Kindred Spirits

I've been missing my long hair lately, so I dragged out my black wig to satiate my desire for longer locks.  I bought it back when my hair was red and I was missing my darker hair, but now it's nice to have longer hair when my short hair just isn't cutting it.  My hair is slowly growing, but it's actually not that much shorter than the wig now.  My hair grows relatively quickly, but since it's curly it seems to take longer to actually gain length.  I like my shorter hair, but for some reason I feel more myself with longer hair.
Speaking of feeling "myself," damn does it feel good to drive this car again!  I'd been putting off getting it registered because I had to go through the whole process of transferring the title from AK to WA and getting new plates, etc, etc.  Every time I have to forfeit another piece of my Alaskan roots my heart hurts a little bit... getting a Washinton drivers license, losing my Alaska license plates, getting a Washington voter's card... little pieces of my Alaskan identity slowly being taken away.  I suppose an identity is internal, but it's hard to give up those symbols.  I always felt a little cool and "other" driving around with AK plates.  I love seeing the occasional AK license plates driving around here in Washington.  It seems like I'm near a kindred spirit or something.

dress(worn as top)/courtesy of modcloth :: skirt/thrifted :: shoes/courtesy of blowfish  
It's crazy that I've had this little car for a whole decade!  She's my girl.  I love all her quirks and oddities, like how to wiggle the key just right to unlock the door, and how you have to turn the key back to get her to start, how I know which bumps to avoid so her undercarriage doesn't scrape on the pavement, and how the transmission is wonky and doesn't want to shift into 3rd after she warms up.  Granted, most of these "quirks" are things I should and could fix.  To some extent, though, it feels like she's a person with these flaws.  I have a tendency to give human attributes to my vehicles...  but she does feel like an old friend.  Someone I've cried with and who's been with me through break-ups and major life events.  She's my girl.

The girl is mine

After almost ten years, the old girl is finally legally mine! Mom and I went to the DMV yesterday and got the title transferred from her name to mine! I got the El Camino when I was 15, so we didn't put the title in my name. She's been sitting in storage for the past 9 months because she wasn't registered, but now she's completely legal and ready to take on the road once more! Oh! And I ended up getting new license plates, even though I love the 70ELKY ones, I'm gonna take those off and keep them forever and replace them with a set of traditional Alaska plates. The gold and blue are very "Alaska" to me since they are the colors of the state flag ("eight stars of gold on a field of blue"). Plus, they remind me of the vintage black and gold California plates that it came with when I bought it. It may not be the most practical of vehicles (lets just say a chevy small block 350 never won any awards for it's superior gas milage), but I love that little camino with all my heart...

Oh, and before I forget, the winner of the ShopRuche Giveaway is...

Sam!

I've got another giveaway coming up soon! Staaaay tuned!

first love.

Let me tell you all a story about my first love. I was fifteen, a silly young teen, and I fell madly in love with the Chevrolet El Camino, specifically the 1969-1970 models. I spent hours on Ebay searching for El Caminos (this was before Craigslist), and eventually found the perfect on in California when we were on a trip visiting family. This car has been with me through what feels like everything. I had it all through high school, hauled hay and tack in the truck bed to horse shows, took it to college. It's quite the friend. For some reason I tend to have closer relationships with non-human things than actual people. Maybe it's just the way these vintage cars have such character. Almost everyone I know has said that Braves seem to just have this jaunty little face, and when I look at the El Camino, I feel like it has some sort of personality as well. Speaking of the Brave, when I first got this car, I had originally envisioned taking a cross country trip pulling a little matching blue trailer! Wouldn't that have been cute too? That was before I fell in love with Winnebagos, obviously. Feel free to not enjoy my cleaning-up-transmission-fluid-and-putting-on-tires outfit. I left home and only brought one change of clothes for three days since I figured I'd just be getting dirty anyway. Oh well! Such is life.

photos of me by my Dad

So you think you know me?

I think the impressions people get of me from just this little blog are very interesting. I mean, technically everyone here sees such a limited slice of my life. I focus a lot of this blog on my personal style/fashion/whatever you want to call it, but that's not the entirety of my life. I'm a lot less "girly" than I think many of you would assume, so I thought I'd give you all a little insight into other things that I do.

Here are a few videos I've taken over the past few years of various things. The first is a video of me flying with my Dad around Prince William Sound. I can't remember which glacier it is we flew by, but the face of that glacier is about 100 ft high. There are a bunch of seals laying around on ice near the end of the video.

After that video was taken, we spotted one of my Dad's friends' boat down on the water, so we landed and went to say hi. We flew home with fresh Alaskan salmon!

These two videos are from when I commercial fished in Bristol Bay, 2006. It's hard to capture rough seas on video, it's one of those "you had to be there" kinds of things. Just imagine a tinier version of Deadliest Catch.

The last video is also from commercial fishing 2006. It's my Dad flying in to come pick me up at the end of the fishing season.

Here are some more photos of commercial fishing. Yes. This is what I looked like for two months straight. I think I only took one or two showers the whole time. It's intense. 2- 4 hours sleep, at the most, per day. The pile of fish I'm laying on here was pulled in by hand. Appx. 5,000 lbs. Usually we have hydraulics that will pull in the net, but if we need to pull it in very quickly or if the hydraulics break, it's all man-power. It took a couple hours to remove all those fish from the net.

Two months on the water in a 32 x 14 ft aluminum gill netter.

This is me back at home with a huge king salmon right after stepping off the plane from 2 months of fishing. Better believe we cooked that fish up right away. I can't remember how much it weighed. I'm going to guess...30 lbs?

Snowmachining in Big Lake, Alaska. I love snowmachining, I hope we get to go this winter. For those of you who are like, "What the hell is a snowmachine?" That's what Alaskans call what most of you know as "snowmobiles." If you call a snowmachine a "snowmobile" up here, everyone will know you're from the lower 48.

Here is a photo of me in Nelson, B.C. Me and my three good guy friends road tripped from Spokane to Nelson and spent the night drinking, hanging out with crazy random people, climbing around on some abandoned mill, and illegally camping in some park. Look at how long my hair was!!

Here I am doing what I love to do most (though I haven't done it in years). I rode for 11 years and this is in Indio, CA at the HITS show. Me and my horse, Taco, showed together from 8th grade through my sr. year of high school.

And here is another one of my all time favorite things to do: show my car. I love classic cars and muscle cars. I have two trophies, a Best Hot Rod award and a Best In Show award from a car show I did in Alaska back in 2005. This is a photo from a car show in Port Angeles, WA from this summer. I'd never been to such a huge car show, it was magical! I'm always totally out of place, though. 90% of people who show cars are men over the age of 50, so I'm this tiny girl anomaly. People are always like, "Is that your car???" Haha!

So there's a little tiny insight into the me that nobody sees on this blog. I'd show y'all a photo of me playing hockey, but all I have is this photo of me watching the Spokane Chiefs back in 2006. So, photos of me playing hockey are still to come...

Haha, freshman me! And my glasses which I own but don't wear!

Rides

Today today today. I am exhausted.

I got my car out of the garage, washed and waxed it, and spent four hours at a car show today! I'm probably going to pass out quite soon, but first I have pictures...

Little pink bike is my new favorite photo companion.

shirt/nollie : skirt/forever21 : sandals/target

Here's my lovely girl, all waxed and shiny. I got my photo taken by a photographer, so I have to call him and get the prints tomorrow or sometime soon.

Here were some other pretty things:

My mom's three friends from college are here visiting this weekend which means I have to live in the garage all weekend with my two younger brothers. There is no internet there and it's cold, so I hope it isn't too uncomfortable. Oh well.