You Might Live in Pelican if...

this is for all my readers who keep asking to hear more about life in Pelican...

I confess to swiping some of this list from my SouthEast Alaska facebook group, but some are my own addition too...I left a couple that don't specifically apply to me cuz they're so funny, but most of these are either about me or one of my friends here.

You Might Live in Pelican (or SouthEast Alaska) if:

- People hear that you live in Alaska and ask about the polar bears/tundra/constant darkness, and you have to explain that you live in the 'other' part of Alaska...the part with rainforest, grizzly bears, salmon, fishing, cruises, whales, and bald eagles...

- You live in the tiny town of Pelican on the very large island of Chichagof, but your family still refers to "Pelican Island" and thinks it's little

- You know what muskeg is

- Anything short of a torrential downpour and raining sideways is "good weather"

- You cannot stay inside when the sun is out, no matter how briefly

- By the time you get your coat and boots on the sun is gone again, but you stay outside for a few minutes anyway

- You have worn X-tra Tuffs to school or work or on a date

- You own more than one pair of X-tra Tuffs --->

- You think name brands are Grundens, Helle Hansen, X-tra Tuff, and Carhartt

- Your Christmas list includes such items as boat parts, raingear, long underwear, or rifle ammunition

- You know everybody in your town, and I mean EVERYBODY

- You also know their dogs by name (and which dogs will be nice to your dog/toddler)

- You know that boat dogs--male or female--squat to pee, even on land. Raising a leg on a boat = falling over

- The kids in town wear lifevests (aka 'float coats') everywhere, all the time

- You take up knitting because the weekly knitting circle is the only social event in town (unless you like to hang out in smoke-filled bars with drunk fishermen)

- You drag a plastic sled to the post office/store to bring home your mail/packages/groceries.

- You keep a tidetable in the house because your son likes to walk to/from school over the tideflats, and he doesn't always pay attention to whether the tide is in or out before he starts walking

- You have to go into Juneau to go shopping (and it's expensive, so you only go a couple of times a year, or else get everything shipped on the seaplane/ferry)

- Ferry day is worth canceling school (so everyone can go help unload their family's groceries)

- You can't remember the last time you locked your front door, even when you were out of town for a week

- You have thought about inventing a bumper sticker that reads "this car does not brake for cannery workers" (variations include same phrase in other languages or substituting "tourists" for "cannery workers")

- You would put the bumper sticker on your 4-wheeler or golf cart...because you don't actually have a car

- Riding in someone elses golf cart feels really fast (because you're used to walking)

- Two 4-wheelers/golf carts within sight of each other constitutes a traffic jam

- You have been married 35 years and have 5 kids but have never had a drivers license...because there are no cars in town so who needs one

- After living in Pelican for a few months you visit Juneau and borrow your cousin's car, and while tooling down the highway at what seems like a good clip you notice everyone passing you, and so you look at the speedometer to verify that you are going 45mph, and realize that you're doing 32.

- Fishing is not a hobby but a job

- You know what dogs, reds, humpys, coho, pinks, silvers, sockeye, chinook, chum, and kings are and can tell them all apart by sight OR taste

- Everyone you know has a picture like this --->

- When you can tell the difference between wild and farmed salmon in a restaurant, even if the waiters can't

- You have a bumper sticker that looks like this:

Friends DON'T let friends
EAT FARMED FISH

(and you display it in your window)

- You know who will (and won't) ship a fish box fast enough that the fish is still good when it arrives

- It's not uncommon to come home and find a 'big king salmon' in the sink that your neighbors dropped off because they didn't have room in their freezer.... so you eat it for dinner

- You tell people down south you are a commercial fisherman and they ask if it's like Deadliest Catch

- You are more proud to be an Alaskan than an American and you don't really get offended when people mistake you for being Canadian

- You know that "SouthEast" means SEA (southeast alaska) and that it's actually north and west of "The NorthWest"

- You know that Seattle is down south, which is totally unrelated to The South (where people eat gumbo and say "y'all"). People from down south just don't understand . . .

- You have spent 30+ hours on a ferry on one trip, and you can recognize every one of them from 3 miles away

- You have taken a float plane or a commercial fishing vessel for a school trip

- You've been stuck in Sitka, Gustavus, Hoonah, Angoon, or Juneau because of a wimpy pilot who circled over your hometown until you were too dizzy to know what's going on and then landed you somewhere else
- The lady at the seaplane office leaves her home number on the answering machine for the days when it's foggy/windy/stormy and she won't be getting down to the office

- You have been on a seaplane flight where all 6 people in the cabin applauded the pilot for landing you safely on the water after a pee-your-pants scary ride involving "flying by braille" in the fog or falling 1000 feet in 2 seconds (yay wind!)

- You're not the least bit baffled by city names like Ketchikan, Chichagof, Baranof, and Klukwan, and you know that Gustavus is pronounced "Gus-TAVE-us"

- Puddle jumping is part of your cross country or track teams' regular practices

- You only go to school on Wednesdays during your sports' season because you're traveling the rest of the time

- You look forward to school trips as mini-vacations off the island and shopping opportunities

- You have gone to high school basketball or wrestling regionals even if you weren't competing in anything, simply because otherwise you would have been the only person left in your town.

- Papa Murphy's Take n Bake pizza IS delivery (and it comes on a seaplane, and the entire town orders on the same day to share the freight cost)

- You have taken a skiff to get to school (a skiff is what non-alaskans would refer to as "a motorboat" or something with no cabin and that's too small for commercial fishing)

- You travel down south to visit family and grandma points out a songbird to your toddler...and he looks and looks but doesn't seem to see it, and then you realize that the only birds anyone has ever pointed out to him before were great blue herons and bald eagles