Tut, tut. Looks like rain. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=kaiwik]
Thanks for the compliment Phase42, it’s still rough in places. As my life becomes a bit more settled I am trying to get my memories written down in order to leave them to future kaiwikettes!
Not to hijak this thread, (even though I have, sorry) but really supervenusfreak I found the tattoo process relaxing. However when it begins to heal, man, does it itch like crazy! I finally found a photo of a bear head I want tattooed on the inside of my ankle next!
Just to tie this in with the rest of the thread, we have had an early Spring bear roaming about the edges of town since February. He’s just hungry, and with the new bear-proof dumpsters in place, he has been scavenging roots and shoots, just as he is supposed to. The reds start running in about six weeks, and then it’s an adventure to go to the beach or river! :eek: 
I don’t have any tattoos, and I’m still young for those there bear activities. (I assume alcohol is present?)
You guys realize that I will be out of college before I’m able to drink? As in, I’ll have my 4 year degree and not be 21 for another over half of a year?
You know, I’m tired of the war on bears. I think we should call it off and maybe start a new war. Say, a war on TLA’s.
[QUOTE=Homebrew]
LOL. That pic made me snort jello. Nice!
Kaikik, the tattooing process doesn’t bother me at all either. I know that I will get another one, it’s all a matter of timing and financing.
Okay, I promised to relate the story of my dad’s encounter with a bear. I’ll try to write it like he used to tell it. Caveat: As I’ve grown older I’ve come to the conclusion that my dad was one hell of a liar, but he told a good story. I’m sure his version of the story is embellished, though it has been corroborated by others.
It was 1962, the summer after Dad graduated from high school. He grew up in a tiny rural farming community in western Washington state. The town is not far from Mt. St. Helens, and is situated in the midst of the great evergreen forests for which Washington is known. The men of the area were avid hunters, and that included my dad. Deer and elk roamed the surrounding forest, as did black bears.
A friend of my father enjoyed trapping, and had scattered a number of bear traps throughout the woods. This friend went out one day to check his traps. For some unknown reason — probably the fact that he never found anything in his traps — he did not bring his gun with him. Naturally, this was the day he finally caught something. There was an extremely annoyed black bear with one of this fellow’s traps clamped around it’s ankle.
Because my dad lived nearby, the friend came knocking on his door. “Hey!” he said. “I’ve got a bear in my trap, but I ain’t got no gun! C’mon, bring yours!” Or words to that effect. So dad grabbed his favorite rifle, a Winchester Model 92 .32-caliber lever action piece, and loaded seven rounds into its magazine. The two friends headed back to the trap.
Nearing the bear, they crept softly until they had the beast in sight, at which point my dad’s friend stood up, pointed, and shouted, “There it is!”
Now, by this point the bear had been stuck in that trap for several hours, and was in an ugly, ugly mood. At the sound of the human voice, the bear turned to face the two 18-year-old men, roared, and charged. The bear trap was chained securely to a log, which the bear dragged behind itself as it as it came on. Dad pushed his friend to one side and opened fire. He was already an experienced hunter, and a good shot, but the enraged animal kept getting closer. To quote my dad:
“The bear was right in front of me, and I had the barrel of that gun this far [holding hands about 18 inches apart] down his throat, when I pulled the trigger and it went ‘click’.”
A wrestling match ensued, though dad didn’t describe it in detail because he couldn’t remember exactly what happened. But at some point the bear stopped fighting and collapsed, on top of him. The friend managed to get dad out from under the bear, and then reloaded the gun and put a bullet into the bear’s brain. Dad passed out at this point.
The friend ran for help, returning with my grandfather and a pickup. They patched up my still-unconscious dad as best they could. Then, in true hunter fashion, they first loaded the dead bear into the bed of the truck and then laid dad on top of the bear. They drove him into town and found the local doctor, who got dad’s wounds sewn up. Dad still has a huge scar on his lower back and another on his knee from that encounter.
When they cut the bear open, they found it’s heart completely destroyed by my dad’s shots. Running on pure adrenaline and anger, the bear simply didn’t know it was dead yet as it tore into Dad. The whole encounter probably lasted no more than a few seconds, but Dad said that, at the time, it felt like an hour.
Now that I think about it, his injuries from the bear may be the reason he didn’t go into the Marines until a year later. He needed time to heal!
chaoticbear the majority of my bear encounters occured when I was stone cold sober. The same goes for the tattooing. I will congratulate you for your academic progress, go you!
Homebrew that’s a nice tat, what is in the bottom area? (Not the bear paw, the other?) I have two others, I’ll dig out the pics soon, as my stoopid digital camera is on strike. supervenusfreak I still want fireweed on my right calf (above the bear yin-yang, a bear head (not growling and ferocious, just the plump, furry face of a bear) and I am going to add to the back of the hand and wrist tattoo, probably with more flowers and a dragonfly. My husband so far has no body art, but we are going to get tattoos together, and I think we have settled for something involving Calvin and Hobbes, for many personal reasons! Timing and financing are an issue with us as well, as he is gone out fishing most of the time.
It’s a tiara. I’m a little bit Queen and a little bit Bear.
Ah, gotcha. I didn’t think it was a flower, and my brain is tired and a little slow tonight! Still, a very cool tat! I like mine to be personal as well, not just flash off the wall.
Koalas aren’t bears. I will however concede that they are stoned on eucalyptus martinis for 95% of the time. It does keep them quiet, but it also makes their piss one of the most toxic substances on earth. 
Just for the record, it’s the dropbears you need to be wary of in Australia. Fucking not cute and not cuddly bastards that they are. 
OMG!? The Google Ads:
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The whole world is against us!!! Where can we hide from Google???
Phase42 that’s a great story! So happy that your dad came back with a story to tell, too! Bears don’t give it up very easily at all, I have heard of more than one story where the bear continued it’s attack after it was clinically dead, the adreneline just keeps it going. Here’s a link to a photo of a bear guide I knew out in the village, it’s an older photo, but I promise you the bears are still as large!
China?
LOL. I wrote “China?” twice at the end of my post, and twice erased it before sending.
Condisering the way they caved in to China’s censorship demands, I figure we can’t even hide THERE.
Hmmm… unless we hide in all the ANTI-CHINA webpages… Or, hell, the Big Gay Bear Trek Party Pages…
… that might not be too bad a place to be. I bet I can drink for free there!
Yeah, I’m pretty grateful for that too. Of course, if he hadn’t I wouldn’t know the difference 
Hmm… if he hadn’t survived it, my mom might have married the guy she dated before my dad. That guy’s a multimillionaire now :smack:
My dad went on to become a state patrolman, and got called “bear” for reasons having nothing to do with the mauling (Smokey? Bear? Get it? 
)
There’s another guy in my town who is called Bear. He wrestled in the WWF in the 60’s and 70’s, and at one point he got roped into wrestling a bear as some sort of publicity stunt. He won. - he killed the bear. Yah, this guy is big. Wish I could remember his real name. Ken something. He told me some of the names he wrestled under, but I’m afraid I can’t remember any of them.
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That’s bigass bear! My dad’s bear wasn’t anywhere near that size!
Maybe we should be glad that they postponed Bear Invasion until nextr year. We would have been sitting ducks!
I just had assumed that drinking-age-legality was a prereq for them.
Somehow I don’t think kaiwik and donkeybear (my little pet name for chaoticbear) are talking about the same thing.
At any rate, db drinking, while it does occur in mass quantities at bear events, is not something you have to do. Matter of fact, I’d advise to go real light, cause well, it’s kinda good to at least remember what you did the night before.
That occurred to me as well. Won’t it be fun when we clue kaiwik in?
chaoticbear, usually the only restrictions on bear runs are age-of-consent (18). Some specific events at the run may be held in bars, and you’d be restricted from attending those events, but the run itself is almost always 18 and over.