The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-tyee-treetop-tours.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — tyee treetop tours

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SOUTH END ECO-TOURISM

No doubt all you Eco-Adventurers have got your spandex in a bunch salivating over Camano’s newest zipline ‘canopy tour’ at Kristofferson’s farm across from the Plaza Grocery.  I know, you can’t wait for the aerial clothesline through the alders and out over a spectacular vista of Camaloch’s suburbs, the Plaza stripmall and the scenic highway to the South End.
But if you think that is the final word on Aerial Adventure, hold onto your zip harness.  The Tyee Treetop Tours are opening this month too.  One quarter mile of death defying logging cables strung  over killer nettle forests, the store’s old wrecking yard, monster blackberry jungles and a pond filled with west nile mosquitoes bred in car battery water  that make piranhas look as dangerous as guppies.  This is no Thrill or Spill, this is South End history viewed from an eagle’s perspective and moving at 90 mph.  You sign our ironclad waiver of Non-Responsibility and before the ink dries, you’re rocketing above discarded appliances, rusting 1930’s automobiles, vintage logging equipment, all with a spectacular view of Tyee Store and the adjoining Art Gallery, both untouched and unimproved since they designed and built by the now famous firm of Frank Lloyd Wrong, pre-strip mall purveyors of the early pole building school of architectural design.
Tyee Treetop Tours is a virtual time machine on a cable.  Bring the kids — we’re Family Friendly.  Bring an appetite — the Tyee Rotisserie Dogs are tailor made for the courageous.  Bring a Bible — prayers never hurt.  And they’re far more potent than a liability attorney.
Tyee Treetop Tours start at the ridiculously low price of $75 dollars per adult and half price for kids.  We also offer our unique Senior Citizen Discount for you Old Timers looking for that last big thrill.  No safety harness, no admission fee.  Just sign the waiver and skip the small print.
So come down for the fun, come for the adventure or come for an education you won’t find at the community college.  Or come for all that and more!  Tyee Treetop Tours:  History at 90 mph.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-driving-without-a-rearview-mirror.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — driving without a rearview mirror

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Luck’s a funny thing.  Some folks don’t much believe in it – or don’t want to – since they think they’re the Captains of their own Destiny.  Me, I’m easily seasick on the storm tossed waters of my life … so I put more faith in luck than my own crummy navigational skills.  I guess living on the South End had a lot to do with it.  You find yourself on an island on the edge of a continent, you think it’s a short walk before the next move is a wet one.   I came when no one had heard of Camano, few people lived here and most of the cheap land was far down at the south end where I stumbled in one dark and stormy night.  Luck had pretty much run out, jobs were scarce and a bad marriage had foundered on the rocks thanks to the aforementioned maritime skills.
I bought a shack and 7 acres for the princely sum of $25,000, everything I had down, $225 a month for the next 15 years.  Sound cheap?  Well, I had a hard time meeting that mortgage the first few years.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the poorhouse.  Corny as an A.M. radio pop song, I fell in love, got married to my old sweetheart and fell in love too with my place, the South End and my life.  Lucky?  You bet!!
We take forks in the road all the time.  I know buddies who always wonder where the other road would’ve take them.  I don’t look back.  I don’t use the rearview mirror because it takes all my attention to drive the road I took, the one with the NEXT fork and the unexpected curve.  You ask me — and I know you didn’t —luck is part being ready for it.  It’s not a lottery ticket, it’s that small opening, that slim opportunity, that sudden chance that may not come twice, the one that veers up out of the headlights and offers, for those who are ready for it, a new game, a fresh start,  a brand new road.  Luck, I’ll admit this: it does take some skill.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-colton-island.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —colton island

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The Colton Crime Capers go on week after week, month after month and year after year with reporters rolling down Camano Island from France, England, Brazil and every other country interested in international breaking news.  To say it’s a media frenzy is like saying the Gulf Spill will require some big sponges.

The South End Chamber of Little Commerce, our bastion of entrepreneurial endeavor, doesn’t really like talking to reporters about Colton, something akin to Forks denying that vampires walk their streets after dark.  I guess the realtors hate having to explain the intricacies of alarm system technologies to every prospective shack buyer.  It’s a difficult enough market as it is  … and if you were looking for property with a small airstrip behind the carriage house and a hangar for your Cessna, well, probably there are better places to retire.

Our tourism ad slogan — ‘the place to do nothing’ – always troubled us slackers down past Elger Bay Store.  We weren’t proud of unemployment and indolence.  We aren’t ashamed either, but hellfire, what kind of tourist promotion IS this?  Especially when we got the Mother of All Tourist Promotions going on for the past 3 or 4 years.  The Barefoot Burglar, the Camano Kid, the Flying Filcher, our very own international anti-hero.  The movies are being shot, the books are being written, the documentaries are being edited, the mom is hiring an entertainment lawyer, the deals are being made!  Rolling Stone has declared Camano officially the Cape Cod of the Pacific Northwest.  And we still want to be the place that does nada?  Maybe the Chamber  …. But the rest of us are ready to roll!  Tour buses, T-shirts, coffee mugs, souvenir shops:  we’re ready to cash in.  Camano, the island to do nothing?  We don’t need a new slogan, we need a new NAME.  Colton Island.  Nice ring to it.  Get off the hammock and call your commissioner today!

Paid for by the Committee to Rename Camano Island

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-the-high-price-of-fame.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — the high price of fame

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