Alaskan Mosquitos...And Corrections!

This post comes from my youngest brother, Scott "the one-legged lineman". He is in Alaska working right now. Odis Scott Brawner, Jr. The correction is at the bottom of this post. 4th of July pictures are comming soon.

Sis,
Next time I here anyone down there complain about mosquitoes, I'm gonna send ya these pics. The pics really don't do our skeeter population justice. We are the minority, I have been wearing 20 pound weights on my ankles just to be sure I don't get carried away by them. I have been thinking I might need to tether my self to the truck some how with a leash, so if the do get a hold of me they cant fly away with me.

Bet ya never seen that many in one spot. So this is just quick shots of the truck and the wall outside my room, not very good, but it shows how bad they are. Believe, it's worse than it looks. but surprisingly, they don't really bother you that much if your working and moving around. It's when you stop in a area where the wind is broken (i.e. the truck is blocked on 3 sides here by walls, no wind) that's when they hammer ya. but normally there is a breeze everywhere out and about, so during the day they don't bug ya much.
The skeeters are a secondary concern, considering, someone shot a very large Grizzly in the 2nd floor hallway of the most popular man camp (hotel) recently in the middle of the night. He was on the 1st floor when a women walked out of her room headed to the cafeteria for a late night snack, she screamed and he headed up the stairs and was mose'ing around when the local security guy grabed his large bear rifle and shot him dead in the hall way. Thats in the Prudhoe Bay "HOTEL" so the skeeters arent that scary :-)

I'll try to pull up some photos of this today and send out of him laying in the hall dead.
Scottie

These mosquitoes when you enlarge the picture look like the size of lightening bugs.

The story behind the "one-legged lineman" is this...He rides a motorcycle. I think it's been 5 or 6 years now, he was riding crotch rocket. My step-mother, Charlene, Andy, his wife, my sister Delani, and Andy's kids, Blake and Alisa were following behind in Charlene's van. Scott decided to do a wheelie. When he put the back wheel on the ground he lost control, I believe that there was a semi-truck or some type of vehicle in the on coming lane so Scott tried to maneuver the bike to the ditch, which didn't quite work. He slammed through a barbwire fence which cut off his leg and he did some major damage to his arm. Remember, the van was following him. Charlene stops, Andy jumps out rushes over to Scott and whips off his belt and wraps it around his leg to stop the bleeding. Someone stays in the Van to keep the kids from seeing what was going on. A nurse on her way home from work stops and called for emergency help. Scott was airlifted to the hospital in Springfield, Missouri (they live about 30 minutes from Branson, Missouri and this all happened just a few miles from my dad and Charlenes house.) I can not imagine what it was like for Charlene and my brother Andy to watch all this happen. My dad was in Alaska at the time working for the phone company, it was so hard on him being stuck in the middle of nowhere, not being able to lay his eyes on Scott. Charlene was the ROCK for everyone. She amazes me. Andy amazes me when I think of how much courage it took to jump inot action. It still unnerves me to even try to imagine what they saw. It was touch and go for awhile. They were not sure that he would make it through the surgery. When Scott woke up he wanted to know if the doctors had put his leg back, and they couldn't. The leg had too much nerve damage and the barbwire was embedded to deep. Scott wanted to get his leg, go to another hospital and get someone to put it back. He had a hard time for the first couple of days but finally came around. He made an amazing recovery and went back to work for the phone company teaching ......"SAFETY". Kind of ironic.

I hope that Scott does not mind me putting his story on here and if I've made any mistakes let me know and I just realized that I think that I've posted this before, I've already spent all this time typing, so read it anyway and be happy.

Reply from Scottie...

Sis, You really got fix the back stoppie thing. It was a wheelie at around 100 to 120 Mph. When I set the front wheel down it was not properly aligned and caused a massive head shake (high speed wobble) which caused a loss of control and then I couldn't dodge the truck, so that's when I went off the road. If we're bragging lets get it right. Tore off the left leg, broke the right arm in 3 places, broke the right scapula, the right collar bone, and badly lacerated my right leg, and had a slight concussion. The rest was perty good. But come on if your gonna post my stuff at-least fix the spelling issues, gosh, your making me look like a redneck or sumtin.

The grizzly bear laying in the hall way is really cool but I gotta get a digital pic of it, the pics are on the wall as a reminder that there can be a grizz anywhere at any time, but I haven't found any digital's yet.

You were close enough, but there aint no back stoppie :-) a stoppie is when you bring it p on the front wheel under heavy breaking from 50 MPH or so. I know you needed that info for reference :-)