Great stuff, subbed.

The story about swimming out to get your boat had me sweating bullets, glad you made it. Your story would be perfect for that show I Shouldn't Be Alive

Having gone through that, have you set up anything as a safety net in case something similar happens again? Sat Phone? Box of gear with tent, etc hidden somewhere?

Being alone out there, it seems like thinking about some worse case scenarios in advance would be beneficial.

Stay safe and good luck!

Clearly amazing.

I live in BC on the other coast on the mainland a block away from the Ocean.

I grew up in Eastern Canada near Ottawa and we used to take family driving holidays to the New England area including Maine. I have fond memories of my time there so I am glad I came across this thread.

Funny enough, I drank (among other things) a ton in my twenties too.

Looking forward to following your story.

My family also have a holiday house on an peninsula 7 miles by boat off the south coast of Victoria, Australia. We have had it for about 20 years now and its interesting looking back at all the extra inclusions we have added over the years,, extra solar panels and batteries, water tanks, have you considered this? Water is your life so I think if you are going to keep sustainable and sustainable in the future you should look into this,, although I know just by yourself perhaps your supply is sufficient.

Can you fish off there at all and is the fishing any good?

I agree with your marujuana use, im a user myself and have also been a drinker over the years but as I got older the drinking doesnt bother me too much but i need my scoobs.. Would be good if this thread didnt become a thread of drug stories though, we all got them, much interested with the life on the island.

Hows the grinding going and what are you currently playing? Any good scores lately?

Awesome thread- subbed.

On nice days that your aunt and uncle aren't on the island what % of the day are you wearing your birthday suit? If your answer is less than 60% please explain.

great story - great writing

if u are ever in vegas I would love to buy you dinner my man...looking foreword to hearing more of your story

Just read thru, this is awesome. Couple of random questions:

1.) What's the weather like in the winter and do you go outside at all during it?

2.) Would the government allow you to build a separate 100 square foot building on that property? Like, I'm envisioning having a 2nd 100 square foot building that could serve as an office some day?

3.) Do you ever fish from the island to catch your dinner?


Again, this is awesome and so different from anything I normally read on 2+2.

-Shane

Not really. If I get stranded out here I will be fine. I have gotten much more cautious when around the water though. Being a fisherman I was never afraid of the ocean in an egotistical way. Now I have a much more healthy respect for the dangers I face living out here.

I'm sure I will get something better set up some day. I need to look into it but I was thinking a distiller so that I could use the ocean water. For right now though I have adequate supply. This summer I will be digging the well deeper and lining it so that the water is cleaner.

All I have ever caught out here are Mackerel and Harbor Pollock. You can catch a bucketfull in an hour when you catch the tide right. People catch striped bass and bluefish in the river, but this area isn't know for good sport fishing.

Grinding has been going great. I decided to take another shot at going pro back in February. I have been working with a coach since then who has been helping me for free and is hugely responsible for my success thus far. I was playing 10nl in February and now I am winning at 100nl. If everything goes well hopefully I will be shot taking 200nl soon. I have a backer so that has helped me move up pretty quickly while still making a little money to live off. I think this month might be the first time this year I make enough to not get stressed about the little things like wanting to buy some soda but realizing it's not a necessity.

I'm the type of person who likes wearing clothes...call me lame. Though there was this one time...

Ok well let me start by saying there is a family that has 3 adjacent houses on the beach across the water. They face the island and have always hated my family for one reason or another. The oldest has a telescope that he keeps pointed towards the island (you can see it if you drive by his house) and he likes to call the authorities about anything he can. He has called about us having camp fires without a permit and other dumb stuff. He called code enforcement on me when he saw my camp being built because he figured I didn't have a permit. They just suck and like to give my family grief, mostly because of old lobstering rivalries.

So what I was getting to. Now when the weather is nice and I take one of my sponge baths out of a bucket, I make sure to do it on the part of the island that he directly faces. I stand out on the rocks and make sure to give him the full view. Why? I don't know, I thought I was getting him back or something but just now I'm realizing that maybe I was making his day. Oh and btw they have an outdoor lobster resteraunt on said beach. So if any tourists with really good vision look over they will wonder "is that a naked guy bathing on that rock? Nah, can't be..."

Awesome thanks you enjoyed it! I may be in Vegas this coming winter. I need to get away from the Maine winter and Vegas is definitely on my list of possible winter homes.

I didn't stay out here this last winter. Actully I just moved back out here April 1st and it had been almost a year since I left. I knew I needed to make poker work before I could come back. The winter I did stay out here was pretty rough. I have no protection from the wind so there were quite a few nights I was truly fearful my place was going to blow over. An average January day out here includes a gay kind of light peeking through the clouds, 10 degree temperatures not counting the wind chill, and wind blowing anywhere from 20-35mph. There are days when it is much worse than that. You also get occasional 30 degree sunny days. I would try to cross back and forth on those days.

There really isn't anything to do outside out here in the winter so I didn't go outside more than I had to. I did spend alot of time staying on the mainland that winter though (1 week in/ 1 week out). The biggest problem with winter out here is keeping my boat safe. I went through 3 outboard motors my first winter out here because my boat kept sinking. I had 2 pulley lines to keep my skiff tied to, one on each side of the island. When I knew the wind was coming westerly I would move my skiff to the east side, an vice versa. But sometime the weather would change in the night and my skiff would get swamped and sink. I actually had a second near death experience trying to save my skiff when it was sinking that winter.

This has crossed my mind many times. I don't think it would be a problem with the government, but I think it would cause problems with the family if I made a little shed village on this side of the island. Some of the family is actually kind of mad at me for building my place out here because "what if we all built a little place out there?". Which I then respond, "that would be really cool."

I am not a big fan of mackerel so I haven't yet. But I have some ideas for this summer. Smoked mackerel isn't too bad so I have thought about making a small smoker.

I do harvest periwinkles and clams somewhat often though. I actually just set a lobster trap a few days ago, I am going to haul it on the next non-windy day. I will take pictures of the process when I haul it.

Amazing read.

So what do you do for cooking and stuff when on the island?

I want to be an island hermit. Next life.

The oldest has a telescope that he keeps pointed towards the island (you can see it if you drive by his house)


This just dont sound right.

Sick Ben hopefully no hurricanes this summer!!

Nice pics NE is the bomb!!!!!

It varies. I have somewhat limited choice because I don't have refrigeration. I eat quite a lot of bread, bagels and Belvita biscuits. The other staples are rice & beans, baked beans from a can and breakfast cereal with powdered milk. Lately I've been on a corned beef hash kick. I really should focus on eating better. Once I can afford new batteries for my solar system I will get a mini fridge and that will give me a lot more options.

I eat periwinkles once every week or two. I dig clams to eat about once a month and I eat lobster when I can catch them. Periwinkles aren't bad. Most people around here wouldn't eat them but if you don't look at them when you eat them they are good. They just look gross out of the shell though. I am always lazy and just steam them with some spices and sauces and eat them straight. I really should try making a meal with them though. I think they would be good with pasta in a buttery sauce.



I set a lobster trap last week. It was an old ****ty trap with one of the bricks missing from it, no wooden runners and the door bungees were broken. It was just sitting on the dock and I doubt it will get used again if I don't set it. I went back to haul it a few days later and photographed the process.

First we need some bait. This time of year lobsters are attracted to the freshest bait you can get. Clams aren't normally considered lobster bait but I think they work well, especially in the late spring. So I grab my clam fork (the same clam fork that tilled my garden) and a bucket to put the clams in.


There aren't many places on Paradise where you can actually dig clams, but I know a few secret sandy patches where we can get a handful. The times I want a decent amount to eat I go to dry ledge where there is a really good clam bed, but this spot is good enough to bait a trap with.


I only take a few swipes with the fork and I already have enough clams. The tide is starting to come up so my hole is filling with water.




Then I throw a rock in there and crush them up by shaking the bucket around.


Then I drag my skiff down to the shore


And now I paddle to the other side of the island where my lobster trap is.




There it is!!




Now I couldn't take pictures while I was hauling the trap up. I pulled in 50 feet of rope, and brought it aboard. It was dead empty!



So I re-baited the trap with fresh clams and moved it a little closer to the shore. This time of year the lobsters aren't very active so I didn't think I would catch a bunch, but I was hoping for at least one. Then as I was rowing in I saw an old slimy lobster buoy. When a buoy is covered in slime like this it means that it was forgotten about by the owner and left out all winter. These are called "strays" and they are considered fair game by most lobstermen.

I hauled the trap and there weren't any lobsters in it. Just before I threw it back though I noticed a flounder in the trap!



I don't have a good fillet knife out here anymore though so I let him go. I really like eating flounder though so I was kind of bummed out. I didn't think there were any around the island but now I know that I should be rigging up some hooks for a flounder trawl.

Now it's time to go have some baked beans I guess. Gotta drag my skiff back up the beach.

dmt..... Seen that stuff of phish tour..... Eek

I could totally get into this stuff, except I hate fish. I wonder if I got reallly hungry I would grow to like it?

Subbed for sure


I would really like to hear your felon story as, I unfortunately have one of my own nothing serious or crazy or violent but still have one none the less. I also hope I can turn poker into a valuable source of income and maybe branch of into something else maybe along with poker. Unfortunately I am having a tough time and a bit of a down swing, I was wondering also how you got backing and a coach if you didn't already say.

Must-read stuff. Love it.

I would definitely be cooking over flame though!

What a great great man! Great blog.

Wow interesting stories and life. Subbed!

Thanks for following everyone!

A few updates in my life. Poker has been going kind of crappy, but I am fairly confident I have been playing to the best of my ability most of the time. The past few months I have been climbing the stakes, yet making less than the month before. It's just the nature of the beast though and I need to stay focused on my goals and keep pushing forward.

On a better note my girlfriend has decided to quit drinking! She has only made it about a week so far, but she seems really excited about it and knows that she needs to stay sober no matter what. So that's pretty awesome.

Ok so there have been a few requests for my felon story. I guess it's time to share...

I was 22 years old and drinking like a fish. I had also started experimenting with drugs at this time. The lobstering season was winding down and the boat I was working on didn't fish through the winter so I wasn't sure how I was going to make ends meet. Then I decided to try selling seafood on the roadside out of my truck. This is something that alot of coastal Mainers do in the winter during the shrimp season because they can be sold while they are still incredibly fresh and you don't need too many licenses to do this. I was doing this for a few weeks and my profit margin was razor thin. I was taking home about $100 a week after expenses because I didn't have a great roadside spot compared to some of the other guys around (eventually that winter I found a town about 3 hours away that was a goldmine!).

I was having a really bad week and I couldn't sell enough shrimp to cover my expenses. With no money saved I didn't have enough to buy more shrimp from the boats and I was scared that my venture would be done before I could even get going. I needed to find a way to make some money quick. In years past I had broken into a few safes. I told myself I was never going to do this again, but the temptation was just too much. If I could just rob one safe I would have money to keep my seafood pedaling going and I could score some good drugs and life would be great!

My girlfriend at the time was working at KFC and she made the mistake of telling me that the back door had a lock on it that didn't work very well. So one night I decided I had to do it. This would be my last score and then I would never rob another safe again, though I had told myself that before. I was living with my cousin and his girlfriend along with my girlfriend. I talked my cousin into dropping me off at KFC and picking me up when the job was done. I put on some black clothes and cranked some music while I gathered my crowbar and hammer and stuff. I was pumped and ready to do it. I have never felt a rush like breaking in somewhere and busting the safe open and I was hungry for that feeling again.
My cousin, my girlfriend and I all got into his car and drove towards KFC. Nobody tried to talk me out of it, though I don't know if it would have made a difference because I really needed the money. I had been drinking that night but I wasn't too drunk, just enough to calm my nerves. I listened to some old school Oi! to get my head in the game on the way there. Then they dropped me off about 100 feet down the road from the KFC.
I crept along the bushes, waiting until there weren't any cars driving by, then ran to the building. I found the back door that I was told about and pried it open with my crowbar. Alarm!! There was an alarm that she didn't tell me about!! I ran to the woods just out of sight. I waited for the cops to come so that I would know which direction to run. After a few minutes of waiting, listening to this loud ass alarm blaring, there still weren't any cops. I had set off alarms before when breaking into other places and the cops were always there within a minute. So in my drunken mind I thought "A few minutes and still no cops? The alarm must just be a local alarm that doesn't send a signal to the cops." So I ran back to the building and went in. I found the safe and it looked like a piece of cake. So alarms blaring all around me I started to work on the safe. A few minutes later I had both hinges off the safe and I was just starting to hammer my crowbar into the door for the finishing blow, less than a minute from now I will have this thing open and I will hopefully be $5K-10K richer. Then just as I am pulling the door open a bunch of flashlights turn on all around me and I hear "Don't move! Put your hands up!" I dropped my tools and put my hands up. Then as I was being dragged out of the place they pulled my facemask off and one of the cops happened to be a long time friend of my family. "what the **** are you doing Ben?" he asked. "I needed money man, I'm desperate.", "not like this Ben, not like this..."
I got a court appointed attorney and plead guilty. The court was gracious enough to let my sentence get suspended until the next winter at the end of lobstering season. I got a 2 year sentence with all but 6 months suspended. This mean that I had to do 6 months in jail, but if i messed up and got in any more trouble I would get the full 2 years. I also had 2 years of probation after I got out of jail.

Now some people take to jail just fine. They don't have to work and just hang out playing cards and watching tv all day. This was not my experience at all. I had spent the last 2 years (excluding winters) living in a tent in the woods and just living free. When I got to jail I was couped up with no freedom, around a bunch of moronic animals. The jail around here isn't a tough jail where there are fights and all that very often. It's just a bunch of punks who talk about one another all day. As I have said before I don't get along with my peers very well and this was definitely no different in Jail. I couldn't fight anyone to get them to just leave me alone, because I would lose my good time and end up doing a full sentence. My only thought the whole time was that I just needed to behav, even if it made me look like a pussy. Luckily I managed to stay out of trouble and got a job in the kitchen. For every day you work in the jail you get time off your sentence, so I only ended up doing 4.5 months. I must say though it was the absolute worse time of my entire life. I am not the type of person who handles stagnation very well. When I got out I was on probation for 2 years and managed to stay out of trouble the whole time. I was smoking pot at the time and eventually I told my probation officer about it. He appreciated my honesty and said that he wasn't going to drug test me, but if I got caught by the cops with weed then he couldn't do anything to help me. Thos 2 years on probation were incredibly stressful and filled with paranoia, but at the same time I think it helped me to not fall back into old habits knowing that I had 18 months of jail time hanging over my head.

I could keep writing about this stuff but I think I have made this too long already. I would go into more detail about other burglaries but I was never caught for them so it's probably not a good idea. I also want anyone reading this to know that I have never stolen a thing from any individual, ever. Any time I have stolen anything it has always been from a large corporation. This doesn't make it right, but in my mind it separates me from a purse snatcher by just a little bit. I also want to say that I am very indignant of my crimes. I tell this story in a matter of fact kind of way, because it happened and I can never take it back. I do feel guilty about it though and think that I deserved my punishment, if not more. I haven't done anything like this since that time that I got caught and I used to think of jail as "ohwell I will probably end up there some day" but now I know that I cannot ever put myself back there. Incarceration is such a waste of life and you will never get that time back.

Thanks for reading everyone.

I haven't updated it in a while, but I explain how i got my coach in my PGnC http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...ember-1508214/
If you want to take poker seriously I would recommend hiring a coach.

The backer came after I started winning. It would be really hard to find a backer if you don't already have a track record for winning. The reason that I decided to seek out a stake was so that I could withdraw money each month without slowing my progress climbing the stakes.

Feel free to hmu on skype if you want help going over some hands or anything Skype- live:btripp1986

when you say you could rob just 1 more safe and "get some good drugs", what kind of drugs are we talking about?

I ask bc I grew up with felons and fiends, and I can't say that anyone from either group could talk themselves into, "bah...prolly just a local alarm, lemme go get this money".

i'm assuming designer/hallucinogens? someone mentioned dmt (feel like I should remember all this) and every smack/crackhead I know, even sick would weigh those odds and figure they're better off begging down the street than detoxing in jail...

Yeah there was ecstasy going around my town at the time and that's what I wanted. I don't think I would have done it just for the drugs though. The big motivator was to keep my seafood pedaling going, the drugs would just be a bonus.

finally, "dmt: the spirit molecule" by dr rick straussman is a phenomenal book about a doctor testing lab-grade dmt on volunteers in a controlled setting. there's something to that drug, if you read the volunteers' accounts of what was going on they all said basically the same thing. kinda spooky even.

always said I'd try it twice under the right circumstances, but short of an encrypted, I assume chinese drug dealer's email back and forth I had that I couldn't pull the trigger on, I don't have the first clue where or how to find 99% pure dmt.

on top of that, I don't know that I would trust my 105lb wife to be able to babysit that (albeit brief) adventure.

anyway yeah I'm rambling. great book if you haven't read it

Yeah I don't want this to turn into a blog about drugs, but DMT is some really amazing stuff. I got what I needed from it and have told myself I never need to do it again. I never bought the stuff but I extracted it myself from mimosa hostilis root bark. I bought that book you are talking about a few years ago but never read it and now i have lost it.