A Glibertarians Exclusive – Mr. Okpik Goes to Washington, Part I
Wainwright, Alaska – February 2028
Quinn Okpik looked morosely out over the expanse of sea ice. He was seated on a chunk of sea ice that had blown up onto the pebble beach earlier in the winter, before the sea had frozen solid. His brother Tuktu walked up and sat next to him. A cold wind blew in off the Chukchi Sea. The brothers were two of a kind – short, stocky, like most of the Inuit, with broad faces, black hair and shining black eyes. Quinn was thirty-seven, Tuktu, thirty-five.
“So much for any jobs in the oil fields,” Quinn grumped.
“Yup,” Tuktu agreed. “President Harris shut down the whole thing. All the oil and gas fields. What did they call it? An ‘executive order,’ that’s it. At least we can stay home all year now, instead of going up to the fields.”
“Old Anuniaq says she can’t do that. She can’t just shut everything down. Something about the Constitution.”
“Well,” Tuktu pointed out, “she did it. Not just going to hurt us, either. Going to hurt the whole state.”
“She don’t care.”
“Nothing we can do,” Tuktu went on. “All because of some kind of ‘climate change.’ Wouldn’t mind a little climate change around here. At least if we could fish more of the year. We may have to.”
“Comes to that, we’ll need more boats, more and bigger. That means buying them from somewhere or making our own – and what are we going to make them from? Wood costs too much to have flown up here. Last year they made us stop whaling. Remember when that Sea Shepherd asshole was up here filming us? That got back to Washington and bang, no more whaling. We been doing it for thousands of years, but bunch of rich people in the forty-eight got all upset, so we got to stop. It ain’t right.”
“President Harris claimed she could do it under some EPA rule.”
“It ain’t right,” Quinn repeated. “Someone ought to listen to us up here. Nobody listens to us up here.”
“Call your Congresswoman,” Tuktu joked.
“She didn’t pay that much attention to us up here when she was Governor.”
A distant buzzing slowly grew into the roar of two Wright radial engines – the sole aircraft belonging to Bob Sutter Air Cargo, an ancient US Army Air Force C-47 converted into a civilian cargo hauler, bringing in general cargo from Kotzebue on the regular weekly run. The brothers turned and watched as the ancient bird settled to the airfield’s one runway with an almost audible sigh of relief.
“Maybe it would be a good thing to go to Juneau. Talk to those people down there. Maybe they’d listen. They’re Alaskans – or they’re supposed to be.”
“You think?”
Quinn stood up. “I’m gonna go talk to Bob Sutter.”
“What for?”
“See if I can get a ride with him.”
“What? Down to Kotzebue? What good is that gonna do?”
“So’s I can get a ride farther. Maybe I can get to Fairbanks, then maybe Wasilla, Anchorage, and Juneau.”
“You think these guys are just gonna fly you as a favor? This ain’t hitchhiking, brother. And we got no money for plane fares.”
“Won’t hurt to talk,” Quinn said. He turned and walked off towards the airfield.
Tuktu thought very hard for approximately six seconds. “Wait!” he called. “I’m coming with you!”
The brothers walked to the airfield, arriving just as the last crates were coming out of the old C-47. They found Bob Sutter, the plane’s pilot and sole owner of Bob Sutter Air Cargo, checking the last of the crates off on a clipboard. Sutter was a scrawny, grim, weathered man, his eyes crinkled from staring into too many low suns. He wore a long beard, white with streaks of gray.
“What do you boys want?” he asked.
“I want a ride to Kotzebue,” Quinn said. At his side, Tuktu nodded agreement. “Me too.”
“What business you two got in Kotzebue?”
“None. Need to get to Juneau.”
“Juneau? Why the hell would you want to go to Juneau?”
“It’s the state capitol, isn’t it? We want to…” Quinn searched his memory for the phrase. “We want to… redress the… no, we want to petition the government for a redress of… of grievances! That’s it!”
Sutter threw back his head and laughed. “Are you two nuts? What makes you think the big heads down in Juneau are going to listen to a couple of raggedy-assed North Slope characters like you two?”
“It’s their job, isn’t it?” Quinn felt himself growing angry. “I pay taxes, just like anyone else. They damn well better listen! I’m tired of this, I’m tired of people living in big cities in the forty-eight telling us what to do. We can’t hunt whales, we can only fish so much, now we don’t even have our jobs in the oil fields. Those people in Washington won’t listen to us, but the ones in Juneau damn well should.”
“Damn right,” Tuktu added.
“I’m tired of this. I’m tired of always reading or hearing on the radio about these damn people always knowing what’s best for everyone, whether it is or not. I’m tired of knowing what they’re going to mess up next. I’m damn well tired of it all, and I’m tired of nobody doing anything about it. Everyone I know is tired of it. Everyone I know is sick of it. Now I’ve got some shit to say. I’ll go to Juneau and say it, and if they don’t listen, maybe I’ll go to Washington and say it. I’ll keep on saying it until someone listens.”
“Damn right,” Tuktu added.
Bob Sutter regarded the two young men for a moment. He frowned, then he laughed again.
“Well, fellas,” he said, “you sold me. What the hell. Normally I’d tell you two hundred and seventy-five each for fare to Kotzebue, but I want to see if you can talk your way all the way to Juneau. You’ve got a decent line, I’ll give you that. Be here in the morning at seven. I can get you to Kotzebue, and I’m gonna bet that Sam Gibson will take you to Nome. From there, you might be able to get somewhere – McGrath, maybe.” He looked up at the sky, already darkening in the early February afternoon. “From McGrath…” He consulted the map of Alaska that lived in his bush-pilot’s mind. “Maybe Wasilla, or at least Willow. Then Anchorage is just a hop – hell, you can walk it if you need to. From there you can get anywhere.”
“Good,” Quinn nodded. “We’ll be here.”
“This should be interesting,” Sutter chuckled. “I bet you two are gonna make a splash. Them politicians are just gonna jump for joy when you get started, I bet.” He smiled. “Never seen the like. This should be interesting, all right.”
The journey took several days. The C-47 took them to Kotzebue, where they caught a ride in an old de Havilland Otter to Nome. From there they were crowded into a Cessna 170 to McGrath, where they waited several days, finally catching a ride with a hobby pilot in an old Piper Super Cub to Willow.
They arrived at Willow late in the day. “It’s getting dark soon. I’ll give you boys a ride down to the Willow Trading Post,” the hobby pilot told them. “You can get a cabin there. If’n you want to go to Anchorage, not sure how you’re gonna do that, but you can figure it out in the morning.”
“Nobody out of here headed that way?” Quinn asked.
“Nah,” the hobby pilot replied. “Mostly local stuff out of here. Some Denali tours, hauling hunters and fisherman out into the bush, stuff like that. You two were lucky to catch me back from visiting my cousin.”
The next day the brothers walked and hitchhiked to Wasilla, then to Anchorage. But once they were there, they found they could go no farther on the charity of strangers. Reluctantly, Quinn and Tuktu put together their last cash resources and managed to find a cheap hotel room for two nights. Once that was done…
“Let’s raise some cash,” Tuktu suggested.
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’re a few blocks from downtown. Let’s get you on a corner, let you start giving your speech you gave Bob Sutter. Maybe some folks will chip in to get us to Juneau.”
The plan was to yield unexpected fruit. Over the first three days, they made just enough to keep them in the cheap hotel another two nights and kept them eating. Passers-by would stop, listen to Quinn’s spiel, toss a few dollars in the glass jar Tuktu had found and occasionally record Quinn on their phones.
On the evening of the fourth day, a small, pale man in a heavy overcoat approached them. “Are you the two that have been here on this corner for four days?”
“Yes,” Quinn said.
“Quinn and Tuktu Okpik?”
“That’s us.”
“Here.” The man handed Quinn a heavy manila envelope, nodded and walked off.
“What is it?”
Quinn opened the envelope. His jaw dropped.
“Plane tickets,” he breathed. “To Washington.”
“Washington? As in, Washington, DC?”
Quinn sorted through the rest of the envelope’s contents. “There’s a note. Says we’ll have a hotel reserved when we get there. Someone will meet us at the airport. Guess somebody put me talking up on the internet, and he saw it.”
“Who saw it? Who’s paying for this?”
“Here.” Quinn handed Tuktu the note. Tuktu goggled at the signature.
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I know. Think it’s really him? The electric car guy?”
“Plane tickets look real. Guess we’ll find out.”
“Guess we will.”
***
Everybody’s building the big ships and boats
Some are building monuments, others jotting down notes
Everybody’s in despair, every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here everybody’s gonna jump for joy
Oh come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
I knew it. Elon and his Eskimo army will rid us of these meddlesome politicians.
Adios, Bob. Welcome, MM.
In The Unincorporated Man, after the fall of the US, a “libertarian” government out of Alaska took over the US for the reboot.
I never could figure out if the author was pro or con his idea. That might have been the only good thing about the book. He was an awful writer.
That took an unexpected turn.
Good start.
you tell ’em, Northern Sloper!
Legit laughter.
Haha! My very first thought, as well. West, North…slopers are all the same!
One quibble–that’s a firmly two-seater airplane, but maybe they found a way to cram someone in the baggage, but that’d be pretty sketchy for weight and balance.
The passengers each rode on a wing.
I like it.
Ain’t that the truth.
Church, yo.
Great story. Only things missing was the brothers saying “I sure regret we voted for that Biden/Harris asshole ticket back in ’20.”
good stuff
*shudders*
“I’m tired of this, I’m tired of people living in big cities in the forty-eight telling us what to do.”
Fake news. Everyone knows the noble savage appreciates the work big city liberals do to preserve his natural, hardscrabble existence.
OT: Some action for Tres.
(My apologies to anyone trying to enjoy their lunch)
Needs a tattoo of the earth, 1 : 1 scale
No mention of the 2027 food riots?
The Ministry of truth must have been really effective!
Of course Elon saves the day!
Good stuff Animal, can’t wait for the next one.
*Lights the Evil Sheldon beacon*
I’ve been curious if our resident Glib-gunners have thoughts on yet another caliber – the 6.8 mm that the Army is going with?
6.8 spc has been around for a long time now…I never got interested enough to go with it. The point of it is to reach out a little farther than 5.56×45 but without the weight and recoil of a 7.62x51mm rifle. It’s sort of like going back to the .276 Pederson, which the M1 Garand was originally supposed to be chambered for before MacArthur swung his big dick around and forced a retroversion to .30-06. Lighter cartridge, lighter rifle, flatter trajectory, longer range than the big cartridge.
The bullets have a much higher ballistic coefficient than the heads available for 5.56, so they lose less energy and are more effective at slightly longer ranges.
I’m not convinced that it can do that much better than a combination of 5.56×45 and 7.62×51. The justification rides on the presumption that you want (and can force) engagements at greater separation from the opposing force.
It seems like the real justifications get to the ‘bigger is better’ arguments that people argue with for going back to .45.
Or in the Armor/Infantry community for upgrading the Bradley to 30/35MM.
Bigger round that takes up more room and doesn’t kill anything more than the smaller round.
Thanks, db. Every time I see a big adoption like this I always wonder if it’s actually an improvement or just “the right palms got greased”.
OK, so I was misinformed and it’s not 6.8 SPC, but .277 Fury, which is 6.8x51mm. So the magazines will be basically as large as 7.62x51mm (.308) magazines, and the ammunition not too much lighter than 7.62×51. From what I can tell it’ll have a 135 grain projectile, which is only 12 or so grains lighter than 7.62x51mm standard loadings.
I’m not really seeing the benefit to using the 6.8mm cartridge as opposed to the 7.62×51 except the trajectory should be flatter and maybe a little longer range (but the effective range of a 7.62×51 is quite good anyway.
I’m not really sure why they would be doing this. The justification would have to be an expectation of longer battelfield ranges, and an intent to force opponents to fight you at ranges beyond which their small arms chambered in 5.45×29, 7.62×39, etc., lose effectiveness.
…5.45x39mm …
The 6.8×51 is overcharged producing significantly higher chamber pressure and muzzle energy greater than 7.62×51. I guess the Army wants to abandon intermediate rounds common with assault rifles.
80,000 psi is a lot of pressure. Lots of heat, and it’s going to burn out barrels fast.
Taxpayers can afford it.
I have no opinion on the caliber. Nor do I want to get into it.
The new optics though, are intriguing.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/all-about-the-xm157-next-generation-fire-control-system-for-the-xm5-rifle/
Interesting indeed. For the civilian market, I foresee some issues with having ballistics info available for all the very many rifles and rounds.
That’s been my dream capability since the first time I missed a deer at long range.
The first story I saw on this had the rifle in a bullpup configuration, with some kind of weird fat silencer at the end. What I’ve seen more recently looks a lot more normal. It also said the casing was going to be some kind of ceramic?. Non-metallic, anyway. And not reloadable. I have no idea what the advantage of that would be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.277_Fury
I have no idea what the advantage of that would be.
Weight
Kraut Space Magic: the H&K G11
I remember reading all about that as a teen.
That is freaking weird.
Haven’t finished the video but ISTR that with the 3-round burst you (supposedly) wouldn’t feel the recoil from the 1st round until the 3rd had left the barrel, due to the internal damper.
Let’s see if I’m misremembering that…
Extreme high pressure. The cartridge isn’t going to be much, if at all, lighter than 7.62×51.
https://www.tvammo.com/
Is this what you were thinking of, RC?
There were three prototypes of the rifle and three different variants of the ammo. I believe they all have a suppressor. One of the casings was ploymer, one was the steel/brass “Hybrid,” and IIRC the third was regular brass.
Task and Purpose has a lot of articles/videos of the three competitors.
Here’s the one you were thinking of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIjHE2atom8
The BSA taught me “Okpik” meant “Snowy Owl.” It was the name of their winter camping program in the BWCA.
I am here today to dispel a very noxious myth. One that has a tremendous impact on us all. No, snow does not slow down a Firster. Firsters do not slow down to almost second-like levels in colder climates. Firsts move at an equal speed and intensity in all climates.
Do not be a spreader of disinformation.
It is dangerous.
What is the propagation speed of a first in vacuum versus a medium such as a viscous liquid?
Are you asking him if he swallows?
Firsts, unlike light, travel in solid beams. Not waves. There is no refraction of a First, and it is rather a matter of whether the First meets an object of greater force that can prevent the First from traveling through it. Firsts have been known to cut through solid objects, to include solid steel. So, really, this is a matter of the age old question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object.
Firsters have long since surpassed Faster Than Light Firsts (FTLF’s). Johannes Kepler accomplished this in the 17th century, though this remains part of his unpublished works never widely divulged to the general public.
African or European?
Damnit, MikeS.!
Someone’s spreading something alright.
You’re as dependable as the fuckin’ post office!
Acorn” target=”_blank” >Blind pig –> Acorn
Increasing corn ethanol production would be a big mistake, says Jason Hill, a biofuels expert at the University of Minnesota. “The science has long pointed out that this is not where we want to go,” he says. “In the long run corn ethanol has done almost nothing for our energy independence, and it has a large, disproportionately negative impact on the environment and food security.”
There are still other impacts of bioethanol. Global food prices jumped by a record 13 percent last month. Diverting some U.S. corn away from bioethanol and toward food would help keep prices lower and replace lost exports from Ukraine and Russia. “There is all this competition for the land,” says Annie Levasseur, a professor at L’École de Technologie Supérieure, an engineering faculty based in Montreal. “If we want to look at the impact of increasing biofuel, then we will need cropland, and there will be this displacement.”
Hm. Even with the macro, I managed to fuck up the HTML.
The link actually seems to work.
Did it really? When I clicked, it went to Slate…
And no one would do that on purpose.
Yes I would . . . .
We obviously need to feed that corn to pigs and chickens.
New to Me
I like it.
New to Me
Good stuff
HOW many people were in the Super Cub?
They get a little tight after squeezing on the children and shopping.
I remember my dad telling me he had one of those in the ’70s. My first bike was a Shadow 500cc, and he said “oh, you’re starting with a BIG bike”
#7 Carefully Driving With Eggs
#9 and #31 are the same picture.
Not to an Afghan.
I took this in Charikar, in 2004.
I saw families of four on mopeds in Guangzhou.
5 in Saigon
Are your apple trees blossoming, Kinnath?
I planted 2 more this morning, in the garden, Zone 3. My trees from seed that I planted last year are showing signs of buds.
When the SHTF I’ll be out at the end of my driveway selling apples for a quarter.
I was out in the yard yesterday. A handful of the apple trees were starting to bud out. We are at least 3 weeks late this spring. The maple trees in the front yard just started to leaf out. They pop out about the same time that the earliest apples start to bud. I use them as a warning sign to go check to see how the apples are doing.
The “good” news is that it never got warm. So, I didn’t have to worry about a late freeze killing off the buds. It never got warm enough for the trees to bud out.
The Philippines is notorious for it. They wouldn’t let us drive there because traffic was nuts and it was better to not have an American in the driver’s seat in the inevitable event of an accident.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/z2Vic1Skvzs/maxresdefault.jpg
Have mercy…
Daughter, or two wives?
Wife, Daughter, 2 little guys.
Somewhere I have a picture of an Iraqi Bongo van that was packed with 40′ rebar. They just slowly drug it down the highway, sparks flying everywhere.
Great start, Animal!
Great story, I thought they would figure out a way to hitch hike all the way to DC.
They were California Dreaming’ but by the Time they got to Phoenix they thought of Walking’ to New Orleans
With their feet ten feet off of Beale?
Nice work. I look forward to more of the story.
These are great and make me think of sitting around a campfire getting a great story told as we fight off the hunger and the cold.
I am really hooked on this story. Looking forward to more entries.
What the hell is going on here?
it’s a hlaf mile run just to get around It, whatever IT is,
Also Rachel Levines second job, Classic!
Meal Team Six
Nice.
“Pronouns are He/Ham”
😀
LOL
*roaring applause*
Has this been covered yet?
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/uniting-for-ukraine
Don’t know if you can specify the sex, age, or libido of the refugee you’re willing to house.
I’d have to get rid of my orphans and I think the orphan market is down right now.
Why are they eligible for SSN instead of taxpayer identification numbers?
Because they agreed to vote Democrat?
You’ll get a 39 year old, 260 lb Ukrainian mobster taking advantage of the system and you’ll like it.
You’ll get a
3954 year old, 260 lb Ukrainian mobster taking advantage of the system and you’ll like it.Another Spinal Tap drummer has died.
He went to
HeavenEleven.[golf clap]