At 3:20am on April 27, 2008, whispers said…: is there a forum or website or anything that past guides regularly visit or anything communitive like that on the internet that you know of??

At 3:18am on April 27, 2008, whispers said…: what do you mean you pay way too much for housing?? thought it was only 12$ a day. thats only $306/month right??? What kind of rules?? I mean seriously if they are that over the top and housing is more than what they advertise I would love to know before I leave so I can change my mind or atleast be prepaired.

At 2:41pm on April 26, 2008, Timothy Green said…: Hey what's up. I'm actually about to leave Ketchikan. It didn't really work out all that well for me here. Here's what you need to know, and what to be ready for. For starters you probably won't have as tough of a time training as I did. You're used to the cold seeing as how you're from Minnesota. Plus when you train it probably won't be snowing with a wind chill of 15 or 20 degrees. Nothings worse than having your fingers freezing up on you while you're trying to clip and unclip the carabiners. Anyway here are some key things to keep in mind. It's not a timed event. When you train take things slow and think before you act. I kept trying to do things fast because I wanted to show my trainers that I could be as fast as them. The thing is, I didn't always know what I was doing, so doing it fast meant doing it wrong. If I slowed down a little bit, I wouldn't have kept making mistakes. So just keep things slow. You won't get timed until the very end of training. Some more things to expect is rain. It was windy and rainy everyday that I trained. So be ready for that. If you have a good pair of fingerless gloves bring them with you. That's all the job related stuff that I can think of.

When it comes to housing expect to pay way to much and to have only 1 bathroom. The company is making money off of it's employees by overcharging and over stuffing. I was in a house with 7 other people and we only had 1 bathroom. I was very disappointed by how unprofessional things were run. You might luck out and get a house with only 6 people in it with 1 bathroom, or maybe even 2 bathrooms. Don't know, but expect to be packed in tight. Uh, and unless you can find your own place you'll have to put up with Gigi's stupid rules. They're actually kind of funny to read. And it's sad that they had those types of problems in the past.

So a little bit of the negative, with that stuff, but the positive is that you'll be working with some really cool guys. Your trainers and supervisors are all pretty cool. I don't know who else you're be working with because there are still about 20+ people that haven't shown up yet. Still, the people that I worked with were really great.

Good luck,

Timothy