Intro #2 (class. essay)

A little bit of brake, push in the clutch, downshift, gas to the floor, turn left and let off the gas, turn right and gas to the floor, E-Brake and feather the gas, E-brake off, turn left feather the gas, turn right, down shift, steady pressure on the gas and thank God he kept my car on the road once again. Driving in winter storms in Maine always keeps me on my toes and looking for the softest snow bank put my car in if needed, so far I have not had to, but I know it is coming. There are really only three types of storms that make me nervous. The typical snowstorm, sleet and freezing rain, and the storm that everyone loves to hate, the Noreastah!! Every one of them can challenge even the most experienced driver, and I thought after growing up in Maine, and driving in all types of storms and weather I was experienced enough, but every year I get humbled by one of these storms, and on bad years all three.

Intro 1 (class. essay)

Winter driving in Maine can be a new experience to any driver that is crazy enough to venture out in it. What I have noticed over the years of driving the one hundred and four miles to work and back home every day, is there are only three types of weather that really make me nervous. There is the typical snowstorm, sleet and freezing rain and my personal favorite the Noreastah! They all have their different dangers but every one of them makes my hour ride home even longer and a little more stressful.

Meta-graph

While writing this entire essay it made me want to take off to the lake and go fishing. There are many stories from previous years that I wish I could have worked in the essay, like watching a Doe swim across a part of the lake in the middle of a storm, to our campsite, or the second year we were there, we had a big storm that hit and destroyed our entire camp, or the year my dad caught a bass that broke his fishing pole in half. One other thing I wish I could of done to my paper, is there are so many examples I would have liked to write about, but because of the length I had to leave a lot out. I wish I could explain the boat ride in the storm a little better. I have caught bigger fish then the one in my essay but that one gave the best fight and also the only one that broke my favorite fishing reel, I guess five years of abuse will break any fishing reel, no matter how much they cost. Now I am looking forward to next year when we go, and all the many adventures we will all experience.

Cause Essay

There is nothing like the smell of early morning next to a lake. All our gear is packed tightly in the sixteen foot aluminum boat. The 18 horse power motor is running and filling the morning air with exhaust fumes and I am still a little groggy from the lack of sleep the night before. The anticipation of this day made me toss and turn all night, but it’s nothing that a strong cup of instant camp coffee can’t fix. “Five days of fishing and relaxation Sam” “yup” my father law says sitting in his captain’s chair with his hand on the throttle, waiting for me to shove off. I push us out and we begin to move towards the mouth of the canal that drains into the main lake. The sun is just up over the horizon and the yellowish red tint on the water from the sun makes me put on my sunglasses to protect my eyes. As we motor through the narrow canal back and forth avoiding all shallow parts, I can see the lake in the distance for a moment before it is swallowed up by live and dying pine trees. The lily pads have moved closer to the middle of the canal and there seems to be a little more sweat grass near the shore this year, it won’t be long before the moose are in and around the shore indulging themselves on it. Then we round the corner, there it is, the sun gleams off the surface of the lake like crystals in a window just like it does every year, and I can’t help but think of the small mouth bass that were practically jumping in the boat the year before. As we head across the lake to our campsite that can only be reached by boat, I just sit there taken up by all the beauty and hope that this year on our annual fishing trip will be just as action packed as the years before it. Little did I know that the camp fire conversation, the weather, and the fishing would test our patience as well as our own limits like it has so many times in our past trips.

The trip started off like any other trip. Sam and I got to the campsite and started to put the tent, and all the many tarps, when we were done it looked like a giant tarp city. We had a few hours to kill until my Dad and Uncle Tony were going to show up. Tony is not really my uncle but I have known him for as long as I can remember, he is a very big guy, and could provably crush my head in one of his hands, but he is kind of a big teddy bear. My dad is not a small guy either, and on many occasions growing up he has tried to crush my head with one hand just for fun, but I think I could take him now. Sam and I went fishing for a couple of hours, and with no real trophy Bass pulled in the boat we took off to the boat launch to meet the other two tenants of our tent city. Now after we all set up the rest of the camp, we decide to go fishing until it gets dark. Once again we all return with not one trophy bass story, and I started to make dinner. The first night has the tradition to cook four, two inch thick T-bones on an open fire, and usually we eat them with our bare hands, while sitting next to the camp fire, just a little barbaric but it is tradition. I learn a lot about my father just sitting around the campfire, but mostly I hear the same old stories from all three of them every year, like the time Sam lost is wallet for ten years and one of his friends found it inside of a mattress, at the camp they all hung out when he was a teen. Or the time Tony took a row boat to an island off the coast about two miles in some very thick fog just to see some girl, and then rowed back in four foot seas. But mostly the stories I hear from my dad I have never heard before, like stories of him and his brothers, antagonizing the poor old lady down the street from where they lived, or the stories of the things his father made him do when he got in trouble, like the time he skipped school, and his father made him pull a one ton bolder out of their lawn, and by the time he was done he had all the boys in the neighborhood helping him. Then there are a lot of personal trials and tribulations he has gone through almost the same way I went through them, so it’s kind of strange hearing the same things my father did I have done also, I guess the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree.

We all get up every morning before the sun, talking about how all this fresh air made us all sleep like babies, and we all haven’t slept like that since the last time we were camping, its really the same old thing every year. We all hop in our boats and take off with big dreams of catching the first fish because first fish of the day gets a dollar from everyone. I don’t want to brag or anything but I usually catch the first one. We took off that morning knowing that we had a chance of a thunder storm and rain and heavy winds, but we went across the lake any ways. We have been caught on the lake when a storm comes up and we have had to beach the boats to keep from being hit by lighting, so this little warning was not going to stop us. Around 9:00 am we snuck into a cove because the wind was getting to strong and we could not keep the boat in one place for very long. Looking like it was starting to get worse we started to go back across the lake back to camp, but once we got out of the cove and around the little island that was sheltering us from the wind we knew we were in for a ride. Every wave was about four feet high and every time we went over one the next one was there to dump 10 gallons of water in the boat. Sam did a good job ridding the waves but I was sitting up front trying to hold down the front with my weight, and every wave put me almost ten feet in the air, and then we would take a nose dive. About half way across and thirty minutes later Sam told me to grab the life vest from the cubby because he was starting to get nervous, so of course now I started to get nervous. After every wave I would brace myself for the next one and wait for the big one to flip us over but we made and I lived to fish another day

We fish every hole in that lake and it takes all day, except for the hour we all return to camp to eat and re-charged the thermos with the strongest coffee known to man. We catch a lot of fish but nothing like the year before, we had to practically bait our hooks behind trees before getting in the boats, it was crazy. There was one day that Sam and I caught 71 small mouth bass in a day, I was some tired when we returned to camp. This year we were not so lucky but on the day before we left I caught the big one. Sam and I returned to a hole we had been fishing the day before but were not catching anything, it was on the way to one of our other fishing spots. I had just put new line on my Abu Garcia bait caster, and I had not yet fine tuned the Fourteen pound test line, so the first cast was a very conservative, short, not well aimed cast, and of course like every other time I put new line on, the first cast got all snarled up around the spool. As I pulled line out to fix the snarl, I noticed my line moving where it had landed, and it was moving towards us faster than the boat was floating, so I quickly pulled line and when I started to reel what I pulled out back in, my line started to move even faster in the opposite direction I was moving. I waited until just before all the slack was taken up and I gave it a good tug, and set the hook, and then I felt the power of this fish. It pulled line out of my reel like the drag was not even there, and I could hear it trying hard to slow this fish down. I let the fish take what it wanted and then it was my turn, and as I started reeling the line in, the fish started swimming towards the boat, I reeled faster and faster, and then the fish took a dive, I pulled up on the pole and the fish started coming to the surface. Running out of water to swim in, the fish still tried to swim, it must have jumped three feet in the air, and I finally got to see what I was fighting with. It hit the water and started to dive again and the entire battle began again. After about twenty minutes the fish tried to go to the bottom one last time, and then gave up and floated to the top. I pulled my five and half pound twenty one inch small mouth into the boat and I had my father in law snap a few pictures, gave it a big old kiss and threw it back in. So I have a couple of picture and a broken $120 reel, the fish burned my drag out of my reel.

When I return home from our fishing trips I am always more exhausted then when I left. I always come home with great fishing stories, some true and maybe some just stretched a little. There are always scars from the trip like broken flashlights, ripped tarps from 40mph winds and broken tent poles to match, nothing a little duct tape won’t fix. Engine problems that turn out to be just loose gas lines, dirty carbs, bad plugs and flooded engines that you should always let vent out before you start the motor, at least if you want to save you fire extinguisher for a much bigger fire. Falling out of the boat, loosing fishing poles, hitting rocks, getting stuck in trees, getting stuck on rocks, hooking my father law, my father in law hooking me, and losing two hundred bucks worth of lures and gear. Every year we say “same time same place next year?” and we go our separate ways back to the busy world where we all came from. Even though we may not have caught a lot of fish, and the trip in the long run cost us more than we would have made if we stayed at work, we all still come back to our same old fishing hole each year and enjoy each othesr company, and just relax, because you know what they say “a bad day of fishing is still better then a good day at work.”

Outro (cause essay)

When I return home from our fishing trips I am always more exhausted then when I left. I always come home with great fishing stories, some true and maybe some just stretched a little. There are always scars from the trip like broken flashlights, ripped tarps from 40mph winds and broken tent poles to match, nothing a little duct tape won’t fix. Engine problems that turn out to be just loose gas lines, dirty carbs, bad plugs and flooded engines that you should always let vent out before you start the motor, at least if you want to save you fire extinguisher for a much bigger fire. Falling out of the boat, loosing fishing poles, hitting rocks, getting stuck in trees, getting stuck on rocks, hooking my father law, my father in law hooking me, and losing two hundred bucks worth of lures and gear. Every year we say “same time same place next year?” and we go our separate ways back to the busy world where we all came from. Even though we may not have caught a lot of fish, and the trip in the long run cost us more than we would have made if we stayed at work, we all still come back to our same old fishing hole each year and enjoy each othesr company, and just relax, because you know what they say “a bad day of fishing is still better then a good day at work.”

Intro #2 (cause essay)

There is nothing like the smell of early morning next to a lake. All our gear is packed tightly in the sixteen foot aluminum boat. The 18 horse power motor is running and filling the morning air with exhaust fumes and I am still a little groggy from the lack of sleep the night before. The anticipation of this day made me toss and turn all night, but it’s nothing that a strong cup of instant camp coffee can’t fix. “Five days of fishing and relaxation Sam” “yup” my father law says sitting in his captain’s chair with his hand on the throttle, waiting for me to shove off. I push us out and we begin to move towards the mouth of the canal that drains into the main lake. The sun is just up over the horizon and the yellowish red tint on the water from the sun makes me put on my sunglasses to protect my eyes. As we motor through the narrow canal back and forth avoiding all shallow parts, I can see the lake in the distance for a moment before it is swallowed up buy live and dying pine trees. The lily pads have moved closer to the middle of the canal and there seems to be a little more sweat grass near the shore this year, it won’t be long before the moose are in and around the shore indulging themselves on it. Then we round the corner, there it is, the sun gleams off the surface of the lake like crystals in a window just like it does every year, and I can’t help but think of the small mouth bass that were practically jumping in the boat the year before. As we head across the lake to our campsite that can only be reached by boat, I just sit there taken up by all the beauty and hope that this year on our annual fishing trip will be just as action packed as the years before it. Once again I was not disappointed.

Intro #1 (cause essay) lets try this again john

I know you didn't say to re-write this, but after I read the old one again I relized how much it stunk. lets try this

The sun is slowing coming up over the horizon and the yellowish red tint from the sky reflecting off the water makes it look like the entire small pond that leads to the lake is on fire. The smell of two cycle exhaust fills the air and in every breath straight into my lungs, but instead of coughing and complaining I take an even bigger breath and slowly exhale, “five days of fishing and relaxation Sam” “yup” Sam says while waiting for me to shove us off. I reach for the boat, but all I feel is my knee, and a sleeping bag. Confused as I was, it did take long for me to realize I had just been dreaming of five days prior. I stretched my arms out and sighed, because today was the last day of our annual fishing trip and I knew I had to get up and start taking down camp. You would not think the events we had just experienced for the last five days would cause anyone to relax but I assure you, there is nothing like fresh air, fishing and crazy unexpected weather to make one forget about the busy world we all live in.

Essay Intro #1

Many public schools, or should I say Government run schools have gotten worse over the past 60 years. Parents have lost control on what their kids are learning at all ages, teachers tell students to keep and hide things from their parents, and kids are being taught tolerance for all people, religions, or sexual orientation unless you believe in Jesus Christ, I thought tolerance for all people meant all people. These are the three main reasons why my wife and I have chosen to home school our kids. I went to public school, and I never cared about any of this before, but after having kids and now finally seeing the truth, I think very different.

Graf #8

The essay about the Red Sox was definitely the best out of the three in my opinion. He definitely sounds like a hardcore Sox fan. His description of inside the stadium and walking around the streets of Boston was right on. I have walked all over Boston and been on the Subways, and watched people do very strange things, especially Sox fans. If you take the Sox just losing a game and lots and lots of beer, and some Jackass walking through Boston with a Yankees hat, you get bloodshed, you’re better off walking away, calling the police, and tell them a Yankees fan is about to get killed. I have seen it happen more than once.

Graf #6

Well at first when I was reading the Isearches, I was thinking this looks like a lot of work, all that time researching and interviewing people. But then I got thinking about it and it sounds like fun. The Isearch about the history of the people of 385 and 387 street I enjoyed reading. She not only did her paper but found some real history of Bangor and even had a second thought of selling her house after all was said and done. I started brainstorming ideas for myself and I have picked two I was wondering what you thought. I was thinking either researching what it would take to become a Gun smith or Is evolution science or just another religion? One is very straight forward and one is very controversial. I am very interested in both subjects and I want to have fun writing this paper.

Graph #5

My first acoustic guitar has been a part of me for almost eighteen years. We met for the first time when I was eleven in a back street music shop in Auburn Maine. When I went into the store I picked up all kinds of guitars, and I played every one of them, but not one felt as good as my Contessa. When I strummed her for the first time I not only herd how beautiful her melody was but I could feel it, I could almost see the notes flow from her six brand new stings, it was as if she was singing just to me. My Contessa has been through a lot with me.

My contessa was with me when I drank my first beer, and smoked my first cigarette. My Contessa was there when I kissed my first girl friend and was there when I broke up with her two days later. Young love, it is fun but never lasts. My Contessa was there when I decided to dye my hair green and put every sticky substance known to man in it just to get it to stick straight up. My Contessa stuck with me when I stuck a pickup inside her and hooked it to a distortion pedal, just to beat her and make her scream with feed back from my amp. I realized what I was doing to her so I stopped and used the one of my many electric guitars instead, but not one of them could sound like her. My Contessa was there when my band and I made our first record, and she came with us when we went on tour of the east coast. My Contessa was there when I met my wife, and just because I spent more time with the love of my life, my Contessa never got jealous or ran away. She was there when I was called to be the worship leader in the church I was going to, and for the first time I knew why she and I met, and what we were supposed to do together.

We have come a long way together, and even though I may have neglected her at times she still was there for me when I needed her to cheer me up. I still play her the same but the older she gets the better she sounds. I hope one day I can pass her on to one of my daughters, and she can grow up with them as she has with me.

Graf #4

What is unique about me? To tell the truth I was stumped on this one. I was sitting in my leather recliner, with my laptop on my (of all places) my lap, trying to brainstorm something, anything, whatever I could, I was starting to panic. Then I looked at my feet. Yes I said my feet, my long, sore, and sometimes stinky feet. What caught my eye were not the scars on my left foot from a bad case of poison Ivy when I was ten years old. It was not the veins that seemed to protrude from the top of my feet like parking lot speed bumps. Even though very strange, it was not that my pinky toes had a very small, almost nonexistent toe nail. Not the fact that my feet just like the rest of my body has become this Superman’s kryptonite when tickled, and my Lois Lane and my little Lois Lanes have no problem using my weakness to make me submit to all demands. Not even my toe that rests peacefully next to my big toe, being my longest toe on both of my feet alone was enough to catch my eye. What caught my eye the most along with all the strange, smelly, bulging things going on with my very ticklish, ugly, size eleven and a half feet, was they are mine and I have grown very attached to them, yes both of them, and if I did not have them, then I would have very strange, ugly, maybe even stinky ankles.

Graf #3

Things I see on my side of the bed
A field & Stream magazine
A pair of slippers
A pair of shoes
Gun cleaning kit for riffles and 45 cal. Handguns
A dirty pair of socks, a shirt, shorts, a really dirty pair of work shorts and a shirt, and not so dirty Carhartt sweatshirt
A sleeping bag rated for -30 degrees
5 ice fishing traps
A Benjamin pellet gun
A 45 cal. Smith & Wesson hand gun, in its case, and a full clip nearby.
And a bedside table with a basket just full of good stuff
A blue folder full of worship songs, with words and guitar chords
A “ read the bible in a year”
A father’s day card
L.L Bean LED hat
A blue pocket knife, a 10mm and 8 mm combination wrench, 2 fire balls, a bunch of keys, a box of pellets, used earplugs, handful of change, a zip tie and a movie stub for Wall-E

This guy is obviously does not take care of anything he might need at some point in his life. He empties his pockets and throws what is in them in a basket beside his bed, why not just throw all the extra change in a can, or throw away the movie stub and used earplugs in the trash? I bet his wife just loves his nasty stinky work clothes stinking up their bed room, hey numbskull walk them Twenty feet to the Laundry room. He must take his families safety very seriously, and I am sure he sat his kids down and he must have shown them his gun and let them touch it so their curiosity would not take over and make them disobey their father. I am sure he explained to them why they should never touch or play with guns when their dad is not home. It is September, what does he think he is going to do with ice fishing traps and a -30 below sleeping bag? He has a hat with two LED lights in it? Well that is just cool and very useful. “Read the Bible in a year” I bet he has had that for three years and still has not fished it, I wonder if he ever will. It sounds like he as good intention but gets side tracked a little, or maybe he is just a little lazy. All I know is he needs to take care of his crap before his wife gets sick of it all and throws it all out for him.