February 6, 2011

Win This Free Hat

.

This post is bound to get me in trouble with someone.

But do I care?

No.

I am on a quest and I am determined.

I am prepared to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship** to obtain the object of that quest.

And doing so means that, inevitably, I will raise the ire of some - probably some of the following:

- Arnold the cockroach, who thinks I already waste too much time on Googling contests that appear on other people's blogs

- Tillerman - whom I am always managing to tick off for one reason or another

- the easily annoyed activist group People for Shellfish Sensitivity, Education, and Defense (PISSED)


So what is the object of this quest and why is it worth ticking people off?



It is nothing less than this hat:


This photo showed up on a recent Tillerman blog post. I'm not quite sure what the post is about. I've read it three times now and still don't know. Which is unusual for me because I generally understand his posts by the second reading.

The post has something to do with Disney Toy Story movies, Randy Newman, Tillerman's daughter-in-law's blog, and a kid wearing a crab hat.

I don't care about most of that, but - holy crap - I've got to have one of those hats. Wouldn't that make one of the coolest sailing hats ever?

So, as usual, I started Googling to find the hat online, but didn't see it in the first page of Google hits. I'm pretty lazy and easily distracted by all of the photos that show up in any Google image search, so, as usual, I gave up by the end of the first page.

I even tried to leave some broad hints over on Tillerman's blog that he award the hat to someone who could figure out the answer to a puzzle that I already knew the answer to. No go. He was on to my little game.

 But then I had one of those epiphanic moments.

Why should I do all of this work to find the crab hat when my readers could do that for me?

So here is the O Dock Crab Hat Challenge.

Find out where I can buy the hat that appears in the photo above and I will buy two of those hats.

One for me, of course, and one for the first person who posts the answer in the comments here.

For once, you actually will win a free hat, if any hat can be said to be truly free.

Employees of Proper Course and members of their immediate families are ineligible to enter this part of the contest, but there's a second way to win, for which they and all others are eligible.

If you can suggest a better sailing hat than the crab hat, I will consider those suggestions and will then buy two of those hats, one for me and one for you. But I think it's highly unlikely that a better sailing hat than the crab hat exists.

Decision of the O Dock judges will be final, but may be influenced by appropriate bribery.

As usual, anyone may post off-topic comments, grammatical or content-related corrections, or anything that will lift the level of discussion here.

-----------------------------------------------
**Don't you just hate it when a citation is referenced to an asterisked footnote and then there's no asterisked footnote anywhere on the page? Well, we're much more considerate of our readers here on O Dock. This is the asterisked footnote that is referred to at the beginning of this post.

.

11 comments:

  1. I need more coffee. I clicked on the words above the picture of Aidan and boom! I landed on O Dock. I was expecting nursing homes and lasers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is part of my evil scheme to draw more traffic to this blog.

    Now, please get to work, Baydog. I must have one of those hats.

    ReplyDelete
  3. O Docker - There's a picture of a nice boat posted over on Proper Course.

    Perhaps you noticed it?

    I'm not a sailor, but I think it might be a Jahoobiecat 43, with the original trim.

    In the background, there's also a really cool sailing hat on a hat stand.

    If that hat wins your contest, you don't have to buy me a hat too.

    Just give me the hat stand.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mojo, I did notice the twin spinnakers flying over at Proper Course.

    Traditional cruisers claim the twins are easier to handle, sailing shorthanded at night.

    I'm afraid I've inadvertently created a contest without a solution here, though.

    More anon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. O Docker, don't forsake your epiphany.

    Let's let your readers work it.

    They're very resourceful.

    Just look at the company that Tillerman (aka the Laser Stallion) has been keeping!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. "A contest without a solution"?

    No such thing.

    Someone, somewhere in the world has these hats for sale.

    Or, if not, someone, somewhere in the world will make them for you.

    Or, if not, someone, somewhere in the world has these hats and will eventually sell them second-hand on eBay.

    Maybe the person you seek is living on some remote island, or maybe he or she is living in a house fit for a lord, but somewhere your destiny awaits you. Have faith my eco dork.

    ReplyDelete
  7. As usual, you are right, Tillerman.

    My next post will attempt to unravel the mystery of the crab hat - a mystery I could not have imagined when I began my quest.

    After reading it, you will say, "O rocked."

    ReplyDelete
  8. No, no, no. Don't reveal the answer so soon. There must be another picture of the crab hat somewhere on the Interwebs. Surely one of your smart readers can discover it and from there identify its source?

    Surely some dormant game tyro will spot a clue somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I found a McCall's pattern, but it wasn't the same crab. There were several other patterns available at other sites online, but most of them were knitted or crocheted, not constructed out of polarfleece. There was another site that might well have had the pattern for the right crab, but that site had been hacked and tried to frighten me into allowing a virus onto my computer (love Chrome's intercept capabilities).

    Oh, well, my sewing machine's at the vacation place right now anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  10. This hat would look better on your dog. If you had one.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks for looking, Carol Anne. Sorry if I sent everyone on a wild hat chase, but the next post (which probably crossed with your comment) should explain.

    Panda, I am rather proud of my ability to wear any hat with panache.

    Our dog was one of those macho types who always refused to wear a hat, no matter what the weather.

    ReplyDelete