My Weekend in Minecraft (never leave home without a stack of wood)

I posted this as a response in another thread, and one of the commenters suggested I stick it up by itself. So, I'm here to tell you the story of my latest Minecraft adventure.

Last weekend I went on a long trek in the Nether, in order to locate a Nether Fortress. After finding a Fortress and collecting a great stack of loot, I decided to return to the regular world to make my return trek (slightly) less dangerous. I made a new portal in the Fortress and hopped on through.

The new regular world portal generated inside an abandoned mine shaft. Bear in mind I'm a good 5000 blocks from my home base - I do not want to die. So I head to the closest wall and dig diagonally up to escape. I realize too late that I'm digging up to the ocean floor, so I decide to roll with it and swim for the surface. I break out of the water just as my last air bubble disappears. It's dusk, so I'm fortunate to see a moderately-sized island a dozen blocks to my right. Once I reach the island, I build a hasty cobblestone shack and drop a few torches before settling in to await the dawn.

The sunrise shows me the extent of my plight. My island is by itself in a vast ocean - there's absolutely nothing else visible to the limit of Far render distance. More critically, I'm out of wood and this island is barren. I'm well-armed and fully armored, with a decent supply of food, but I'm plainly not going anywhere. And again, I've got an inventory completely full of hard-won loot, so I want to keep my risks to a minimum.

I remember my recent escape from the abandoned mine shaft - there's wood down there, if only I can reach it. I can't find the hole I swam out of, but it's deep enough that diving for it would be suicide even if I could see it. I'm out of obsidian, too, so I can't try any portal tricks.

I decide to dig a staircase down in the middle of my island. I just broke my pickaxe before leaving the Nether, so I throw together a stone pick and start digging. I'm fortunate to run into some iron ore, so I grab it and run back up to my little shack, where I throw together a furnace and smelt enough material for a decent pick. I resume digging, and it's not long before I start to hear monsters. I redirect my staircase towards the noises, and miraculously manage to break through unnoticed into a large cavern in the abandoned mine shaft, almost on top of four wood columns.

I hastily erect a cobblestone barrier around the columns, so I can harvest them in relative safety. I come away with a third of a stack and make for the surface. Once there, I make a chest to keep my loot safe, throw a door on my shack, and build a boat in case I decide to head back home.

At this point, a friend on the server suggests we establish a more permanent base at this Nether Fortress. He grabs a few blocks of obsidian and treks through the Nether to the portal I originally escaped through. Retracing my path up to the island, he throws together a new portal on the surface, and we both head back into the Nether. I hop back to the normal world once more (again appearing in the abandoned mine shaft) and disable the portal there, so the surface portal will now take precedence. Swimming up one last time, I return again to the Nether to continue the adventure.

As I was doing this, my buddy was antagonizing Ghasts. He was taking fire from three, and was in serious danger of also attracting the attention of a whole swarm of Zombie Pigmen. We managed to avoid the Pigmen, but the Ghasts weren't so easy to lose. We sprinted the 600+ blocks back to our home portal while dodging fireballs and returning the occasional arrow to cover our retreat. Finally evading the monsters, we made it back to our home portal.

Of course, that loot is still out on the island in the middle of nowhere. We commence our most epic construction project to date - a fully enclosed tunnel in the Nether, right at the upper bedrock layer. Ultimately we hope to have a minecart system, but for now it's enough to have a safe passage between these two important locations.