Frustration Vacation

Did you ever have one of those weekends where you thought that maybe God wanted you to stay at home? That maybe some greater cosmic force was upset that you ended up in the Great Outdoors, taking in the beautiful weather and the warm sun? Did you ever stop, look up at the sky and ask “What do you want from me?” I guess I should have know from all the dead skunks along the highway on the way up here this weekend. Apparently it’s skunk mating season, according to my friend Chris. They must all want to mate with Freightliners and PeterBilts from the carnage along I-85.

Well anyway, let me take you through the weekend I’ve just had in case every trip you take turns out peachy-keen. I suppose I shouldn’t be feeling as frustrated as I do, after all the weather was great and the company yesterday was awesome ( my good friend Chris was there) – but we caught few fish. A few. 3. Between us both.

So the fish didn’t exactly go nuts for us, right? That’s ok, right? Yeah, well it would be ok maybe if it was spring already. But this winter! This cold, long, snowy winter that everyone in the South seems to be so sick of enduring…this winter is making it really hard to swallow 3 fish a day between two anglers. I don’t just want fish, I NEED FISH. I enjoy the nature and the woods and the water, but I don’t go fishing to sit on a rock and think about art. If I didn’t like the catching part of fishing, I’d just leave the rod at home and take up hiking I guess…

But, 3 fish a day –  What was I thinking? That’s ok! Because today I only had to swallow one fish. In a river full of 15-30 inch trout (that’s right…..30 inch trout in a public river) I caught one 11 inch brook trout. That’ll show me for complaining about three fish I guess! At least I didn’t break a rod this weekend.

I did twist my ankle and run a #22 Griffith’s Gnat through my index finger though. And I inadvertently froze two bananas out in the truck last night. You know what frozen bananas taste like? No? Trust me, you don’t want to know.

So, this morning I wake up to find that I’ve overslept and I make it to the river at a “rooster crowin’ crack of dawn-ish” 11 am. The river was crowded yesterday. Today it is twice as bad. Somewhere to stand and cast to a fish? Hope you brought your own rock. I eventually find a rock to stand on and this is where I perform the incredible feat of 5 hours +/- of fishing and one little brookie.

Then, I decide on a “non-camping” dinner and stop at Wendy’s. This will make the third time I have ordered the new funky cheese Chicken Sammich and NOT gotten one. Do they even make this thing? Are they just advertising it’s asiago cheese, juicy tomato and crispy bacon to lure  you in and then give you a PLAIN OLD CHICKEN SAMMICH! THREE TIMES WENDY’S! THREE TIMES you have totally screwed up my order. PS – your new FRIES stink, and tonight they were cold. That will teach me to check the order at the window. And by the way, it’s odd that you can always be super-slow in taking my order, but so pushy when you suggest that I take my change, my drink and my food in like .003 seconds. GIVE ME A MINUTE, will you! I have the same number of hands as you do, you idiot – and one has a wallet in it, the other has the change you just gave me. Shoving a large sweet tea and the bag (with my order wrong, mind you) in my face isn’t going to make me go any faster after I just waited 7 MINUTES FOR YOU TO SAY “CAN I TAKE YOU ORDER?” HELLO? ARE YOU NUTS?

Alright. So then after eating my PLAIN CHICKEN SAMMICH ( FOR THE THIRD TIME! GGRRRRH! ) I decided I’d download the video I shot today. There was precious little catching, but I did get a couple of decent shots of trout ( not of the monster 30 inch ones we saw, unfortunately…). I download the video, process it, save it and start to play it back before uploading it online so I can share it with you guys. Guess what? No, really. Guess. You’ll never guess. Never. Nev…..THAT STUPID GLITCH IS IN MY VIDEO AGAIN EVEN THOUGH I CHECKED IT FIVE TIMES BEFORE SAVING IT AS A MOVIE! SO, NOW I HAVE A MOVIE THAT I THINK IS PRETTY *$&# FUNNY, BUT I CAN’T SHOW YOU BECAUSE EITHER MY COMPUTER, THAT (#@&$ WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER, OR THIS CHEAP KODAK CAMERA KEEPS SCREWING UP THE VIDEO! I’m sure I’ll put up the video for you guys eventually, even with the errors in it…but I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to spend an hour putting something together only to have it come out screwed up with no warning.

And now…….I’m so frustrated I can’t sleep. Horray. Like I don’t already have enough of THAT problem as it is.

So, let me ask you guys – have you ever had to ask yourself if maybe you would have been better off at home?

Spring. Please hurry. I can only practice running from bears for so long. . .

 

Spring. Wonderfully Trouty Spring.

Roll Cast, 4 feet, tight loop…

An unusual drive-by post for me, but I wanted to get it out there before I forget to say it for the fifty-third time:

Please spay and neuter your…no, no that wasn’t it…hmmm….

Oh yeah! I remember what it was now…

Top 234 Reasons to Read This Blog

#234…

Nah. That wasn’t it either…

While I’m thinking I’ll remind you that if you want to link to an article that you find interesting or funny, make sure you click on that articles’ title before you grab the URL. If you just grab the url from the homepage, by the time your sister-in-law in Albuquerque gets around to coming here to see that funny picture, it could be a post about tippet size or dry fly treatment. So, remember to go to the actual page you want to share before copying that URL. ( You can always use the “share” links from that page that are under each post, too! )

Now, what was it I was wanting to tell you guys….

Let’s just make a list:

• Go Packers.
• I think I may be getting the flu.
• I’ve had enough rain and snow this winter.
• I’m very much “over” American Idol.
• I will not be watching President Barack Hussein Obama tonight, because I already know the state of the Union.
• I need a new T-shirt or three.
• I have no idea what’s for dinner, but there’s a good chance it’s “something with chicken.”
• Oprah could find she was related to Elvis or Castro and I still wouldn’t care.
• I have an increasingly horrible case of Cabin Fever revolving around rainbow trout.
• It gets dark much too early this time of year.
• Did I mention I think I may be getting the flu? uggggh.

Yep. I guess that about does it. The sad part is, none of that was what I was going to tell you when I started this post. Roll….that’s how I.

 

Have a great Tuesday night everyone!

OK, now…this isn’t funny anymore…

For those of you who live and fish up north, I know it seems as if it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. What’s 4-6 inches of snow, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you why it’s such a big deal when it happens. Or rather, I’ll tell you why the real culprit for all our worry and woes is such a big deal…

Here in the Deep South, when it snows or threatens to snow – people do get a little worked up. Don’t even think about going to the grocery store the night before snow is forecast. If you don’t already have your “bread and milk,” don’t worry – most of your neighbors do and you can always walk over and borrow some if you need it. Make sure you catch the late night news, so you’ll see your company’s or school’s name run across the bottom of the screen….as closed for the day. And if you haven’t sealed off the outside faucets, or in newer homes turned the off from the inside – you’ll be doing that after the news, before you go to bed. But in all this build up to the big event that looks to all the world ( or at least to the thirteen yankees still left in the north) like we’ve lost our ever-lovin-minds…it’s not the snow we’re worried about. Contrary to popular belief, we do have road crews and machinery to clear snow from the roads  – at least from Atlanta, northward to the state line. We don’t have enough of them if it’s a big snow, but we have them and they can clear the main arteries and highways near the towns. It’s not a lack of salt or sand or plows. And again, it’s not even the snow.

It’s the ice.

Snow and Ice mean Power Loss and Car Pile Up's....

And as you can see, it looks like we’ll “have us a bait of it.” ( That’s southern slang for “more than enough!” 😉 ) Well, anyway….when it snows here it’s really pretty and the kids go nuts because all the schools close. You really can’t have full school buses of kids careening all over town, into cars, guard rails, other buses, etc. And it doesn’t matter if you have 4WD or not. Lots and lots of people down here in the South own Jeeps and other 4WD vehicles…I’ve owned two jeeps myself and three 4WD’s over the years. I used to think that the fact that a 4WD vehicle just slides 4 times as much was something every yankee would know. However, I learned that it really isn’t the case. I also used to think that it was easy to understand why ice, and not snow, is what freaks everyone out so much. And now, we move on to the other issue that gets us Southerners all worked up over a winter storm…

We have pine trees.

Ice, Pine trees, and power lines. Not good.

 

And we have lots of them. And if there’s one thing other than a tornado that does not mix well with pine trees it’s ice. Ice is heavy and pine trees are the whimps of the tree world in the Deep South. Their branches break easily, and ice and wind can pull them to the ground in one big crash.

“So what?” you ask….”Are people afraid that they are going to walk outside and be killed by a pine tree falling on them?” Well, no.  They are afraid that a pine tree weighed down with ice and pushed around by the wind will either fall or lose a limb that will come crashing down on their power lines. And if you’re stuck in a house for 3 days because the roads are all iced up, and your power is out and it’s 25 degrees outside. Well, for us Southerners that are used to mild winters and hot summers, it’s enough to make some folks go a little nuts. But hey, it’s better to be prepared and cautious than brave and dead, ya know? You ain’t flyfishing in spring if you run your car into a patch of black-ice and off a bridge in winter….ya know?

 

Even so, not all of us go nuts and over-react about it. And not all of us panic if the power goes out. Some of us realize that we have gas grills for a reason and that we can, if we must, take the unused log rack out of the fireplace and wipe the 12 years of dust off of it, fill it with wood and make a fire. We may not remember to open the flu though. We’re not even sure if that’s how you spell “flu” in that context. But we do know to run to the store TWO days before the blizzard and get bread and milk. Why bread and milk? Who knows? Just because it’s going to snow, I guess. It’s as much a tradition as grits and ceiling fans and the summer fish fry. When we don’t have ice at all….except in our sweet tea.

 

 

Bacon, Toast, Bacon and GRITS! ( Not my hand, btw.)

 

So, hang on to your hat, fellow Southerners – and you yanks don’t look down on us too hard – we’re not as nuts as you think.

………and make sure you have that milk and bread by noon tomorrow if you’re gonna get it. 😉

 

OH, and if FFSBR is inactive for a few days next week, you’ll know I’m out back, sliding down the hill behind the house and making dinner on our grill, outside while we walk around like mummies, wrapped up in warm clothes and blankets.

SO BRING ON THE SNOW! 🙂