Roads Go Ever On And On

Last Saturday afternoon my daughter and I decided to go fishing. My son decided he’d rather stay home and hang out with Megan and play video games, which means he’s basically a lot like me.

We got to the lake around 4pm and fished until after 7 without a bite, using various combinations of worms and artificial lures and bobbers and sinkers and so on and so forth. Keep in mind that the last, well, every time, I’ve taken the kids fishing they haven’t caught squat, so by this point my daughter was about to give up on the whole thing. Especially since people on both sides of us were hauling in decent sized rainbow trout every 15 minutes or so.

Since my daughter is quite friendly and inquisitive, she started asking some of our bank-neighbors, two gentlemen who were probably in their 70′s, how they were catching fish. So they not only told us what bait they were using (sparkly yellow intensely garlic-scented PowerBait) but also how they were rigging their line. They even gave her some of the hardware they were using and gave me pointers on how to set it up.

I’ve never, in my life, had luck fishing with Powerbait, but I’ve also been pretty unsuccessful at fishing most lakes here in Utah, so I put on an egg-shaped slip sinker with about a 2.5 foot leader, a tiny treble-hook loaded with Powerbait, repeated the process on my daughter’s rig, and we started fishing again just as daylight started waning.

Withing minutes I had a definite strike, and shortly after had a big rainbow on the line that, unfortunately, broke my line 2 feet from shore. By this point it was pretty close to dark, so we had to call it a night. My daughter was so excited that she decided she wanted to head back at first light the next day though.

I was fairly excited too.

The next morning we woke up at 6am, even getting my son to rouse from hibernation to join us. We got to the reservoir very shortly after the sun crested the mountains and set back to the serious business of fishing.

Jessica had a strike shortly after starting, but didn’t hook it. A bit later, I had several hits in a row that I also managed to somehow not set the hook in time. But it wasn’t terribly long before I caught our first fish of the day:

By this time it was starting to get brighter and warmer, and the fish weren’t hitting as frequently. Jessica was starting to get frustrated again, David was napping in the car, and I finally landed a second, slightly smaller rainbow.

The second fish definitely did not want to be caught. After removing the hook, halfway up the bank and with the fish in the net, it decided to flop out and start sliding back towards the water. I did what any self-respecting angler would do: dove down the rocky bank after it like a heavy metal guitarist doing a power-slide. The end result was that I saved the fish (or doomed it, depending on your perspective), but also did the following to my leg:

The fishing had really started to slow down at this point, and we decided that we’d give it about another hour, until 1pm, and then leave.

At 12:50, my daughter started reeling in to check her bait, and BAM suddenly had a fish on the line. I scrambled over to her with the net and we landed it, her first ever fish caught truly on her own. And it was bigger than both mine, a fact which she reminded me of constantly.

We stayed a little longer but it was lunch time, we were hungry, and tired. So we packed up and called it a day.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be taking her back next weekend they are over though.

The weekend didn’t finish off all that great, as while cooking up the fish (which was pretty tasty) that night, I came down with a migraine and didn’t really get out of bed for the next 30 hours or so. But other than that, it was a good weekend. I’m already looking forward to next time. The trout up at Mantua put up a lot of fight, which makes them fun to catch. One actually has to let them run for a bit to wear them out before bringing them to shore, which makes for entertaining angling.

TL:DR – “Fish!”

This is a story that usually entertains people when I tell it in person, so I’m going to share it here.

A couple of years ago, I came home from work to an interesting scene. My roommate had invited some friends over, and all these friends were white supremacists.

I walked into the house, carefully stepping over and around empty bottles of liquor and trying not to go deaf from the cacophonous sound of electric bass and guitar being played far too loudly and far from well, and was greeted by the sight of a number of complete strangers, many of whom had their shirts off to display swastika tattoos and other ornaments of white power.

Granted, the entire situation was awkward, but I decided to just lock myself in my computer room, put on some headphones, and do my best to wait out this particular storm.

Since I was having some company over that night, I was hoping that the situation would clear itself up before too long, and I was somewhat right. A couple of hours later, there’s a knock on my door and my roommate says “Hey, we’re all too drunk to drive, can you take these guys home?”

As hesitant as I was to drive around with a car full of drunk skinheads, I really did want to have them out of the house before my feminine company arrived, so I agreed to take them home. As I dropped them off near a shady gas station in a less desirable part of town, I noticed a group of about 4 or 5 black men walking towards the drop off point, and they were staring at the car with an intensity that I found disconcerting. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a history between them and the car full of skinhead-gang-affiliated gentlemen in my car, and for a few brief moments I felt like I might get caught in the middle of something I wanted no part of.

Fortunately, my cargo was offloaded and I was able to leave before anything went down, but I can’t help but wonder – would there have been any possible way that I could have convinced a group of strangers, that I, a hefty white male with a shaved head, piercings, and tattoos, was in no way affiliated with the rest of my car-mates?

I’m guessing not.

This is the story of how Zonzo the Crested Gecko came to our house.

I’ve been thinking about getting a reptile of some sort but never acted on it.

A couple weeks ago, I was asking my kids what they wanted for their birthdays, and somehow they decided they wanted a gecko. I figured this was fairly serendipitous, and it worked out that a co-worker breeds them and was willing to sell me one for about 1/3 or 1/4 the cost that the pet stores sell them for.

So, for the kids’ birthday present we went shopping for the tank and supplies needed:

Then Zonzo came to say hi:

Here he is in his new home:

I never really expected to enjoy a non-mammalian pet this much, but he takes being handled quite well and is really enjoyable!

The kids named him Zonzo because one of them wanted to call him Zipper, the other wanted Gonzo…so that was the compromise.

And here’s my favorite picture of him so far: