Endless Journey

It was only 38 degrees at 7 am  this morning when me and MP went for our bike ride, its another one of those things in life that you gotta want to do...and one of my favorite things in Soldotna's summer - light - fish season. My friend Shaun Whitmore has a car lot right down the road for us and he's got this business model where he leaves the doors open so folks like us can hassle free peruse the goods.

Its times like this that life gets kind of simple as we just wander all the 'what if's' , 'maybe's' and ' somedays' of life. Its a married deal and I bet you do it too.  MP looks a little in shock there because she's actually thinking that's a pretty darn good deal and its not hard to picture our team touring the 48 in our new used Endless Journey. mmmmm, through the years I've been invited to just about every state in the union and wouldn't it be fun to pull up and say "well, here we are, betcha didn't think we'd really come eh " ?

So I tried on the couch as I figured on it. As big and luxurious as this thing is its pretty darn small compared to our rental in Mazatlan. So it dawned on me that the reality of this 'maybe if '  was that theres a good chance that after about 3000 miles of sitting with me and hearing the same stories all day and the same songs all night MP just might run a butter knife through my PescaMaz tee-shirt. Just a little too small to be around an ultra type A smart alleck 24 /7...in fact my mom crowned me with a cooking spatula when I was a kid for the very same reason, we were driving the Alcan and camping in a travel trailer.   So, we put that notion away and ride on to my favorite place to ride, the river walk.

Toby Keith has a song, ' Play by the rules and you miss all the fun '. So in my world some little things just have to be overlooked, I kinda figure I'm like a 1st base umpire, its human to miss a call every now and then and frankly that's what helps make the game interesting. . And, at 7 am whats it going to hurt to speed along the cool turns and twists of the boardwalk and glide down the hills. Pretty cool.  But as luck would have it we ran into the same people we ran into last year doing the same thing in the same time frame...ya gotta love Slowdotna.

Our friends Connie and Jay Goltz are retired educators and are part of the landscape in our town. They're birders and naturalists and just folks that appreciate nature. Now I'm not varsity level at it like they are but I'm learning and we chat about the birds in the background - gulls, arctic terns (both left hand and right ), robins (Jay explains the reason I think they're not as colorful here is because I'm only looking at the females)...we talk about the sandhills and the up coming Kenai birding festival that rumor has it I might be  playing some music at.  And Hahny....they said hi. So after a 15 minute interlude we hustled back to the river, its warmed up to 42 degrees and we've ridden about 6 miles.

We get home and I'm feeling the need to get on the river. A couple days back when J + J  (Jet and Jeff)salvage was out scrounging I came across the tag end of some really nice nylon cord sticking out from under the ice and I couldn't pull it in...and wondering what was on the other end was killing me. So we fished for about an hour and then went to the spot. Walla, the strangest thing I've ever found in.....well....one of the strangest things I've ever found in the river. This beautiful cord was attached to 2 down rigger balls that every fisherman knows cost some serious fundage. Yahtzee. But who uses this set up for an anchor? I don't know but I'd bet he's moved on to another approach. And oh, I found a real anchor too.  MP won't admit it but I know she's got her eye on that orange cord to hang things in her green house with.

Next week I'm going serious fishing, I fish hard, everyone knows that. Theres a difference between fishing serious and being manic, so I've learned to fish serious without taking it so seriously, know what I mean ?  But, if you want dead fish pics come back soon. If I turn out to be the lucky angler who catches the first one in the boat...again...you might even hear something kinda off in the distance, kinda like when a bird or the surf or the wind sounds soooo good , like its new....that's me, seriously.