If you're like me....

watching the stock market lately is driving you nuts. I ain't no ' day trader' or ' diversified portfolio '  owner but I do have a dog in the hunt. So here I am in paradise with no income and only outcome watching my financial future stagger away. It wouldn't be so bad but like a lot of Americans we often turn the news on while we eat breakfast to see if the world is getting weirder ever since the 9/11 Osama Bin Laden deal. So as we ate at El Tunnel the other night enjoying Sinaloa style Tacos me and MPeasy went into executive session and once again she had a brilliant idea. She said  just handle it the same way you do the when the check engine light comes on in your truck.

So there ya have it...a black piece of electric tape right over the news tracker. I have to tell I am once again at peace with my financial future, thank you MP and I highly recommend this investment strategy to all my friends who read Mile 14.

On the Kenai River we got two kind of guys, we have Spin-Glo guys and we have Kwikfish guys.  Of course I ain't no dummy and I know that their effectiveness depends a lot on the bait attached and where and how they're fished but there's still a strange dynamic at work in my little pea picker...the price. How could a lure that cost 50 cents be better than one that costs 6 dollars ? But here in sunny Mexico this phenomena is hard at work. I got long cast lures, I got shallow dive lures, I got deep dive lures...I got it all. And all this last week the fish I caught were on a little feather jig fished within 20 feet of shore, go figure. Here's a pic,  right from left, 2 ounce Krocodile 7 bucks, shallow run Mirrolure 11 bucks, 2 1/2 ounce Roberts Whistler 8 bucks and my little wonder lure from Pecamaz at 20 peso's, about a dollar and a dime. Yikes.

The other day I took my friend Alejandro's advice. he says that anytime you see really really small bait skittering on the surface close to shore that good fish are following. So I seen it, I changed and before you know it I had caught about 6 or 7 of those weird looking guys at the bottom of the pic. Of course I let them go because they looked kinda strange and I'd never seen them before. Well ol Pepe comes by and says lucky me for catching such nice Grouper so I kept the next two.... I hate it when that happens.....and I caught a nice little Palmeito. Strangest thing, you just cast that little fly/jig out as far as you can ( which ain't very far ) and you just let the current take it bouncing around and these fish have such good eyes that they find it like nothing I've ever seen before. AND....they eat it just like it were real bait, strange.

So a couple days later I'm chucking a 2 ounce metal with my long cast rig and just proud as punch with myself as I watch it soar well over 100 yards and come in cast after cast without a bite when I see it again......miniature fish skittering right in front of me. I quickly change to my one dollar lure and follow them as they move steadily up the beach. I cast and walk, look, cast and walk, then look and cast and walk and ...walla... a nice Robalo just right for me and MP's supper. Ya know I think I'm figuring this deal out.

Night of the Iguana

When you come to Puerto Vallarta you hear an awful lot about that movie and what a good movie it was. I just  just hope that we in Alaska never get to the same point where people tell you ' this is where the TV show Alaska Bush People was filmed. Here's a selfie of me and MPeasy right in front of the beachfront casa where Liz Taylor and Richard Burton fell in love...really run down. In fact I'll print a pic of Mismoyla beach and bridge and you see that's bit over used as well.

It's about 10 in the morning and Mismolya is just waking up and it's pretty obvious that the places to eat there aren't places we're going to eat at. So luckily we run into a helpful young man who shows us a short cut through the jungle ( which took a real leap of faith) and told that the next stop to a wonderfully remote little town and harbor named Boca was just a 20 minute walk away.....well, an hour and a half later we're still walking and MP and I agreed that we set an all time endurance record that day with an easy 10 miles hiked. But we finally walk up on the gorgeous view of Boca and better yet a store with 12 peso Corona's of which I had 3...I don't mind telling you that when I saw the sight below I was a bit relieved....did I ever tell you about the time I got us lost in the desert ???? well, I was having deja vue.

They have it going on in Boca. We sat and watched boat after boat load up citizens and head off to secluded bays like Boca for lunch or swimming or whatever. They guy running this business has life figured out, I'm just glad I don't have to compete with him on the Kenai River.

It was actually a good thing that we got twisted around a bit on the Boca trip because the next day we were taking the bus even farther south to the Botanical Gardens and we learned a lot about the buses and the area and what not to do....like take off walking through the jungle. Here's my favorite horti- culturist in her natural element.

It's a strange married life dynamic that I think all men share when they find themselves in a place like this and you feel like you're kinda taking one for the team and then you silently find out that you are actually enjoying the place but the last thing you need to do is let the rest of the team know that,,,,kipeesh ?...So we wondered and even wandered around, these flowers were so brilliant they look like they'd been waxed or shined up or something.

They had a 45 minute hike down to the river and although my legs were  rubber from the day before we stumbled down to this beautiful setting. I didn't know what to do....start whistling the River Kwai song or get out my fly rod. It was absolutely one of the prettiest places I've been on the planet earth....

What would a jungle be without some birds cackling and monkeys screeching and snakes slithering and,,,,,well we didn't have any of that but I did get this pic of our favorite bird the Stellar Jays cousin the San Blas Jay.

PV is just a whole different vibe than Mazatlan and we liked it well enough but Maz is more our style. PV is way more touristy and commercial, they even have happy signs on the ATM machines to inspire you to spend....one machine says hello to your money, the next one good bye.

Part of the vibe in PV comes from it's well known gay and lesbian community. I guess we must be out of touch because the only swingers we noticed were these.

I also have to say that the sunsets in Mazatlan are way more dramatic. Here the sun falls directly over the horizon from us and then the light bounces around for an hour. In PV it sets to the south and just like Alaska you got those darn mountains in the way.  But with many years of practice and thanks to the digital age of cameras that has allowed me to take  5,742 sunset photo's I think I finally have the ultimate sunset pic. I have friends who can do this stuff by using all those buttons on the camera but me....I use the ' intelligent auto' mode. That pic has all it takes, a mountain, a tree, a cloud, an ocean and of course a star...magic.

So I'll leave you with just a pic of yours truly, Kenai guide #003 relaxing on  a beach lounger. I had just had breakfast with the most wonderful lady at an authentic restaurant where she had this pic of Al Pacino on the wall with all her other real Mexican stuff. I was sitting there wondering why she had it and what it meant and well it wasn't really all that hard to figure out....she just liked it and so did I and that's just how simple this whole show is...Like it = smile at it = remember it = memories = life = continue.......

PV

This gonna be quick, as good as the blog app works on my phone the typing is sooooo difficult . And if you use the voice activator it changes your words and you sound like a bigger idiot than you really are. 

Here's a pic of me and my friend roger on the roof of his beautiful casa right next door to Liz Taylor's old house.... Thanks to the kenai river I've met so many wonderful people.

I kinda like the vibe, the malecon, the menudo, the cerveza, the smiles and music.... But MP see's that and more, she said they have the coolest doors.

That which doesn't kill ya,

makes ya stronger is the old adage. Well I  don't know about that but I certainly hope it makes me smarter. It was one week ago exactly that I did my Carl Wallenda and this morning I fished hard for one hour until my rib cage began to ache pretty good. We're off on the bus to Puerto Vallarta Saturday for a week and I expect that when we get back I'll be ready to rock again and assume my position of morale / safety officer Team X.

That there is a lucky fellow leaving the hospital with his X-Rays showing no fractures but severe bruising and some cartilage separation. the hospital is clean , modern and efficient. I had two x-rays and an exam then got injected with a steroid / B bomb / Lidocaine cocktail and then was given 3 more hypodermics loaded as well a b-bomb pill regime and a medicine for a certain other little problem I was having brought on by the soreness that we really don't need to talk about....the entire bill, right at  $100.00.... a steal and something American Medicine could learn from, Doctors have to hate a guy like me who is just smart enough to get on WebMD or Mayo Clinic and know just enough to question the treatment. It's a whole different protacal , in the USA for this deal I would be given pain meds as well as muscle relaxers and told to rest. The pain pills are important to help you breath because without deep breaths the fear is pnuemonia could set in....but here they have no problem with real pain meds and ways to get it to you. the steroids are anti inflamatory and the b-bombs I'm not sure about but it's working. The first Lidocaine injection was like instant relief. Here's pic of one of the bruises I'm dealing with.....looks a little like the State of Iowa eh ?

I know this post is a bit of a bore but it's all I've really been up to this week, I can't fish or walk so good yet and it hurts like hell when I sing so I've been just laying low and recovering...almost there. But, please come back soon. The road trip to P.V. oughta create some chuckles. I'll try using my Blogspot phone app to post pics but most likely won't have all the news that's fit to print done until next weekend....And for all of you that were concerned for me let me just say THANK YOU and sorry I put all of us through these things.