My left foot

I used that title for a blog post many years back about my first / last ever pedicure. I liked it then and I like it now so here goes....I've been in Mazatlan fishing every single day now for pushing two months now and believe it or not I hadn't done anything stupid until yesterday so as we all know it was just a matter of time.

I'll bet ya said ouch....me too. My big toe next to that index  or whatever your podiatrist would call it was broke doing the same thing the same way two years ago and now it barely bends and goes numb from time to time. So now I got two. My Team X partner Ernie gave me hell for not wearing the water socks he gives me every year but Ern...I need to feel mother nature under my feet brother, I got feeeeeel it...and so I am. It quit throbbing last night at 2:00 a.m. so no worries....It kinda makes me sympatico with my buddy Chris who is nursing broken toes in Alaska right now and we both agree that walking is an under appreciated part of life.

Christmas Eve me and MPeasy gotta started on ' Project Soldotna Star '  because it's Christmasy and the Stars have won a record 40 some football games in a row. We've done peace  signs and fish and smiley faces and....well.....we just new this was another easy project. BUT, we're both math challenged, creative people ya know and this thing was confusing. Ya call it a star and it's easy but when you call it a Pentagram it gets really weird. I forgot the basic tenet of construction that you can't locate anything with only one reference point but our friends Candace and Rueben Dressler came to the rescue and pretty soon we had the north star just a shining bright. The building loved it and so did we,

That morning it was my job to hustle down to North Beach and meet the boats coming in so I could get Lobster for our Christmas Eve. Walla, I got 5 just like the ones this fisherman is holding for 270 peso, about 14 bucks Alaskan.....oh baby.....As you can see, this guy was fun, Happy New Year amigo.

So with our langosta safely iced and put away in the back pack we made it into old town for breakfast and to try and find MP's  Christmas present. We buy our own presents ( I got two Mirro Lures from Pesca Maz ) so MP was in search of a metal Our Lady of Guadalupe statue at her favorite store and ....well...it's Mexico and things are just different here. The look you get when you see a sign like this was pretty special. Breath through your nose baby we'll find it.

After six years and many set backs.....like somebody forgot to install plumbing, the Shark Tank at the Aquarium is open and ya all oughta go. It's just like the one at Mandalay Bay Las Vegas except a little smaller but really cool. It's got the 360' viewing tunnel and of course sharks and 700 fish for them to eat. I took this first pic because I thought it was weird light and just a cool scene and I was spot on. Then a nice gal took a pic of us in the tunnel of the Tiburon....

Now if the Musky is Minnesota's fish of 10,000 casts then the Robalo is his Mexican cousin....they're just darn hard to find. In fact they're so hard to find that the Mazatlan Aquarium with maybe a total of 40,000 fish had only one....and I found him sharing habitat with some plain ol Snappers.  This fish here is the perfect sport fish, a challenge to find, a challenge to trick and real challenge to land if you're lucky with the first two.

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I want to wish everybody who reads Mile 14, heck I want to wish everybody period a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Mile 14 seems to have about 400 regular readers and I'm humbled, I really am. I wish I had some great wisdom to pass on but being a pretty darn contented guy I'll say this about happiness...I was gifted this thing of life twice in my life, once in 1953 and again in 1973... I've always been a guy who was a little like a salmon, always swimming upstream, fighting the current. Well, some time back I decided to be happy, that's all, I just decided. It's a quest I'm still on but I'm winning and of course still have some edges to whittle off but the big thing was that....I decided. 

I'm gonna end this blog with a pic of me and Gilberto who runs the water taxi at El Cid Marina. He and the other staff call me ' Peter' for the Fisherman....and that's ultra cool to be known as that guy....and your friend Gilbert who's trying to have a good life and a wonderful 2017 just like I wish for all of you.....Happy New year.