Adventures in … Life

Last weekend Proctor and I headed up to the annual fishing trip on the Delaware river. It was a great time though the fishing was horrible. I caught only one trout the whole weekend. The first day we went fishing it rained all day long:

The second day was at least sunny. A lot more folks had show up by this point and half of us got in canoes and headed down the East Branch. Below is a picture of our boats and fly rods.

Here my fishing partner, Fred, was working a nice riffle, though no fish showed any appearance.

A lot of what this weekend was about is sharing, hanging out, and having a great time. Here Tom and Sam sit on the remains of a old bridge support, having a good time.

I did happen to catch something, and while it wasn’t a fish, it was interesting, though in a gross kind of way.

This creature was somewhere between a foot and a half and two feet long. It had actually gotten snagged on my fly while I was fishing, when it rolled over I got a look at this:

A circular sucker mouth full of pointy little teeth.  Below is a video of it swimming away.

After I got back I looked it up on the internet and found out that it’s a Sea Lamprey. I guess they swim up the rivers to spawn.

We also recently upgraded our old digital point and shoot for a new camera, the Olympus 850sw. The selling point of this camera is that it’s completely waterproof. I tested it out on this bass I caught in the lake.

Anyway it was a great weekend and I can’t wait to get back to Starlight.

This last weekend Deborah, Proctor, Bebeth, Lucy, and I all went up to Starlight to “open up”. “Open up” refers to the process of unpacking the “Green House” from it’s winter storage and preparing it for all the spring and summer fun. This involves dusting, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning out the cupboards, fishing (any trip to starlight usually involves fishing), and unpacking all the seat cushions and pillows from their plastic cocoons. It’s definitely hard work.

But in order to do all that hard work you gotta eat well. How about some home made biscuits, strawberries, honey, jam, maple butter, and bass from the lake (which I caught) for breakfast? Sign me up!

Last weekend I was still in Seattle while Bebeth was already in New York. I decided I’d make a last minute trip over to Eastern Washington to fish since I’d be out on the East Coast most of the summer. My target was Lake Lenice, a 94 acre lake just south of Vantage. It was planted with Rainbow, Brown, and Tiger trout. I got up Saturday morning at around 5:30am and got to the lake around 7:30am. 20 minutes later I was kicking my way out into the lake. There were so many different birds around, red wing black birds, yellow headed black birds, coots, magpies, and swallows … and of course trout! It was a great day of fishing and catching. I “brought to hand” around 10 -15 trout and missed maybe twice that many.

That day I found out that I had a major leak in my waders, so the next morning instead of donning wet clothes, I drove over to Rocky Ford, which is a spring creek near Ephrata and spent a couple of hours chasing large spring creek trout from shore. Picked another 4 fish from there.

Anyway was a great weekend of fishing!

Mark and I are spending the month of May living with my parents in New York City and I chose my arrival date so that I could ride in the five borough bike ride. Its a 42 mile ride put on by Bike New York that goes through each of the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island). They cap the participation at 30,000 which isn’t a very high percentage of the population, but it still quite a lot of people. There aren’t many events in NYC that give quite as good a sense of community. The last time I did this was in 2001 and its gotten quite organized and very popular (spaces filled up fast). My dad and I enjoyed the beautiful weather and the mostly flat terrain. There were lots of rest areas with food and music, plenty of new sights to see, and even a ferry ride at the end!

Unfortunately I didn’t have a good camera with me (our small one was in a lake with Mark in Eastern Washington), but I took a few with my cell phone.

The first one is of the longest bike I’ve ever seen. Its a little hard to tell, but the yellow baby carrier at the back (sans baby) is at the end of 4 attached bikes. The front is the father’s full-sized bike and behind him are each of his three daughters’ bikes. Its not exactly a tandem, but they’re attached with some bar (I’m sure all you parents know exactly what it is). It seemed a little unwieldy in length, but it was pretty cool.
This shot is of one of the rest areas with lots of people!