Fishing at Starlight has always been a fun activity, but in the past we haven’t eaten too much of it. Usually we eat a single fish just a couple of times a summer. My friend Matt was up at his house down the lake last weekend and we decided to do a whole meal of lake fish. This involved catching lots of fish (photo #1), cleaning all the fish (photo #2, with the help of Lucy), cooking the fish (photo #3, Mark and Matt did all the cooking) and the eating (photo #4, as you can see each fish was cooked differently. There were six different kinds including pan-fried, mustard-soy sauce, lemon, steamed, etc). It was a yummy dinner!
Damsel Flies are very delicate versions of Dragon Flies. These two paused long enough for me to capture them as they rested during their mating flight.
Looking at this fish, where would you guess it’s from? Note the blue gill plate, the pink underbody body, the black “ears” behind the eye … if you click on the picture and look closely you’ll see iridescent flecks of gold and silver. If you guessed Tanzania, Kenya, or South America I wouldn’t blame you. This fish is from the lake (Starlight lake), right here out our front door. It’s called a Bluegill, also called Panfish or Sunfish. The fish is very common, and in some lakes (mainly trophy trout lakes) considered a pest. But they fight well on light tackle and supposedly taste great (we’ll let you know how that goes). We’ve seen some amazing animals in Africa, but it’s great to remember that we have our own animals to appreciate right here at home. (Note: this picture is unaltered, it just happen to come out this vividly. We used our little waterproof Olympus Stylus 850SW)
Yesterday we had a great time on Dad’s day. We spent it biking around town, eating good food, and just good ol’ hangin’ out kind of fun. Hope everyone else out there had a great day as well!
Currently there are approximately 400,000 people living with Multiple Sclerosis in the United States and 200 more are diagnosed every week. The Pacific Northwest has the highest rate of MS in the country and yet no one knows why. I’d like to help the National Multiple Sclerosis Society eliminate MS…wouldn’t you?
Why am I supporting MS? As some of you may know, my uncle, Ray Heacox, was diagnosed with MS in 1998. Mark and I have been living with Ray and Cynthia for the last six months and have gotten to see first hand the challenges that Ray has to overcome every day. Symptoms vary greatly from one person to the next and include: fatigue, numbness, vision problems, coordination problems, and many others. Wouldn’t it be better if no one ever had to live with MS?
In order to raise money for MS, this fall (September 13-14) I’m riding 175 miles in the MS Ride. The ride takes place over two days in the Skagit Valley (North of Seattle). I’ll be riding with 2,000 other people who are also committed to raising money for MS. My goal is to keep up an average rate of 15 mph and to complete each day in 8 hours (plus one more hour to walk 5 ft. from the bike to the car!)
My goal is to raise at least $4,000 this year. In order to jump start the donations my mom (Deborah Schenk) and my aunt (Diana Huffman), Ray’s sisters-in-law, have agreed to provide challenge donations. Deborah will match the first $1,000 pledged and Diana will match the second $1,000. Please help me reach that goal with your pledge. Your donation is tax deductible. You can donate through the MS Society’s website via my fundraising page (http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/bebethsteudel). You can also mail a check to me made out to “National MS Society”.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society will use funds collected from the Group Health Bike MS Ride not only to support research for a cure tomorrow, but also to provide programs that address the needs of people living with MS today. Because we can fight this disease by simply riding a bike, because we have chosen to help thousands of people through a contribution to the Bike MS Ride, we are now getting closer to the hour when no one will have to hear the words, “You have MS.”
Every Memorial Day, an event takes place in Oneonta NY, the Clinton Canoe Regatta. There are many divisions, but none so illustrious as the Coed Aluminum Relay division. The race is generally on Sunday with the our teams (Red Lining and Blue Lining) showing up the day before. Every year the first task is figuring out “The List” of who is paddling with who. The race consists of 5 legs of varying lengths with the middle legs being the longest. The goal is to find a balance between strength, experience and match those up to the correct legs. Below Bebeth and Courtney try and figure out the best match up.
Below is the crew right before taking for the starting line
Graphite paddles prepared ….
The start is always chaos, 30 - 40 boats all jockeying for position.
This is a relay point, teammates in the water ready to assist the finishing team out of the boat and the starting team into the boat
After everyone comes in, the boats get loaded back on the trucks and we all get to talk about the weekend till next year ….
And of course the weekend wouldn’t be complete with out a trip to the Penguin (Unfortunetly I didn’t have a picture )
A good friend of our, BRyan Polson, fellow returned Peace Corps volunteer, and now back in Kenya, sent us these pictures of the two national papers in Kenya … both featuring Obama.
Here’s his explanation:
As one race is over, so another begins. However, as you know, Obama has simply become an international phenomenon. Now, multiply that by pie-r-squared and you have the feeling of the pandemonium his victory has created here. I have gotten “Aye, just imagine that it was one of us who finally did it in America!” or “Obama Tosha!” (”tosha” meaning “enough” as in “all we need” which was used by Raila Odinga during this past election for Kenya as in “Raila Tosha”). People are selling t-shirts and there is talks of a security detail soon being sent to his grandmother’s tiny little village of Kogelo near Lake Victoria. For those of us American, we are well aware of the history here, but do know that in Kenya, a nation celebrates too!
I’ve attached pictures of today’s newspapers headlines and have included some links to the stories they have written:
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.
