Queasy Rider

It all started with a storm.

Last Friday night as I was cooking dinner for my family a big thunderstorm system moved through our area, wreaking havoc on small towns west of the metro. Fortunately for me our community was unscathed. A few hours later I was riding shotgun in my friend Al's car, leading a caravan of four cars across Wisconsin, with the lightning still receding off to the East.

We were sharing a charter on the "Angler Managment," a 32-foot Trojan, out of Kewaunee, Wisconsin. We arrived in Kewaunee right at 6AM, when our charter was to begin, but because of the recent high winds we decided to delay until 8 to let things die down and to get some breakfast. When a Great Lakes charterboat captain suggests that you wait it out a bit, you don't really argue.

I wish now that I had actually eaten some breakfast in town -- But as it were, I had some greasy sausage sticks and other assorted pogey bait that I had brought along. I munched hungrilly on those sausage sticks as we motored out of the protected harbor. Out on the lake it was better than I expected but still pretty rough seas. After about 15-20 minutes of wave crashing I began to feel very very hot and very very queasy. I looked over at Al and he was worse off than me

I have only been seasick one other time in my life, and it also involved a hastily-scarfed breakfast of dubious components. I had to hurl a couple of cookies over the side but by and large held together. Thankfully my friend Faron had some Dramamine with him.

The first four hours of our charter were fruitless. In all that time we had one bite, which my friend Jet lost. It wasn't for a lack of trying; the skipper threw everything he had in the water save for Al's puke bucket. It was getting to be so bad that I suggested that we anchor the boat and fish with bobbers. About then the next bite hit. I was up.

At first I thought I was into the fish of a lifetime. He certainly felt that way. But as it turned out there was a problem with the planer board on my line, and I was basically trying to reel in my fish with the planer board turned sideways in the water. Making it worse we were still maintining trolling speed; so once the skipper saw what was wrong he slowed up the boat a bit and that helped. I boated the first fish of the day, about a 7 or 8 pound king.

The action picked up after that, and Jay, Faron and Al each boated fish. It was starting to look like things were picking up, but when we got back to the top of the order, it was Jet's turn and we didn't get anymore bites. So in the end we returned to port and Jet was empty-handed. Poor guy.


Here is the full group of us. From Left to right: Jeremy, Siegfried, Faron, Yours Truly, Jay, Al and Jet.

Siegfried and Jeremy were on a second boat with Sieg's grandkids. They boated three, so they didn't do much better. We're a pretty diverse group: A South African, a German, three Americans and Two Filipinos.

Here's a photo of yours truly with the skipper and his mate. Ironically the guy dressed for fish cleaning is the skipper, and the more 'skipperly'-looking fellow on the right is the mate.





Here is a picture of Faron and his King.
Faron took a lot more pictures than I did (I wasn't really in the mood once I started puking) so maybe he will get some more photos for me to post at a later date.









Here's me with my king.
Easily the smallest fish, he was pretty easy to find at the bottom of the cooler.








Big or no,
he sure did make for a tasty dinner.









Charter fishing is not really fishing.
Oh, some fishing does go on, but it is the skipper and the mate who do all that. That's what you pay them for. All you do on a charter is reel fish in. If there aren't any fish to reel in, then all you are left with is pretty much an 85 dollar an hour boat ride. I booked this trip before I knew that I was getting my boat. I probably wouldn't have gone if I hadn't already committed a non-refundable deposit. I would have spent the money fishing around home.

I function better as my own skipper, and my rates are more reasonable.

Perfection

A great quote from Henry David Thoreau,
over at The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:

"Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit."

This quote led me to think of our society's opulence, how we have become perfectionists who dig through the fruit bins looking for the unblemished specimens while spotted fruit gets moved to the side and ultimately is thrown out. All this goes on in our nation on a daily basis while a part of the larger world starves. To meet our demand and to get our dollars the food growers have responded by increasing the use of pesticides, preservatives and artificial fertilizers (Insert Joni Mitchell lyrics here).

I'm part of that system and most likely you are too. I only bring this up because I have been wracking my brain around finding my own way out of the system, to get my family to the point where we can choose what level we will participate in the economy. We are doing quite well for ourselves but I continue to have the uncomfortable awareness that if prices were to skyrocket without a signifigant change in our income or God forbid there was a downturn in our income due to layoff or illness, we would fold up. Not right away, not even in six months (at current market rates), but savings can only last for a finite period and even that is uncertain if you introduce a scenario where the dollar plummets in value.

The gold standard is worthless if nobody is interested in buying any gold. What carries intrinsic value that would survive a market crash? Corn on the stalk, potatoes in the ground and animals in the field.

There are plenty of blogs out there with a lot of people trying to find their own paths away from dependence on the market based economy. This one, my blog, isn't really one of them. It's pretty much an over glorified cat blog. But nevertheless I will continue to document this attempt of mine to shift my paradigm (In between posting pictures of flowers).

inconsistent, obscure and hebephrenic.
That's my promise to you.


PS - That's a really nice service that some poor soul is doing, over at that Thoreau blog. You should really go check it out. I wish that blogging existed back in the days of the founding fathers up through civil war time. I bet Franklin would have cranked out 3-5 posts a day.