Abercrombie & Fitch was once one of the premier purveyors of gear and clothing for fly fishing.
Modesty was not their strongest trait but by most accounts, if they were not the “greatest sporting goods store in the world,” they were pretty darn close.
(A photo prompt from the Outdoor Blogger Network: The photo least likely to be framed and hung on the wall.)
I click the shutter button a lot and, most of the time, my pictures look pretty good.
A Newt
Sometimes I will review the contents of my camera’s memory card and come across a shot that makes me wonder just what the heck was going on when I took it.
Huh?
Sometimes I will take a picture because of the unique point of view or to look at something from an unusual or uncommon angle, figuring “well, as long as I’m down here …”
I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!
Photography has come a long way since I started taking pictures with that old Kodak Instamatic and those throw-away flash cubes. I have done my best to keep up with the latest advances and have fully embraced digital technology to take, sort, edit and share my photos but I’m telling you, if I live to be a hundred and ten, I don’t think I will ever get the hang of taking pictures with a phone.
I Can't Talk and Take Pictures at the Same Time
I have seen guys stroke their stubbly chins on Sunday morning and make growling noises, like that’s what one does when one has a beard. It’s not, and they don’t. I believe my growling is more effective because of my beard but my beard is not why I growl and Sunday stubble is not a beard.
I come across blogs and web sites featuring young men in their twenties, spending five days at a time fishin’, sleepin’ in the dirt and drinking PBR, but those dark shadows on their jowels are not beards, either. They are five days worth of stubble and sometimes when I look at those guys I wonder if they aren’t also stubbly other places, too, after five days.
As a younger man, my boating experience consisted mostly of drinking beer on the pontoon boats of others. I went bass fishing with an uncle once (Caught my first bass, too. Thanks, Uncle Dwight!) but I was 10, so what did I know about boating — other than we went really fast? There was also a long-ago week on sailboats in the Caribbean but it was still more or less me drinking beer on someone else’s boat. And a lot of rum, too. I think. I can’t really remember, but that’s not the point.
Boating is just not something I grew up with. Knowing better than to fib about such a thing, I was completely honest regarding my lack of boating experience once, during an interview for a job that required quite a bit of boat work, and still got the job. I hauled people and gear, fuel oil, tractor parts and even sheep, to and from an island on Lake Champlain for a time and didn’t make the evening news so, while I may not be the most seasoned of skippers, I do have tales to tell and slightly more than a passing knowledge of boating safety.
If that is not enough to convince you of my experience with today’s topic, I currently oversee a small fleet of wooden craft resembling rowboats in that they have oars and are roughly triangular in shape. Continue reading
A stiff, warm breeze has kicked the process of melting into high gear and mud season is upon us. Driving on an unpaved road can be an adventure this time of year, even for those who have experienced mud season before. Four wheel drive certainly helps, but so do ground clearance and a certain amount of good judgement.
We wondered all morning, Mrs. Gordon and I, if anyone would get stuck today and if so, whom. It’s early yet, so there is still time for my choices (the weekend people from New Jersey) to hit the ditch but they catch a bit of a break today by not being the first to get stuck in the mud of our road.
That honor goes to a tiny little car from Massachusetts.
And it only gets worse from here!
I once came across a Hummer with Massachusetts plates, stuck in a ditch during mud season but did not have my camera along so I had to settle for laughing at the driver before shifting into low and leaving him behind, not even twenty yards up a hundred yard hill. It still bothers me to not have a photo of that Hummer in the ditch so when the driver of this car knocked sheepishly at the door, looking for help, I said, “Sure! Just let me grab my camera.”
Frankly, I’m surprised they made it this far up the side of Nonesuch Mountain and I’m not sure why they kept trying to go further, but they did, plowing with the skirting at the nose of the car until they were stopped dead in their tracks. I did give them credit, though, for staying out of the ditch.
Of course I’m going to take pictures.
It doesn’t look like things will be drying out any time real soon — and I certainly don’t expect people will stay off our road — so maybe we can look forward to more entertainment like this in the next couple of weeks. And if, as I’m taking pictures before pulling you out, you ask how (other than a large 4×4 truck) I avoid becoming stuck in this springtime morrass, I will tell you I just don’t go out and about. That’s not dry Yankee humor; it’s good judgement.
According to this article from the March 15, 2011 Bennington Banner, a local neighborhood is under siege. Residents are scared and you, no matter where you live, should also be concerned about this growing menace. It is spring and, once again, bushy-tailed terrorists are working on their goal of total world domination!
These skwerl attacks are apparently “unprovoked” and target humans as they go about their business, shoveling snow and clearing sidewalks for the safety and convenience of all. I have known for years that these attacks are part of an ongoing plot to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
If you don’t believe me, check out this web site: Scary Squirrel World
In these troubled times we must all remain vigilant!
(Posters from www.scarysquirrel.org)
You have been warned!
My good friend, Eugene, has had his own encounters with the Bushytails:
I, myself, have been on the forefront of this ongoing battle:
The calendar puts it only a few days away but, for me, it’s not really spring until someone spots a pair of turkey vultures sharing a dead skunk on the shoulder of Rte. 5. We have a ways to go yet, before the peepers are in the pussy willows and the anglers are on the pond, but things are looking up, knock on wood.
Rain and melt water are absorbing into the snow on top of the lake ice, creating a thick layer of slush so heavy the ice groans loudly under its weight. Meanwhile, the snow piles out front are shrinking, the hay rake is once again exposed, and the driveway is a mess during the day but, man, you should hear the racket when it is driven on in the morning after freezing at night.
Rain and slightly warmer temperatures this week raised water levels and the ice on the river, upstream of our village, is breaking up. Snow on the banks is collapsing, adding to the floes, and a jam yesterday forced water out of the channel and into the fields. The water has receded somewhat today but, if the ice jam lets go, there could be big trouble in town.
In last week’s Friday Fish Sticks feature at OwlJones.com, Owl posted a link to a video of a robotic fish and speculated about the potential of expensive, robotic lures. I’m sure there are self-propelled lures out there and I have no doubt that, with the advances in polymers and nano-technology, it won’t be long before we can get rid of all our complicated gear and use tiny cameras to guide a lure into the mouth of a fish, flip a switch and command a tiny motor to tow our quarry to shore for us.
The thought of robotic lures made me laugh (and shudder a bit) but those who pursue fish have always found ways to put new technologies to use. Inspired by Owl’s $57.00 robotic Rapala, I share a few ads I came across while putting together this week’s edition of Flashback Friday:
We live in an age where just about anyone can quickly, and generally unbidden, share just about anything with just about anyone else, anywhere else. The problem is that, if you make it possible for just about anyone to share just about anything, most of them will.
That’s a lot of sharing.
Digital technology has become cheap and easy, as has much of the entertainment it provides, coming at us faster and faster all the time, but there was a time when it was hard to share what we are doing right this instant and had to settle for sharing what we had done instead.
Why, before we had satellites and wireless signals a guy would have to wait until he got back to camp to call his buddy at the office to brag about his big Labrador brook trout — and only if he was lucky enough to be staying at a camp with a telephone!
That camp phone doesn’t have a dial but it has a hand crank, used to get the attention of an operator, who then dialed the number for you (such service!). Doing it this way must have taken forever! Maybe even as long as a minute and a half. Continue reading
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 