Thursday, June 26, 2008

When Will I Be a Man?


So I’m on vacation for a couple of weeks, and this first week I am local because Angie is working. I decided about 10:30 last night that I was going to wake up wicked early and go fishing today on Hemlock Lake. It required me to do a little work before bed since I didn’t want to have to load the canoe and gear come morning. This was a good call, because when the alarm went off at 5:10am I was looking for excuses to crawl back into bed. Instead of excuses not to go, as I contemplated how comfortable my bed is, two thoughts hit me. The first was if I get back into bed after my alarm going off this early Angie will most likely kill me. The second was that I already strapped the stupid canoe to the top of my car so I might as well take it somewhere.
I stopped near the lake for some gas station coffee and because there was a sign in the window that read, “bait.” While gas station coffee is a serious affront to my coffee snobdom, it just didn’t seem like a real man morning to brew Starbucks before fishing alone. I thought it a good idea to get some live bait since all my other attempts at fishing this year have led to me losing the lures I had on my line. I’ve always found it kind of gross that a place that primarily sells people food also sells fish food, but I guess most of what a gas station sells doesn’t really qualify for people food (I would like to see Morgan Spurlock live off that fare for a month). I felt good about the worm purchase because of the reassuring writing on the container. It told me that they were genuine “Canadian Nightcrawlers.” I’m not so sure why they are better than worms from the states, but if they came all the way from the Great White North it must have been worth the trip. The other thing that I liked about the packaging was the disclaimer, “Not meant for human consumption.” Since I wouldn’t be drinking on my aquatic adventure I didn’t need the warning, but I’m glad it was there.
Hemlock Lake is amazing because there is no development around the lake because it is owned by the City of Rochester for a water supply. For this reason they also only allow hand propelled boats, and very small motorboats. All this leads to the sensation that you’ve stepped back 200 years in time because you hear almost nothing from other humans and rarely see anyone out there. As you can see from the view, not a bad place to spend your morning. It’s kind of hard to have a bad time when you have this lake as the backdrop for your prayer time, even if are technically there to fish and haven’t caught a darn thing.
Which brings me to the question at hand: If real men are supposed to be able to do things like fish, do I officially have to have caught a fish to be a fisherman? I do think that I came as close as I have yet this morning as it’s possible that a fish or two chewed my worm off the hook without getting caught. But seriously, how hard can this be? I just want to catch a fish. Something, anything, I’ll be happy with a goldfish at this point. Well, fishing aside, I kind of took a step further toward manhood last night when I actually crawled under Angie's car and used my drill and those plastic pull ties to connect some shielding that had come loose. So I am making some progress, but keep me in your prayers.

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