So You’re Saying There’s a Chance
Jeff Daniels is making the rounds promoting his new Showtime series, and of course the albatross of “Dumb & Dumber” still hangs around his neck, like a concrete necktie. But it does allow for some truly classic movie quotes to once again surface, like the line, “So you’re saying there’s a chance,” a line that encapsulates fly fishers everywhere within six short words.
Having “a chance” is why we also take “one more cast” as a hurricane approaches, or the sun safely sinks below the horizon while we’re in the middle of nowhere without a light. A chance is what wakes us up insanely early, sends us, beats us down, and keeps us going back for more punishment … expecting different results with tiny tweaks to our methods. We’re not quite doing the same thing over and over again after all. It just looks the same to the untrained eye.
GOOD MONDAY MORNING ALONG THE SIDEWALK
Welcome to the bleeding edge of innovative sharing of fly fishing news and perspectives from the digital realm. The weekend was full of melancholy from the 9-11 recognition of twenty years on, and I marveled at not only the effect it had on me, but the effect it had on many others around me. Anniversary dates and birthdays that end in a zero have, proven themselves to be road signs in the past. A “Dead End” sign to a marriage, died there on the zero, and passing through the forty mark, the fifty mark have been fantastic numbers for me as I passed through those zeroes.
So when we hit the twenty on the 9-11 anniversary, there’s a lot more to think about because it closes a parentheses on two decades of personal living as well as a twenty year chapter – American History XX.
This past Saturday (9-11), it was easy to ask CW where he was “today” while we were poling around on Ray Roberts. He was working in a restaurant in Lubbock, and nobody was coming in, so all the employees were just watching it all on TV. After hours of watching, “One of the waitresses sighed, and said, “Uh … like … how long is this gonna last?”” Twenty years later we rolled out laughing … mostly to keep from crying, I think.
And the numbers with CW are strangely aligned with me as well. Twenty years ago, I was about his age now, and in twenty he’s looking at being my age now. That was sobering for him, and real for me as I approach another zero year next month.
If I can get just one more zero year after that, I am way past borrowed time: I am, without a doubt, a thief who flat out stole it. At least I drive my life like I stole it … is there another way?
PLANS MADE WASHED AWAY
As this hits the keys, I am planning on a trip to Houston, but we are looking straight down the eye of a new storm – Nicholas – that snuck up while we were all thinking and watching the 9-11 remembrances on TV (it’s gonna last a lot longer). This storm, isn’t very organized looking, but it is an open-handed slap of the Texas Gulf Coast and has a track that leads it right to where I was going this week.
Will this rainmaker graze North Texas along its path? No way am I going to try and predict it after this year! It would be like trying to predict the height of Texas bluebonnet season, or Colorado aspens, or … fill in the blank ______________.
I can’t even predict what you will find here this week! But all this retrospective thinking and taking stock has had an effect on me – we’re still going to be innovating, the website will be changing in appearance in 2022, and the road will be opening up wide in my upcoming zero year. It may be a dirt road, it may be sand, it may be mud, it may be a rocky pass, but it’s a road. Thanks for reading, and I would love to know what YOU WANT TO see and read in coming months – off the carp season – here on the number one site for fly fishing information, and ramblings, here in the bizarre State of Texas.
Category: Body-Mind-Soul, Life Observed, OFF TOPIC, On The Road
