"6 inches is the new 9 inches" or "Catch & Release"

Growing up I was always a worm and bobber fisherman.  One Summer I was elevated into the ranks of the elite “Fly Fisherman.”  It happened after I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over two hours as I tried to get from the GW Bridge to my studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights.  I was so frustrated that I had to call someone, and the only person I could think to call since it was after midnight was my oldest friend Mike who lived in California.  He said, Steve, do you know what you need?  I asked if it had to be legal.  He said a “Fly fishing trip to Idaho.”  Some place very far from traffic and where the Rainbow Trout outnumber people by about 10 to 1.  I’m sold and jump into action.  I race out to the store and buy the waders.   I go to my dad’s house where he’s got this Fly Fishing Pole that’s been sitting in a very nice wood veneer box since I can remember. As it turns out, one of the grandfather’s friends gave it to my Dad when he was a kid.  It’s a real bamboo fly-fishing pole, and it’s never been used.  Probably if I were to have taken it to the Antique’s Road Show, I could have set some valuation record for fishing polls.  That wasn’t meant to be though. 

I arrive in Idaho-Big Sky Country, Fresh Air, it’s Wonderful.  We head for the river (it’s a very tall state, you can drive for hours). I’m envisioning large trout fighting each other to jump onto my hook.  That wasn’t exactly the case. 

We’ll forget about the mind-bending tangles and knots I created that brought Mr. Patience to new heights of screaming frustration.  No, first there was the issue of learning how to cast with a fly-fishing pole.  You see unlike a regular fishing pole that has a heavy bobber on the end of the line to assist with casting, the fly pole and line is a completely different animal.  There are no weights on the end of the line. (What, no Bobber?)  As a matter of fact, it’s the exact opposite.  You want the end of the line to be as light as possible to allow the fake fly to lie on the water and fool the fish.  The way you get the line out there is by continually letting out line as you make forward and backward motions with your pole.  I’m getting the hang of it quickly, my technique seems to work well.  Then, unfortunately, I lost control.  I kept letting out line and couldn’t stop myself.  Now I have about two miles of line flying through the air and I have to keep going.  It’s kind of like a ponzi scheme.  You know its eventually going to collapse in your face, but you’re addicted and have to keep feeding it.  At one point as I’m in this crazed whirling of the line back and forth, I feel something hit my nose.  I’ve got a lot up in the air at this point and don’t think too much of it.  It wasn’t until after I had flung the pole forward that I thought to myself, (mind you this thought process is happening in micro-seconds) “What if that was the hook that hit my nose?  And what if it’s still there?” 

Too late…Inertia has caught up with my line and the hook on the end of it.  The same hook that is now lodged in one of the pores on the side of my nose.  As the tidal wave of line catches up with the hook in my nose, I have the unique opportunity to understand how a fish feels when he’s hooked and being reeled in.  As we leave for the day I suggest to my fishing buddies that we stop off and get me a complimentary tatoo to go with my nose piercing.

And a last bit of embarrassment:  It’s “catch and release” so if you want proof of your catch, you need to take a picture.  I caught one fish on our second day, but was too lazy to take my camera that day.  Now it’s the last day, so I have the camera and I’m ready.  The Great Fisherman that I am, I catch nothing.  At the end of the day, I see a shiny silver looking thing stuck in the thickets in the middle of the river.  I’m guessing it’s a can of some sort and I think to myself, well that stinks that someone would ruin this pristine environment by littering.  So I wade out to get it.  I look down in the thickets and see it’s actually a large rainbow trout, but he’s dead.  He’s in great shape, looks like he might have just had a heart attack or something.  So I scoop him up with my net, get out my camera, and snap a shot.  

With that my friend Mike comes walking by, looks at me and says, “Well Steve, I guess technically you did catch it.” 

How I Cracked My Ribs...Again

I wish I could say I did it while skiing down a challenging mogul

run....but that's not even close to what happened.

We’re going to the Pennsylvania mountains for a week of skiing…. on the Saturday morning we're getting ready to leave, my wife suggested that we bring the two cats with us...along with the large hairy Golden Retriever.  In a moment of insanity I said, "Yeah, why not."  

So I go out into the garage and dig out the one cat carrier we have.  Now I need to get another one (being that I’m now the proud owner of two cats) at the ridiculously overpriced store in town.  

I can feel my temperature beginning to boil because as usual, I’m in a major hurry and this set of activities is going to delay lift-off…and as is the usual case, it’s for absolutely no reason at all.  I’m just in a hurry and making a conscious decision to torture myself.

“Isn’t it Fascinating! “

I opt for another front loader similar to the one we already have. (Surprise, it’s the least expensive model they have.) I chose wrong. We were able to get Jack (who can be ornery) into the old carrier by putting a greenie in and closing the door behind him.  Jill who is generally sweet as pie became a she-demon.  (Three transfusions later, the doctors tell me that with time and some plastic surgery the scars won't be that noticeable.)

Now I’m in an absolutely perfect mood.  I have to go back to the boutique pet store, return my initial purchase and buy a top loader carrier.  Naturally the new unit I need costs over $80 dollars.  I did mention that one of the selling points my family used in acquiring these cats was that they were free!

Once we got up to the PA Mountains, I decided it would be a good idea to fold down the back seat of the minivan to make it easier to get at the ski equipment for the week.  Fortunately or Unfortunately I remembered that I packed two small snow shovels under the back seat...so they'd need to come out before collapsing the seat.

Instead of taking the extra 20 seconds to walk around the side of the

mini-van, and open a side door to remove them, I decided that I'd just reach over the back seat from the back of van and pull them out that way.  One of my many miscalculations of the week was that I forgot that I'm less than 6 feet tall and have relatively normal size arms.

I couldn't reach the shovels.  So again, I refuse to walk around the van; but now I'm imagining I have the flexible body of a twelve year old.  I position the lower portion of my rib cage on the top of the back seat, my body is now parallel to the ground and I reach over to pull the shovels out.  I get one shovel out (falsely reinforcing my notion that this was a good idea), but the other shovel is stuck.  At this point I'm totally committed to this plan, there is absolutely no way that I'm backing out.  (Let’s forget about the fact that at this point I'm totally frustrated and p*ssed out of my mind)  Then in a fit of rage I yank and yank on the handle of the shovel and felt what can best be described as one of my ribs buckling or crumbling.  Now I’m thinking to myself, “Oh Cr*p, I didn’t really just do that?  The Mrs. is going to be really pleased…again.”  But I got the shovel!

Hurt ribs can be a funny thing.  From past experience, they generally don't  hurt that bad right off the bat.  It doesn’t hit home until you try doing something difficult, like tying your shoes. 

I didn't start feeling any discomfort until that night.  I had some problems breathing after having a large meal.  Pain didn't show up until the next day… when it started snowing. I found that if I shovel in one direction no pain.  If I switch hands, it felt like Mohammed Ali connected with a left hook to my rib cage.  It snowed for 6 days straight.  When all was said and done we had over 3 feet of snow.  

Adding to my luck, I caught a family member's cold mid week.  So sneezing and nose blowing became unbelievably painful events. What's really fun is when you get into a sneezing fit and you rifle off 3 or 4 sneezes in a row.  The good news was that when I came to, I had no recollection of what happened.

Good Friends Golf Together (Famous 3 Stoogies Poster)

I don’t have any friends that are good enough to golf with me.  There are good reasons for this.  You know you’re golf-challenged when:

You’re out with your friends and after teeing off for the 3rd time, you hear, “God you suck.”  You turn around and one of your friends says to you, “Did I say that out loud?”

The first time I played golf I was about 16.  When the day was over the older brother of one of my friends picked us up.  He asked us what we had shot.  When I told him a 169, he looked at me unsympathetically and said, “Steve, you wasted your money.”

One time I was invited/forced to play in a charity golf outing where they paired a Golf Pro with everyone’s foursome.  Our pro was giving all kinds of helpful advice to everyone in our group…but me.  When I asked him what advice he had for me, he just looked at me in a confused and perplexed way and said, “With you, we’d have to start from scratch on every aspect of your game…just keep doing what you’re doing for today.”

When you’re in sales it’s kind of taken for granted that you play golf and you’re pretty good at it.  There are exceptions to every rule. When people ask me, “But don’t you like it?  I have a pat answer, “If I want aggravation, I’ll commute into the city on New Jersey Transit.”  Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of golf: Fresh Air, Sunshine, Exercise, Camaraderie…but all of that goes down the toilet as soon as you have to swing at the little white ball and pray that it goes somewhere reasonable…which 9 times out of 10 it does not.  Maybe if a golf ball was the size of a melon that would be helpful.

I had a traumatic golf experience early on.  I was just starting out in sales and my company was a sponsor in the Ken Venturi Guiding Eyes Golf Classic.  I was able to get two high level VPs from my customer (neither of which I had ever ever met before) to agree to go.  I’m not sure what I was thinking because I was almost exclusively a miniature golf player.  It’s about a week before the tournament and I’m taking a subway downtown with a co-worker Don who was pairing our company’s executives with sales reps and customers.  Our head VP was guy named Bob Tway senior. His son was Bob Tway Jr. who at the time was the number 2 ranked golfer in the world.  Bob was from Atlanta and I didn’t know him at all.  Don is having problems finding a group to put Bob into.  He asks me who I have going.  When I tell him, he says, “Well that settles it, Bob’s golfing with you.” This was the first time I questioned my hearing.  (Next, picture Ralph Kramdon studdering in the Honeymooners’ “Chef of the Future” episode).  Don tries to calm me down and tells me that as long as I don’t do anything “Off the Wall”, I’ll be just fine.  (Now I’m thinking to myself, “Don, could you be a little more specific around your definition of “Off the Wall?” You’re talking to a guy that went to see the movie Animal House “in the theatre” no less than 8 times.)

So, for the next seven days I found a way to play golf each and every day.  The last day before the tournament, I decide to get a “lesson”, to tune myself up.  I’m feeling pretty good about myself, and figure with one of two pointers I could be a contender.  The golf pro is a jerk and has no patience (to be fair, even if he had an ocean of patience it wouldn’t have helped).  He decides he’s going to change EVERYTHING about my golf game (Huh?).  When I leave, I’m a complete mess.

It’s the day of the tournament.  I arrive at a very elite golf course (which I have no business being at), and look around.  There are a number of blind golfers who are putting on impressive clinics.  I think to myself that maybe I should have brought a cane and some dark sunglasses and I could fake my way through the day…but then I remember: I have to golf with customers and the VP of my Division whose son is the number 2 golfer in the world.  Could the crap I’m in be any deeper?  I start to rationalize: If I’m going to ruin my career better that I do it quickly and crash & burn in one day.

At the last minute, they decide to make the tournament a best ball scramble and my life has been saved.  So now after I hit, I no longer have to play my own ball.  What’s even better, they also had caddies chasing down everyone’s lost balls.  I leveraged them extensively and by the end of the day, I could hear the caddies cursing in the distance when I’d step up to tee off.

We finish our 18 holes, I’m completely worn out and just want to get back to the clubhouse for the after golf festivities.  We end our day on the 14^th hole about as far away from the clubhouse as you can get.  The three guys I’m playing with come up with a brilliant idea, “What do you say we play our own balls back to the club house.”  (At this point I’d rather be lit on fire than play any more golf.  I’m crushed; I had done a YoMan’s job for the last 5 or 6 hours in the extreme heat.  I had held it together, didn’t embarrass myself too much, and at this point my mind was fixated on just sitting someplace with my hand firmly grasped around a large, cold adult beverage.)  Naturally I chime in and say, “Yeah that sounds great.” 

We get to the first green and it’s surrounded by sand traps…lots of sand traps.  I get stuck in one and wedge out of it into another, and then back again.  This repetition goes on for a while.  There are no words that can adequately describe the frustration searing through my being at this point.  I’m waiting for a golf cart to pull up that has men in white uniforms and a straightjacket to take me away. 

With that, Bob Tway looks at me and says, “Steve, you can Surrender now if you like.”  I accept and become the designated driver for the rest of the day.