So
one of my kids is going to a writing camp down at a North Carolina
University. I come up with the
brilliant idea to drive her down.
So we get up early on the Saturday of 4th of July weekend and
from Northeastern PA get on Route 81 and start heading south. I really shouldn’t complain because the
weather was beautiful and the highway was very do-able…but I will anyway.
We’ve
been driving on Rt. 81 for nearly 7 hours straight (one gas/bio break…which I
guess in my case is a redundant phrase).
I can’t remember the last time I drove 7 hours straight so I’m pretty
beat. We finally get off 81 and
start heading east. In the back of
my mind I’m thinking, “We maybe have another 45 minutes to go.” I finally look at my MapQuest
instructions and they tell a different story. There are multiple 29, 32 and 40-mile segments that remain. I have another 3 HOURS to go. Forget about having the wind completely
taken out of my sails; immediately a combination of depression, frustration and
exhaustion sets in. We arrive at
our hotel, almost 10 hours to the minute from when we left. I’m completely toast and will eat
anything that’s put in front of me.
(That last phrase will produce immeasurable damage as this story
progresses)
I
spend the next day getting my daughter moved in and eating extremely greasy
fried, really “butter-laden” foods.
Now you combine that with the fact that if I leave my zip code and drink
the local water, my digestive track goes into a complete state of
disrepair…trouble can’t be far off.
Next morning I’m back in the car driving up to Annapolis to do some
fishing on the Chesapeake with a good friend from college. Naturally I wait too long to get on the
road and I run into traffic around DC and Baltimore. As I sit there cursing myself, I hear a gurgling in my
stomach begin…not a good sign.
Without
visible damage, I arrive at my friend’s house late in the day. His wife, he and me go out on his boat
and have a great time taking in the sites on the bay and maybe we down a couple
of sociables. We then pull up to a restaurant on the
water…consume a couple more beverages and a fantastic burger & fries. The burger might have been cooked in
the same oil as the fries but I wouldn’t know, I’m back in the state of mind
where if you put it in front of me…I’ll eat it. We get back to the house and I have one more responsible
beverage (mind you we’re on the water the next day around 5 AM to pull in
monster-size Stripe Bass!) I take
a Zantac “Ha, like that’s really going to help” and go to bed at a reasonable
hour…and that was the last reasonable thing that happened to me for the next 18
hours.
I
woke up around midnight with cold sweats.
My digestive track is feeling like I’m the runner up in the national
jalapeño-eating contest. You
know you’re in trouble when you get to the bathroom and you can’t figure out if
you should be driving the porcelain bus or sitting on it. Scary thoughts of a dual effort start
to run through my mind but I fight them off. This goes on
for hours with no relief at either end.
Finally around 4AM I make the call, it’s time for the Woodbridge two-finger
jam. With a small amount of relief
I head back to bed to see if I can get more than an hour of sleep. No such luck. About 5 minutes after I lied down, I heard the garage door
opening under me. My friend Brian
is heading out to get bait. He
comes back about 20 minutes later with bait, sandwiches, and two massive
coffees. One is for me…what a good
friend. As much as I needed the coffee,
as the toothpicks I wedged under my eyelids were about to buckle, the thought
of pouring hydrochloric acid down my throat into my ulcerated stomach was
frightening. Time to Man-up. I grab the coffee; quickly swallow
about five large gulps (think of those episodes on a Survivor when the
challenge is to eat nasty hunks of squid that have been sitting out in the sun
for a couple of days.) Almost
immediately I feel a rumbling, probably not unlike the rumbling that the
inhabitants of Pompeii felt when Vesuvius was about to erupt. I put down the coffee, re-thank my good
friend and excuse myself to a remote bathroom in the house. I won’t be too graphic, but if I could have
scheduled my long awaited colonoscopy that morning, I definitely could have
killed two birds with one stone.
(It’s a been there and done that kind of thing…if you’re of the right
age, you know what I mean)
So
I emerge from the bathroom, a lesser man, but much better for it. We pack up our gear, I swallow an
Imodium AD, and we head to the marina.
On the short ride over, Vesuvius begins to rear his ugly head again. It’s about 5:30AM and no one is in
sight. My friend can sense that
I’m struggling a bit and just before we shove off he says, “Last chance to hit
the head…pointing to the marina bathroom.” I consider it for a second but didn’t want to hold up the
fishing operation, so I say, “No, I’ll be fine.” Nothing further from the truth could have been true. We’re about 100 feet from the dock and
I get a significant wave of gastronomic pressure that causes me to reconsider
my captain’s offer. But now we’ve
pulled away and to go back would be an even larger gaff. So I soldier on…praying that the modern
technology built into Imodium will prevail. We go about a ¼ mile and now I’m close to a panic stage…but
again to turn around now would be a such a slap in the face to fishing
etiquette and manhood in general, that’d I’d rather jump overboard than ask
that question. (You really
have to pause and wonder where my priorities in life are.)
Now
we’re miles out, we drop anchor and I have no choice but to go with “Mind over
matter.” (There was an old episode
of Star Trek where these small alien creates would attach to your neck &
spine and inflict such severe pain that you’d go out of your mind and shortly
there after, die. Spock get’s
infected but because of his superior Vulcan mind, is able to hold the pain at
bay…every once in a while getting an excruciating wave of pain that he needs to
concentrate on to control…this is what the day was like.)
So
we get to what seems like a good spot , bait up and cast off. We have three poles on the boat with
us. Two are in stanchions, and one
is laying on the back seat. My
friend is now towards the front of the boat and I happen to look at the smaller
pole lying on the back seat. It’s
in motion and starting to fly out of the back of the boat. I yell to my friend, “Brian, the
pole!” He grabs the pole and
battles in a 24 inch Stripe Bass. You may ask, “Steve, why didn’t you just grab the pole,
you were closer?” And here in lies
where the title of the story comes from…”You Snooze, You Lose.” And as things usually work…I caught
nothing the rest of the day.
P.S.
Once
Brian hauled in the bass, fishing boats from out of nowhere surrounded us. One about 40 yards away caught about 10
fish the size of Brian’s in a matter of 40 minutes…I finally said to Brian,
“What do you say we pull up the anchor and ram those &@#$%ers.”
