It was that time again, my annual fly-fishing trip on the Green River in Utah. Or should I say, my annual test of patience and javelin throwing. I haven’t lost a fly rod yet.
To be clear, I’m a horrible fly fisherman. Whether its tying knots, casting or following instructions, few have skills below my level. My friend and I use the same guide every year. He’s a great guy with a ton of skills. One year he expertly removed a hook I had cast into the corner of my eye socket. These days whenever he sees me coming, he always seems to be finishing a big gulp of Pepto Bismol. I can have that effect on people.
This year started off with a bang. In the morning I got a lot of hits but could not hook a fish. Luckily my fishing buddy and the guide were keeping count. I made significant progress in the afternoon, I actually hooked fish. But then after they’d jump out of the water, (like seeing a prehistoric creature launch) the fishing line would break. The guide would then tell me exactly what I did wrong that caused this to happen. You’d think after the seventh time, I’d get the hang of it.
Day two – I caught some fish, but nothing to write home about. Then I hooked what had to be the Moby Dick of Brown Trout. The epic battle of Man vs. Fish began. At one point our guide said to me in a panicked voice, “Let go of the reel!” I almost took him literally. And since the reel was attached to the rod, I came closer than I’d like to admit, to dropping my whole fishing rig. Instead, the guide just wanted me to let the fish take as much line as he wanted. But then the fish started heading down stream in what seemed like class four rapids. So I got instruction to not let that happen. This battle went on for a number of hours (That’s in fisherman time). The beast finally got within eye shot of the boat. He was immense. The guide said, “That fish has shoulders!” My fly rod was now in the shape of a pretzel and I was pretty sure it was about to snap in half. Our guide was screaming instructions in rapid fire. I got to the point where I wanted to say, “I luv ya man, but I need you to go silent, and let me screw this one up on my own.” The great fish finally parked himself about ten feet from the boat and refused to move. I was patient, but not patient enough. I tried to force him towards the boat and Moby Trout snapped the line. There was momentary silence in the boat, and then the guide said, “Don’t feel bad Steve, that fish was so big that I doubt you could have held it for a picture.”
And the price we pay for the opportunity to tell fishing tales… Our drive back to Salt Lake City airport was about four hours. We arrived an hour before take-off. I battled my way through security where I set off the TSA alarm. I was lucky enough to be the random person the system will occasionally choose. I’m lucky that way. Generally, it’s not an issue, unless TSA is short on staff and no one is available to run the magnetometer that scans your whole body, which was the case that day. I asked the young TSA agent if I could just walk through again and was told, “No, you’ve been randomly chosen for torture, get back in line.” I could feel the acid pouring into my stomach. Finally, another person showed up, so the young TSA agent was able to get one person through the mag machine and then walked away saying, “Sorry, I have to go.” We were back to square one. The remaining agent allowed me to walk through the normal way and I was free at last, free at last. Or so I thought.
Our plane was thirty minutes late, but we boarded promptly. We were taxiing to the runway when the captain told us, “With a violent storm coming in from the west, all planes will need to take off from the north, which will take another 30 minutes to execute.” While working our way to the north end of the airport runway, hail struck. My airline had a number of planes on the runway that were also hit by hail. Their policy was that if a plane was hit by hail, it was required to go back to the gate and be checked by a maintenance person. Small issue, since Salt Lake was not a major hub for U-Airlines they only had ONE maintenance worker and he had to check ALL of the planes. Reduction in Force at work…or not.
I hope U-Airlines’ C-suite personnel got their bonuses this quarter, by cutting employee head count. At the same time, I’d like to suggest that these airline executives not listen to Elon Musk’s idea regarding humans not needing to work in the future – We’re not there yet!
(Side note: my fishing buddy was on a different airline and he said, “It stormed on us too but D-Airlines was “wheels up” and safety comes second.”)
So we were back at the gate and deboarded the plane. The plane checked out satisfactorily, hurray! Let’s get back on the plane and go. Not so fast. When we left the plane, we weren’t scanned out and we can’t reboard until the agent can find the one person who knows how to clear the system so we can all reboard the plane. As it turned out, this one person currently lives in a remote monastery and can only be contacted via pigeon.
When we finally got back on the plane, we were told that we’d be flying minus a wing, but the captain said that if we all lean to the left it shouldn’t be a problem.
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