Saturday, May 14, 2011

Death, The Dalai Lama and Fly Fishing

Yesterday was the anniversary of my mother’s death. I cannot believe that she has been gone for 11 years. Man time flies. I was thinking about her yesterday and how much I miss her. She was a great lady and I had so much fun hanging out with her. I miss our times together, but I have great memories of her and I am glad for that. I wish with all of my heart that Melissa would have gotten to meet her, they would have really hit it off. Bummer.

Lots of stuff has been going on. Melissa and I went to hear His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak last weekend at the U of M. It was amazing. It was an incredible feeling for me to be in the same room with him, even if that room was a hockey arena. It still was a special time for me. He has a great sense of humor and it was just so thrilling to hear him speak and hear his laugh. You can tell that he is just a gifted speaker and such an intelligent person. It was truly an honor for me to be there and it is
something that I will never forget.

Classes are done for spring! I am so happy. My two classes were tough this semester. Lots of papers to write. Over the 8 weeks I wrote 9 papers. Ugh, by the end I was ready for a serious break. I have 4 classes left and then I will be done. At that point I will need to decide if I want to continue on or hang it up for a while. I am not sure what I am going to do. I would like to go on but it might be nice to just take
a break from school for a while and concentrate on some other things.

Melissa and I are going to Washington DC over the Memorial Day weekend. I am really excited about it and I think she is too. Neither of us have ever been there and I know for me it is somewhere that I have always wanted to go. I think it will be amazing to see all of the monuments and the history that goes along with all of that. We are only going to be there for 3 full days so it is going to be a whirl wind tour of DC. I am hoping that we get a good taste of the city and get to see some of the important things. I am hoping that if we both like it well enough that we will return another time to spend more time looking around. But either way it will be a nice chance to get out of town for a while and be together.

I finally got out fly fishing the other day with my buddy Bill. I met him over at a spot on the Kinnikinnick River in the River Falls area. It was a perfect day. We got to the spot and the trout were rising all around us. We both found spots in the river and went to work. I was fishing a little foam ant along the bank. Four casts in I had my first fish. The way he hit the ant I thought for sure it was going to be about a 15lb fish, but alias it turned out to be about a 4 inch Brown trout. Either way he was fun to catch and my first fish of the year so it was a great start. I moved around a bit on the river, sadly missed about 4 or 5 strikes before I had #2 fish on. I had made the switch to a small Elk Hair Caddis and caught the #2 fish almost right away. Again he was about the same size as the first fish, but again so much fun, man for a
little fish they can sure fight. After moving around some more I found what looked like the perfect spot. I got my caddis fly into what I hope would be the perfect sport and boom, nice huge strike! I knew I had a bigger fish on. When I finally got a look at him he was indeed a bigger fish. I got him in and he was pretty, about a 13” Brown with some spunk, he put up a great little fight. He was not interested at all in being landed. But I assured him that I would simply get a photo and set him free. I finally got him in and took my photo and set him free. It was exciting! Fished for 3 hours, caught 3 really fun fish, missed about 9 strikes and had a blast. I can’t wait to get back out there and try again.