Hi folks, How have you all been?

[DruLeeParsec]

Hi folks: DruLeeParsec here (A.K.A. Greg)

I've been offline from FAOL for quite a while but I'm back now and wanted to say "hi".

Quite a while ago (4 years?) I wrote a series of post title "A Newbie's Journey" which received quite a few positive comments. I participated in a beginner fly swap and even won a guided trip in one of the contest (which I never took for reasons I'll describe soon).

Well, 2 years ago next weekend I took a bad fall at home and shattered my left arm. I broke the Ulna in 7 places and I shattered the radius bone so badly that the Dr described it as "a grenade went off". I now have a large metal plate with 9 screws in it holding my arm together and I have a prosthetic at the end of my radius bone. It took quite a bit of therepy to learn to use my hand and arm again but after 2 years I'm back to fishing and playing guitar again.

Last month my wife and I went on a vacation which toured the northwest. We passed by, but didn't have time to fish, the Umqua, the Skagit, the Gallatin, the Madison, Henry's Fork, and the upper Sacramento. We did camp in Yellowstone for 3 days so I was able to fish in the evenings a bit. I didn't catch anything but it really reminded me of how much I use to love fly fishing.

After the vacation I started going to my local river, the place I wrote about in "Newbie's Journey", and let the river teach me how to fish again. It's been fun and I've caught and released several small brown trout. Part of me felt completely awkward and clumsy. My casting sucked, I couldn't remember how to tie my knots, I tangled my tippet and lost flies in trees. But there was another part which felt right at home. By the 2nd or 3rd visit I started to feel like I remembered how to do this. Rigging up was easier and faster, my cast were smoother, the frustration of my bad casting was going away and the calmness of being on the water was coming back.

It's been good.

But there's another change in my life as well. We now have a step daughter living with us and she has a beautiful 7 year old daughter. This means I suddenly went from having no children at all to being "Grampa Greg". We've gone to a local kids fishing day where they stocked a pond and about 200 kids tried to catch the fish (hardly anyone did). And we've gone back to that pond and to our local river to fish a few times (still no fish yet). She can cast a spinning rod overhand now and she's even learned to roll cast a fly rod. She also likes to tie flies with me although that gets boring pretty quickly for her. Overall I think she enjoys fishing but it may just be that she enjoys her time with Grampa Greg, but it's been a real joy for me just having her in my life.

So that's how I've been. I'm looking forward to fishing a lot more this year. My arm is in good shape and there's lots of good rivers near me. It should be a good summer.