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Wednesday is my usual day off, so most weeks
I write my weekly column, or at least part of
it, on that day. It limits the time I have to
fish many weeks, but that is usually the only
time I have free when I can think and write.
However, this week I had a different type of
Wednesday. In fact, it was totally consumed
without even turning on my computer.
It all started Tuesday night after I got home
from work. I had two large frames to build for
work, so I was busy when my wife (Patty) got home.
Everything went smoothly for about an hour and then
the phone rang. The caller was a friend of Patty's
who had a friend who wanted to get rid of an exercise
machine, and we could have it free if we would only
go get it.
When we got there, it was a Weider 8630 mini gym (another
name for fancy weight lifting machine). We took it apart
and loaded it up, then drove home. But now, my frame
work was about 4 hours behind schedule, so I got to work
into the early morning on that. No problem, I often work
late into the night, frequently ending my time in the
early morning.
On Wednesday morning I got up after a mere 5 hours
of sleep and took the frame to work. Heck, I had
the large pictures hung by noon. I still had plenty
of time to do several errands, put the exercise machine
back together again, and still write my column. Or,
that's what I thought.
Three trips to the hardware store for missing nuts
and bolts later, and I had the machine put back
together, but it was now about 5PM, and I had a garage
full of sawdust from the frame adventure. No problem,
I had all evening to clean the garage and write an
article for this week. Or so I thought. Then the
phone rang.
The guy on the phone was my dentist and fishing buddy,
Erik. He had two extra tickets to the Eagles farewell
tour concert, and would meet us at the south doors at
about 7:15. "Don't be late" were his final words. No
problem, or so I thought. Since concerts usually only
last for about an hour and a half, I could be home by
10 and get at least part of that article written.
Well, the concert didn't really start until about 8:15,
and about 9:45 the Eagles took a short break since they
planned to give us a 3 hour concert. Since our seats
cost Erik $125.00 apiece, I suppose three hours isn't
out of line. No problem, or so I thought. I would
be able to work on the article for at least an hour
after I got home.
Holy smokes! That was one fine concert! They rocked
and rolled and entertained us in fine fashion for three
hours and 15 minutes. The sound was perfect, the
lighting was great, and they had two large screen
monitors with camera close-ups of the action on
the stage. Unlike most concerts, they really did
sound like they do on CD. However, unlike their CD's,
they played more music and really got down to business.
It was the best concert I have ever attended, period!
When the last notes of Desperado faded from the speakers,
it was 11:30; but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
Sometimes doing a buddy a favor (as I did for Erik last
summer), pays off in huge rewards. He couldn't have
found a better way to repay that favor.
Well, it is Thursday evening and I'm sitting here
writing this column. I wouldn't have changed
anything to make it go any faster either. Sometimes
you just have to shuffle with the flow if you want to
partake of the good things in life, so that is what I
did. We got a free exercise machine and a free concert
out of the deal too. How could anyone complain about
that?
What does any of this have to do with fishing? Not
a damn thing! However, it does have something to do
with the flow of life, and that flow effects our days
and plans. Sometimes things just don't go off as
planned. However, sometimes they go off better
than I could ever plan. It's that way in fishing
too. Our best-made plans sometimes don't go as we
had wished they had. However, if we take life as
it is given, maybe they will work out better than
we had planned after all. And, that has everything
to do with fishing and life in general.
Oh, by the way, if you get a chance to see an Eagles
concert on this final tour, you'd be nuts to miss it.
~ AC
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