Adeodatus in Wonderland

I am ironing out my movie-choosing-and-viewing procedure. Months ago I discovered that the local library usually has more movies on DVD worth watching than even the Blockbuster across the street. (End of late fees? That’s a nice start – but how about, oh say, the End of ALL FEES? Public libraries rock.) Initially, I would take the time to scan all the titles until I found one or two films that either I have been wanting to watch or that struck me as worthy of a screening after reading the copy on the case. This isn’t a bad system insofar as you end up with a movie or two every week that is probably worth watching. But who has time to look through all those movies to pick the most appealing title?

You can check out seven DVDs at a time, and you get to keep them for a whole week (no renewals). So my strategy changed to grabbing the maximum as soon as possible: peruse the spines, pull out any appealing titles, stop when you reach seven, and sort them out at home. The benefit of this is in the time savings: no need to weigh the value of a film there in the library and search for a Truly Worthy movie. Instead I can weigh its worth here at home, look at some online reviews, and ignore it if it turns out to be a clunker. The downside? I tend to watch whatever comes home, even those movies where the strongest thing going for it is the title and cover design.

Now for the perfect solution: pre-emptive choosing and intentional viewing. I discovered the other day that I can go online, place holds on movies I want to see, and have them delivered to the library down the street. Sort of like Netflicks, only…free. I just got back from my first pickup, and I realize one little downside to this brilliant plan. Whereas the commercial version limits you to three movies, I get seven. At once. Sitting there waiting for me to pick up and watch. Tonight’s viewing? Band of Brothers (6 DVD’s in there, I think), Punch Drunk Love, Rear Window, We Were Soldiers, and the Hours. I probably won’t even watch half of these before they are due (and the other seven titles I placed holds on show up).

I’m thinking about asking you readers for any recommendations you out there might have for me. The Denver Public Library seems to have a pretty good collection of movies spread out across her many branches. But hold off on those just yet. I need to write about my growing pickiness in film viewing before you lay out your pearls before my piggish upturned nose. (Hint: I have been less than whole-heartedly impressed with the likes of Taxi Driver and A Beautiful Mind of late).

Once you get fishing on the brain, it is useless trying to get anything else done. You tie flies every evening. You clean and dress the line on all your reels, even the barely-used 6-weight. You pick through all the flyboxes, making room for new patterns and getting rid of perfectly good old ones. There is only one known cure for this form of consumption.

Carl and I ran up to the Old Waters immediately after church on Sunday. We were in the river by 3pm. I reeled in the first trout by 3:07. It was not the most glamorous or aesthetically pleasing form of flyfishing: the trout were holding on the bottom of a deep run, on the other side of the faster water. That means you crimp on about six splitshots and work the cast. You have to let the current pull the weighted mess behind you so you can load the rod and heave the rig the twenty feet to the head of the run. Then hold the rod up high and flip the line upstream into the faster water once. Twice. Let those flies get down deep where the trout are eagerly waiting for a treat to come to them from the rapids above. It was a great drift and the right bug. Two of the rainbows were at least twenty inches. I assumed they were whitefish the moment I hooked them: you never want to get your hopes up when it comes to a big rainbow. The first big fish I hooked on this river eleven years ago made a screaming run downstream. I chased it, slipping over rocks and imagining my bragging rights (“So how’d you do?” “Not bad. 23” brown”). When I finally scooped it into the net I found myself gazing not at a girthy, hook-jawed brown, or the other-worldly splashes of pink, green and silver of a rainbow. I stared instead at the dumbfounded eye of a mountain whitefish . Only trout this evening, though. I don’t remember ever landing two trout this big from the same drift. There was added pleasure in the long stares of the fisherman downstream. He was fruitlessly casting into the slow tailout of the run. Didn’t mean to be snotty, of course: the guy was not getting his fly down, doing the required work. After he left I walked down to his spot and noticed all the cigarette butts he’d left in the crevices of the river-rock. Now I felt free to enjoy a [retroactive] prideful, in-your-face-buddy air of superiority. Let me catch a few more lunkers right in front of your stinky, littering face. Grrrrrrr.

We crashed at Bill’s house mid-valley. I hadn’t made any plans before we arrived, or even before dark after we got to the river. There was always Stan or the hostel. But, really, you can always count on Bill. He and his wife caught me up on the news of people. They are kind and godly folks, but it surprises me a bit that not everyone has left behind that sort of charismatic expression of Christianity like me and so many of my friends have: isn’t that just an adolescent phase in everyone’s faith? Don’t we stop worrying about pimples and getting excited about driving to the supermarket at some point? But I digress.

You can’t visit these rivers without a pilgrimage to the world-famous tailwater . This is where water leaves a dam. The constant year-round temperature and steady flows make these stretches hog-factories. Trout regularly grow to five pounds here. Ten or twelve pound fish are not uncommon. But they are wily creatures, having seen wading legs and hundreds of flies every day. I hooked two rainbows right off the bat on a tiny red midge before snouts began to break the surface all over. Not often do you get to enjoy a thick hatch and scores of rising trout in the middle of February. Thankfully I was skunked during just such a hatch last year on the Blue, so my box now contained at least ½ dozen tiny dry midges, #22 - #28 . This wasn’t the earliest I have hooked a trout on a dryfly (one year I landed a midge-sipping brown the first week in February), but it was the first big hatch of the year, and the first time I have landed a fish on a #28 fly. The trout eventually stopped feeding, about the same time my toes became totally numb and the wind became steady.

Back on the Fork, we went back to nymph fishing. Egg patterns and bigger bead-head patterns pulled up the trout. We hit three spots before the sun finally faded away. I had brought the cooler to fill with those pesky whitefish. I haven’t bonked any on the head and smoked them in a decade. But none showed up. Thinking about it, I realized that I haven’t hooked a whitefish since I moved away, six years ago. Maybe they understand that I am no longer a passionate local but a fair-weather interloper. Maybe the profound climate shift we’ve seen since Kyoto was rejected has forced their mass migration. But I’ve fished whitey-looking waters at least a dozen times since in those six years and find myself frustrated at the lack of these homely, despised riparian citizens. Think of walking up to a group of junior high boys who wear backpacks buldging with this and that, only to have them roll their eyes at your salutation and turn their backs on you.

It was a good trip. I missed Valentine’s day, which is probably a big deal only insofar as I missed it (we never mark it as a couple, not even with a card or a candy bar). Carl lost his net and picked up a new one at Frying Pan Anglers, where I ran into the guy who ran off with my best friend’s wife long ago. It would have been more awkward had he shown any signs of remembering me. (Grrrr. A quick Google search uncovers this: Warrick’s now owns the shop, and he’s the one who has posted a nice section of the Pan which used to be open for public access. Can God’s grace save an adulterer AND one who posts some of the last remaining public access on the lower Pan? My faith says yes, but my heart…)

One final note: the business end of a cigar can burn through a flyline remarkably quickly. One minute you are adding tippet and changing flies, and the next you notice a strange disconnect between said flies and the rest of your tackle. Good thing I remembered how to make a decent nail knot (without even a nail or tube or nuthin’.)

So I turned 35. Finally.

About seven or eight years ago I got tired of remembering my age. It’s not like it was a difficult endeavor: 1970 is pretty handy for subtraction. Really all I need to do for most of the year is remember which decade I’m in and add the current year’s one’s place. It seemed a lot easier, though, to pick a generic age which would work for a while and stick with it.

So I’ve been 35 since I was 27. It feels like finally growing into that old denim jacket your favorite uncle gave you before died of lung cancer, the one that’s been hanging in the back of your closet since you were a kid. Maybe just a little baggy in the shoulders, but familiar and warm.

I must still have some youthful vigor left. I had to show my ID for the bottle of wine I picked up on the way home from the Sam’s Club run. Never mind that I had on a baseball cap and the clerk was clearly enduring the hammering thuds of a dandy hangover.

Funny that the day came and went without the usual heavy dose of introspection. I vacuumed. Did a little teaching of impressionable young children. Visited the other side of town to shuttle mother-in-law’s car back to her apartment from the hospital. Sat through a pointedly bad presentation at our Perspectives course, but as annoyed and even angry as I was, I decided that now that I’m 35 such foolishness would no longer get me all worked up. That guy was an idiot. Just try to see if there was anything valuable in what he had to say and drop the rest onto the dusty floor. One funny note: he said “crap” at one point, then quickly apologized. He asked the guy recording it if he could just bleep that out. Beautiful! Think about it: if you are just listening to the recording online, and you hear a beeped out word, what will you automatically assume the guy really said?

Tonight is a father/daughter banquet at church. We are supposed to dress “fancy”, so I will (literally) dust off my tux. I bought it when I was 18, and it still fits. You would think that I would have grown out of most everything from that era (when Reagan was President, mind you). But no…