The 12 day of the fifth month of the year of the OP

I'M BAAAAACK!


It's been a while and I have returned from the wilds of New Hampshire after enduring some mysterious head ailment. Either nose, throat or ears, a specialist for each I am seeing in another week.

Enough! I can now type without seeing double.

The link for the website photo contest this month is
http://www.ifp3.com/contest_images/contestPage.cfm
Please visit there as the category is Nature: Macro photography again. Kinda neat!

I spent most of this past week recovering from all the fun and excitement of the previous week which was spent with four of the longest term friends I have. The New Hampshire gang. I would fish for a few hours and then lie down and read and then fish, play poker, read, rest, eat, rest, yada yada yada.

What did we ever do without that term from Sinefeld?

Landlocked salmon fishing was poor this year as we probably were late for ice out and the fish were deeper than we were willing to fish. But my total was just fine for the amount of fishing I did. One keeper salmon, a couple of shorts (too small to keep), about six or seven large, small mouth bass (a rarity for us), and two really nice rainbow trout. The largest of which was about four pounds and pictured here. That too was a rarity for us, but I loved catching them.

The other photo is of the gang of guys.......when the H*** did we get so old?

Now you know where they get those people to make the portraits of old grumpy people you see in the fake antique frames hanging in the "Cracker Barrell"! These guys were really happy. Really they were! It was just before Cocktail hour and they were impatient with me.

You will see that knowing just how long the timer is set on the camera is crucial. You get a lovely shot of the back of my head followed by my best buddies from left to right John Greenfield, Paul Likus, Bill Frey, and Frank "Abe" Bell. Missing but not forgotten is Dave Clark who could not make the trip this year. I just couldn't run fast enough to beat the timer.

I think that we concluded that the first year any of this group made this trip was 1969 when Dr. Bell Sr, Abe, and Skip made the first trip. Let's see that makes thirty years this group has done this together. Some record. Some more photo's tomorrow.

FICTION AND FACT FROM SKIP'S ALMANAC OF GARBAGE KNOWLDEDGE

Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off, the car battery dies, or the cops get there.