Fly Fishing and the Outdoors
2009 was my year of fly fishing obsession. I stood
in 3 feet of snow on the Owens River in the eastern sierras
at 7am on January 1st, 7 degrees farenheit. Since then
i have had the pleasure to fly fish in New Zealand,
Washington, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Brittish Columbia,
Savannah, Colorado, Rarotonga, North Carolina, Manitoba, and
Norway,
 I fly fished some famous rivers and 3 National Parks:
Sequoia, Yosemite, & Yellowstone. I started tying my
own flies and have actually caught fish on the flies I have
tied. In fact since starting to tie flies I have
now become obessed with that. I'm just really bad at
it.
My fly fishing trips have also met with some pretty stiff
spousal resistance, obviously, so i'm going to try to back it
down a bit in 2010. What I do enjoy the most, though, is
fly fishing with my son Mark. He is a good little fly
fisherman too. At 14 he can dominate the Eastern Sierras
at times. He has outfished me a number of times.
The problem is that the older he gets, the more he wants to be
with girls and the less he wants to fly fish with "Dad."
2010 has been a banner year for fly fishing too. Until
Kelly officially grounded me i fly fished 6 of 7 straight
weekends in the Spring all over America including the
Missouri River in Montana and the White River in Arkansas.
 When
i don't bring a fly rod on a business trip, i'ts usually
becuase i have a snowboard. I am lucky. I get a
lot of days in per year and even for an old guy I can still
board at an expert level. There's not many
people on the hill I can't hang with including the "old
people on planks" and the fearless teenagers. The only
difference between me and the teenagers is that my
spectacular wipeouts end up with me getting up a lot slower.
I'm a season ticket holder at Mammoth Mountain in Mammoth
Lakes, CA. It's in the eastern sierras and one of my
favorite places in the world. Unfortunately it's 375
miles north of us, otherwise i'd be there every wekeend.
Maybe that distance is fortunate.
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