A seagull on braided 20 lb. test line…

Before any incriminating photos show up on Facebook, let me state for the record that, yes, I did catch a seagull in Florida on braided 20 lb. test line.

Bob and the three Dave’s: D3 (Bradley), D1 (Hemminger) and our host D2 (Dahlquist) on the beach for breakfast. Another in an unbroken string of glorious meals.

The bird, gull species unknown, put up an aerial fight for a few minutes just above the waves, but ever the sportsman, my prize was treated as a catch-and-release bird.  Only I, in an effort to catch something that swims, could catch something that flies.

D1 in the surf – if you can call calm water ‘surf’ – on our first morning. Rays, fish at the bottom of the food chain swimming for their lives, and birds are a good measure of a sea side environment.  We wondered how long it would stay that way before man permanently screws it up.

That was the low point in a guy’s weekend filled with high points on Anna Maria Island.  This is the third go-round with the three D’s and a Bob (all mentioned below).  With any luck it won’t be the last.

Ellen and Reid read all about it last week:

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October 9, 2012

Ellen/Reid: It was really a great few days in Florida with the boys (Dave H., Dave D. and Bob F.).  Fun golf, a nice beach, great weather, good time on the water and equally good food and drink at every turn.  You can’t ask for much more.  It was quite gracious of Dave Dahlquist’s mother-in-law to loan us her 3 BR condo on Anna Maria Island.  We could, and did, lounge during cocktail hour with an elevated fourth floor view of the water and the island beyond.  That was nice.  Our first morning I must’ve waded in the surf for nearly two hours watching the fish and other aquatic and bird life.  Stepped on a ray but it didn’t sting me although if this were the Olympics I might have won the high jump going away.

With Dave’s help we steered clear of most of the tourist stuff.  We did have our share of dives (Rod & Reel Restaurant) plus some nicer spots, but the R&R had some of the best fish & chips I’ve ever had.  It’s out on a pier and while the décor isn’t much, the rest of it was great.  Pretty much the whole environment rotates around the beach life, and we had breakfast on the beach, other dinners close to the beach, etc.

Yours truly, Bob, D2 and D1 at the incredible Concession Club. So tough we stopped keeping score, but we did count the rounds of G&Ts (3) on the 5 star veranda.

The golf was great but what really stuck out for me was the fishing.  We charted a boat with a guy named Cap’n Josh for a half day’s excursion.  He’s about your age Reid and he really knew his stuff.  After he tossed out his net and hauled in a couple of hundred bait fish, we set off for an artificial reef made of demolished bridge pilings that was about a mile and a half straight off shore from our condo.  We dropped the bait straight down to the reef, about 25 feet, and in moments you’d get nibbles from grouper, ‘grunts’ and snappers.  Snapper was what he was really after, and our largest was only about 2 lbs.

D2 smacks his patented power fade on a par 3. D2 and D3 swept this stretch of three 6 hole matches.

What was really fun was watching the sharks and the big cobia pick off the bait fish.  Josh would toss some bait behind the stationary boat, and the big boys would come in to feed.  I had a tough time hauling anything in but when Josh fished he had something on every try.  A cobia came through and Josh immediately hooked him.  He handed the rod to me, and the first thing that struck me was how strong the fish was.  It was incredible.  He stripped off line and before I could get my bearings, he tore for the reef and the line was shredded.  I guess that’s one of the tastier fish around, and there it was, I lost him.  Dave D. had hold of a reef shark, and that was something.  Since we had light tackle and weren’t using steel leaders, there wasn’t much chance that we’d land it, but it was still fun to see while the fight lasted.  As for the unfortunate seagull, it snapped up my bait as soon as it hit the water, and he flew off about 25 yards.  It put up a better fight than some of the fish, but Josh had seen all this before and got the bird off my line in short order.  I like to be on the water rather than in it.  This was a highlight, and Reid, we need to give it a shot somewhere.

Bob near the 18th at the Concession Club. 90 members, limited play, and an incredible experience.

The plane ride home was something else.  Lightning struck our 757, and fried some electrical component that had to be flown in on the next flight from Atlanta.  So that shoved the takeoff back a few hours, and then when we pushed off again, the part malfunctioned.  Back to the gate we came.  A lot of passengers bailed at that point but I wanted to move on in the event a seat might not be available in the morning.  We waited another couple of hours for another plane and finally got to Atlanta just after midnight.  Since my morning flight was at 7, I opted to stay in the terminal for the night.  A so-so choice at best.  I only had my golf clothes on since I came straight from the course, and it was cold in the terminal.  I tried to stay warm as best I could by covering my legs with newspapers.  About 3 a.m. I went for a walk to stay active and came across a couple of Delta Airlines blankets.  That made sleeping a little easier, but it was the incessant security announcements that really kept me awake.  I’m not cut out for sleeping on chairs in airports anymore.  Those days are behind me, and good riddance.  Travel just isn’t what it used to be.

The habit-practice-compulsion

Last week’s letter (we are the well into the 11th year of a weekly note to Ellen) never made it to a door side mailbox before it was read.  Reid opened his within minutes of the email attachment arriving at his London office, and Ellen read the post days before her letter arrived by postal delivery in St. Paul.

The habit-practice-compulsion (it is whatever you wish to call it) just keeps rolling along.  It has its own energy and sense of momentum.

But it consists of the energy of one.   Momentum-less is the original dream: prod non-letter writers (parents in particular) to adopt regular letters as a legitimate low-tech means to simply stay in touch with their kids.  The sense here is almost no progress has been made to move even a small number of people from Point A to Point L (letters).  That failure is a super-duper-sized elephant in the room.  Case in point: subscribership remains low.  I’m not reaching parents at the logical separation point when kids flee for college and the nest is suddenly empty.  That’s when writing a letter might seem to be a viable thing.  The dream, it turns out, is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Other factors may be at work.  My blog itself could be suspect or ill-created/managed/promoted or worse yet, just flat-out uninteresting.  Likely on those counts and others.  Maybe the forest is too close and I can’t see through all those infernal trees.  But I wouldn’t label this as a wholesale rant or whine.  Instead, it’s recognition that the formula isn’t working.  One thing for sure, I’ll keep trying.  Someday the light will come on and I’ll spring forward with an approach that is more viable.

So the blog remains essentially a running, public diary of correspondence between me and my two.  Maybe that is enough.

This morning’s letter to Ellen and Reid is freshly minted and won’t be posted until next week.  The same-week release of last week’s letter on the excursion to the Bridger Wilderness in Wyoming used up whatever free pass I had on that score.

The Good Book…

This incredible book might be titled Golf Trip 2010 but it should really be called Jane's Book.

Just when there seems nothing that can pull me out of a winter funk – my golf swing is laughable, the Harley won’t start and Felicia has severely limited my carb intake - comes a package from my friend Jane in Des Moines.

Inside was a coffee table-quality hardcover book about last September’s guy’s golf trip to Coeur d’Alene.  Full color photos with narrations and commentary.  Jane let the pictures do the talking but the book spoke loudly about her.  Every bone in her body is creative.  This is indeed The Good Book from a golfer’s point of view.  It’s on the coffee table now, and that’s where it will stay.

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February 2, 2011

Jane: I haven’t bothered to check this morning to see if Phil-the-divined-rodent has seen his shadow or not but I don’t much give a damn: I’m calling for an immediate halt to winter across all time zones and borders.  You saw it here first.  That may not be much salve to you up in Des Moines but hopefully it will work here first.  FYI…our daffodils are already bucking the wintery trend by poking their heads up.  Why a rodent in Pennsylvania is allowed to forecast weather is beyond me.  That should be left to the pros.

I just am at a loss for words about your book.  Honestly, it just threw me for a loop.  How in the world do you summon such creativity on demand all the time?  First it was the invitation and the subsequent flood of well done details for Coeur d’Alene, than this arrives in the mail.  Furstenau and I have texted back and forth about it and for him to use the word “awe” is something in itself.  It is now resting on an honored spot on my coffee table next to the channel changer and assorted paperwork that should be stowed somewhere else.  This sort of work is your calling, and if you can catch a breath of air from riding herd over your three – I’m including Dave in that mix – then such books are where you should spend your time.  By the way, whatever became of the recipe book you were doing a few years back?  It should deserve this kind of publishing.  I offered to send it to Ellen for a quick look but she wants to see it next time she comes to Charlotte.  I think I just found the creative director for my book, whenever the time comes for it.

I’ve reiterated to your Dave that the welcome mat is out down here.  Not to sound like a shill for the local chambers of commerce, but I will throw the North and South Carolina hats into the ring to get everyone to pay a visit down here for golf and socializing…and that would include the spouses, too.  Our weather will beat your weather on all counts.   Never in a million years, however, would my feeble attempts at organization in any way, shape or form match yours, so I will exercise my right to subcontract a portion of that out to you.  I would foresee Charleston or Savannah in the group’s future, given that the other boys tend to like things that float.  My days with boats are long gone.  Really, a visit by everyone would be a great thing.  You have my permission to run that up the flagpole of everyone in Des Moines.  I’ll send some sort of note in that regard to the others in the DDD&B fraternity.

Well, I’m again grateful to be on the receiving end of your creativity.  You have gone above and beyond or however to deign to describe it.  I miss all of you very much, but don’t let me continue to whine about the invitation to all of you to visit.  Consider the door open.

Another Monday…

Feed-Zilla. I didn't know bird feeders came in sizes, but this mother-of-all-feeders was XXL as Felicia and Reid both pointed out. By default it will go to Ellen and Tim, and a greatly scaled down version will go outside the kitchen window.

I’m back in the letter writing swing of things.  It is another Monday and another letter to Ellen and Reid will go out the door momentarily.  As is the custom around here, you’ll see today’s letter a week from today.

Not to let the cat entirely out of the bag, but today’s note continues with a theme you’ve seen recently; the wind-down of my work at the bank, and the stark reality that if there is no meaningful full time (or even semi-meaningful part time) work in the offing, this could rightly be considered as step one in a retirement plan, although I’m not ready to eat with the real geezers at 4:30 at the Golden Corral or Waffle House.  I’m not nuts about the prospects (just plain nuts, you might say) of being away from work but there are worse things.  Well, I’d best get along.  I laid my AARP application around here and need to locate it.

Here is a note to the kids from roughly a year ago.

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December 7, 2009

Ellen/Reid: Finally it’s cold here.  Fired up the furnace for the first time last night and to my continuing amazement it always seems to light up and put out heat.  First significant frost was yesterday which means the Bermuda grass on the golf courses goes dormant until next March or April.  Makes for mucky playing conditions but we’ll just have to live with it.  Walked a course in Fort Mill, SC yesterday with a new playing companion from the bank.  We waited out a two hour frost delay then we had a good walk in cool but not oppressive conditions.  He’s a good guy and a good stick.  He trounced me pretty soundly in all facets of the game.  The plants on the front porch are goners and the basil and parsley will be missed in my cooking.  Both are indispensible around the kitchen and easy to grow.  As soon as things warm up in the spring both of those, plus some other herbs, are going in the ground.

The deer are starting to make appearances out in the back.  Haven’t seen any bucks but have seen some pretty good sized non-antlered deer in the back.  With the leaves gone on the trees you can see them traipse through the wooded area.  They come out to graze on the green rye grass which is overseeded in the lawn once the Bermuda turns brown.

Well, in theory the bath should be finished by this weekend (at least the tile work and the plumbing finished, not sure of the electrician can make it just yet).  But I’ve heard these oaths before and nothing has been done.  Last week was the first time I was truly perturbed by the snail’s pace of things.  But when it comes time to get paid, they want it and they want it now.  I’m afraid to tally up the final cost, but my educated guess says somewhere in the $9,500 – $10,000 range.  That shower damn well better work.  I’m mildly worried that the 50 gallon water heater won’t be enough to supply the new showerhead.  We’ll see.  I’m just tired of the dust and the debris and the commotion.  Part of the garage was reclaimed this weekend.  Demolished the old bathroom cabinets and stuffed it all into the garbage bin.  Was going to donate them to the Habitat for Humanity Restore but without a top, the custom sized cabinets wouldn’t have been much use to anyone.  Betsy has claimed the green countertop, so it is still languishing in the garage.  Did buy a $300 Kohler ‘comfort height’ toilet to match the pedestal sinks.  This weekend will be devoted to putting up all the matching towels bars, mirrors and other accoutrements (glass shelving, toilet paper holder, towel rings).  Until that’s done, won’t know for sure precisely where the sconces will be placed.  That will cost a few more bucks to position correctly.  Still haven’t order the shower glass door.  That’s in the works.  Cha-ching goes the cash registers.  Kind of numb to the costs right now.  Have dipped into a few thousand dollars in home equity loan to pay for it all.  I’ll install a cheap shower rod and curtain until the glass is ready.  The wood trim won’t get done until January.

Your uncle is applying some pressure to head West to the Nebraska-Arizona Holiday Bowl game in San Diego over the New Year.  He thinks it would be a good 60^th birthday present to ourselves (60 years old, can it be true?).  The cost would be about $2,500 and that probably means I’ll stick around these parts to enjoy the new shower.   It would be fun to go but I’m in the mode, and mood, to save a few bucks right about now.

I have my tickets lined up for Omaha for Christmas.  It’s a mixed bag of feelings.  Your grandmother is having a hard time with late-day ‘Sundowner Syndrome’ and that makes things tough on your grandfather.  Not sure how we will spend all that time, but I hope to get over to Des Moines to see you guys briefly on Christmas day, weather permitting.

Behind the woodshed…

A tough morning for Ellen's adoptive dog Henry. Hey, I'm with you, pal.

I have had an epiphany.  Actually, the light bulb came on in the half hour I was taken behind the woodshed for a good old fashioned ass kicking.  But no writer has deserved the punishment more.

Administering this private flogging was my friend Betsy who, thankfully, had the nerve to tell me A) the letters to Ellen and Reid are too shallow, B) the letters sent to my mom should be segregated in a different space, perhaps a different blog, C) there are too many rants against technology on this space and instead I should delve more into what is written to Ellen and Reid and why.  None of her criticisms stung in the slightest; I think she was spot on yet her counsel was in part self serving.  If she was going to spend her precious time to read the blog and the letters, she wanted content worth reading.

This reaches well beyond this blog to the core of the letters themselves.  Because Betsy has seen the letters over time (this is the 125th post) - each with one or more letters on display - she spotted what you may have noted, too; a disturbing trend of short paragraphs about the same things over and over again.  The weather.  Tomatoes.  The bike.  Golf.  Why not, she said, open up about losing my first job ever (at the age of 60) and how it shook me to my core?  And that’s just the tip of the topic iceberg.

Betsy thinks I don’t give the kids enough credit for being adults who want to see a deeper side of their father.  I couldn’t agree more.  The letters hadn’t matured as the kids grew.  Why or how it took hundreds of letters until the deficiencies were uncovered might seem a mystery.  Yet even as she began to outline her case, the points she raised were no strangers to me.  Most had already crossed my mind through the years.

So I’ll pay a long overdue visit to the drawing board.  It may not be wholesale change but there will be change.  Will it mean tossing aside an approach that has worked (or has it?  Do Ellen and Reid share Betsy’s view?) on upwards of 500 letters ?  Could be.  I am about to find out if there is a middle ground.

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Of course, Betsy’s comments about depth do not apply to letters to my mom.  Here is today’s letter to her.  Betsy did point out that the letters to my mother (along with prior letters to my mother and father when he was alive) don’t necessarily fit a blog about letters to children.  She suggests parental letters be housed in a whole new blog.  I’ll toss that one around.

October 29, 2010

Mom: They have put me in a new job at work and if I didn’t feel pressure before, I sure feel it now.  But hard work never hurt anybody, least of all me.  I’m glad for the challenge and its fun.

I see from the weather than you’ve had your first cold snap and frost.  That’s really pretty late for you guys up North.  We haven’t even sniffed a day in the 30s just yet but it appears we’re in for that sometime in the next week.  The Indian Summer here has been just glorious.  The weather couldn’t be any better than it is right now.  Lots of people here locally say this is their favorite time of year.  As for me, I like April and May.  That’s the best time.

I’m starting to see a few more deer begin to move around the neighborhood.  They have to learn how to dodge cars if they’re going to survive.  I don’t think the deer grow quite as large as they do in Nebraska but there sure are a lot of hunters around here.  There’s a lot of forest area around Charlotte and the Carolinas so there’s no shortage of spots to shoot a gun.  They hunt a lot of quail down here, too.  My shotgun is with Ellen’s husband Tim up in Minnesota.  I don’t want to hunt down here.

I’m supposed to play golf on Sunday, but if you saw my real swing on the course you would be disgusted.  It’s really bad, and it makes me not like golf very much.  It’s been such a big part of my recreational activity for so long that it’s kind of hard to think about giving it up, but I am.  I’ve been doing a lot of walking these days and that’s almost enough workout for me.

Your other son says you went to the dentist the other day and things went pretty well.  He says you have some more dental work ahead of you, and he’ll do a pretty good job of keeping me up to speed on how things are going.

Tomorrow Nebraska plays Missouri in football in Lincoln.  I’ll videotape the game and if the Big Red wins, I’ll watch it.  By the time this letter reaches you, you’ll already know if they won, too.  They’re doing about as well as can be expected.

Reid was in San Francisco last week and he seems to have had a good time.  He likes Chicago a lot but it wouldn’t surprise me if didn’t think hard about moving out to California.  But it’s so expensive to live out there.

Well, that’s enough for today.  I’ve got to put my nose back to the grindstone, but watch for another call real soon.  And keep that fleece on because winter is coming.

Falling upward…

 

My friend Bob sent this photo of my letter to him, plus the $1 I grudgingly owed him for a lost bet.

 

It has been some time – a few months anyway – since I’ve written a letter to only one of the kids.

Now is the time for another.

Reid has done a better than admirable job at his gigantic ad agency in Chicago.  The advertising game is a harsh what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business.  He has persevered after his primary account was lost to a competitor.  He made himself valuable with his attitude and his intellect.  The account went down but he fell upward.  And that is a great thing.  This week he got a raise and a shift to other big accounts.  Maybe he didn’t get all he was after, but I am very proud of his stick-to-itiveness.  This is a kid who, early in his agency career, got axed along with a slew of line staff at another shop.  At a tender age he became a graduate, with honors, of the school of hard knocks.

I’m not sure when the letter to him will ultimately surface on this page.  I will ask but that will be his call.  Yet that is the prerogative of dads and moms: tell their children when they have done something that is good and, secondarily, pleases their parents.  That is the gist of the note to Reid.

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Bridger Wilderness update: Hey, I’m up to one companion for the July, 2011 trip.  My cousin Tom Andersen from Oregon, is on board.  Bring it on, Tom.  Hey, there’s room for plenty more wanderers.

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But it’s Wednesday, and we’ll reach a bit further into my bag of tricks for an older letter to the twosome.

July 9, 2007

Reid/Ellen: As weekends go on the old 1-10 scale, I’d have to give this one a 3.  This is Murphy’s Law as relates to weekends: whatever could go wrong did go wrong.  And once it goes wrong, it really never gets right.

It started when I took the hog in for its 30,000 service — 30,000 miles, can you believe it? – and since the Harley dealership (i.e. crooks) didn’t have loaner bikes, I rented a Dyna Wide Glide for the day at an alleged steep discount.  Anyway, the bike didn’t have a windshield, so it was nice to feel the wind, and bugs, in my face for a change.  I went home and laid around then thought ‘what the heck, I might as well get out and ride’.  So I went northeast of town to Lowe’s Motor Speedway, an absolutely enormous venue that can sit 200,000 for stockcar (i.e. NASCAR) races.

On the way back, it clouded up, and before I knew what hit me, the rain was coming down sideways.  If you’ve never been on a bike in the rain without a windshield, the best way to explain it is that raindrops feel like needles.  In the space of :30, my face was utterly exfoliated.  It was raining unbelievably hard, and by the time I got to shelter under the first Interstate bridge, I was completely soaked.  But it was very hot, in the mid-90s, although the shower cooled it down a fair amount.  Seems we had a microburst which shoved down trees and powerlines all over the city, and by the time I got back to the Harley dealership (i.e. crooks) I’d navigated through standing water and was mud from head to toe because of all the traffic ahead of my kicking up dirt and debris.  And if it’s not enough to catch raindrops, try some sand and stones at 70 mph.  That gets your attention.  Now I’ve been in rain before and really don’t mind it, but this was incredible.

And that was the high point of entire two days.  Against my better judgment, played golf yesterday, and it was more of the same you’ve heard me whine so often about: bad, bad, bad.  Shank, shank, shank.  It’s sickening.  Reid, I may give you my clubs when you and Rachel are down here.  I stink.

Am supposed — supposed — to go in today for a skin treatment called Levalan.  It’s where the dermatologist slathers your face in some gunk and, as he says, you sit in the lobby for an hour or so to “let the marinade work” (his words), then you sit under some blue light for 90 minutes.  It turns your skin bright red — they say absolutely no post-treatment sunlight for 48-72 hours — and in theory it’s supposed to rid your skin of pre-cancerous cells.  I’ve had what they call squamas cell carcinomas taken off in recent weeks and this is supposed to do the trick.  But when he uses words like marinade and sort of laughs off the treatment, it makes you wonder.  So, I’m getting a second opinion in the very near future.

Did bake some round Italian loaves Friday night and dropped them off to some folks around the office on Saturday morning before the deluge.  I dunno, Reid, these loaves are good but my gosh, it’s a three-riser and takes roughly 5 hours from start to finish and didn’t take things out of the oven until 11:30.  Hardly worth it.  But damn, it makes good toast.

Okay, here’s the skinny on Grandma’s birthday.  Uncle Ralph has made arrangements for photos on Friday at 2:00.  I don’t know why he didn’t get this figured out for Saturday, but that’s the way things are.  Can you guys make that?  If you need plane tickets, go ahead and make ‘em.   FYI…with Joe’s wedding in January, it seems plane tickets may be $1,100 according to Ralphie.  That may change our plans a bit.  Let’s reconsider making that trip.

Be good, be safe, have fun.