To Some Extent Skunked

People who fish say they were "skunked" when they don't catch anything. So I was skunked yesterday, after driving two and half hours to the New Jersey shore, spending about three hours fishing, and driving what you would naturally expect to be the same distance back to my mother's birthday dinner. I'd made plans to fish with a couple of fishing buddies, and then found out that the dinner was happening that day. I really wanted to fish with these guys, though; I'd made and broken plans to get together a week before, and didn't want to repeat the nonperformance. Driving up alone, I had that sense of fierce anticipation as I got closer, and that was fun. But really the best part came about an hour in. It was clear the fishing was going to be slow, and I was talking with a couple of bait fisherman about it when I turned and looked far away, up the long path that leads down to the water. There were a couple of gray dots up there, a few hundred yards away, up the twisting path of soft sand we call the "Death March." It's not physically taxing, just a trudge that lasts long enough to be annoying. These guys were far away, but there were two of them, at about the time I expected my buddies to show, and they had the dull slate grey clothes characteristic of fly fishing regalia. I watched for a minute, and thought I recognized, at the limits of my vision, the shade of hat my friend Rick wears. And so it was. It's nice to see two dots, a long way off, but making their way toward you, and thinking, "Those are my friends."

When I do a lot of highway driving I wonder whether I should get E-ZPass. That's an electronic toll-taking thing that lets you roll right through the (natch) tollbooths. On the Garden State Parkway, they have these basket deals you throw change into, and it takes a minute. So I'm at the basket, and I throw my money in, and I notice that some people have missed, and there was change sitting on the flat part below the basket. Hmm! Nobody behind me to give me a savage honking. Let's go for it! I rolled the window down all the way and made a lunge. Got a quarter, and headed on. So I didn't catch any fish, but I met up with buddies, got a lot of much-needed casting practice, and I'm 25 cents to the good. I've had worse days.