A Series of Poor Decisions

This is not a post about fishing. It is a post about not fishing. Or maybe it’s about future fishing.

About 17 months ago I made a poor decision to join the Peace Corps. I joked with people that even if things were terrible I was confident that I could put up with anything for two years. I just never thought that would actually be the case.

It has been bad enough that I have pretty much stopped fishing. I look down on the ocean from my porch and feel … nothing. No excitement, no curiosity, no interest. Daily life has diminished to a slow countdown of the days remaining until we pack our bags and leave.

What largely sustains me is looking forward to my next poor decision: buying a boat. The legendary Columbia River carp angler, John Montana, often said that there were carp all along the 500 or so miles of river he had explored. The difficulty with fishing for carp on the Big C, he said, was not a lack of fish but a lack of access. And so, in my state of despondent madness, I have decided that the best thing will be to buy a boat. Now, if you ask any professional mariner what type of boat one should buy they invariably respond that the only good boat is one that belongs to someone else! I have heeded that advice for many years, but I just don’t have any friends with boats where we are headed, so it looks like it’s finally time to “break out another thousand.” Here’s hoping that, in this case, two wrongs do make a right.