It was taken down by the wind in the last line of thunder showers that came through. Apparently an ant-hill near its base had weakened the roots and the wind toppled it. As I was cleaning up the remains Janet stepped from the house and informed me that our friend Al Watson had passed in the night. Unfortunately I only get to see Al one maybe two times a year. I was looking forward to this years installment or perhaps “fix” would be more appropriate.

I am lucky, I get to see people at their best – their happiest – their most relaxed, but I don’t think that that was a factor with Al. Even when it was cold and pissing down rain on a fishing trip he had a shit eating grin on his face. Al was a fun magnet. He would attract the fun to any situation and you’d get sucked in too. Before you realized it there was a party going on with everyone as grinning and as happy as Al. He had an odd penchant for hand held self portraits with the digital camera. The eastern mystics like to blow smoke up a person’s ass by saying  – “You’re an old soul.” Well Al wasn’t an “old soul” he was a young soul! He saw things with the brightness and positive perspective of a kid – a young man. To hell with being an old soul I wanna be a young soul like Al. I think that Al had the secret to eternal youth – a young soul. Al was a catalyst, a jovial sort, a good fisherman, a good father, an outdoors-man, a friend and my brother (I knew it even before Jeff started calling me uncle Jack). He is sorely missed – I feel as though I’ve been kicked in the gut. But I warm myself with the memories I share with him and my aspirations to achieving young soul status.

Yes dear reader as so often happens here at Sportsmen’s Camp the lake temperature will be higher than the ambient air temperature (thats tempeeechur for residents of Mogadore) and a haze or fog will form over the lake. It also seems to happen, consistently I might add, when the Walkers are here. I am still not quite sure of the nature of this phenomenon but I do my best (from a purely scientific perspective) to investigate its causation fully. Part of the research entails examining the pictures taken over the past week. Most are not blurry or foggy, but – for the life of me – I don’t recall taking them. The pictures also seem to have very odd subject matter. I sent this last batch to HAL at Starbase Bryson and he’s doing a spectrographic analysis. He was a little cranky about it though muttering some nonsense about “beer haze” and “beer goggles with bifocals” – I’ll probably remove a few of his upper cortical function modules and degauss them with a ceramic magnet when I get back home. But anyway I’ll post two of them here so our reader can posit the situation or at least suggest a likely elucidative caption.

One of the theories floating around camp is that Billy fell asleep whilst smoking in one of our older wooden boats.

But there is still much to report. We (Pat, Carol, Gil, Joyce, Baxter,and Bart included) made a trip to the Mond and caught a lot of fish. But there will probably be no more people getting into that lake this year. The entire Grassy river system is down about 3.5 to 4 feet! It was a very difficult push into the lake, what with all of the Evil Janeeto’s – of planet Janetron – bitching and moaning and the low water levels. I would stay with the idiomatic “pissing and moaning” but Janet has raised the art of pissing to new level so I will stay away from that. I had a great time and the fishing was delightful but when the other participants recount the trip they will probably dwell on “Oh it was so hard to walk in the bush and the mud was soooo deeeeep and…” Wa wa wa what a bunch of fucking babies!

I also went up to Sinclair lake a couple days back with the Walkers and it was absolutely amazing to see all the structure high and dry. The drop in water level there appeared to be a good clean 4 feet! You could walk around the lake if you wanted to! But the fishing was still good and the newly exposed rocks on the shore line were gorgeous.  The boat launch at Sinclair was very easy with a 4 wheel drive truck but the launch at Loonwing was about 100 ft away from the water.  We caught several pike, many pickeye or wallyerels, and the bass are now firmly established in the southern grassy system. It occurs to me that any trips to outlying lakes should be investigated prior to packing the boat up and travelling there this year.

The may-fly hatch appears to be concluding. The green drakes were heavy on the water the last few nights so it is possible that the early July guests will experience some of the best fishing of their lives – sans mayfly. The lake temperature is about 73F but we have some cool nights predicted for the coming week but as long as the days are mostly sunny the temps should stay pretty constant.

What with the impending and lamented demise of the Penguin’s beloved igloo (aka Civic Arena/Mellon Arena) Janet (evil one nee of planet Janetron) was  pissing and moaning about the loss of such a wondrous piece of architectural innovation – I believe her exact words were, “Do you realize how much Pens tickets are gonna be in the new rink – SHEEEIT!” Being the doting husband and caring partner I am – I thought about what I could do to ameliorate her grief. So I rummaged around in my briefcase and retrieved my good old Architectural Miniaturizing Device (AMD) that I constructed in high school shop class. It seemed no worse for the wear as I dusted it off after removing it from its’ Seagramms bag. And so my plan was hatched. I donned my blues brothers suit (sans hat) and put on my ray ban shades and assumed the guise of a federal agent (“man in black”). I then caught the CN Northlander to Toronto and made connections to Pittsburgh via Greyhound. I had no problems at the boarder because I used my Freedonian Diplomatic Passport that Groucho Marx willed me – Hunter S. Thompson wanted it but he only smoked shitty cigars and he and Groucho were never really close so I got it. I arrived in Pittsburgh in the middle of the night and trudged up to the Arena and set up the crystal transponders around the perimeter of the structure to be miniaturized and fired up the AMD and waited for the the old zenith TV tubes to warm up before engaging it. But alas the 5 D cells had died from when I last used it on Forbes Field (I screwed up on that one misplacing the crystal transponders leaving part of the outfield wall). Shit! Where was I gonna find 5D cells in the middle of the night in downtawn Pittsburgh? So I walked down to Liberty Avenue and looked for an open convenience store. Nothing was open but as luck would have it Pegasus was having an amateur Go Go boy dancer night contest with the second prize being 5 D cell batteries – I guess it was just fate. So I stripped down to my  buttoned down white dress shirt and ray ban shades and channeled Margaret Dumont singing the Fredonia national anthem. ” Hail, hail Fredonia land of the brave and free… ” It was a hit! I told you I looked hot naked! It was either that or the ultra long shirttails on my shirt did not completely cover my massive endowment. I had to do three encores! But was entirely chagrined to realize that I had overplayed my – ER – hand – as it were winning first prize! SHIT! But the second prize winner – Ricky Martin, doing I think, Vita Loco was gracious enough to trade the batteries for the first prize of the two free Beto’s Pizza coupons. What a nice guy and he didn’t seem gay at all! Who would have thunk it??? It was difficult getting dressed with everyone pawing at me (at least they had nice soft hands) but I soon was walking back up the hill to the Civic arena. I plugged the batteries into place after cleaning the contacts and powered up the tubes. Everything hummed and glowed nicely. I punched in the mini factor and toggled the engage switch (from a 1963 Jag XKE dome light) and ZAP! The Civic Arena was shrunk down to the size of a single contact lens! Now for the hard part – it took me two goddamn hours with a flash light to find it! I then placed it with my tweezers into the contact lens case that Slick left at camp years ago and pocketed my architectural artifact. I was soon on my way to the Canadian boarder. At the boarder I did have a little problem – you see apparently someone had posted a youtube video of my Pegasus performance and the Boarder Patrol demanded a repeat performance – Damned Internet! But they couldn’t hold me since I had the Diplomatic passport and I was soon on my way – after narrowly averting a cavity search. I told them I had enchiladas and re-fried beans for supper. So now I am back at camp with my ill gotten gains and have re-sized it for use here in camp.

After it was happily re-sized, I made a replica of the Stanley Cup from a salad bowl and some stainless steel stove pipe and re-sized it and fixed it on top of the arena.

The Civic arena will now be placed on the frame for the roof of the new diesel generator house. So let no Pens fans lament, the beloved Igloo is now preserved for all time here at Sportsmen’s Camp.

It’s also time for the annual Lupine Picture:

The lake temperature is back up to 70F and I have the reef makers placed on the lake. As I was placing the markers I caught about a dozen nice bass on a brown wooly bugger and silver mepps. The bass have already vacated their beds and there are swarms of bass fry all along the beach.

I was walking totally nude in the delightful sunshine back to the house from a searingly hot shower (gee I hope your not reading this before breakfast!) when it occurred to me that entropy certainly takes its toll – I was looking at the paint on the workshop you asshole – I can’t see my body without a mirror and I wasn’t wearing my glasses anyway so just shut the fuck up and quit your snickering and besides I look hot as hell naked and well never mind, where was I? But entropy seems to work in reverse when it comes to technology. All new products are more complex, have more stupid features, are harder to use and don’t last as long. (fasten your seat belts you’re in for an old fart curmudgeon rant) The latest Microsoft product, Microsoft (insert any random fucked up string of numbers or focus group marketing crap word here) will be about 10x more complex, use 10x more memory space and computing power, will be more difficult to use and will crash your system more often. The new refrigerators will urinate streams of cold water and defecate ice cubes from their double doors, they will be frost free, they will be programmable, they will cost more than a thousand dollars, they will break down in 5 to 7 years. The new TVs will be hi-definition with stereo surround sound and sub woofers and include yellow as one of the basic colors on the screen pattern and be a flat panel screen and have space shuttle like console remote controls and die in 4 years. Cars will have 10 times the moving parts and have them all controlled by an inscrutably obscure Microsoft program and GPS so they know where you are and how fast you’re going and your state of sexual arousal and the dashboard will have people talk to you from remote locations via satellite and your seats will have memories and be heated, simulating pissing your pants on cold morning. Easy chairs will have internal massage rollers and integrate into sectionals and the foot rests will fall off. Well I think its all fucking CRAP! Cut the complexity and make things do what they’re supposed to do properly and durably.  That’s why people cherish old tools and antiques – these things were built simply and with care for durability and easy comfortable long term use. Just a second … I think I’ve come up with a way I can put a microprocessor in a shovel – this will make me a million dollars…

Its another rainy cool day here but we need the moisture. The weather will be rebounding quickly into sunny warm days by Sunday and for the rest of the week. The fishing has been good if you’re willing to go out in a north wind with misty rain – but why the hell would I do that – I’m here all summer Ha ha ha ha ha – eat your heart out – and there ain’t no goddamn black flies - La la la la (as Babe the pig would say).

And reopening employing a new business paradigm.

Yes dear reader the inevitable ibis has come to roost in our proverbial rafters. Janet tipped me off this morning. After an evening of preparing a sumptuous doggie repast of brown rice, chicken, hot dogs, ground meat, green beans, carrots, corn, broccoli, and beef broth and a morning of running the boys on the beach after their morning meal it occurred to Janet that everything we do here revolves around our dogs! Their personal chef (chef Jack – pronounced with a really bad french accent) prepares gourmet meals two sometimes three times a day. Their personal trainer The Evil Janeeto (from the planet Janetron) runs them for about a mile daily. Their personal masseur Pat gives them a daily rub down on the table in the store, their personal chauffeur drives them twice a week to the dump so they may sniff the interesting smells and bark at bears, ravens, seas gulls and the occasional wolf. Their personal activities director Carol keeps them sated on delicious doggie treats and throws sticks and toys for them at the beach. Their personal fishing guide takes them for boat rides and fishing on Firth  and various other far away fishing destinations. Their personal maid and staff picks up after them and grooms them daily. In short the staff here at the camp devotes all their energy catering to the every whim and want of the spoiled pair.  So we are reopening the camp as a doggie spa. It has everything a doggie could want and need. I think we will use the same pricing structure but anyone not bringing a dog will have to charged extra in order to finance our VIPs (very important pups). I have just been informed by Baxter TWD that my bonsai collection will have to be put down on the patio so they have something interesting to pee on and Bart has informed me that all the doors must be removed from the cabins so that they can come and go everywhere they like and these silly rules about jumping up on guests tables and dining from their plates have to be abolished. In addition all guests not bringing a dog must bring a small kitty to be chased and mauled – not harmed just terrorized. I am sure the list of demands will grow as the day goes on.

The lake temperature is 68F and there has been a north west wind blowing at about 10mph for a couple days. We haven’t been fishing for a while so I don’t have first hand info on the fishing but its always great so don’t sweat it. The really cool thing is that I have been working outside for the last few days and have not been bothered by a single blackfly! The dragon flies are out in full force and the north wind has bee concentrating them in camp and they are scouring it clean. The water levels are hovering around typical mid summer levels. That is to say that the Montreal river landing ramp is only about half submerged – I was down at the rapids north of Penassi (caught a lot of fish) and the large rock in the center of the rapid is about a foot out of the water and the second rock (to its left facing down stream) is also above the water. The weeds have had a very good start and weed beds are flourishing.

I have just been informed by Baxter TWD that it is now time for the scheduled dump outing and that I must wrap this meaningless drivel up. So off I go on another perfectly ordinary day.

I don’t want baby steps I want action NOW!!

But then again I have never been accused of being impatient or unreasonable or irascible or a curmudgeon or – ok, ok, quit your fucking snickering you’ll wake the dog!

Progress is being made here at camp. But its slow. With my extremely high quality standards and perfectionist ideals – stop that! Stop your fucking laughing, you bastard – its not funny. But I did get the lettering painted on the naming rights signs yesterday and I am lacquering them on the patio before I waterproof them with the varnish.

I think they look pretty good. Or as my mother would say, “They look just fine if you step back, take off your glasses, squint your eyes and blur – yeah they look just fine”. Hey shut the fuck up! I view my work as an artistic event – I draw my painting style from the post impressionists and tend to shy away from the Norman Rockwellian realism of the pedestrian small minded narrow right! Observe the free flow of the brush strokes (no stroke jokes at my age either you pricks! Its not funny once you get past – oh just never mind) and the liberal use of color and copious amounts of paint as well as the multimedia presentation…. I can just hear the rave reviews from the New York critics (from around Buffalo). But I digress.

Things are moving along here, but to me, at a snails pace. But Hell, am I having fun? Fuck yeah!! As Dave Henderson would say “This is more fun than picking your nose!” Of course he had a pretty big nose – but what with cartilage growth continuing even as we get older my nose is getting bigger too and -  Oh shut up – quit your giggling and do something productive…