The fishing trip that wasn't

Rick & I went on a bike ride the day before yesterday and besides having a flat tire, we got caught in a horrific rain storm and got drenched.  It wasn't all bad.  The day was hot and the tire just needed airing up.  That reminds me that I need to go out and check the back tire again to make sure that it is still aired up.

I almost forgot but our bike trip started out as a fishing trip to check out a pond, but when we blazed our way down to the secluded brush covered pond we found out that although the pond was large, it was too shallow to support any type of large fish.  So with fishing pole and worms in hand, we made our way back up to the road.    

After leaving the pond we headed for Rick's cousin's house to tell him about our adventures with the pond and flat tire.  Apparently we stayed there too long eating cantaloupe & potato chips,  and got caught in a sudden downpour as we reached the city limits of Berea.  It was raining so hard that we had to stop because Rick couldn't see the road very well and, the rain was stinging me to the point that I was glad that we stopped.  There was another couple on a motorcycle traveling from Ohio to Tennessee that told us that when the rain suddenly came down that they saw numerous accidents on interstate 75 all the way from Ohio to Berea.  They tried to out-run the rain, but it always caught up with them from time to time.  We stayed at the gas station until the rain almost stopped and we were glad to make it home safely.

Fishing Story

A friend of mine, Gail, was telling me about her experience fishing and the problems that her & Steve had with raccoons stealing their bait, running off with their soda pop cans and just wreaking havoc on a fishing trip, and just all kinds of raccoony things. Her story reminded me of one of our fishing experiences, and below is what I wrote to her.

I laughed at your raccoon problem because we never see raccoons here, only at the zoo or dead on the roads. That would be so neat to see raccoons racing to greet you as you get out of your truck and getting into your bait bucket stealing your bait. I remember once while fishing with Jimmy when a snake was giving Jimmy a hard time. This is how it started......

I know that Jimmy is afraid of snakes so when I spotted one in some cattails I used my fishing pole to push it gently (like guiding it) over into Jimmy's direction. It took me about 30 minutes of wrangling with this snake to get him to where I wanted him. When the snake was almost near to where Jimmy was it spotted his small bluegill on a stringer in the water and began swallowing one of Jimmy's fish. I left the snake alone at this point because Jimmy would see me fooling around with the snake, and I didn’t want that….I wanted the snake to be a surprise. While the snake was attempting to swallow a fish that was a little larger than it could comfortably fit into it's mouth, Jimmy had caught another bluegill, took it off his hook and pulled up the stringer only to pull up the snake with it with one of his fish in the snake’s mouth. It was so funny to see Jimmy scream, throw the fish stringer back into the water and run to get a big long stick to fight off the snake with. The snake got away unharmed, thank goodness but it came back, time after time trying to get at those bluegill on the stringer. Jimmy couldn't concentrate on fishing with that snake so close and we finally had to call it quits and come home. I finally told Jimmy how the snake got there, and we had a good laugh. Unfortunately he doesn't take me fishing anymore.