RapidGroove

Friday, May 27, 2022

Fishing Buddies

The people who share our pastimes

Image credit: Steve Haefele in Salt Water Sportsman

I enjoy fishing alone, and I enjoy fishing with friends and neighbors. Alone can be quiet and peaceful and an escape from the noise of the world, while fishing with others is not only social, but practical. Fishing with buddies means more hands when we need someone at the wheel and someone on the landing net or tending an anchor. Fishing with a buddy or two is also a great opportunity to share knowledge. We talk about what bait, lure, tackle, or technique has worked well lately, and what spots have surprised us in recent days in good or bad ways. We might share what we’ve seen in the water that might affect fishing, like big schools of sand eels or bunker.

It’s great to have fishing buddies! Even when neighbors and I fish alone, we often end up comparing notes at the end of the day as we clean the boats. When my neighbors bring their boats back to the dock after a day of fishing and I’m already at my dock, I’ll walk over and offer to hand them a dock line to make things a little easier and then we’ll talk about their day.

Recently, I had the chance to expand my thinking on who "counts" as a fishing buddy.

A few days ago I did my start of season fishing gear inventory and cleanup. I dragged out all my tackleboxes and gear from my fishing shed, pulling the tackle out and cleaning the boxes and then reorganizing the tackle back into the boxes, throwing away a few old rigs that aren’t going to make another season. I cleaned up lures and hooks, replacing rusty treble hooks on topwater plugs I’ll need for spring Striped Bass. When I was done, I had a short list of fishing supplies needed, so I headed into town.

I pulled into the parking lot of the tiny neighborhood tackle shop I’ve been going to for the last 15 years, and as I entered the shop for the first time this season, I saw Tom who has run the place for the owner, his brother Pete, since the shop opened. I’ve known Tom since the shop opened. He and his shop have been a great source for fishing equipment, advice and help, and on what’s biting and where in our local waters. Over the years we’ve gotten to know each other and become friendly. Tom is really another fishing buddy, even though we’ve never actually fished together. He greets me by name with a smile, he knows what I fish for, and he knows some of my preferences on fishing equipment. I appreciate his help and advice and have many times chosen to buy rods and reels from him rather than save a few bucks at a giant chain store or an online supplier. I like my local shop to thrive and stay in business, and I appreciate that they give me the kind of personalized help a local shop provides.

Once, a few years ago, I brought in a very old Penn conventional reel that had some problems. It was very old and it wasn’t a high quality reel. I could have thrown it away, but it had some sentimental value for me. When my mom fished from time to time with my dad and me years ago, she used that reel most of the time. I had managed to keep it working for decades, but now repair was beyond me so I took it in to have Tom work on it. When he gave it back to me a week later it was working well and as part of the repair he explained that he had to replace the handle and showed me how it worked smoothly with the new one. Then he handed me something. It was the old handle on a key ring. He had welded a loop to attach it. He said, “Since it was your mom’s reel, I though you might like to keep that handle so I made a key ring for it.” I was really touched by this. I still have that key ring and keep the key to my fishing shed on it.

Anyway, back to present day. When I entered the tackle shop and saw Tom, we caught up on our winters and shot the breeze for a few and then he said, “I’m really glad you stopped in today. Tomorrow’s my last day and I’m saying goodbye to the friends I’ve made here. We are moving out of the area and starting a new life.” Tom had gotten married last fall and he and his new wife wanted to move to an area where they could afford to get a house and some land, and Long Island was not a place to do that affordably.

I wished my fishing buddy well and shook his hand telling him how I really appreciated him and that I hoped our paths would cross again. I told him I valued his help and advice, and his friendship over the years. I’d miss him and I said so. He smiled and said he’d miss my visits to the shop.

Lifelong fisherman like myself have lots of fishing buddies. They enter our lives, and sadly sometimes they depart. I first fished as a 5-year-old with my father, grandfather, and uncles. Sometimes my mother and my aunt would join us. These family members who taught me to love fishing are all gone now, but were my first fishing buddies. Now I fish often with my sons, and I’ve taught them what I know. These days I also fish with my neighbors and with friends from my school days. All of these people have been my fishing buddies.

Thanks to all my fishing buddies, past, present and future. You make my time spent fishing that much better!

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Sunday, February 27, 2022

My New Ride

Back in March 2015 I bought a new BMW 428 hard top convertible, making it the 10^th car I’d owned in my life, but just the 4^th new car. The dark blue BMW was beautiful to look at, and the power, ride, and features quickly made this car my favorite, even surpassing the fond memories I had of my first ever car - a 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo. Add to that the thrill of the automatic hard-top motion looking like something out of a Transformers movie, and I became very attached to this car.

It may sound strange to some, but I name my cars, just as I name my boats and my houses. I called my BMW 428 “Serenity” and enjoyed driving her year-round but especially in the summer with the top down and my favorite music or podcasts playing on the stereo, wind in my hair.

Late in 2021, I decided that the time was coming to trade the car in before too many miles racked up on the odometer and before anything major went wrong. My goal was to make a change by or before 7 years with the car. I considered getting the latest version of the same car, but design changes made the BMW 400-series convertibles less attractive to me. Also, I had begun to think about getting a small SUV as my next car in order to haul music gear and beach chairs other things that are parts of my life. I also wanted a car that I could use to tow small watercraft. I looked at a range of brands and models and had hoped to find a luxury hybrid SUV with the right features in the right size at the right price point, but in the end my choice was the BMW X3 M40i which was everything I wanted except for hybrid. The larger X5 comes in a plug-in hybrid model but it’s just too large a vehicle for me. Other brands have some great models that I considered, but in the end my mind was made up.

I placed an order for a BMW X3 M40i configured with colors and trims and features I wanted and picked it up early in February 2022. In the first week with the car, I didn’t get to drive it much and as much as I was loving it, I had some funny moments of not knowing how some things worked. I couldn’t figure out how to move the moon roof cover and I misunderstood a speed warning setting resulting in an almost constant speed warning. The heads-up display was not in the perfect position and though I adjusted it, it still wasn’t quite right. Slowly, I read the manual and tried things and got to know the vehicle, and a recent 6 hour round-trip drive helped me to really get to know my new car. I’m really enjoying it a lot now and will no doubt learn more in the coming months. I look forward to several years with this wonderful small SUV, and as I get to know her better, I’ll probably give her a name.

Sunday, May 30, 2021

My First Boat

Simple beginnings

At around this time every year I write about getting my boats into the water and preparing for another boating and fishing season. I watch my neighbors getting their boats ready and, after a quick “how’s the family?”, we talk about boating and fishing in the summer to come. This year instead of looking forward I’ll look way, way back. My boats today are modern fiberglass fishing machines, fun and comfortable to ride in with cushioned seating, cup holders, and Bluetooth radios. My first boat, though, was very different.

When I was 11 years old, my family spent a few summer weeks in a fishing village that was in the process of changing into a vacation community. I spent my days climbing onto little boats with neighborhood boys, getting to know the local waters and learning the wonders of little engines which we started with a pull string and steered “tiller style” with a handle on the engine while sitting at the stern. We cruised the bays, beached the boats to explore little islands, and best of all, we went fishing. I had learned to fish at my father’s side when I was just 5 and loved it. Now at 11, I also had the “boating bug.”

My father was happy about my newly found love for boats and he and I got an empty cigar box and started a boating fund that fall. Every spare nickel was tossed into the box and about once a week I counted it. We didn’t have a lot of money in those days and so it built very slowly. By the spring almost 2 years later in about 1973 we had saved just over $300 (please don’t laugh!) and were looking for a first boat we could afford when my father stumbled across an old wooden boat that he decided was perfect for us. We bought it for $100, leaving us some money to buy equipment and also to pay for some help with hauling it out, scraping the barnacles, filling in spots with wood filler as needed, and painting it. We were willing to do the work, but we were still learning how.

similar vintage boat

I have no pictures of this boat, but I can paint you a picture in words. It was a very old wooden v-hull boat, about 18’ long, and painted white. There was a flat windshield that, like the rest of the boat, looked cobbled together. I think this flat windshield with three window panes may have been converted from a porch window. Forward of the windshield was a small compartment for the anchor and life jackets, and aft of the windshield was just an open boat. The deck or floor of the boat was wooden decking sections that lifted out to reach the wooden bottom of the boat.

I remember that there was always a little water in the bottom of this boat as if something was always slowly leaking. In those days, it was common to bail a boat out with a small bucket or a used Clorox bottle with the bottom cut off, thus making a scoop with a handle. A few years later, we got a kind of bilge pump that looked like a bicycle pump. It was meant to be placed on the deck of the boat and the handle at the top pumped up and down so that the water would be pumped out through the hose which was placed over the side. That was a luxury! Today, by comparison, both my boats have electric bilge pumps with a float sensor, so they turn on and off on their own, and neither boat leaks at all unless something is very wrong. The pumps are mostly to handle rainwater and wave splash.

The steering system of this first old boat of ours was a set of cables and pullies rigged to a steering wheel below that awkward flat window windshield. The cable looped around the shaft of the steering wheel and when you turned in either direction it caused the cables and pullies to pull on metal brackets mounted on each side of the engine, causing the engine, and thus the boat to turn. The steering wheel was a comically small version of a ships wheel with spoked handholds.

Everything about this boat screamed ‘jalopy’ but we didn’t care. We had a boat of our own and if we kept up with the maintenance and saved every penny to pay for parts and labor, we could go fishing whenever we wanted to. And we did! We fished from April to November those first few years. My father was an expert fisherman, and he knew how to read the waters. In those days we had paper charts and no electronics at all. As a former Navy man, my dad had a knack for finding his way back to favorite fishing spots by triangulating landmarks on shore with buoy locations. It must have worked well because we regularly caught more fish than all the boats around us.

The boat lasted us only a few years as the wood filler couldn’t keep up with the cracks and holes. We eventually had to junk the boat, which was sad, but replaced her with a fiberglass boat of similar size and more modern affordances. Over the course of more than 45 years, I’ve had no fewer than 9 boats, but that simple and ugly wooden boat was the first. This year as the boating and fishing season gets underway, I remember how it all started.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

10 Years of RapidGroove

10 years ago, in April 2011, I started the RapidGroove blog with a post called I think that bird said beep. I followed that a few days later with My Doctor Just "Friended" My Pancreas.

Writing a blog is a bit of a conceit. You have to believe that you have something to say and that other people might care. Twitter gives us a few hundred characters to say something, Facebook a little more. Blogs give us more space to work with and I have appreciated that. Looking back now on 240+ posts and almost 84,000 views, I'm still enjoying writing the blog.

I decided to start blogging back in 2011 to exercise my "writing muscles" and to try to get better through practice. Writing is one of those things that I believe can be valuable in many settings. I also think that when we practice writing, it helps us to appreciate the writing skills of others. That is to say, I sometimes read an article that I think is well constructed and admire the authors work and think about how they achieved it and what I can learn from it. I'm not sure I would read in quite that way if I didn't write as often as I do.

In my work as an IT Leader at three different universities over 3+ decades I wrote often, and today in my work as an Executive Partner at Gartner, I write even more.

In the RapidGroove blog, I have written about fishing, cooking, technology, and other things. I often wanted to write about other topics that interested me and on which I had an opinion, but decided that the topic was controversial in some way and that writing about it in a public way didn't serve my purposes well. For these topics, I'll gladly share a pitcher of beer or bottle of wine with friends and have friendly arguments in person! For RapidGroove, I always tried to choose topics that were interesting to many and offensive to almost nobody.

After 10 years, I don't know whether I'll continue to write in RapidGroove as often. Over the years I tried to write at least once a month, and often I wrote much more often than that. Going forward, I may just write when the mood strikes. I do have a very large writing project in mind apart from blogs, and I look forward to taking that up when I retire.

If you've been a reader of RapidGroove during these last 10 years, and especially if you commented here or in social media or in person, thank you. Your choice to engage in the discussion helped to make this more fun and interesting.

Thanks for being part of this 10 year journey!

Links:

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Will COVID-19 Cause Airports to Change Again?

Standing in line and showing your papers

After the horrific events of September 11^th, 2001, and some subsequent terrorist attempts involving passenger air travel, we all got accustomed to real changes in the experience at the airport. Long TSA lines, taking off shoes, throwing away our water bottles at the check point, travelling with tiny containers of toiletries, plus a trip through the X-Ray machine for our luggage. I’m wondering whether we are on the eve of another set of changes at airports.

Photo credit industryweek.com

One of the many Coronavirus-inspired discussions these days surrounds proof of vaccination. As the numbers of people vaccinated goes up, some still refuse vaccination and others just haven’t gotten the opportunity yet. It seems to me that the airports, and even the airlines themselves, are in uncharted territory as more people look to get back to air travel.

In order to preserve safe conditions, will we be asked to carry “vaccine passports” as proof of vaccination in order to travel to and enter some locations. Would this be one more document to show at the TSA checkpoint, or perhaps at some other airport check point? What are the implications for international travel? Today, upon entering a country from international travel, we go through customs to review what we might be bringing into the country from elsewhere. How might this change? It’s not hard to imagine something like vaccine passport checks as part of the process, given that different countries may be at different levels of vaccination and have different rules regarding travel.

Beyond documents, will rapid testing play some part? If, as we all hope, vaccinations worldwide help to make COVID-19 rare or even "background noise" soon, maybe there’s no role for testing in airports. But what if some of the COVID-19 variants make for uncertainty over the next year or more about vaccination efficacy? Would rapid testing at airports, perhaps with short term quarantine areas, need to be considered for at least some arriving passengers depending on the locations they have visited?

We didn’t imagine the airport experience changing so drastically before September 11^th, 2001. Maybe we should imagine it now.

Do you think COVID-19 may have any significant impact on the travel experience or do we go back to the February 2020 notion of “normal?” What if anything do you expect to change? Leave a comment and let us know.

Friday, February 26, 2021

In Praise of Fishing Magazines

Over the last 10 or so years, most of my reading has shifted format. I find that I don’t hold paper in my hands in order to read the printed word very often at all anymore.

I do all of my work-related reading on my laptop, my large monitor, or on an iPad. I read for fun on the iPad, and I listen to books on Audible on my phone. I used to read physical newspapers, with all the associated folding trickery, sometimes for hours at a time. Now I read “newspaper” articles for a minute at a time on my phone when I wake up, and occasionally during the day when the alerts on my phone are sufficiently interesting. I subscribe to the New York Times but only the digital edition. I still read some of the things that arrive at my house by US Mail in the old school ways, though I recycle a lot more than I actually read. As I think about it, I read very little today in the formats and ways that I did just 10 years ago.

My one big exception is fishing magazines. I subscribe to a few fishing magazines and one boating magazine and I still get them delivered in paper form. I still pick them up in my hands, without any electronics involved, and read them that way. More than that, I keep them around for years. I often pick up old issues and read through them again.

When I first get a fishing magazine, I leaf through it slowly and take note of the article titles that are of interest to me. It won’t be all of them. The ones that catch my eye deal with the kinds of fishing that I do, and in the regions that I like to fish or hope to some day fish. Sometimes there are articles about techniques that interest me, such as kite fishing for sailfish, or trolling for tuna and wahoo, or articles about fishing rods and reels and tackle that I use or want to try. I might read these right away or remember them for later. I skip over other techniques that are less interesting for me such as fly-fishing in fresh water. I also may read the reviews of new boats and boating equipment, and I look over the ads for equipment ideas.

When I come back to one of my fishing or boating magazines, whether a week later or years later, I’m already familiar with it. I can leaf through it again and be reminded of the things that I noticed the first time. I might read an article about fishing halfway around the world, or one that caught my eye on drifting techniques or rigs for Striped Bass close to home. It doesn’t matter if the article is 3 years old, it can still inform my fishing.

Unlike news articles which are timely, and unlike most books which I generally read once from start to finish, these magazines are things I read small parts of over longer periods of time. The photos and headlines and ads fuel my fishing dreams.

My fishing and boating magazines are my favorite beach and deck reading and I keep favorite issues around for years. They really are the last big holdout in my old school reading of the printed word on paper.

Do you read much in dead-tree format? Leave a comment and let us all know.

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Working at Home During the Pandemic

This is the 5^th time I’ll be blogging on topics that are related to the pandemic. Given the profound impact it’s had on our lives, that probably shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

About 6 months before the pandemic really took hold in the US, and well before it had serious impact on how we work, I changed jobs. My new job involved about 75% work from home and about 25% travel. The company I work for has offices around the United States, some of which have large numbers of office workers, but my job wasn’t assigned to an office under normal circumstances. By March of 2020, as things were changing radically for many workers, I was very lucky in that I kept my job and could continue to work. More than that, the shift to 100% work from home for me was a fairly minor adjustment.

Those who have been working from home for years probably have many “pro tips” that make them successful in working from home. I’ve been learning along the way.

Space: Some things are obvious, like having a dedicated space that’s laid out well and ideally is separated from the distractions taking place around the house. I spend a lot of my day on camera, so my space has to be well-lit and tidy, too.

Time, part 1: Some things changed immediately. In the past I had a 1 hour commute each way, so I gained back 2 hours a day. Even if I spend one of those “found hours” on work, getting even more done, I still get back one hour a day for myself and that has been great. As the family cook, I often use that time to get dinner going while listening to audio books or podcasts, which is therapeutic for me. Other times I use 5 minutes of that hour to place an online food order and then watch television or play piano.

Time, part 2: Managing time became a little different. One of the first things I began to learn was exactly how long mundane things in my life take. If I have 3 minutes before my next meeting, do I have time to run to the kitchen, get a cup of coffee, and be back and on camera before my meeting? Yes, easily. I don’t even have to run. Within the first few weeks I learned how much time I needed to make and eat lunch, or visit the restroom, or grab a sport coat for the next call. As it turns out, a few minutes are all that are needed for lots of things when they are within the limited confines of your home.

Lunch: Since I’m not out and about, I don’t buy my lunch at restaurants or delis. I have to plan ahead a bit more and have food in the house, which has been good for several reasons; I can plan for healthier lunches, and I can save some money. But the best revelation about lunch didn’t occur to me until several months in to working-from-home. For the last 35+ years I chose my lunch in ways so as not to impact my breath. Now, though, if I choose to have leftovers from last night’s garlic-laden dinner, or if I want a bunch of raw onions on a sandwich, I won’t offend my boss or my clients in afternoon meetings. This is surprisingly freeing! Of course, I still need to be considerate of others in the house.

Dress Code: The usual joke is that while on camera professionals must dress the part with shirt and jacket but don’t necessarily need pants. I do, indeed, wear pants. But while in my last job my pants were usually part of a suit, my pants these days are often jeans, or the warm-up pants I used to wear to the gym while my top half is generally neat business casual. The thing I generally don’t wear is shoes!

Clothing budget: Related to the above, there was a big change to my spend on clothing. When I wore suits, there were dry cleaning bills and the occasional additions of dress shirts or ties, and at least once a year a new suit. That stuff added up! All of that past spend is now savings for me (which I’ll probably blow all at once on a piece of music gear or a fishing trip).

The pandemic has been a terrible chapter in our lives, with many of us suffering losses of loved ones or health impacts or economic impacts. I feel very lucky so far to be managing well and will remain committed to masking, washing, and social distancing. And getting vaccinated when I am able. I remain hopeful that the second half of 2021 will look better than the present or recent past has been, with chances to visit restaurants and theaters and gather together, but will continue to adjust my life in the meantime.

How are you managing? What are your tips and tricks? Leave a comment and let us all know.

Thanks for reading! A blog works best with active participation. If you enjoy this blog, leave a comment, and share it on your favorite social network. More readers will drive more discussion.