Fishing off Grayton Beach

The Grinky Fishing Team met this past weekend in Grayton Beach Florida.  Four of the ten team members were able to make the trip (Kobie, Chuck, Steve and Trent).  Our accommodations exceeded past fishing camps, staying in a three bedroom home in Watercolors, also different from past trips girls were present for meals and the celebration of the catch.

Our first day on the gulf was attended by myself, Steve and Trent; to say it was exhausting would be an understatement.  We were met on the beach by Captain Larry of Dead Fish Charters, he pulled his boat up on shore instructed to put on a pair of rubber fishing boots and climb aboard his 20 foot boat.  The seas were a bit ruff at our 10:00 AM departure so we started fishing with light tackle rods for flounder.  This lasted for about a half and hour yielding 12 to 15 flounder and other small fish.  The wind had laid down, a sailing term, so we ventured out for deeper waters.  With the aid of his GPS Larry was able to put us over an underwater formation and within minutes our rods were being hit by 7 to 15 pound Jacks and Red Snapper at a depths of 55 feet.  It wasn’t easy getting these fighters off the bottom.  Adding to the struggle was the strict fishing rules.  Red Snapper can only be kept if caught in season (June and July), Jack can only be kept is between 14 and 22 inches long, so many of our fish had to be released because they were out of season (Red Snapper) or they were to big (Jacks).  Before our four hour voyage was over we had caught three times the fish that we were able to keep.   Our arms were aching, our backs were screaming, and our spirits were souring.  The three of us had caught more fish in those four hours then we had caught in our last 8 fishing trips combined.

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You’ve got a big one,” Larry hollers as I set the hook on what feels like a large Jack.  I reel for thirty seconds and “Wham” my rod tip bends to the water.  “Your fish has just been eaten by a bigger fish,” Larry shouts.”  I throw back my shoulders and lean back to pull my rod as high as I can and am immediately pulled back to a bent over position with my rod pointing down into the water.  “You’ve got a 180 lb to 280 lb Shark.  My thought was “I weigh 180 lbs.”  I pull back and my foe peels the line off my reel with a wine.  “Closer to 280 lb” comes from behind me.  The fight extends for three minutes, every muscle in my body is screaming, and then the line goes limp. ”He broke your line.”

 

I’d caught twenty fish before that but this was the story of the day until thirty minutes later we spot three dolphins off our starboard side, I catch another Jack and forty feet from bringing it aboard “Wham and Wine” my line is peeling off the reel.  “One of the Dolphins has your fish, he won’t take your hook but he’ll run with your fish, He’ll let go to come up for air then you reel as fast as you can.”  I do just that then “Wham”.  This dance went on for five minutes until the Dolphin let me have my fish, what was left of it.

The three of us went back to our Watercolors digs flying high but exhausted to find our forth team member, Chuck my older brother, arriving from Atlanta.  After reviewing our day’s activity we all decided to abandon our plans to go out on a Destin Party Boat and call Captain Larry to see if we could book the Dead Fish for the next morning.

Larry’s first question was. “You know how it works what do you want to fish for today?”  He got a unanimous response “Grouper”.  We went out five miles and Larry put us over a man-made reef and as requested the four of jus started pulling out Grouper with a smattering of Red Snapper, Jack, Trigger Fish and Pink Snapper, but like the day before the rules had to be followed so the Red Snapper went back as did many of the jack and the smaller Trigger Fish.  All and all it was another great four hours of fishing.  Any time there was a lull in the activity Captain Larry would move us to another spot and the action would resume.

I feel confident we will be back on the Dead Fish with Larry in short order.

See all the Photos..Click Here

My Memoir: A Gift to My Decendants

It took me about six months to write Tall Grass, my memoir, and then another four years to get it published.  I’d tell people, when asked “What are you doing?” ”Writing my memoir,” and they’d respond, “Who’s going to want to read your memoir?”

I’d never had given that much consideration because I wasn’t writing it for others to read, I was writing it for myself and if someone else wanted to read it that’s great, but not important.  Oh it’s a good story and will someday become a movie, but that’s just a bonus.

I also enjoyed going back to Cincinnati and Champaign and visiting with old friends and relatives and seeking help in jogging my memory and in some cases, filling in the blanks about things that I didn’t remember, didn’t know or haden’t considered.  In some cases I was able to resolve issues that had been plaguing me for over forty years.  I also had the opportunity to pick my older brothers brain and we were able to talk about things that we’d never talked about even though we experienced them side by side.

Why did it take four years to get it from my computer to paper?  Some people had to die and I had to find someone that I wanted to go through the editing process with.  I wasn’t the best of students, I don’t spell well and my grammar isn’t the best, so it needed an editor.  The editor and I met every Tuesday for four months to go over a chapter, not to explain my spelling and grammar but to clarify issues which usually resulted in additions and subtractions.  “Do you really want to say that?”  or  “This isn’t clear, you’ve left the reader hanging.”   It was a process that I enjoyed, it made my book come to life, and it validated what I had done.  The whole editing process cost me about $1,600, what I felt was a fair amount.  I’ve spend more then that for a four day weekend at a resort and often did’t have as much fun and I did in the editing process.

Writing a memoir is like watching a movie of your early life and you get to choose who plays each part, best of all the story will be here forever.  Can you imagine reading the story of your great- great grandfathers life as he and his family made their way to America or his fathers story growing up in where-ever.  Why would I want to deny my descendants that pleasure?  How about you?

 

I Need A Googler

I have put together a business plan for a website that will provide a Facebook like connection for families; it’s all about building a virtual world around young children. It’ll be site where children, parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles can learn and play together.

I am who I am because of the people who influenced me at an early age.  Today grandchildren often live hundreds of miles away from their extended family and being involved is a challenge.  There are 70 million grandparents in the U.S. who will spend $52 Billion on their grand children this year.  This presents a need and an opportunity.

“It Takes the Best of Us to Raise a Child”

I’m looking for a connection with a Googler, a Google employee, who can open the door to Google Ventures (Googles venture capital arm). There’s $10,000 in it for the Googler, if you have a connection sent them my way.

Why I wrote my memoir and life review

 

At 61, I decided I need a better understand of “Why am I the person that I am?”  It was not an effort to better myself or to settle any depression or haunting problems but instead it was an exploration that led me far into my memory.

The Swedish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard noted, “Life can only be understood backwards.” I had just retired and I had realized that in my life and career I had repeated my same victories and had as well repeated my same failings.  As hard as I tried I could not change, the pattern of my life seemed to have been predetermined.  I wanted to know how that pattern had been set and “Why I was who I was.”

Two other factors entered into my decision to write a Life Review.  First I didn’t know how much more time I had and I wanted to make the most of the rest of my life; that is I wanted to live it to the fullest and I wanted to concentrate
on my strengths and avoid my weaknesses.  Second, I wanted to leave something behind.  I know more about George Washington and Abe Lincoln then I know about either of my grandfathers and I didn’t want to die at my death.

I’ll write more about the process, writing, interviewing relatives, editing and self publishing in future posts.  You can sign up to follow my posts through the RSS Feed on the right.

Jane Fonda’s Life Review

Jane Fonda\’s Life Review

This is an excellent video explaining the importance of doing a live review.  Although I haven’t achieved perfection I am a better person as a result of writing my life review Tall Grass.

Jane Fonda, Oscar winner on her quest for perfection, battling bulimia and a strained relationship with her father.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqPNP60tpZQ

 

 

My Life Review and What if?

I wrote Tall Grass for me, to gain a better understanding of who I am and why I am, for my family, most of whom don’t care to read it now but I suspect will read it when I’m gone and that’s OK, and for others in hopes that other people will write about their early life to better understand themselves.  I’ve found that most of the visitors to my blog are coming through Search and they are in some form using the keyword “Life Review”, so I feel that I have achieved all of my primary goals for Tall Grass.

The other day at lunch a close friend, who had read Tall Grass, asked me questions about my childhood and some of the things that he had read.  Many of the questions I couldn’t answer because they were things that I might have known at one time but apparently weren’t important to me at the time and now I don’t remember.  This caused me to  realize that who I am is a result of what happened to me in my early years but it’s also as a result of what I deemed to be important at the time, and I think that was controlled by my emotional state at the time.  So if my emotional state had been different the results would have been different.

I mention this because I am in the early stages of developing a new website, BestofUs.com, built around the phrase “It Takes the Best of Us to Raise a Child”.  It will be a closed circle social networking website built around the young children in our life’s, the children that we want to have an influence on even though they may live hundreds of miles from us, our grandchildren, or our nieces or nephews, or the children of close friends.  If as a close knit community, I call it a village, we can add some stability, some emotional strength achieved by knowing that they belong, maybe the children in our life’s can become the best that they can be.

I just wonder how my brothers and my life’s would have turned out different if there had been a tight circle that could have supported us after our mother died.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress with BestofUs.

Website Search Engine Optimization

I’ve been doing Search Engine Optimization for many of the professionals listed on my Bestofus.com website for several years now.  I’m able to bring almost any website to the first page of Google Search and Google Places within three months.  Then it’s a matter of tweaking the input on a monthly basis to keep it there.

Like you most people don’t go into the following pages to find what  their looking for so it’s important to be on that first page.  I charge a monthly fee of $295 for my services and work on a month to month basis; in-other words if you’re not happy at anytime you just cancel our arrangement.   Give it a try and let’s see what I can do for you and your business.

“Oh yeah life goes on / Long after the thrill of livin’ is gone”

Yesterday John Mellencamp sang these lyrics at my morning spinning class.  It caused me to smile because the thrill of livin hasn’t gone for me yet.  Then Steven Tyler urged me to Dream on throughout my retirement.

Every time I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It went by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay

Yeah, I know nobody knows
where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life’s
in books’ written pages
Lived and learned from fools and
from sages
You know it’s true
All the things come back to you

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away

Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dream comes true

I do still have dreams, and I intend my retirement life to go on and the thrill of livin to never be gone.

Later this month I’m going skydiving for the first time.

Nita’s Heirloom Tomato Salad

Imagine our delight when today we found that one of Nita’s many tomato plants was a Heirloom Tomato Plant.  There within the canape of green leaves were two Rudy Red Heirloom tomatoes.

We had been exposed to an elaborate tomato salad at The Hot and Hot Fish Club, a restaurant here in Birmingham last year, and had duplicated it with tomatoes purchased at the Pepper Place Market in downtown Birmingham.  But now we could produce this culinary delight from our garden.  Take a look, it’s all from Nita’s garden (except the goat cheese).

2 Ruby Red Heirloom Tomatoes

Green Basel

Purple Basel

A pinch of  Fresh Thyme

Goat cheese

A sprinkling of Balsamic Vinegar

I complimented this magnificent creation with a roasted Rosemary Chicken, with new potatoes and a bottle of Napa Cellars Chardonnay.

 

 

 

This is how we are starting our 4th. of July weekend, can it get any better then this?  Maybe it can, I’m getting another ton of rock, to add to the ton and a half that I got last Saturday to build a wall and walk in my back yard.  A three day weekend!  I’ll lose 2 lbs a day moving rock.

 

 

Driving U.S. Made or Foreign Made?

Are you driving a Made in the USA Automobile?  This would be one way to put Americans back to work.

Rank 2011 Make/Model U.S. Assembly Location Rank 2010
1 Toyota Camry Georgetown, Ky.; 1
Lafayette, Ind.
2 Honda Accord Marysville, Ohio; 2
Lincoln, Ala.
3 Chevrolet Malibu Kansas City, Kan. 5
4 Ford Explorer Chicago
5 Honda Odyssey Lincoln, Ala. 6
6 Toyota Sienna Princeton, Ind. 10
7 Jeep Wrangler Toledo, Ohio 9
8 Chevrolet Traverse Lansing, Mich.
9 Toyota Tundra San Antonio 8
10 GMC Acadia Lansing, Mich.
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