fiction

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Maintenance Walks

Weight: 199.2lbs post walk

Diet: Chicken, asparagus, rice and soup for dinner and 1bagel and honey for breakfast

This entry covers yesterday and today but I only timed todays walk. Also, the mileage on my watch and the data above doesn’t really match what’s marked on the trail, but the real mileage was about 4.2 miles total today. Yesterday was a three mile walk.

Yesterday, I invited one of my favorite people out for a walk. It was the first time my neighbor, David, and I walked together after fishing together for the last 10 years. I have been his mentor in fishing so he can take his grandkids out on the lake and be successful or at least have a clue about what to do. That’s very important to me because grandpa needs to know where the fish are and how to catch them when the grands come for a visit. In return, David has been my spiritual mentor, and I have learned so much from him over the years. David and his wife, Ann, have authored at least two books, and I wanted to pick David’s brain a bit about a couple of aspects of writing, as well as some spiritual guidance on my new endeavor. I got both from him; but more importantly, I got the encouragement I needed to keep going.

It’s kinda funny in a way, but David asked me what the folks around me thought about me putting down the fishing rod for a while and writing a book. I had to crack up a bit because they have busy lives and really don’t read my blog, but that was all okay because that’s what gives me the fuel I need to keep going. It’s like I shouted, “Hey, guess what fam? God told me to write a book!” This is a good pictorial depiction of the expected response….

Man, I love that picture and sometimes I crack myself up looking at it. It’s like I just told a raunchy Navy joke or something.

I told David that I know it sounds weird, but I no longer had the slightest desire to fish, and the book is what I’ve been tasked to focus on. So, David and I walked on, and then David put his hand on my shoulder as we walked along, and he prayed for me aloud. People were walking by, and here we were, David and I walking in prayer. It was David on my left with his hand on my left shoulder praying, and Noah was on my right with his hand on my right shoulder, saying, “Welcome to my world, Jim.” After our prayer, David said, “If there’s anything I learned about you over the course of the last ten years, it is that you have an uncanny dedication and devotion to your interests, whether it was training for a marathon or learning to improve your fishing skills.” I wasn’t looking for technical help in my writing skills or suggestions from David as much as I was looking for encouragement, and he did just that.

This is my third week of walking the trail, and one thing that I get from spending this kind of time by myself—whether it’s fishing, running, or walking a trail—is clarity. It may be the extra oxygen from being outside, but for some reason, I can sort it all out and come up with a plan. Remember a few entries ago when I talked about always setting goals for yourself? One goal I set for myself is to get down to 175lbs and see if it’s possible to run again on two replaced knees. But another goal for now is to finish my writing over the course of the next few months. Here’s a sneak peek at the layout and title. The title is explained in the preface.

The book has three sections of short stories, and the name of the book is “The Shadows of October” (Stories of Fishing, Freedom, and Faith). Each section has a number of stories from my life.

The fishing section is called “Fifty Years of Fishing” and will interest the Lanier fishermen because the first story is called “Twenty Years on Lanier” and that encompasses a lot of what I learned in those twenty years and some of the fishermen around the lake that were an influence on me. There will also be other stories from some of my fishing adventures over the years.

The second section is called “Twenty Years of Service,” and it will encompass 20 years of service to the Navy and this country in short stories. There are a few stories from the blog that will be included in this section, but there will also be some stories that I’ve not shared with anyone. There are some things that I experienced in the Navy that I don’t talk about much, but some people ask about them. You can’t work in the environment that I worked in and not see some gruesome things over the years, so I’ll share a few of the more heinous incidents that used to give me nightmares, as well as a raw look at what it’s like for us maintenance folks in fighter and fighter/attack squadrons.

The third and last section is called “Fishing for Faith” and is about faith as it pertains to my story and my journey through Christianity. This section will be devoted to my grandchildren so they can have a tangible look at their grandfather’s life (so far). There are stories of some unexplained events and explanations of how God has been a factor in my life and has given clarity to the unexplained. I’ve said it before in the blog, but my grandfathers were great men and significant influences in my life in their unique ways. I just wish someone would have written a book about their lives because all I have left of my grandparents are the pictures and the memories, and they are fading fast.

My plan is to release the book on my dad’s birthday in October which gives me about 3 months to finish my work. We’ll see how it goes but eventually this blog is going to go away, either by a hacker or myself, but I’m going to extract everything I’m going to use in the book very soon. Most folks don’t know this, but my blog was already hacked, stolen and sold off without my knowledge once, but it was recovered. The next time I might not be so lucky.

Song of the day. Not the original but an awesome rendition.

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Missed it by a Curly Fry

6/16/2025

Weight: 200.2lbs post walk

Diet: Off the Chain

I was back at it this morning after taking yesterday off and taking the tribe to the Braves game. I knew this past weekend was going to be a wash and I was hoping the damage would be minimal when I weighed myself this morning. I was a good boy Friday evening and had some egg drop soup again for dinner but Saturday we went to a fish fry, and I couldn’t help myself, so I let it go and indulged in fried crappie, my southern style Potato salad, my crawfish corn muffins, some mac and cheese and banana pudding for dessert. All of it was good and I enjoyed every bite.

(*Recipes for the southern style potato salad and crawfish corn muffins are on my recipe page here on the blog.)

Yesterday is where that catchy title comes in. We took three of our grands to the Braves game yesterday afternoon and once again I let it go and when we got to the game, I decided one of those sweet looking double cheeseburgers with curly fries might hit the spot. Everybody in our crew grabbed something to eat and drink and we found our seats for the game. This was our view.

I knew I probably screwed up when I saw all that greasy cheese melting down the side of the double cheeseburger, but I still tore into that grease ball like a rat tearing into a freshly discovered Cheeto. I also had that order of curly fries in the burger box and they were just glistening in the afternoon sun, calling my name. When I pulled that first succulent curly fry out of the box and stuffed in the old cake eater, another curly fry fell out of the box and tumbled onto the concrete under the chair in front of me. I couldn’t reach it to pick it up, not that I wanted to, so I just left it there and went back to eating. Once I finished the burger and started on the curly fries, I looked down at the curly fry under the seat in front of me and I noticed a grease stain starting to form under the curly fry on the concrete. The first time I looked, the grease stain caused by errant fry was about the size of a dime but a few minutes later and after I consumed a few more fries, the stain had grown to the size of a half dollar. I started thinking about how bad that grease stain would have been if I dropped that greasy burger down there. That one little curly fry formed a grease stain on the concrete with the circumference of a tennis ball within 20 minutes. I couldn’t reach it to kick it away and I couldn’t unsee the grease stain for the rest of our time at the game, so I finally just quit looking at it, but the damage had been done. I knew I had blown up everything I worked for over the last week, so I said “what the heck and ate one of Lisa’s left-over chicken strips she brought back home from the game.

This morning, I was back out at the Big Creek trail and ready to push it a little more since I pigged out all weekend. I was thinking to myself that hopefully I could burn off some of that mess from yesterday, so I stretched my gate and quickened my pace to just shy of a power walk. I popped a bleeder in my left big toe after the second mile and that slowed me down just a bit. I know this sounds weird, but it actually felt pretty good since I haven’t had a foot blister in years and when I pulled my sock off and saw the blood stain, I actually got a bit giddy. I probably need some new shoes since these old Asics are probably 10-15 years old, but they still had good tread, so I’ve been using them. They also feel like I’ve got iron lungs wrapped around my feet, and I’d almost bet running shoes are lighter weight by now. I’ll probably make that adjustment and purchase some new shoes soon. After finishing my walk this morning I decided to weigh myself and see how bad the damage actually was. I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon and they always weigh me, so I wanted to get it over with before I get to the doctor and see the damage with a nurse looking over my shoulder.

Anyway, when I jumped onto our bathroom scale after my walk this morning, I had to take a double take as it was just a curly fry or two above 200lbs and it read 200.2! That tells me that my metabolism has shifted gears and barring any other grease binges by me in the next 24-48 hours I should see my scale reading below 200 for the first time in the last 10 years. Stay tuned!

Favorite tune from today!

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Fishing, Fasting and Felines

This week has been an interesting one for sure. It started out this week with Lisa traveling for work, so I had to hold down the fort early on this week. Last Wednesday I started a 10 day fast for religious and health reasons. First off, my prayers for folks have gotten larger here lately and I wanted to spend more time in prayer and less time enjoying good meals. I’ve read a lot about fasting and the health benefits of fasting and I wanted to give it a try. I’ve also watched several episodes of “Naked and Afraid” on tv and it seemed to me that most of the plump, pale and pudgy ones seem to do very well, basically surviving off their own body fat for days in a state of ketosis. They just lay around the grass hut eating their own fat and make their skinny tattooed partner mad because the skinny one is doing all the work. The ones that come in skinny and don’t eat much, have issues and drop out a lot more than them chunky ones. If they can do it for 21 days naked, cold, with nothing but bugs and worms to eat while getting bitten by insects, surely, I can do it in the comfort of my home. Mainly it’s a test of my willpower and sacrifice. Well, I finished my 10 days yesterday and I feel pretty good as my only solid food over ten days was a little chicken or shrimp and fresh asparagus or soup some evenings. I had a little fruit in the mornings for a few days but most days I just had a cup of coffee and started my day. During the day I drank a can of Fresca which is basically carbonated citrus water and that would carry me through the day. I did lose weight as well as energy for sure. I dropped down to my last belt notch over the 10 days, but I do feel a bit better overall. I’m going to do another fast soon but the next time I’m going to try without the morning coffee, and we’ll see how that goes.

On another note, our new little kitten, Casper is not doing well and we’re just praying that he makes it. Lisa found the little guy abandoned in a work shed and it was very cold so Lisa thought the little newborn kitten was dead. She put the Kitten in her coat pocket and a few minutes later her pocket started moving. The mother was reunited with the kitten and nursed it along with 3 other kittens that Lisa rescued in the shed that would have surely died. We found a home for the others, and we decided to keep the little white one to give our current cat a friend be around while were away. We’re not sure what happened to little Casper, but he just started getting very lethargic and all but quit eating. The vet said he had a little fever but otherwise they could find anything. They wormed him and we left. He may have eaten something he wasn’t supposed to as we have some indoor plants or maybe it was a piece of plastic. Once before he ate a little piece of plastic, and we waited 4 days before he finally passed it. If you’re reading this, please keep little Casper in your prayers as he’s struggling right now.

Fishing started slow but turned on big time as the week progressed. This week was one of those weeks that gets better as the week progresses with the weather being stable and the bass getting into their spawning routine. There are some weeks where the fish reset and things that were working days before don’t work now. Last week I was having a ball with the crankbait but this week I didn’t catch one fish on a crankbait, and it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Monday, I didn’t fish, and Tuesday was a short day, but Lisa was back on Wednesday, so I hit the lake to put something together. The numbers were there on Wednesday, but the bigger fish were baffling me until Thursday when I started to zero in on the big girls, then it was just a matter of making the right casts to see if they were home. The shaky head was what they wanted to bite but the bite was somewhat unique, and I had to get used to it.

This week the bite with the worm was subtle to say the least. One of the most important things I mastered with the shaky head is learning to feel the bite however small it is. It just drives me crazy to fish with someone who slacklines a lot. The key to success with these big spots is to never have slack in your line because you can miss a very subtle bite from a big fish if you have slack in your line. When I’m dragging my worm on the bottom, I want to feel everything. Every little stick, rock or indifference on the bottom. I want to be able to feel when a fish slowly picks up my bait and starts swimming away. Using braid with a flourocarbon leader intensifies the feeling coming up the line and I try and visualize what the worm is doing on the bottom. On Wednesday I didn’t fish clean and lost a couple key fish by not setting the hook properly when a fish would pick up my worm and swim straight towards the boat, which was most of the time this week. Once the worm was picked up by the fish and I reeled down on the swimming fish I would forget the hookset and just keep reeling down. I lost two very nice fish to thrown hooks on Wednesday, but I figured out my error and vowed to correct that on Thursday’s trip.

Thursday I kinda knew what I was going to do, and it didn’t involve a crankbait or any other moving bait for that matter. The big fish I lost from the day earlier just happened to be out on the end of deeper dock, and basically the big female was in some form of spawn mode. You have to keep in mind that spotted bass will spawn deeper than largemouth, especially the bigger ones, and our spots can spawn just about anywhere. It could be out on the main lake humps, or it could be around an unsuspecting dock, down in 20-25 feet of water, around some small structure. These bass can be hidden from Livescope and my best hope was to just throw the worm around the deeper docks and work the worm very very slowly! I caught fish during the morning hours on Thursday, but the good bite didn’t start till early to midafternoon and that’s when I really concentrated on the deeper docks. After a few smaller fish I boated a 4.3 off a dock and figured it would be my biggest until just before the end of my deep dock run, I hit pay dirt. I threw the worm to the front corner of a 25-foot-deep dock and let the worm drop straight down. I’d made that cast a thousand times before over the years on the front corner of that dock and I knew there wasn’t any major structure in the area of my cast. Once the worm hit the bottom I started a very slow drag. It didn’t take long till I felt the worm stop like it had come into contact with something. I just held a little pressure on the worm and waited. I felt the worm move just a little. I hadn’t induced that movement, and I knew it wasn’t natural. I kept a little pressure on the line and again I felt something unnatural barely moving the worm followed by a slight tick. The tic is generally when the fish quickly sucks the bait in by opening the mouth very quickly and creating a strong quick vacuum. In the next second I figured that hooksets were free, and nobody was looking so I reeled down and laid into the suspected worm nibbler. The first thing I felt was dead weight but, in another second, I felt a big head shake and I knew I had something big. The fish stayed down and swam out to the boat like dead weight with an occasional big head shake. When the fish finally decided to come up and jump, I could see the worm lodged deep inside the roof of her mouth. She wasn’t going to shake that out and I dipped the net in the water as she shook her head, tail walking right into my waiting net. At first glance I thought it had to be a largemouth but on a second look I knew it was just a big ole spot. I said “thank the Lord and where’s my scales”!! I was shooting for a 5lber and when I hung her on the scales it immediately popped up to 6.3 which was a tie with my biggest spot to date, but the scale settled on 6.1 and I said, “I’ll take it”. It was every bit as thrilling as the 6.3 record from years ago. I put the fish in the livewell after weighing her and I sat down for a second and relaxed. I thought about running back to the house with the fish and grabbing a tape measure for a replica mount, but then I thought that the fish was probably close to spawning and I really didn’t was to drag her around for a measuring session so after a couple minutes I picked her up and took a good look, thanked the Lord again for such a great fish and I released her. She headed straight back to the dock she came from. The picture at the top was the only picture I took of her besides the picture of the scales.

Yesterday I was out with my buddy Jeff Williams, and we were doing a little worm fish. Years ago, Jeff helped me tremendously by giving me confidence in the shaky head. I took several beatdowns from Jeff using the shaky head over the past few years and every once in a while, we get together, throwing the worm to match our skills. The last time I think we tied so this time was going to be the tiebreaker with equal time on the front, nothing but a worm and no Livescope. Yesterday Jeff jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. We had a great time as usual, but the good bite didn’t really start until the last couple hours of the trip. Jeff was ahead by 3 fish, and we ran one last stretch of deeper docks which accounted for most of the bigger fish for the day. Just after 3 o’clock I made a cast into a shade patch of a deeper dock and soon after the worm hit the bottom, I felt a small tug on the worm. I reeled down and set the hook on another bigger fish. At first, I didn’t think the fish warranted the net but then Jeff got a look at her, and he immediately told me it was 5 or over. Once again, the big fish tail walked right into Jeff’s waiting net and the fight was over. I knew it was right at 5 if not over and I thanked the Lord again and weighed her at 5.2. After that we fished a bit longer but called it a day and headed back to the house. Jeff got me in numbers as usual, but I did manage the big fish of the day which finished out my week of fishing and 10 days of fasting. It was a great ending to the week and to my fasting.

The lake is a little over full pool right now and the corps is moving water a few hours today. Water temps have been on the rise all week and was somewhere around 55-57 degrees in the creek. The fish are staging and getting very close to an early wave of big spawners right now. I targeted the deeper fish that I felt were staging at the deep end of the docks and it worked pretty well for me. The most important thing for me was being able to recognize that subtle bite from the bigger fish. Here’s a few more fish pics from my week.