As I mentioned previously…if you fish with me you’ll be laughing!
So there I was! I’m tired, flat worn out. But I have 4 miles of downstream travel to get back to the car. It sounds simple enough but in reality there’s a lot of wading involved and walking on gravel all day takes a toll on you.
As we started the slog back to the car in the afternoon heat and blazing sun we were not looking forward to it. But something had caught my eye on the way upstream. An idea began to hatch and a plan developed. Around the bend in a log jam was an air mattress I spotted earlier. Hmm, is it possible?
Now I want you to picture this in your mind. An air mattress, not just any air mattress I might add. This thing was HIDEOUS! It was pink…HOT PINK. And to top it off, it had something akin to fake diamonds glued to it. The Horror of it all.
But as I said before…I was tired! So what does any self-respecting fisherman do? (HINT: they walk on by and keep going)…but me? You guessed it! I fished it out of the log jam, cleaned the mud and slime off of it and headed to the water’s edge. Believe it or not, this little beauty was still full of air and floated gracefully…not with me on it, but still, I had a hare-brained idea that sounded perfectly feasible. To this day I still blame the heat!
To my credit (and my wife’s chagrin!) I floated (sort of) almost all the way back to the takeout. It was a race by the way, I’m sure the wife was trying to put distance between the “nut job” floating down the river on a pink air mattress and hoping nobody put two and two together.
But do not worry! We passed nary a soul on the way down and because I’m a “macho kind of guy” I pulled up short before the river bent around a wide sweeping turn. Out of sight, I secretively stashed my trusty craft and casually walked the rest of the way to the car…much to the relief of the wife. All’s well that… ahem…has no witnesses. Fish On!
Velox Seeker 