Well, I finally got out on the water with the kayak today. I still need to name her, but havn’t come up with anything good yet. We had decided to go to huntington reservoir to do a little fishing and get a taste of what I’m going to need to do to get better. I guess I need to work out some on shoulders because I’m pretty tight tonight after just a couple hours on the water. It was worth it, though, I shouldn’t have waited so long to get into this. I kept telling Kirk that it was so much better than sitting here in front of the computer. I struck out across to the opposite side and came back and decided that purist philosophy aside, the rudder is a valuable addition, without it I have quite a time getting turned around. I’d read that this kayak was a really stable one, and I only had a few bobbles at the start where I almost took on water, but I’ve found out that I can’t turn my head to look behind me without almost capsising.
This was the first fishing trip I’ve ever gone on where I forgot my fishing pole. I had everything out before kirk got up, and it took some finding, as I havn’t been fishing in over a year. I laid everything out on my bed and started getting the car loaded up. When I finally got the kayak and everything in, I hadn’t realized that I’d left the fishing pole leaning against my bed. Kirk caught one little fish and let it go, but I wasn’t too disappointed that I didn’t get to fish, I had enough fun just fooling around.
When I was getting the kayak loaded up I had put a tiedown around the kayak and was tightening up one of the tiedowns and it came loose and I got hit in the bridge of the nose with the metal clamp. I have a pretty good cut, and it is really sore, so I guess I’ll get a good scar out of it. I tried to take a picture of it, but man, I’m looking old, so I’m not posting it.
After a few hours out the clouds started looking really threatening and the thunder started to roll, so we headed back to the beach. While we were trying to decide if we should wait it out, or see if it looked like it was going to get serious, it suddenly got serious. It started to pour rain and we started getting everything packed up. While I was tieing down the Kayak the rain got really cold and turned to hail. We got drenched within a few minutes to where my shirt wouldn’t hold more water.
Kirk wants to try to go up to the Uintahs and maybe fish Washington Lake or Trial next saturday. I may try to go up to somewhere close during the week, but I’m not sure how easy it will be to get the kayak in and out of the car. I may have to build some sort of assistance device this week. I also need to come up with an anchor device, and probably create one for kirk’s pontoon boat too.

     I decided to take Thursday and Friday off work for a four-day weekend and thought I’d get out a bit and try to get over the miserable last couple of weeks I’ve had.
     I went to lunch with Jack and after we came back to my house I showed him the fishtank I brought home from work on saturday. I’d had it at work for a couple years, ever since Stickboy brought it back after it made the rounds of his family. The tank has a long history. It started out as an advertisment in a Chinese take out place for Oceans realm, a pet store owned by, my brother and me. It’s changed hands several times, ruining a tv in an apartment below it along the way. I had (and have, when you really think about it) nowhere to put it, so I took it to work. Only I didn’t like maintianing it at work and it got to be a real drag to have around. Kirk fixed it up really nice on saturday and filled it with fish. He mostly got South American Cichlids and some tiger barbs as dither fish, and I still had 2 Marleri, 1 Lelupi and a pictus cat from work.
     After we had taken in the fish we went and took a quick look at my metal cutting bandsaw that I’d been having trouble setting up. Jack quickly spotted the loose set screw that was keeping the blade from turning efficiently and now I’m on my way to being able to finish the kayak rack for my truck… assuming I can get the gumption to work on it more. As we were heading back out I told Jack he ought to see the 4 Kentucky Coffee Trees I’m getting set up to play Bonsai, I purposefully stepped off the deck’s 2 foot drop to the ground, but somehow my toes got the instruction to roll over and play dead on the way down. I fell forward and knew I’d crunched my ankle really bad. Now that I think about it, it has been a year without crutches, and I only get one of them in a row, so after a $75 worthless visit to the emergency room I know I have a sprained ankle. I’d already had Jack pull the crutches out of the basement before we went, so I was pretty much set up. I should have had him get my old air splint so I would have had everything I needed. I guess I ought to know that unless it’s a compound fracture I should just bag going to the hospital to save me the money, because unless it’s a compound fracture it really doesn’t make a difference. I say this because of the last part of the radiologists comment:

… No significant tibiotalar joint effusion is present however anterior soft tissue swelling is apparent as well. A bone island is noted in the posterior aspect of the calcaneus.

     So I have a broken off hunk of bone in my OTHER ankle now too. They don’t know when it happened and were puzzled that I wasn’t aware of the break. I told them the only other time I was aware of breaking my left ankle it was, I believe, a tiny crack down inside one of the tarcels.

     Anyway, I’m down for a few days and then have the long rehabilitation to get it working right again. I guess I’ll be lucky to get the Kayak out before autumn.