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I had quite a chuckle the other day as I got in the driver's seat of my soccer ma Subaru. I was parked outside of the local fly shop here in Sitka. I had just gone in to get a section of my Sage fly rod that I had broken on a silver this past fall.

In all of my years of fly fishing I have never had a Sage rod. I have though, made fun of the yuppies who own Sage rods. Bill at the shop talked me into casting one a couple of years ago. Sheesh. I now own a very nice fly rod.

Bill asked me if I was going fishing that day. I told him I was going out to take a few pictures as the sun was out. I walked out of the store with my rod, opened the car door and set it next to my fancy dslr camera. At the moment I closed the car door and glanced over at the camera and rod in the seat next to me I broke out with a laugh.

In an instant I remembered every fishing, hiking, hunting, exploring, beer drinking, family trip that I had ever been on. How many times off the Siberian Coast would it have been nice to have a fancy camera? The sun that set for 10 minutes, the breeching whales, the walrus floating by on the ice, the polar bear with its nose in the wind on the frozen sea. How many times have I crawled up to an alpine lake to cast a fly into sterile water? Skipping Lou Pazar's classes at SJ only to borrow his club of a fly rod. It sure would have been nice to have that Sage then. It strike me funny having fished all those years using Levi jeans as waders, carrying a Kodak 110 just in case the tail bends on some fish when I put it in the creel. Chasing around eagles with a disc camera and then trying to draw any attention to the white dot near the center of the photo. That was an interesting moment.

Now I have the best equipment. I have a fancy camera and a rod that I love. I have diabetes and an arthritic knee. I have less free time than I have ever had. I have a weight problem. I have little desire to climb to that alpine lake because the damn thing did not even have fish in it twenty years ago. Youth may be wasted on the young but good equipment should have found the hand's of the able bodied a little bit quicker for my liking.