I’ve enjoyed every bike I’ve owned, but my Honda ST1300 topped the list—a sport touring bike that was nimble around town and great on long rides. Carving mountain curves on it always caused a smile. But upon entering my 70s, I realized a less aggressive bike might keep me upright—and alive. Enter the Honda Goldwing above, with unsurpassed comfort and protection from rain and cold and heat. A great bike—except for…
Read MoreA Time to Replant?
Several weeks back we visited our favorite Chapin Winery in Temecula, then in the midst of pruning. The long branches, accurately called canes, that produce the grapes had been cut back to the spur buds on the laterals, or cordons, that grow horizontally. But some long canes remained, seemingly at random, and we puzzled about the purpose. Then last Sunday we figured much of it out. Most of the long canes were now gone, and we first noticed some…
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Brushy Streams
In streams like this, I lost countless hooks by allowing the line to drift too freely, catching a lot of branches and roots, both under and above water. Hundreds of times wild roses attracted my line like a magnet, requiring the loss of precious trout time to untangle the bird’s nest. Hundreds of wild trout darted to safety when I trod too hard, or unknowingly let my shadow cross the creek, or when I let the bait land too hard on the water. And fisherfolk face…
Read MoreAnticipating Adversity
Toward the end of the often-disastrous 2020, social media got flooded with memes and posts and comments expressing joy that the crappy year would soon end with 2021. That may explain why I so liked the above meme put up by Jeff Boyer. 2021 won’t fully flush out 2020, and some of the crap will continue to need wiping away. The vaccine rollout has started, but slowly; the cases and hospitalizations have reached all time highs. Yes, we’ll likely beat it, but…
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The Fine Art of Doing Nothing
Back in May of 2020, COVID provided an unexpected opportunity. I had a week carved out to ride my bike to Estes Park CO and teach at a writing conference, then COVID cancelled it. So I subbed in a trip to my beloved Sierras to pull out some trout. I rediscovered why we call it fishing, not catching, because the catching was below mediocre. Maybe pathetic. And from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, it almost totally died. I grew sad…
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image from bearbox.org
Safe from Bears
Mom claimed I had been conceived in the Sierras, so I came by my love for them honestly. And in several decades of hiking and camping and fishing and driving through them, I never had any issues with bears. Until I did. Guys from our church camped in Gray’s Meadow outside Independence in 1990, and after chasing trout on other streams we came back to a campsite in chaos with missing items. The campground host came over, explaining that a bear had strolled in and…
Read MoreDo It Right...The First Time
Sometimes, some people (OK, this is mostly about me), overlook somethings we’ve done that qualify as small mistakes. OK, I knew these were mistakes when I made them, and thought they were minor. They were, and they weren’t. If you don’t see yourself there, then you might want to move on. But most who follow “Unconventional” or me on Facebook know…
Read MoreWounded in Tombstone: Got Some Tweezers?
Almost 140 years after the infamous shoot out at the OK Corral, Tombstone AZ continues to cause damage. Yep, I got wounded in Tombstone just this fall. Sheila and I spent a week at a Tempe timeshare, and I’d recently discovered Luke Short, a part owner of the Oriental Saloon there and fellow gambler with Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, was my great uncle. So I headed southeast for some family research, leaving Sheila to relax at the pool and…
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