No Fly Zone
Slob Fishing, the sport of bums.

I'm approaching the age that Colette delicately described as "agggh! … halfway to 90," so lately I've been looking over my Life List, the catalog of things I want to get done before I start wearing diapers again. No. 1 is Golden Years stuff and thus can wait —"Replenish yourself by taking the time to reread all of (somebody, but first double-check: Have I ever read all of anybody?)." No. 2 may have to be scrapped because the government's Department of Lying About Atlantis continues to ignore my calls and e- mails. Then I come to No. 3, which pulls me into its net: "Learn to catch trout."

That one's challenging, since I bite at fishing. During my first stint living in New Mexico (1994-1996), I caught the fly-fishing bug big-time and made all the usual rookie mistakes. I bought an expensive fly rod that I didn't know how to use and started waving it around like a ratchet- elbowed goofball. One day I borrowed a pair of waders that didn't fit, stepped into a spring-runoff stream that was moving dangerously fast, got knocked down by rapids, got wrapped around a submerged log like a Gumby man, and almost drowned.
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