Winter Squid Fishing Out Of Dana Point

On Saturday, I heard that the squid had moved in so I called Dana Wharf sportfishing. They told me that they were running their first trip of the year that night, so I headed down there to get on the Clemente, which left at 5:30 pm.

It was the last of three or four days of decent weather before the storm system of the week was scheduled to take root on Sunday. None of my kids could go because they were facing finals and had run out of study time. It was Tommy and Davey’s pirate birthday party the next day, so it seemed appropriate to go out and get this strange bounty of the sea for the celebration.

As I was waiting I ran into a bunch of guys from Iowa who were out for a convention and just happened to decide to check out the local fishing scene for the end of January, which has mostly been a Spartan affair. These guys had certainly picked up the right night for a bit of exotica.

We had about 35 anglers as we pushed out to the canyon in front of the headlands. Skipper Cory had us drop our squid jigs in 200 fathoms (about 1200 feet) of water, when he metered squid about 2/3 of the way down. We watched a full moon rise in the east behind the boat as we worked the first drop to more that 100 fathoms.

I hooked up, along with a few other guys with lots of line. I was fishing a Torsa 20 with about 40 yards of 40# mono spliced into 80 pound spectra. I hooked that first squid at over 600 feet and it was chore to bring it in. The Torsa was more than a match for the cephalopod, but everyone had to set their drags so you wouldn’t pull the pins out of the tentacles as you pumped the rod and reeled down.

The squid were running about 18 to 30 pounds, from what I saw, and a bite that started really deep at around 6:15 pm started getting shallower and more intense as the squid rose, sunk out and then started coming up in earnest on our third drift through the canyon. By 7:15 it was pretty wide open and the squid had moved up into the top 50 to 100 feet. There were a few free swimmers that would come up into the lights to take bait just below the surface and most people were getting stopped on the way down during the last hour. It was all you wanted. We were done fishing, with all of the rods racked and the cleaning board out by 8:15. The crew worked furiously to clean the squid so that we could slowly motor in and end up tied up and offloading anglers at 9:45.

This is a great way to pull on some really big and fascinating creatures that are quite tasty when prepared properly. I recommend at least 30-pound line and a few extra squid jigs and weights.  A great trick is to tie about 2 feet of mono below the bottom ring on your squid jig and attach a 4 ounce torpedo weight. When you get your squid aboard, you don’t have to reach into that mass of angry tentacles to retrieve your jig from its maw. You just pick up the torpedo weight and it backs the pins right out of the squid from a safe distance. The squid stays on the deck and you can drop the rig right back down.

As far as eating these things, they are great, but you need to cut the membrane off of both sides, cut them into squares about half the size of a playing card, and then pound them until they are twice that size, but much flatter. Then I recommend breading and deep frying in oil for about two minutes, or until golden brown. They are great dipped in marinara sauce and are an excellent entrée or cocktail appetizer.

Nick, one of guys from Iowa with whom I hung out, snapped this picture of me with one of the four squid I took home. I would say that this one was fairly typical of what we caught that evening:

I had the crew clean them, but I smuggled one whole one off the boat in a double-wrapped trash bag I brought on board so I could bring it back and show this sea monster to my five year old birthday boys. Normally, you are required to have the crew cut up and bag your squid so that the local authorities are not left to clean up the massive ink and slime trails that lead up the ramp in into the parking lot. Lots of folks with 100 pound gunny sacks full of inky squid will dump them in the parking lot when they realize they don’t want too put them in their car, so it is now illegal to take them off the boat unless they have been cut and bagged by the crew.

On the way home, I had an encounter with a group of young (younger than me, anyway) intoxicated males. They were in a metallic green Fury III with no hubcaps. There were three guys in their twenties in the back and a pretty big guy, who seemed to be their loudmouthed leader, in the passenger seat. I was minding my own business at a stoplight, singing along with the Beat Farmers with my windows rolled up, when I became aware that I was being yelled at. I looked down from the SUV I was driving to see this bearded guy with greasy, shoulder length hair yelling at me and giving me the finger. I rolled down my window and he called me “faggot” and spit on my door in a failed effort to get more elevation on his expectoration. I thought I was hallucinating as I took him in. This dude was in a massive, dirty double-cast which apparently supported two broken arms with pipe-like supports. His arms were locked out at the elbow – almost like he was extended towards an imaginary steering wheel on the passenger side. The other guys were laughing hysterically at his clever insult and partially successful attempt to spit. I think that they had some open beers going in the back seat. I just couldn’t find a way to be scared and the evening seemed too young to let this scene just slip by. Besides, I had my can of bear spray under the seat, so I was kind of hoping for a little escalation.

The guy in the cast was also smoking a cigarette. He was using one of those telescoping roach clips with a Marlboro light pinched down in an alligator clip at the end. He kept flashing this wand back for puffs in between shouting smoke filled, slobbering insults as we cruised north on Pacific Coast highway. This seemed funny to me and I started laughing. This pissed him off and he started yelling that they were going to kick my ass. I asked him if his friends had to take turns wiping his butt.

He actually looked big enough to kick my ass, even with that comical cast rig, but the threat just somehow didn’t seem very real. Because of this, I didn’t turn right to go home to San Juan, but continued to head north as my pursuers baited me. As I was driving along, I was fumbling back with my right hand to get the double trash bag on the floor of the back seat open. I managed to do so just as the Fury pulled even with me and I was about to make a right turn where the highway passes the road to the Ritz Carlton. I had to momentarily let go of the wheel and steer with my knees in order to hoist my prize cephalopod in one continuous motion out of my window and onto the rigidly outstretched arms of my tormentor in the adjacent lane as they accelerated to pull even with me. I just had a momentary glimpse of the beginning of a surprised look on their snowman-like spokesperson as I swerved into a right turn.

I just don’t think it is possible to be adequately prepared to receive such a sudden and abundant delivery of fresh seafood while drinking and chasing someone in a car at 10 pm on a Saturday night. I looked up into my rear-view mirror and saw them slide to the left across the intersection amidst much horn-honking as they beached the front axle on the left turn island. I never got a chance to use the bear-spray, which I still have left over from a fly-fishing trip to Canada. I also didn’t get to show my little guys that whole squid, so they will have to do with the picture. We cooked up a mess of squid for the party and washed it down with pirate punch and a little splash of the Captain for the adult members of our crew.

I suppose that some people may think it was uncool to throw a five-foot long squid on an unsuspecting drunk with two broken arms. Maybe I was not in a charitable mood when we met, but I felt better after I shared my catch with these thirsty motorists.

Hey, at least I don’t have to depend on the kindness of others to get MY butt wiped….for now.

These are the days.

Mammoth In July

We packed up and headed up to Mammoth a month early this year.  The water level everywhere was high and the streams were running pretty hard due to a late snowpack.

Tommy, Davey, Isaac and I hit Lake George on Sunday for a bunch of brook trout, as well as a few rainbows.  After coming up empty and tangled after a pass or two around the lake with trolling gear, we anchored up outside a feeder inlet (not the falls, but to the left near the granite face) and started casting crawlers into the water being pushed out into the lake, where the brook trout were on station and feeding where the inlet stalled out into the lake.

It was pretty good action on planter sized trout for the little guys, topped off by a nicer grade rainbow that Isaac finessed into hitting a firetiger-pattern Mepps Syclops he tossed toward the bank in between assisting the little guys in releasing their fish.

On Monday, we hooked up with Matuka Joe Contaldi to try our luck midging Crowley near the McGee Creek inlet, where we caught so many big ones last August.  Well, this was July and the water was still cool, so the conditions had not yet ripened for a lot of big fish to be sipping midges where the cool creek hit the lake.  We got four (two of them after we relocated to Green Banks), but the Crowley bite was just not turned on yet.  Red bubble back, in size 22, worked best and we even got one to take the top fly, which doesn’t happen too often for us.  I think the fish just had not settled into a pattern that we could key into.

Given the conditions, we left the lake before noon and decided to head up to Hot Creek for a little walking and fly-casting nymphs. The weather was beautiful – just a little hint of a Sierra shower, and no big heat. We got several nice fish as we worked off the rust from not using a fly rod since last year.

I got some rainbows and browns and managed to bag a feisty cut-bow that buried me in the weeds on the opposite bank before we were able to convince him to come back to our side and Joe’s net. 

The best pattern for us at Hot Creek was a tiny #24 pheasant tail nymph.  We had to run a little more lead than usual because of the high water, but the flow was pretty close to perfect and weeds were no problem.


Tuesday, Isaac and I took Tommy stream fishing at a couple of spots below 395 on Mammoth creek.   We were aided by high water and fish were visible in the pools, which we pretty much had to ourselves.  We used barbless hooks to take several decent planters at Mammoth Creek on Gulp egg imitations and were able to release all the fish.  

After we had raided this spot for a bit, we traveled further south on 395 to hit a pool behind a check dam on McGee Creek below the highway..  The spot was pretty deep and wide, like a big swimming pool, and there were several nice trout cruising around.  We mashed down the barbs on our spinners and threw Panther Martins, Mepps and Rooster Tails, which produced follows and a few strikes. We finally got the fish to start biting a gold /black dot Golden Lion spinner that seemed to be what they wanted.

Tommy got to crank in a bunch of decent ones, all of which were released.  The spot was little spooky, because the water was running hard below the little dam and we had to take care to make sure Tommy did not go in, because the stream below the check dam merged with more white water that quickly disappeared into a shroud of trees that made downstream bank access completely impossible in the event someone went into the water.  I was glad that David decided to stay back at the cabin, so we could keep a close watch on Tommy.  The spot we fished was beautiful, but it was pretty hazardous for little kids a few yards downstream.

Wednesday was our first day to hit Lake Mary.  All of the inlet creeks were running high and the fish were really biting for us.  Other folks were getting a few here and there by still fishing power bait or crawlers or top-lining trolling lures such as Thomas Buoyants or Rapalas. 

We trolled single siwash-hook needlefish five to six colors down in 40 to 45 feet of water and just got one bite after another.  We got a few on firetiger and also red and gold Syclops, but by far the major producer was the frog pattern/gold needlefish.

Ryan Downs smuggles a trout past the authorities.

We got mostly 1-2 pound rainbows as well as a surprising number of brook trout, along with some browns.  The girls all slept till noon, so Isaac, Ryan, Tommy and Davey took turns reeling them in until we had caught and released twenty in a morning of casual trolling and snacking.

Thursday, it was more of the same as Isaac, Tommy and Davey got up for another twenty plus fish count of catch-and-release action.  Again, it was mostly rainbows, with about 5 or six brook trout and a couple of browns.  The browns were all near the three inlets just short of the deep part of the lake.

Friday, Isaac and Tommy and I hit the lake again (David decided to stay home), but this time the weather was quite different than the sunny time we had experienced on the two previous days.  We were blown off the lake by rain, wind and hail after catching two fish, so Isaac and I went home to drop off Tommy, get some heavy rain gear and hit it again.

   

We got a few more as another big system blew down the lake and pushed us backwards.  We were determined to return and achieve our twenty fish benchmark.  We went home and got Lizzy to go to lunch with us before we hit the lake for the afternoon bite.  Sarah was benched this trip due to a broken leg, which was diagnosed and treated at Mammoth Hospital in a manner completely superior to what we have in Orange county.  This allowed her to sleep past noon in and watch a great deal of big screen cable TV.

When we got back to the lake at 2:30, we were greeted by worsening conditions as we caught a couple before the wind and rain blew us backwards for 30 to 45 minutes and chased everyone off the lake except us.  

We stuck it out and as soon as the wind died down the fish started to bite again.  We employed our system and just managed to release our twentieth fish as our time with the boat expired. 

We were like the crew of the Andrea Gale, insisting we were Gloucester-men who would not be denied our quota just because of some weather.  Isaac kept calling me Billy Tyne.

The last day, the big boys and Sarah stayed home while the rest of our troop went on our traditional hike to Rainbow falls and Red’s Meadows. 

The San Joaquin was running at summer maximum and pitching out in a fantastic display at Rainbow Falls.  We got into the park by 6:45 am, so we were at the falls when it was un-crowded.  After we hung out there, we hiked another ½ mile or so down to the lower falls, which was a rich experience.  

The lower falls are seldom this good and we had the whole place to ourselves the entire time we loitered in the area.

This is such an easy hike and there is always the ice cream reward at the pack station store before you leave the park.

This year brought a significant improvement in bear-proofing, although we did see one on the golf course and another raided the dumpster after it was left unlocked by some hard partying neighbors.

MONKEY HUNT

We finished off the day by zip lining at the village before going on our traditional monkey hunt late that afternoon in the Alabama hills outside Lone Pine on the way home. 

It seems that the environmentalists have taken over the Eastern Sierra, at least as far as traditional pack-in monkey hunts are concerned. This time we used a new company – “ High Country Ape-chasers” There is now a training session that you have to go through (we did ours on-line, so we would not have to waste hunt time in the diminishing daylight).  They make you watch a video about how pine monkeys and boulder monkeys are a resource that cannot be over-harvested. The focus is on getting you interested in synthetic monkey products like turkey monkey jerky or monkey pelts that are really just rabbit or squirrel pelts that are remanufactured to shape-out like primate.  

Instead of .22’s, we were urged to use the new tranquilizer guns that the Sierra Club is pushing as an alternative.  They are way more expensive to shoot, and you can’t really walk your shots onto a fleeing primate like you can with a .22 autoloader.  The active ingredient is the same stuff they give to middle-aged patients who get colonoscopies.  The proprietors assured us that the darts are better because they put the monkeys right to sleep and they don’t remember a thing when they wake up.   They told us we could buy some smoked tofu that is shaped like a monkey if we really want to bring something home. My kids just looked down at the ground and moved the dirt around with their boots while our ranger escort lectured us about the non-lethal hunting experience.

We managed to convince the staff to let us bring along our own pellet guns to practice with, so we wouldn’t have to shoot these stupid darts to sight in our rifles, as they cost 12 bucks per shot.  I paid for everything with cash and we all signed in with nicknames.

Each group of hunters must be accompanied by an escort-guide, who is really just there to make sure you buy their darts and use their guns.  Our guide introduced herself to us as Rainbow. She was excessively well-nourished and wore smelly Birkenstocks. She had multiple piercings to her nose and ears, including those starter plugs.  She was carrying around two large and equally overweight striped tabby cats that she referred to as mountain cats. She told us they actually use these fat felines to track the monkeys, but there are so many of these chattering critters jumping around on the boulders that it makes you think that this is just an excuse for a lazy, judgmental girl to charge you to bring along her obese pets while she bosses you around. 

It was obvious that she knew nothing about tracking monkeys and had no sense of humor. We all piled into the Range Rover they designated for our trip.  As soon as we got into the territory where you could see the monkeys springing about, she stopped the vehicle and held up a cat to her chest as she gestured for us all to gather round while she started to give us another big lecture on the obvious.

Now, this is an example of when worlds collide…..When people who own more than one cat encounter people who have more than one gun. My daughter Sarah, who had a broken leg and didn’t want to stand around burning daylight, got impatient and decided to interrupt the presentation with an observation regarding what we were all about. 

“Dude, we know how to shoot monkeys and we can see them from here”

Rainbow cut loose with an exasperated exhale that sounded like truck brakes and told Sarah that she was being disrespectful. Tommy, one of my five-year olds, sensing the mood of the moment, came to his sister’s aid.  He raised the barrel of his tranquilizer gun and darted Rainbow in the backside.  My other kids instantly reacted to this breach of protocol by doing the same thing and everyone except Wendy dumped a medicated harpoon into our docent in a two second burst.  She staggered around and tried to use her cell phone, but it was obvious that she was going down. She spun around in slow motion and augured into the dirt as the cat instinctively cleared the drop zone and stood there like it was waiting for a pizza.  I darted that kitty to complete that phase of the operation.

We laid Rainbow in the shade and figured we had about 40 minutes to get the job done before she woke up, or it got dark.  The kids fanned out with their pellet guns and quickly brought down eight monkeys.  Five of them were pine monkeys, including a trophy male, while the other three were slightly smaller boulder monkeys.  It is pretty hard to tell them apart without shaving them.

We levered Rainbow onto the tailgate and drove her back to the pack station, where we left her just starting to mumble as she was regaining consciousness.  We wanted to get out of there before she regained her faculties. The amnesiac value of the medication would be lost if she saw us once she woke up.

We hastily field-dressed the monkeys and wrapped them in a fresh cat pelt before we peeled out of there, as our Expedition tossed gravel back at the kiosk in the dirt lot at the station.

     

We barbequed the monkeys on Sunday afternoon, while we watched a slide show of the fish we had released over cocktails with some of our neighbors.  Personally, I prefer the pine monkeys to the boulder monkeys, but I think that is because they eat mostly pine nuts that give their flesh a sort of nutty taste and more buttery texture.  If they start stocking them from monkey hatcheries, I am sure that they will all start tasting the same.  This is probably an academic observation, because I think that in these modern times, this whole monkey-hunting tradition is something that is probably on the way out.  

We are getting ours while we still can, because, after all…

These are the days.

CATALINA GETAWAY – 358 SUMNER We found this place through Catalina Vacation Rentals
My wife and I and our five children really enjoyed this place, which is warm and charming and just right for our family. The folks at Catalina Vacation rentals took my wife and my four youngest kids, who arrived ahead of me on the Catalina Express out of Newport, up to the place a couple of hours before check-in time to get settled in as soon as they arrived. This was much appreciated. I was driving our little boat across the channel and made contact with my family on the cell phone. They were quite stoked with how the place was set up and the fact that they were driven up there to occupy it right off the bat
We had a little trouble figuring out the Big TV and were not able to get cable reception on that screen (the little TV in the master had cable we accessed), but we brought plenty of DVD's for the kids to watch. The kitchen is very nice, although we ate at restaurants for virtually every meal. There was plenty of sleeping comfort with three bedrooms and a fold out couch. The living room area had plenty of seating to watch movies on the cool flat screen and I had to mush the kids away from it to hit the town a few times.
The location is not especially quiet, as it is on a corner below where country club drive spills out, so there is a good bit of street noise.
Having two bathrooms is very nice, as are the patio features on both the front and side of this home. I enjoyed sitting out there and watching the world go by. It was a very positive experience for me and our teenaged kids, who are used to sleeping like rabbits aboard our trailer boat in Avalon. It was the first time at the island in many years for my wife and the first time ever for our twin five-year old boys.
The master bedroom has a soft and rattle- prone bed which may prove to be a future deal-breaker for my wife, but that was the only negative aspect of what was a very fun time.
RESTAURANTS –
We mostly ate out while we were there.
Breakfast is available at many locations.
The first day (Tuesday) my wife and kids immediately headed over to Sally’s Waffles, where they scarfed down waffles. We frequently hit Sally’s when we camp on the boat. My wife went to school in Long beach with Sally’s daughter Lori, who owns the shop right around the corner from Sally’s.
We had dinner at Antonio’s, which is my kids favorite spot. The stuff on the wall is great to look at, you get to throw peanut shells on the floor and the atmosphere is warm and relaxing. Our favorite thing on the menu is Mama’s Day Old Spaghetti, which is hard to pass up in favor of the many other delicious items offered. The patio dining are has great views of the harbor.
Despite being stuffed, we still managed to go next door to top off the tanks with waffle cones from Big Olaf’s ice cream, which is a little slice of heaven.
Day two breakfast was at Original Joes, which shares a kitchen with Sally’s and is part of the same building.. The menu is a bit more varied and you can get pancakes. The service is quick and everyone is friendly, which is generally true of virtually every place at Avalon.
After breakfast, all seven of us headed west in flat calm weather on our little boat, crossing through thousands of dolphins moving to the east. We drove up to a
Arrow point and checked out many of the beautiful coves on the way, including the Isthmus, where there is one of our favorite dining spots. We were still too stuffed to go in a pig out. The Isthmus is a great place to camp on your boat and a completely different experience from the much higher level of activity and commerce that Avalon has to offer.
We trolled up a few bonito for the kids to catch and release and made it back to Avalon while it was still warm and sunny.
Dinner on day two was at El Galleon, which is a bit more upscale and very popular. The calamari was better than at Antonio’s. We all love the scallop chowder and several of us ordered it. It was not as good on this particular occasion as we remembered it from the past. We had the ribs, fettuccini, fish, and burgers. It was all good. It is also a fun place to hang out for after dinner drinks and adult fun, but we were on a different mission with five kids. The service was great.
Day three - My son and I caught an early breakfast at Original Jacks (which is part of the same program as Jacks in Bishop off 395 – which is a must stop for our family on trips to Mammoth). Avalon’s Jacks is just as good. It is bright, well lit and very clean. The menu is the most extensive breakfast menu at Avalon, so there is something for everyone. There is plenty of seating. It is a block away from the water, so there is a little less foot traffic dining, but it is an outstanding place to fill up on a humongous breakfast before heading out for a day of fishing, which is what we were doing.
After going around the entire island fishing some of our favorite spots in perfect weather, my oldest son and I rowed in from our mooring to join the rest of the family for a repeat dinner at Antonio’s. Once again, we had excellent service, food and a couple of beers to marinate away the end of a gorgeous day at the island. The fishing was not very productive, but we caught a few in weather that was as good as it gets.
Our last day brought breakfast for all seven of us at Original Jacks again. This became the top vote getter for breakfast as far as my family was concerned. That is due in part, because of their connection with the place in Bishop and also because it is just a great place to start the day and there is absolutely something for everybody on this menu.
One of the five year-olds, had managed to give himself the runs by eating sour grass from somebody’s planter, so my oldest son and I took him with us early to Dana Point on our boat on Friday morning. The ride was rough in increasing gray skies and a cross swell, but we made the run in 90 minutes with a lot of wheel and throttle action and The isinglass to shield us from the spray that otherwise would have slowed our return.
My wife and the rest of the kids had lunch at Mi Casita, and gave it great reviews. They porked down some ice cream cones at Lloyds candy shop before heading back home on the Catalina Express. We had the three best days of weather while we were at the island, as things grayed up and closed off by Friday afternoon.
The island was as green as it ever gets. Although the channel can get a little grumpy and the fish are not always ready to bite this time of year, if you can catch a good window of weather spring break is a fabulous time to hit the island, which seems like a much more distant getaway while your are there. I can’t wait to get back.

fall 2009 hunting reports

Hunting Report for fall, 2009

First of all, allow me to wish you a Happy New Year as we start another decade. So far, so good. The bird hunting season will last a while longer. That is for the best, since local fishing has mostly been rather lame.

November 18 – Bob and I joined Mike and his son Patrick for some fine upland game hunting at the Hunter’s Creek Club north of Detroit, Michigan. In a case of Déjà vu, we experienced a repeat of our damp weather of last year, as we sauntered and shot with the same guide (Jamie) and his now nine year old Brittany named Hoss.
We got a bit of a late start, which we compounded by eating primate chili in the clubhouse and then going out to shoot a few rounds of practice at the trap range. We had burned most of our daylight when we got out to our fields to begin our armed march. We let a few leak out, but mostly knocked down everything that flushed. Hoss, as always, found every bird that went down, no matter how heavy the cover. We took some time to find all of our shot birds, which meant that we left a few unmolested, as a subtle gray-light sunset chased us on our purposeful walk.
The four of us shot more than twenty birds – most of them were rooster pheasants, but there were some chukar in our program as well. The most interesting bird we encountered, and which I had never seen before, were what Jamie referred to as black pheasants. The belly and neck were navy blue, almost black, giving way to emerald highlights near the wings and the usual camouflage pattern on the back and wing tops. The head and collar pattern were traditional white-banded red. There is one in the picture, but the features are not on display.

We shot until it was too dark to safely shoot, even though it is kind of fun to get the 12 gauges to barf up some sparky flame in the dim light. Patrick shot very well with a pump 20 gauge and was good company. This was not his first time out. We had to leave in kind of a hurry because someone said that the owners of the property next door thought I looked a lot like the guy who shot their trespassing monkeys last year.
Afterwards, Bob and I met up with Mike and his wife Kara for some great food and wine before we headed back to the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham and our early flight back to California.

December 19 – I went on a hunt for what proved to be very elusive quail below Mount Palomar in San Diego County. I went with Robert, his Brittany Sasha, and Robert’s friend Kurt. They both met my dog Victor and I in San Juan before carpooling the rest of the way to San Felipe - not the Mexican San Felipe, but the one near Lake Henshaw, which is not much more than a mud hole now. We spent some time hiking at dawn through some rough terrain that featured virtually every species of closely packed cactus the southwest has to offer. I plucked many spines out of my dog and myself. I had just had eye surgery a week earlier and was anxious to test out my ability to acquire moving targets. This hunt proved to be more of what I refer to as hiking with a gun. I did manage to squeeze off one largely symbolic shot at a quail that flushed too far out and flew directly into the rising sun. The rest of the covey was unshootable, as it flushed at a greater distance and with a crueler angle of departure. We saw a few more small coveys, but they were mostly out of range and flying quickly through flora that left my jeans in shreds.
We moved up the mountain toward Palomar to hunt in the coolness of altitude above 5,000 feet. At the dirt lot at the base of the mountain trail head, we noticed a dusty Jeep Cherokee with Korean martial arts stickers on it. We looked inside and observed several ice chests, disposable surgical clothes and gloves. After we worked our way further up the trail, the forest thickened up and we encountered some Asian guy and his two teenage daughters, who appeared to be around 14 and 15 years old. They were noticeably taller than he was. The father was dressed in designer sweats. He approached us rapidly from where a wheelbarrow was stashed near some tangled bushes. He kept the wheelbarrow behind him as he closed the distance between us. He spoke to us, with a friendly tone, in pidgeon English, which he might have been faking. He introduced his daughters proudly as we greeted one another. They just nodded without speaking and smiled in a knowing manner. They didn’t really seem shy, but rather appeared… interrupted. The girls were dressed in silk floral pattern pajamas and tennis shoes. They each had Remington 1100 youth-model shotguns with military slings, Hello Kitty knapsacks that matched their pajamas, and bandoliers filled with shotgun shells like those worn by cinematic Mexican banditos. The shells in the bandoliers ranged from #6 birdshot all the way to 00 buckshot and slugs. They were very polite, but would not tell us what they were hunting. All three of them lit up Lucky Strike no-filters with metal Zippo flop-top lighters as we tried to chat them up. The girls watched the smoke come out of their mouths as they blew plumes up into the splintered sunlight of the forest. The smaller one powered a smoke ring through a little smoke cloud that had stalled above her and then squinted as it dissipated. They seemed to be waiting for us to move on, so we leashed up our dogs and got the hell out of there.
We had an excellent lunch at the Lake Henshaw “Biker Friendly” café where they jar their own most excellent spicy pickles. We polished off the day with a few beers at the Swallows in San Juan.

December 31- Isaac, Victor and I headed out to Rahaagues pheasant club in Norco at 5:30 am. We had to wait a while for a thick ground fog to lift before we let Victor out for a sniff while we walked behind him with our cool Italian shotguns. It did not take long before Victor went onto a point that would have put him on the cover of Field and Stream. We dropped a chukar that didn’t flush from Victor’s frozen pose until we were assembled like a firing squad. Victor proceeded to quarter his way across the field like a champion and would suddenly lock onto beautiful points that he held without ever breaking. Isaac got several gorgeous birds with the Berretta Auto 302 he has sort of staked out, now that he has grown out of the youth sized Remington 1100 that is the starter gun for the Schmitt kids. I spanked a few with my new Benelli Super Sport. I just had to buy that one because there was no denying Isaac horning in on my Berretta, as he has grown like a weed this year. We flushed a total of 10 birds – six pheasant and 4 chukar. Two of the chukars were driven off by gunfire to fight another day, but all of the pheasant and two of the four chukar were able to make it to dinner. One of the nice things about Rahaague’s club is that they have a bird plucker, so if you don’t shoot the birds that hard, they clean them up with the skin on so that they look better than any whole chicken in the butcher shop. I generally prefer them skin on, but if I clean them myself, I am always too lazy to refrain from skinning, instead of plucking them.
We brined all 8 birds in my homemade marinade and smoked the five most pristine ones on New Years Day. We gave one pheasant away to a worthy person and put the last two in the crock pot. I made a painstaking reduction sauce, some wild rice casserole, and a salad. We served it all up for New Year’s dinner with our friends. I made a soup with the carcasses the next day and will be eating pheasant soup all week.
Wendy Jo has been trying to get me to go for a more vegetarian diet to get healthy this year. In her honor, as well as for the New Year, I had decided to eat only meat that I had personally killed until I lost the weight I had gained exercising my rights as a consumer during the Holidays. Although I froze some of the soup as a reserve against future deprivation, this resolution is harder than I thought it would be. I have come to realize that I require a serving of meat with almost every meal, even dessert. I suppose that is because humans are omnivorous and meat is in each of the five major food groups.
Tonight I got home late from the golf course. I had to spend almost three hours in a Ghillie suit near the water hazard on hole seven, waiting for the course marshal to make sure everyone was off the links at dusk. I am glad that we have this recreational resource in our community. It was cold and dark before I was able to leave with a pair of drake mallards I bagged with a pellet gun, which I have equipped with a home-made silencer. It consists of a duct-taped Red Bull can filled with tampons packed in a tight circle around a plastic straw. Thank God for the Boy Scout manual.
I was fortunate to get two ducks this evening, because I have little desire to go back out there for a the next few nights, especially with the rain we have in the forecast. I don’t want to seem paranoid, but I am a little afraid of getting caught. I think that this heightened sense of vigilance will assist me in my portion control and my appreciation for the opportunities I have been blessed with as an American. Plus, I think suburban poached duck just tastes better – you know, like how the same song just sounds better on a guitar you stole yourself, instead of one that your mom bought for you at a music store where they sell clarinets and trombones.

These are the days.

Equestria

We live in the town of San Juan Capistrano, which prides itself as having the richest equestrian tradition and resources of any suburban environment.  For those of us who do not own horses, there are still opportunities to get in on this program.

My wife, Wanda Jean and I decided to go shopping last night at the Super Market.  We got some shopping ideas from an internet chat room that caught our attention.  It was all about multi-tasking, which is one of my favorite euphemisms for doing a really distracted and crappy job on a variety of endeavors during the course of any given day.

This chat room was all about spicing up your marriage without all of the financial or logistical obstacles associated with a vacation at Sandals, or getting involved in swing parties outside your local community.

Many members of this chat room had some great ideas for adding some excitement and increasing the efficiency of the suburban family engine.

We like to dress up and go out, but with five kids, it is hard to make that happen very often.  Halloween is pretty much taken up by our children’s costume and candy cravings, along with our need to take the little ones around.
 
 I came home late from work last night, as usual.  The kitchen was full of dirty dishes and the refrigerator was virtually barren.  My wife shook me out a martini and suggested that we get the kids in bed, clean up the dishes and then make a special trip to the Super Market and try to have some late-night fun when the store would be mostly deserted.

Around midnight, we were ready to go.  My wife came down with a couple of costumes and trench coats.  She handed me a cowboy outfit and a superman spandex shirt.  “Hey, we are going to a Super Market, so dress the part. Once we get our costumes on, the only rule is no talking.”

Wanda-Jean went into the bathroom to change while I put on the Super-Cowboy rig.  She emerged from the bathroom, dressed in black equestrian boots equipped with taps.  She had matching black leather pants, a steel studded corset and forearm-covering leather gloves.  This program was topped off with a head piece that featured a Spartan style horsehair plume that looked like a jet black Mohawk. This stupendous lid was under slung with a stainless steel and black leather horse-bit halter attached to a set of reins.
It was breathtaking.  I said nothing and we got into the car.

When we got inside the store, she took off the coat and harnessed some straps to the front of the shopping cart and a set of rings attached to the back of her corset.  She gestured for me to take off my coat and get behind the cart.  She strapped on the head piece and looked over her shoulder at me as she passed back the reins.

I started walking behind the cart.  The store was virtually deserted.  We cruised each aisle, as our cart filled with family life essentials, to the staccato rhythm of her boot taps on the freshly polished floor.
We grabbed a six pack of those Red Bull-and-vodka beverages and started chugging them as the pace quickened.

A few employees restocking the shelves paused to check us out, but nobody interfered.  I started turning Wanda-Jean’s head harder with the reins as she rounded the corners with increasing energy and footwear clatter.

She started biting down on the bit and tossing her head at a diagonal as she grabbed handfuls of canned goods and tossed them behind her into the cart that was now careening ever more wildly, like in that climactic scene from Ben-Hur.  I was fully off the ground and riding Iditarod-style as we hit the straight away that led to the produce section.

Suddenly, another cart emerged from the furthest aisle and turned toward us.  It was our neighbors, Barry and Veronica Hunter-Jumper.

Veronica was dressed in a sort of slave-girl I-dream-of-Jeanie get up and Barry was dressed as a Sultan, except he was also wearing a superman shirt like mine.

We passed each other at a high rate of speed and I reached out and grabbed a bag of beef jerky out of their cart as we narrowly avoided a head-on collision.  When we got to the other end, my wife wheeled rapidly and sent the cart sliding around to re-align behind her.  Little flecks of foam gathered on the bit at each corner of her mouth.  She pawed the linoleum with tap-clicking menace, tossing her shimmering plume up and down in exaggerated nods.  Then she reared up and launched toward our neighbors, who appeared to be coming back at us with the same level of urgent ferocity.

We sideswiped again.  This time I was able to seize a piping-hot rotisserie chicken in a bag, but Barry got a sleeve of English muffins and the family pack of boneless chicken thighs.  We find the thighs have more flavor than the breasts, but to each his own.  It seemed a fair trade at that point.

My wife spun us to the right and made for the self-serve checkout counter that the store had recently installed.  Veronica and Barry pulled up to the adjacent counter as both couples raced, without saying a word, to swipe credit cards and bag up the booty.

We finished almost at the same time and blew out through the automatic doors.  The girls looked at each other and simultaneously accelerated toward the driveway, leaving our respective SUV’s sitting in the isolated darkness of the parking lot.

They galloped all the way to our houses, going neck and neck on the horse trail that parallels all roads in San Juan.  Both girls were glistening as we diverted back to the street for the final half block leading up to our homes.  As we pulled even with our houses, at 2:20 am, Barry and I activated our respective automatic garage door openers and churned up the driveways into the empty vehicle bays, as the doors clanked shut behind us.

Once inside, Wanda yanked the quick release straps on her corset to gain freedom from the cart.  It made a sound like a pair of revolvers being cocked.  We left the stolen cart full of groceries to cool off in the garage as I chased her upstairs.

Barry and I walked back to the Super Market this morning to get our cars and go to work.  Wanda-Jean and Veronica put away the groceries and got the kids to school.

This is what it is like to live in an equestrian community.

These are the days.

Finger Lickin' Good Fish Report 5/31/2008

Finger Lickin’ Fishing Report for May 31, 2008

You will find that this fishing report has very little information pertaining to the actual catching of fish. Rather, this report should serve as a reminder of how things can sometimes go awry when you are on the verge of having a good time.

Many of you have probably had occasion to stick your hand into the garbage disposal in an attempt to extract something that is causing a clog or making a funny noise. Generally, while one's hand is close to the point of operation, there is a natural tendency to keep a keen eye on the switch that activates the blades of the disposal. This is true even when no one else is in the room, so that somehow you are sufficiently paranoid to guard against the possibility that someone may burst into the kitchen and throw the switch while your hand is in that vulnerable place.

On May 31, I awoke at 5 a.m. with the intention of doing good deeds in order to generate karma for a fishing trip I had planned with my buddy Larry aboard his 25 foot Parker later on that evening.

I spent about three hours on work related projects at my computer to get a practical head start on the day. After my family joined me downstairs for breakfast that morning I went upstairs to curry favor with my wife by coloring her hair.

She was so pleased with my efforts upon my completion of this task that she requested that I head downstairs, clear off all of the furniture and toys from the family room and shampoo the carpet, which had gone several years under relatively constant bombardment from our dog and five children.

This proved to be a much more grueling activity. I finished at 3 p.m., which gave me just enough time to shower up and load my bitchen fishing equipment into my car so as to keep my rendezvous with Larry at his boat slip in San Pedro by 5:30 p.m.

The piscatorial news from Catalina Island that week was laced with details of an epic white sea bass bite, mostly on the backside of the island. The bite had slacked off over the past couple of days, but the fish were still there.

Our plan was to get to the backside of the Island by 7:30 p.m. with live squid and fish in the area of the “Vees”, or the squid grounds where huge white sea bass in the 40 to 60 pound range had been caught. We figured to set up on the backside in an area likely to hold white sea bass and then fish the magic twilight bite on a tide that would start flowing downhill at 6 p.m. and bottom out in a minus tide by 3 a.m. We would then have a steeply rising tide to fish in the gray light of the morning until about 8:30 a.m. It was a good plan.

Among my usual arsenal of gear I had put together a kelp-cutter rig with a 9 foot Calstar jig stick; a Shimano Torsa 20 reel spooled with 80 pound spectra and a top shot of 40 pound fluorocarbon. The power of this particular rig was so undeniable that there was no way a fish would actually bite it.
.

Traditionally, when I go fishing with Larry, we feed almost exclusively on original recipe Kentucky fried chicken, along with a variety of chips. This trip was to be no exception, although I was intrigued by the recent addition of chipotle flavored extra crispy chicken. This new flavor is currently the subject of KFC commercials featuring attractive spokes-models in fake spontaneous banter-‘round-the-bucket .

I stopped at the Rusty Hook on Gaffe Street to pick up a bucket of shark chum, which I have found to be extremely effective in drawing game fish of all types while on the anchor or on the drift.

When I hit the Kentucky Fried Chicken stand further down the road I once again had to confront the traditional dilemma of whether to order enough chicken, or be smart and order way too much. I knew I had to order chicken-only. We have learned that it is pointless to try and eat potato salad, coleslaw or mashed potatoes when it is much more manly to simply reach into a bottomless bucket of meat on a bone.

This decision was further compounded by the availability of the new chipotle flavor. KFC had a special on the 14 piece bucket, which I initially split between original recipe and the new flavor. Once I got to the window, I began envisioning scenarios where I might end up a bone or two short of a gluttonous stupor.

“What if neither of us liked chipotle?” I tried to regroup while the girl at the window patiently waited.

“Better give me two 14 piece buckets”. That would give us a completely ridiculous amount of chicken. I wouldn't have to worry about Larry invading my portion.

Larry was waiting for me when I arrived and we made it to the San Pedro live bait barge right on schedule. We picked up a generous supply of lively squid from the friendly baitmasters. After we cleaned the squid ink off the deck, Larry pointed the nose of the boat for the island and into a stumpy cross-swell with whitecaps and 15 knot winds.

Conditions in the channel kept our speed under 18 knots as we stayed warm and dry in the wheelhouse while we punched through the spray. The weather on the backside of the Island was no better, as we headed straight into the setting sun and began to look for good signs on the meter after we passed Church Rock.

There were few boats on the backside of the Island, although we did see some anchored light boats west of Silver Canyon. As we got to Silver Canyon we began getting excellent meter marks between 10 and 12 fathoms and then went over the top of a mass of squid in 67 feet of water.
It looked like a great spot and we decided to lower the hook then and there. I slid up the rail on the port side of the house to put down the anchor. Larry told me to pull the pin locking the chain at the bow pulpit. I pulled the pin and grabbed the chain to pull it free. I was feeling rapturous about how in five minutes I would be sitting down, with a line out, taking down fistfuls of chicken like a wood chipper.

Just as I grabbed the chain, I heard a whirring screech. I felt my hand lock down into the point where the chain meets the sprocket. Just as quickly, it spat my hand back out again.

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

My back was to Larry as I brought my hand up to take a look. I paused to take in the view for a couple of seconds. I might have said “Ouch" or something to that effect. Two pulsing thoughts immediately engulfed my mind.

Number one: This was not my hand.
Number two: We are not going to get to fish this spot.

I turned around to show Larry the bad news. It looked like the end of a hot dog when you break it off, with the end-piece hanging there by the skin and the two open ends side-by-side, with gleaming bones in the center of each piece.

“We have to go in.”

A look of extreme concern shot across Larry's face as he looked through the glass. I cradled my finger and pressed against the house as I slid back to the cockpit. Larry was already coming out of the cabin door with a first aid kit.

He started to open up the kit and we both looked at the finger with the same thought. There was no taping this thing back together.

Larry handed me a towel. “Wrap it up and hold it together while I get us to Avalon. I sat down in the passenger seat as we spun back toward the east end. Larry hammered the throttles and we commenced some hard bouncing. I began feeling shocky and told Larry. He throttled back and asked me if I wanted some water. That seemed like a good idea and he got one for me. After a few quick swallows my head began to clear and the feeling passed.

Larry got on channel 16 and contacted the Coast Guard. Some of the transmissions were surprisingly garbled and we began an Abbot and Costello-like attempt to exchange data. We apparently got the point across because we were shifted to channel 22, where we made contact with Baywatch. We got into the flat water near the quarry as the Baywatch skipper advised us he was moving into the front of the Avalon channel. I kept thinking about how great that spot had seemed and conjuring up some transcendent mechanism by which we could be back there fishing, instead of what we were doing.
Larry kept asking me how I was doing and I kept assuring him that I was doing fine. I felt as though I had a heightened sense of awareness and genuinely felt that I was doing fine under the circumstances.

The Baywatch skipper pulled abreast of us and instructed us to follow him in. We were greeted by the sight of an ambulance just up the ramp from the dock and what appeared to be an entire platoon of paramedics. They are generally a cheerful and encouraging group of guys. They seemed happy to see us and made a distraction of asking about fishing conditions while they examined my situation and evaluated my stability. They asked how it happened and we told them. They assured us that people have winch accidents like this all the time at the island and we’d get fixed up in a jiffy with a quick helicopter ride to an operating room on the mainland. We had a few laughs as a squad of them broke off from the rest of the group to escort us to the ambulance.

The officer from the Harbormaster's office kindly said to Larry “Don't worry about your boat. We will take care of it. You go with your buddy to the hospital.” It seemed like we were in good hands and I was more optimistic than scared.

I chatted it up with a few of the paramedics in the van. They took turns looking at it and asking me what I could feel as they were apparently prodding the pieces around. I was still feeling okay and decided not to ruin the mood by looking at it anymore. At that point I couldn't feel much of anything. They took my blood pressure and it was pretty normal.

During the short ride to Avalon hospital, they kept me entertained with more talk about how white sea bass were biting all over the island. We said our goodbyes as we entered what appeared to be a virtually deserted medical facility.

We were met by a long-haired woman who was apparently the on-duty nurse. She was dressed in civilian clothes. She unwrapped my finger as I watched her face. She apparently did not like what she saw and advised us that she would call the doctor. She came back to take my blood pressure. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, she began carping about my shirt interfering with her mission. She seized a pair of shears and cut off my left sleeve to get an update. It actually dropped a few points to 117 over 77. We went back through the story of how it happened. I answered questions about what I could and could not feel as she pecked at the piece that looked like a jettisoned space capsule. I provided the all-important insurance card to keep the party favors flowing.

I felt that I was fielding all of her questions fairly well, until I was asked to remember the date of my last tetanus shot. The fact that I could not remember, she said, called out for me to receive one. She told me she would give it to me in the arm with the cut-off sleeve, which seemed to make her tailoring efforts a natural fit for the occasion. She also told me that it was going to hurt, which struck me as quite funny at the moment of her deadpan delivery.

During this phase of the process, our first attending physician entered the fray.
She was a tall woman, dressed in a white doctor coat to mark the occasion.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Leary.”

A million jokes shot through my brain like a warp-speed flashback.

“Any relation?”

“None. We both knew she had been part of this routine before and let it drop.

She asked me the same set of questions that the paramedics and the nurses did, adding a few of her own at the end, like in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

While we were chatting, she took a look at the finger as I watched that familiar expression invade her face.

“I am going to get Dr. Ulibarry over here right away. It looks to me like we are going to copter you over to a hospital where they can get that finger re-attached. How are you tolerating the pain? Would you like some morphine?”

The second question obviated the need for me to seriously evaluate the first.

“Why yes, I would love some. Thank you for offering.”

Dr. Leary instructed the nurse to hook me up to an IV.

My situation and outlook had just taken a huge turn for the better. I was minutes away from a warm injection of a big-boy narcotic, accompanied by a helicopter ride with some fun paramedic/pilot guys. They could crack some jokes and tell me distracting stories of ‘Nam, while we thumped over the nighttime wave tops toward a crack team of waiting surgeons. I was stoked.

“Do you have a preference as to hospitals?”

This was just getting better. I pictured an approach to Hoag Hospital over the Saturday night lighting of Newport Beach, followed by the descent to the helipad where the waiting gurney would be framed by the flapping white coats of the upward-gazing attendants. I had never landed on a helipad…at night…. on morphine.

“I like Hoag.”

I asked for some water. I was told that I was no doubt going to be in surgery shortly and might severely compromise my situation by aspirating and getting pneumonia.
The long-haired nurse prepped my left arm, from which the pesky sleeve had previously been evicted. She warned me about the sharp sensation I was about to experience, which seemed trivial compared to having a finger crunched off by an anchor chain.

She found a vein and plunged forward. I felt the pinch and watched her frown as the site blew out. She found another spot and stabbed again. Same result. She allowed herself to criticize the hydration of my thirsty veins. I offered to do a few curls to get a better target pumped up. She continued her unsuccessful harpooning efforts as my arm became discolored.

Dr. Leary came back into the room and I asked if we could just get by without the IV. She observed the nurse’s furious needlework and ordered a cease-fire.

“You can just give it to him IM.”

The nurse seemed happy to desist and fix a new bayonet. “This may hurt,” she
said, as she stuck the first of the two shots into my perfectly sleeveless arm. All I knew was that one of those shots was morphine, and I wanted to be on it when they put me into that chopper and slapped the plexi-glass for us to zoom to Nirvana. “Bring it on” was what I was thinking, as she stuck me again and rubbed the injection site.

At some point, the chief Avalon doctor arrived – a cheerful, short woman of
Spanish-Basque extraction. She was introduced to me as Dr. Ulibarry.

She extracted the same information about how the accident occurred; how old I was; how much I weighed, etc. We also talked, as we had done with the others, about how she came to work on this happy island. She unwrapped my hand and had a look. There was not much of a give-away on her countenance as she asked me what I could feel. She seemed to be trying to manipulate it and fit it back together at various angles, while asking what I was feeling, which was mostly nothing. I was not really pulling back or doing much wincing during the process. She let me know that the reattachment was something that would have to be done by others, after my exciting ride in the copter.

The doctors began discussing hospital options with Larry and I while they began to make calls to see what would be best. Larry suggested Long Beach Memorial, among the several fine facilities that were mentioned. The doctors advised us that they were trying to get a hospital with a hand-surgeon either on duty, or on call, since I apparently needed some form of a “re-plantation” team to ideally address my situation.

Larry was making calls on his cell phone, while I heard the doctors talking with various hospital representatives who were apparently dishing them off to others who required the doctors to start over in their descriptions of the situation.

One of our doctors came out to give me an update and ask how the morphine was doing. I told her that I really hadn’t noticed much of anything and she told me that IM administered meds often had a delayed effect. She advised of really good news: Long Beach Memorial had a crack hand surgeon on the floor at that very moment; they had a helipad; and our doctors were just awaiting confirmation that Long Beach would accept the transfer from the emergency room at Avalon.

The situation seemed totally under control, so I gave my wife a call to let her know what had happened and what seemed likely at that point. She was less optimistic than I was. She said she would call one of our doctor friends in Orange County to see what he could do to help. Larry was also on the phone, trying to secure a back-up plan.
Everybody seemed a bit uptight. I was still waiting for that morphine rush that I figured would be accompanied by the sound of jazz music.

I started thinking about my finger to the tune of the white noise of the doctors and Larry calling for help. The long-haired nurse came in to tell me that I would need to get another shot – an antibiotic. This time she was going to give it to me in the hip, so the utility of her sleeve alteration was not in play.

I began thinking about how I used that finger and how it would be without that end part of it. I thought maybe I could now be one of those guys in the old safety movies that you had to watch in metal shop and wood shop. I could be the middle-aged guy with
the missing finger - going into a black and white flashback, as I recounted to some pimple-faced first-day-on-the-job kid how I sawed off a body part while I was inattentively operating a table saw; drill-press; blowtorch; or drafting compass.

I became aware that Dr. Ulibarry seemed to be arguing my case for care to whomever she was speaking on the phone.

She emerged from around the corner with a portable phone, letting me know she had a doctor from Long Beach Memorial on the phone as she handed it to me. I put it to my left ear and heard:

“Hi. This is Dr. Macer. I am the hand surgeon.”

{Let us pause here. If this specialist had said “Hi. This is George Macer. I am a rodeo clown,” I could have avoided a lot of hassle.}

“Great to meet you, Dr. Macer. You are exactly what I need right now.”

He asked me some questions about what had happened, how much sensation I had, and whether I had “vascularization,” at which point I looked to Dr. Ulibarry and regurgitated her affirmative response.

He suggested to me that I might want to consider just staying at the island over night and just coming over to the hospital in the morning. This caught me a bit off guard, since I was under the distinct impression that I needed immediate medical care. The two doctors who were there had already advised me the treatment I needed was beyond their capabilities, but within minutes of exactly the kind of care he was in perfect position to provide. I expressed this to him in as humble, but optimistic fashion as I could, since I could tell from the expression on Dr. Ulibarry’s face that she had already made an effort to get me transferred from her care to his. I was trying to make it happen too.

He listened for a bit and then stated that it was his view that either I was going to lose the finger or I wasn’t.

I thought I heard crickets chirping. My mind spun as I tried to gain illuminating traction from this conclusion.

He asked me what the doctors had done so far as I kept looking at Dr. Ulibarry cheering me on with her expressions. He seemed to think that they had not done enough to try to “re-plant” or somehow realign the pieces.

I repeated Dr. Ulibarry’s assertion that she had tried and he responded by asking if I had been anesthetized, since that was the only way she could really give it the old college try. I advised him of her response that she had done her best and there was no pain resistance to her efforts to tug it about.

I was thinking about what other options might be available and the logistics of checking into a hotel at 9 p.m. I could kill some time before coming ashore with Larry the next morning after the good doctor was off duty and it could be someone else’s non-emergency. I could ask the concierge for one of those room-amenity sewing kits that the better hotels give out.
Dr. Macer then told me that even if I lost it, it was “just the fleshy tip, anyway.”
That pissed me off a bit and I told him that, respectfully, I had personally seen broken bones in each piece, as well as speaking with two other doctors who had tried to treat it and told me I needed to get it put back on sooner, rather than later.

“I am sorry I can’t do more for you” was the next thing I heard as he awkwardly attempted to end the conversation and get back to the important business of hand surgery.
I was sorry too, as I tried to regroup from this shirking kiss-off and wondered just what good he thought he had done up to the point that he let me know he could do no more.

I handed the phone back as Larry blew a gasket over what he had just heard.
He got back on the phone to see what he could do to pull some strings at Long Beach Memorial or somewhere else. Our doctors got on the phone and my doctor friend on the mainland called me to check in. I told him what had just happened and he told me that I was probably better off somewhere else anyway. He asked me some questions about my situation so he could see what he could do. He advised Orange County would have a hand surgeon on call and could take a helicopter delivery at Western Med or UCI, depending on which facility had the team on call that night. He took down the number for Avalon ER, and told me that a Dr. Schultz would be calling. He told me that this should not be a problem and to hang in there.

Wendy called and I filled her in while I was standing with Larry, who was growing increasingly concerned with the passage of time. He suggested that maybe we should just take our chances and get back into the boat for a nighttime crossing to an emergency room where they could not turn us away. Wendy thought this idea seemed too desperate when we were working on so many modern medical options. She told us not to act like cowboys and she sounded right. Besides, I still wanted that copter ride.

The long–haired nurse came in to tell me it was time for my butt shot, which I was apparently to receive while standing up and leaning toward the sink. She experienced a huge amount of difficulty loosening my belt as she yanked it east and west at the buckle. She was even more loudly critical of my wardrobe malfunction in this area than she had been of the long sleeve or the crappy veins that had thwarted her prior efforts at administering efficient care.

When she got done with the shot, Larry broke it up and helped refasten my pants to preserve her good mood.

We continued our phone efforts. Our doctors told us that they needed to talk with a doctor who would agree to accept responsibility for treatment before a transfer could take place. We were trying to locate the right guys at Cedars; UCLA advised that their ER was “closed”; Dr. Schultz advised that he was still trying to contact the OC hand surgeon, etc.

We waited hopefully for the return calls, but I was beginning to feel less cheerful about the whole scene.

I think it was sometime after 10 pm –more than 2 ½ hours since the event, when Dr. Ulibarry came in to tell us that Dr. Schultz had contacted the on-call hand surgeon, who might have had the same name as Kaiser Sose’s intermediary in “The Usual Suspects”.

As we turned our eyes toward her for the plan, she announced:

“Dr. Kobyashi declined.”

“DECLINED? What do you mean, he declined? This wasn’t an invitation to my nephew’s bar mitzvah. Don’t these guys have to take a Hypocritic Oath, or something along those lines?

Dr. Ulibarry took us aside and advised that she wanted to do what was best. She said that we were losing too much time and that what she thought were our best medical options seemed to be off the table. She suggested that the best odds for getting the finger replanted now seemed to be getting ourselves to an emergency room in person. She said that she would make a call to Torrance Memorial and advise the ER doctor we were coming. She told me that she would give me another 2 mg shot of morphine and that I should just grit my teeth and get across the channel as fast as nighttime conditions in the channel would allow.

We cogitated on this while she made the call. I realized that it was not a life-threatening injury, but if I was just going to feed my finger-tip to the dog, I might as well have stayed on that spot and tried to get a white sea bass.
The doctor came back with the name of the doctor at Torrance we were supposed to see and told us she would call a cab for the short ride back to the waterfront.

I was on the phone to Wendy with the new plan when there was a knock on the hospital door, which Larry answered. It was the cab – The town of Avalon is about the size of a miniature golf course, so he was there instantly.

“Where are you going?”

Larry answered him. “We need to get down to the Marina, where my boat is moored.”
The cabbie responded “What marina? Marina Del Rey?” I guess he thought that it was the right moment for that grade of comedy.

“ My friend’s finger is cut off and we need to get down to where the boats are moored in Avalon so we can get to a hospital on the mainland.”

I was still on the phone to Wendy and walking toward the cab as Dr Ulibarry came toward me with the syringe and said, “Wait for your shot.”

The cabbie said, “I’m not waiting for that. Get yourself another cab.”

I said it would only take a minute, maybe less, as I thought of all the big fares this punk was passing up while the morphine flowed. Larry asked him to stay and turn his meter on while he waited, so the driver agreed to stay for the additional time it took him to work in a couple of butt scratches while I shot up. “No tip for that cocker spaniel” was similar to what I said to Larry as the needle came out and I covered the ten feet to the cab. I think Wendy heard me and the driver probably did, too, but I was getting grumpy.

We made the left turn and traveled the several hundred yards of road without incident. The driver stopped. “That will be fourteen fifty,” he said to us as we got out the other side. Larry went around to the driver’s side and handed him a twenty.
“How much do you want back?” he inquired, annoyingly.

“Five dollars and fifty cents.”

I then realized how late it was as we walked past people spilling out of bars and drunken couples making out on benches. We walked out to the green pier to look for the boat. I stayed at the ramp while Larry got one of the same officers who were there to greet us at 7:30. He seemed astonished that we were still there, and at our current predicament. We joked that we did not have enough fuel to get us to a quality hospital in Mexico, so we were settling for Torrance. He took us over to where he had moored Larry’s boat, helped me aboard, and wished us good luck on our trip across the channel.

Larry pointed us toward San Pedro and hit the throttles for as much speed as the seas would permit.

I am not a big fan of nighttime ocean travel, especially if speed is important. You cannot see obstacles in the water, nor anticipate where the next bounce might come from.
Further out from the lee of the island, we started to get slapped around a bit. After we skipped sideways from a bump on the corner I mentioned to Larry that if we ended up in the water, I would probably draw sharks. He said he had just had the same thought and he brought it down a notch.

We made port in about an hour and twenty minutes and contacted Wendy, who was almost to the hospital with our friend Carol, who got dragged along because she happened to be with Wendy when she got the call. We tied up the boat and drove to the ER in Larry’s pickup truck.

I checked in at the desk, got some forms to keep me busy and took my place in the waiting room. There was a pair of amusing young drunks. One guy, who had no shirt or shoes, had clearly had the shit kicked out of him in a fight. He was demanding that the police be called, which I thought might prove to be a mixed blessing for him.

I was taken to x-ray, which resulted in at least one of my caretakers advising that it looked like my right-thumb had been broken pretty badly. I told him that I was more concerned about my severed finger, which he noticed right about the same time that I remembered that I had broken my right thumb in a fight when I was eighteen. I was once again told that I could not have water.

I then met the duty ER doctor, who was very positive and reassuring. He had called an orthopedist who he thought could get there by three a.m.

The cops who interviewed young-drunk-guy left laughing. Apparently, his more quietly-intoxicated ride home had passed out in the waiting room and could not be revived. The cops had to call the guy’s mom, with whom he lived, so she could come down to the ER at 3 am to take them both home after they sewed up her son’s face.

The orthopedist, Dr. Hunt, showed up and advised that he was a shoulder and knee guy. He said he could get my finger sewed back on well enough to keep it alive for a hand surgeon he knew well enough to personally call at 3 a.m. to more permanently re-attach later. Dr. Hunt then set up an appointment with a Dr. Dao in Westminster for Monday at 9 a.m.

Dr. Hunt, who seemed like a great guy, got the finger sewed on a little after 4 a.m., and I got my drink of water. Carol, who had driven Wendy to Torrance, had gone with Larry to bring back my car and had since gone home. Wendy was able to drive me directly home. We said our goodbyes to Larry, who stayed with us until the doctor was done with me. We arrived back at our house at 5:30 a.m., just as the gray light was about to give way to dawn, and 15 minutes before our twin three year-old boys came to wake us up and start Sunday morning.

On Monday, we met with Dr. Dao, who was very confident he could fix it up just fine. I spent the remainder of the day arguing with insurance representatives over whether surgery for the reattachment of a finger constituted an emergency under their interpretation of the policy. I just offered up to her that if it was her finger, she would more likely think it was an emergency.

I had the surgery Tuesday. They put in a couple of pins and some bone graft material from my wrist. Now I am stuck in a bulky dressing that will completely immobilize my right hand for six weeks, assuming that the glue sticks. I typed up this whole stupid story with my left hand, so thanks for reading it.

I think that the finger will stay on, so it will end up as more of an inconvenience than a tragedy. I guess it shows that sometimes you’d better be ready to saddle up and ride if you want to save non-essential body parts that others deem expendable.

I intend to resume my attack on creatures of the sea soon enough, but I hope that the tuna don’t show up until I am back in action.

These are the days,