Its Been Seven Years

     When I was fifteen I purchased my first car.  It was a 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon.  I took it home and started making it mine.  I changed the brakes, did some body work, and decided to repaint it "wind blue" to get rid of the less-than-appealing champagne/brown.  It became The Mystery Machine.

     She was not perfect, but she was mine.  

The summer after I graduated high school I had the opportunity to get a 1982 Vanagon Westfalia.  It was aircooled and came with all of the original camping equipment -- even the kitchen sink.  I sold the mystery machine and bought the Yellow Submarine.  

Photo Courtesy of William Shirey.

Both Vanagons have been alot of fun, alot of work, and most the people I interact with each day do not know a me without a VW.   I sold the Yellow Submarine on Monday.  May it fare well with its new owners.  What car will I drive next?  

LEAVE YOUR FAVORITE VANAGON MEMORIES IN COMMENTS!!!!!

Example:  Remember that time we broke down on the way to a K.I.S.S. concert? 

My Dad's First Cast of the Year

After the inadvertent catch earlier this week, I returned to the lake today for another go at fly fishing.  I caught a few thousand blue gills that were too small to keep.  Pretty Annoying.  I then caught an eleven inch crappie.  Look at how pretty it is:

     My dad got his pole out to try his hand.  I told him that they were biting on smaller stuff.  He had the standard rubber nightcrawler with three hooks.  He said he was just playing.

His first cast landed him this bass, which is just over 18 inches:

I asked him what he did to deserve the big fish.  He said that he pays the mortgage.  

Fair enough.   Good work, good start to the season.

First Fish on a Fly...A New Day is Dawned

The wonders of senior year are a stressful senior paper matched with a few general education classes that happened to be left until the last semester.  Those gen eds are ceramics, soccer, and fly fishing.  Fly fishing is the one I have been looking forward to the most.

Hemmingway:  "Anyone can be a fisherman in May."

Me:  "Yeah, but its March and too cold and they still bite for me."

After only two class meetings for fly fishing, coach let us take the school's  rods and reels how to practice casting.  I decided that I wanted to learn on our lake, so I purchased a leader and some flies.  The leader got tangled (ok, I tangled it) while I was tying it to the fly backing.  It took me over an hour to de-tangle, leaving 13 minutes for time on the water.  Typical enough.

I managed to push enough line out to where fish would be if it had been warmer than 40º.  The rhythm is funny, and the motion weird for someone who has been slinging heavy bass baits out from the time he could grasp a pole.  

"10, 2...10, 2"  After getting the fly caught on the grass behind me a few times, I managed to put the fly down in the water.  It was a less-than-delicate presentation, but it got out there.  Time was up.  I started reeling back the line that I had let out.  There was resistance.  I pulled up on the line and a small blue gill came to the surface.

It was not bigger than the length of my hand, but I didn't deserve it anyway.  

Leprechaun O'Bama

I wouldn't resist:

Hail Yes

Last summer I worked in Juarez, Mexico with YouthWorks!.  We had US and Canadian high school students come for a week at a time while we gave them places to serve by building homes and spending time with children.

Each night we had a club time, which typically began with singing.  We had decided to do worship outside on the steps that led up to the church.  We concluded with the song "Grace Like Rain".  We had heard that a storm was on the way, and the signs of the storm started showing up in the desert sky.  

I attempted to make a joke that it looked like we were going to get some grace tonight, and that we would have to move inside the sanctuary area for the rest of club time.  Being the only resident man on my staff, I was the one whose job it was to go shut all the windows and prepare for the storm.  

Long story short, I got stuck in the little tool shed area (bodega) in a different part of the property that was about 50 yards away from the sanctuary.  The rain was heavy and cold, then the hail came.

The ice cubes pelted the tin roof above me.  

I grabbed a seat on a bucket and rested in not being in control of the situation.  I started to sing "Grace Like Rain", but quickly realized that I couldn't even hear my own signing.  I sang as loud as I could, but the hail was louder.

God will do anything to help me realize how much he loves me.  Grace sometimes has to hurt to get it.  Grace drowns out all of my imperfect praise while at the same time inspiring it perfectly. 

Hallelujah!!