Well Hello,
I have been pretty busy living up my final weeks off before I hit the road again, so sorry for no blogs. Last week I could barely respond to an email because I was 110% engulfed in my latest and greatest passion… FISHING!
Ahhh… Life has been pretty great. I can’t believe summer has come to such an abrupt end though… Though looking out my window today, she looks like a beauty. I plan to hit the Fraser River for some more sockeye fishing in a couple hours, but first I want to touch base with you all and let you know what’s been going on.
As I said, I have been pretty stoked on fishing. Here in BC we are having the most epic sockeye salmon run in nearly one hundred years. Experts estimate anywhere between 25 – 30 million fishies are swimming up our rivers right now, which means good pickings for anyone with a rod… fishing rod.
I, myself, just purchased my first fishing rod last weekend that I have owned since I was a little kid. And in typical random fashion I had quite a laugh in the process of purchasing the rod. As you may have noticed already, fishing lingo leaves many an opportunity for inappropriate puns. Someone such as myself cannot help but recognize and exploit the crap out of this golden opportunity to make “rod” jokes. That said, I was quite surprised and pleased that the 50 something year old lady helping me choose my gear last weekend also recognized this commonality. Her best / worst / most awkward comment likely being when she told me that the girl helping me choose my fishing rod sure knew how to stroke a rod… HEY OH. That is my sister Allison lady! Luckily my family has a demented sense of humour… we all laughed.
As for the fishing… it has been good times on the river!. They is nothing like pulling your dinner out of the water right before your eyes. RANDOM FACT: I often wish I could skip the supermarkets and all of the processing and whatnot that must happen to our food. I mean… Wouldn’t it be great to grow your own fruit, veggies, spices, meat and such?? Then, and only then would you truly know that nobody has tea-bagged your eggs or stuck your carrot in their nose… Do I think too much about this stuff???… Maybe.
The first day of fishing on the Fraser was a major learning experience. You don’t just toss your rod in and pull out a fish. It ain’t Surrey! There is some skill and technique needed for sure. Sitting in a wheelchair definitely poses some different challenges as well, but of course that wasn’t going to stop me. By my second day of fishing I had figured out how to cast with both hands and throw a line a good 40 – 50ft out into the river. I pulled a 6 or 7lb sockeye close enough to see eye to eye before the punk busted my leader, and that was as close as I came the first day. I left the river with no fish. But I wasn’t discouraged. Rather, I had the itch… And not that itch that is prevalent with fishing in Surrey. This was a different itch that doesn’t require a trip to the walk-in clinic. I was hooked… And I swear I did not intend to drop that cheesy fishing pun…
So I went again Thursday with my buddy Randy. He caught his 2 fish limit in about 10 minutes – before I was even all set up. Looked easy enough! But from then on out, we both caught nothing. As the day progressed, we started to lose a lot of line to snags, and there was a noticeable lack of fish. We were about to call it a day when two of our buddies (the Grant brothers) cruised up in a boat yelling “BROOKS… BREIER!!!” The Grant brothers are RAD dudes. I love em! And as an added bonus they had a BOAT! … Which meant we now had a boat!! See each day I had been fishing, I had been looking across from the riverbanks at this rugged rocky island. I could see that everyone on that island was slaying fish. I wanted to be there. I wished many times to have a boat. Now all of a sudden that wish came true.
The Grants are tough… These dudes have hauled me up knarly stuff. And it’s not even so much they have to help me. I think they just flat out enjoy it. My buddy’s loaded me and my chair in the boat and we cruised across to the island. They then lifted my chair, 4X4ed me across what looked like the surface of the moon and eventually plunked me halfway up to my knees in the river right where the getting was good. Within 10 minutes I was pulling in a bigass salmon. And let me tell you this is a battle from start to finish. I ended up losing my first island sockeye, but it wouldn’t be my last. Randy hooked into one a bit later and had me reel it in, and this is the guy in the picture. It was a pretty rad feeling brining in the big fish… well all besides the pain in my shoulder…
SIDE STORY: I went to Whistler to see Strung Out a couple of weekends ago. SICK SHOW by the way! I got up crowd surfing for the first time since I cripped myself. It was a festive night and when I went to leave I noticed that all of my buddy’s were MIA. The elevator was broken at Garfinkle’s, so I relied on some random dudes to lift me up the stairs in my chair. One of these dudes and I did not get along so well. A few words were exchanged, then as I sat minding my own looking for my buddies I was hit with a Goldberg-esque tackle that threw me out of my chair. My eyebrow connected with the ground and split open and my shoulder took a pretty good walloping too. My eye is all but healed, but my shoulder has been giving me grief ever since. As for the knarly Aussie who took me out of the chair. My buddy Nick introduced Mr Fist to his face a few times and then we all laughed about it while eating burritos in a 7-11 parking lot.
… So yeah, my shoulder has been kind of buggered, and I really did it in with all of the fishing and 4×4ing in my chair along the river Thursday. When I got home that night, I could barely move my arm. It scared me a little because I rely on my arms for everything. My arms act as my legs. I started to think of all of the things I use my arm for and wonder what I would do if I suffered a serious injury. I am not really one to chill on the couch and do nothing…
I immediately looked up shoulder injury on the internet when I rolled in the door and learned that I should ice the injury but not put heat on it. Hmmm… I was going to ice then heat it. Good to know. So I iced my shoulder, then elevated it and did all of the things the internet told me to do (a scary thought kind of – especially depending what sites you are looking at). But sure enough after icing, elevating and with some rest and relaxation over the next couple of days my arm is feeling awesome again. So today I am going fishing!!!
I haven’t casted, reeled in and bagged my own sockeye yet, so today is the day. And I hope to get a shot of it too!
But before I do go fishing, I should tell you about one more AWESOME experience I recently had. My mom’s b’day was in August, and for her b’day I bought us tickets to see Gaslight Anthem at the legendary Commodore Ballroom. Oh what a show it was… Mom and I started the evening on a patio on Granville near the venue, where I spotted my buddy Spoons. Spoons is a homeless man who lives in Vancouver and rocks out on spoons – hence the name. He is a kind and gentle soul and I have the utmost respect for the guy. I dropped him a $20 as I usually do, and he rocked out this little gem medley here.
After some eats and meeting up my buddy Mikimal, the three of us (mom, Mike and me – no Spoons) headed for the show. None of us had ever seen the Gaslight Anthem before, and we were in for a real treat. I was especially stoked having taken my mom to her first ever punk show. So we nabbed a table where we could see the stage well… Fortunately some nice dudes from the island hooked us up. I love punk shows and was happy to see my mom really digging the first two bands, Fake Problems and The Menzingers.
But they were just an appy. When Gaslight took the stage it was epic. They really put on a SICK show! Man, seriously, I go to a lot of shows as you likely know from reading my blogs. This was one of the better performances I have seen in a long time. The set was so tight; the sound was awesome; the audience was STOKED on the bad!; and the band was STOKED on the audience. Some notable tunes include Say I Won’t (Recognize) – which they suddenly turned into The Land of the Rising Sun unexpectedly and flawlessly during a guitar solo; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – which sent chills up my spine and had me fist pumping with no similarities to the douches from Jersey Shore; an encore cover of the Who’s Teenage Wasteland; and The Diamond Church Street Choir – which you can check out here.
If you don’t know the Gaslight Anthem, you should. If you get a chance to see them go because are unreal live. I have been so stoked on them and can’t stop listening… this will likely last strong until Friday when I go and see Pennywise, Authority Zero, Riverboat Gamblers and my buddy Ryan Howlett’s band Carpenter play at the Commodore. Yes, another show! It has been a great couple of weeks for shows!
So yeah… Life is good people! On the speaking front, I have been booking up a storm, which you can see here in my calendar. I just booked 3+ weeks on Vancouver Island through ICBC for Spring too, which I am stoked on! It should be a busy and amazing year, and I am super looking forward to getting back on the road with my first presentations of the year in the Land of Living Skies, Saskatchewan!
Lastly, you may or may not have heard that a film crew from BCIT is going to make a documentary on me. Shooting is going to begin soon, possibly even today on the river. The doc is going to be much more a movie about my speaking. It is going to be a behind the scenes slice-of-life look at my day-to-day activities, challenges and victories. I am super stoked on what is going to come from this video. It will be available for sale once it is done too. On top of the serious stuff, I plan to add some jackass KB humourous skits as well. It’s going to be a beauty… and expect to see a cameo by Spoons! Stay tuned on this one… I will post more info as it becomes available.
Well people, the river is calling me. Thanks for reading.
~: )
Kevin