Why Colorado Rocks Part II

I could more or less write a blog under this heading every day for a year, and then I would need to start thinking about a new topic.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go on a hut trip. The 10th Mountain Division Hut Association maintains a number of huts in the mountains between Copper Mountain and Aspen. It's flippin' beautiful up there, assuming you like nature and quiet.

Below are some pics.

Skinner Hut

The fly of the day is the PMX. A nice stimmi for this time of year.



Tight Lines,

Dave

Why Colorado Rocks

There are probably a small handful of places where you have the opportunity to do as many things as you can in Colorado. Believe it or not, this actually turns into a problem, because there is only so much time to do so many cool things. At any one point, you can really only do two things well, and still have a job. Fishing and rugby seem to have bubbled to the top of my priority list.

This last weekend, there was a rugby tournament in Steamboat. It is one of the more social tournaments where players will 'whore' for other teams when they need an extra body to fill out a side. Players take it seriously, but to much less of an extent than league play or RuggerFest. Nobody gets upset at bad calls, or at least not very, and the town is more than happy to see a bunch of folks come in and dump cash at the local stores, restaurants, hotels, and campgrounds. Coincidentally, the path to and from Steamboat runs along and/or near several spots where an angler can drop in and attempt to coax a fish into biting on a hook. Basically, it's an all around weekend for myself and a couple of guys from the club that I fish with on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, the rugby was good, the party was great, and I caught a flippin' monster up in Stagecoach state park. Dry fly season is upon us, which is what all, or at least most, anglers wait for all year. Watching a fish come up to nibble a fly and then setting the hook is much cooler than waiting for your strike indicator to get pulled below the surface by the fish that you can't see.

The fly of the day is the Yellow Stimulator, provided by the folks at www.oregonflyfishingblog.com




Tight Lines,

Dave

USNAFU

USA Rugby fired three people last week. No notice. No discussions about job performance beforehand. Nothing that would indicate that the organization takes itself seriously as an employer. The terminations were guised as a layoff, but when was the last time an employer hands each employee a cardboard box and walks them out of the building in a layoff. Layoffs generally include some form of transitional strategy, with an admission that there is just not enough cash in the coffers and that reductions in costs are necessary for the long term viability of the organization.

While the point of this story could well turn into one about how employers should treat their employees, and that is a valid thread, the punchline here is that USA Rugby is still the same dysfunctional organization that it always has been. It is run on the agenda of a small scale fiefdom where personalities and the ability to kiss the correct buttock at the right time are the measures of merit.

Two years ago, the organization fired two of the better known and certainly more accomplished players ever to play for the national side. If nothing else, these two were ambassadors to the sport with international recognition. At least a handful of other employees at various levels were also let go. A new management team was brought in, including a funny-talker CEO, and everything was supposed to get better. I was told that we should give the new leadership a chance to let their model prove itself. Well, it didn't take long for the new administration to show that nothing had changed. USA Rugby was, is, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be the same small scale fiefdom that it always has been.

The basic problem with the organization is that it is the national governing body of a sport that nobody cares about, except for those of us who play the game and our relatives. Because nobody cares, there is little support at the national or local level. Since I started playing the game about 12 years ago, the US national team was ranked somewhere between 19 and 22 in the world, depending on the time of year. Today, the Eagles are ranked #20 in the world, despite new sponsors, a boatload of money from the International Rugby Board, a fundamental restructuring of the club level divisions, and a few palace coups at the national office. While soccer and lacrosse have both proven that building from the ground up with youth programs is an effective model, USA Rugby continues to pump money and resources into the top levels. The end result is that the sport has not increased the base of support, and the US is still an easy W for the opposing club in international competition.

When there is no performance to point to as a metric of success or failure, politics and bullsh*t become the basis for decision making. In a way it's a shame, because the whole effort is misguided. If you asked anyone who plays the game whether it was more important in the near-to-mid future to introduce the game to more youth or to actually win a match in the World Cup (let's face it, that in itself is a stretch goal), 95% of the respondents would vote for expanding the sport through the youth. We are after all the US of A. I can't think of a single silver medalist with an endorsement deal, so why waste the resources on a national side until we can actually compete?


The fly of the day is the Blond Wulff courtesy of the nice people at Fly Anglers Online




Tight lines,

Dave

Save Second Base

So I went up to Summit County this last weekend, with the intention of being my wife's support crew and get in some fishing on the Blue. The fishing reports for the Blue were off the hook, right until the day I left. Apparently, the water department decided to let more water out of the Dillon reservoir, and blow out the fishing holes. The reports at the local fly shop read like, Don't Bother" "Wait a bit, it'll get better soon" and my favorite, "Get a tube and a 30 Pack".

Heading into the weekend, I must admit, I was more concerned about which spot to fish, instead of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer itself. I figured there were people who had that organized, and my wife is one of those corn-fed girls from the midwest. In other words, she's tough. What I did not figure on, was the production value that was going to take place that weekend. There were obviously a lot of pink license plates, and a lot of pink t-shirts and caps in town. The only comparison I could come up with was a 'Dead show. Cars were well appointed with messaging, pink ribbons, signs, pictures, flags, boas, and just about anything pink that you could figure out how to attach to the exterior of an automobile. The support crews were amazing. There was a group of bikers, as in Harley not Trek, who stopped at a few places along the way to tell jokes and cheer on the participants. There was the self-named Moo Crew, dressed in bovine themed attire, likewise providing encouragement and improv. humor. One lady, whose granddaughter is a 3 time survivor came to support the cause and held the sign in the photo above.

Overall, it was an awesome gathering of folks who came together to support a cause and did as much walking as they did talking.

The one altercation I heard of included a biker, Trek not Harley, who yelled at the ladies on the path to share the path because they were in his way. Sidenote: In what frame of mind does it seem that yelling at 50-100 ladies all wearing pink and on the same 39 mile hike is ever going to sound like a good idea? According to my wife, the ladies responded with a plethora of pejoratives that would have made any rugby club proud.

All in all, ~1100 people participated in the walk. Approximately 10% were survivors, and $3.3 million dollars were raised by the participants through donations. The walk itself was no mean feat. 39.3 miles in two days at 9300 feet, is nothing to sneeze at. I must admit that the takeaway from the weekend was the magnitude of the weekend, and the dedication of the participants and their supporters.

There were a few fish caught, but at the end of the day, I can't really say that counts.

The fly of the week, going with the theme of pink, is the Hi Viz Caddis: (Courtesy of the folks at Royal Gorge Anglers.)



Tight Lines,

Dave

Big Blue

My wife is going to participate in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer this weekend. 39 miles in 2 days is going to be quite the feat. She and her friend have each raised over $2,000 in pledges and have been training pretty diligently for this event. Considering the fact that they will be taking on this challenge at ~9600 feet above sea level, the story even becomes more impressive. The least I figured I could do is go with her to support her in this effort.

As luck would have it, the Blue River, and the Colorado River, are both within a short drive of where we will be staying. This of course had nothing to do with my decision to help... or at least not much. As of the last reports I read, the flows are down, bugs are hatching, and the fish are hungry after fighting off the spring run-off for the last month or so. 10 days ago I read a one-word fishing report for the Blue - BLOWN. Like anything else you read, you have to read between the lines. Fly shops will always provide information about what the best anglers are able to do do catch a single fish in a day. When no hope is offered, you should take it seriously.

Anyway, the goal is to get some fishing in on Friday, Saturday during the middle part of the walk, and if fortune holds out, maybe a little on Sunday as well. Now I understand that the likelihood of the planets aligning properly for this to take place are slim, but you can always hold out hope. While there may be some ethical dilemma that I am missing, I will be doing my part on Saturday in that making sure that the ladies make it to the starting line on time, and my wife will be joining me on Friday, so I feel a little better about myself. Like Jeff Goldbloom said in the Big Chill, when was the last time you went a day with out a rationalization.

Even if all of this falls through, the creeks in town are beginning to clear and after-work/lunchtime fishing is about to return. I love summer in CO.

I'll post a follow-up report on Monday.

Today's Fly is the Barr's Tungstone: (Courtesy of GigHarborFlyFisher)




Tight Lines,

Dave

Random Musings from Vegas

This last weekend, I met up with some friends and friends of friends in Las Vegas to celebrate a buddy's 35th birthday and 5-year anniversary of his cancer remission. Two notable and worthy events for sure. This trip to Vegas took on a slightly different meaning as the group was made up of guys who are/were married and/or have kids, (with one notable exception, but we'll get to that later). In the past, trips to Vegas, and Reno for that matter, usually revolved around a rugby match, a bachelor party, and 6-7 guys crashed on the floor of some lower scale hotel. Not this time.

For some reason, we ended up staying at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay, having a host at Tryst (still not exactly sure where that is), and several rides in school buses that have been transformed into limos.

The trip definitely provided an different perspective on what Vegas has become. The following are some impressions from the trip, in roughly chronological order.

1- Bachelorette parties are train-wrecks waiting to happen. While waiting for my plane to board in the airport bar, 8 women walked in the bar, trying to strut what they once had to strut some years ago. I figured they had to be on the same plane, based on the presence of more than one feather boa. As fortune would have it, they sat right behind me on the plane. (I knew I should have paid the extra $39 for the seat with more legroom) It was pretty clear that the more liquored up these ladies became, the less they actually liked one another. That party was about 4 rounds away from a meltdown, and it was only 7pm. Should make for some interesting chatter at the reception.

2- Welcome to Vegas, but if you want to sit down anywhere, it's going to cost you. Saturday morning I decided that my hangover was going to require more blood circulation than sitting on the couch was going to provide. So I took a walk down the strip toward the north end where the old standards of Circus Circus, The Stardust, and Westward Ho still reside. After walking in and out of a few casinos, it struck me that there is no place to sit in the whole town. Unless you are at a gaming table, a slot machine, a bar, or a restaurant, or in a cab/limo, there is not a chair to be found. Sitting requires the exchange of funds. Granted, you can go to the sports book and hang out without being harassed, but that's about it.

3- When did LA move to Vegas? On Friday night we went to some place called Tryst. It is basically the 8th sign of the apocalypse. Because my friend has some loose association with a woman who either is or was a showgirl, we were hooked up with a "host" who got us VIP treatment which included "table service". Because we were "VIPs" we got a couple of little tables and a couch that we could call our own for a couple of hours. All we had to do for this service was drop $500 apiece on two bottles of vodka. There were mixers too, but I'm not entirely clear if they were included or cost extra. I'm always one to go to a human circus, and this was certainly one of them. We must have looked important, because several people walked by with that inquisitive, "who are these high rollers?" look. These tables are also quite the pick-up tool, every girl that my single buddies went to talk to was miraculously interested in having a conversation. Even when they decided to dispose of lines and went straight to pelting the young ladies with ice.

4- The model has definitely changed, Vegas has become it's own destination. Food, drinks, and rooms used to be afterthoughts. The hotels used to seem genuinely interested in getting you fueled up and on your way, so that you could spend more time at the tables. The model these days is much more focused on getting you to drop coin at every corner, and if you get to the tables, then that's ok too. The first glimpse of this change in model was the $6 bottle of Budweiser. The second look was the journey to the pool. Any pool with 3800 lounge chairs, a wave pool, a concrete river, a kiddie pool, its own food court, and 50-60 cabanas for rent at a thousand dollars a day is a business in and of itself. They didn't even have a blackjack table. Doesn't anyone gamble anymore?

5- Who would want to live in Vegas? Apparently, people want to get their own pad in this oasis in the desert. The owners of the Mandalay, Excalibur, Monte Calro, Luxor conglomerate are building residential towers. After talking to the real estate representative in the lobby of THE Hotel, 500 sq. ft. studio condominiums are going for ~$650K. 3200 sq. ft. penthouses can be had for anywhere between $4.5M and $10M. Maintenance fees are anywhere from a buck to a buck-and-a-half per foot. Yowsers.

Some things, however, have not changed:

1- Vegas is still really ugly in the daytime. It's like the morning after at a frat party.

2- It's still flippin' hot in the desert.

3- Never gamble with a bunch of guys who don't gamble. Nothing like a new guy who utters "seven" 8 or 9 times in a row as the shooter is getting ready for the next toss.

4- 48 hours is as much time as anyone should ever spend in Vegas. After this last sojourn, I'm looking at revising that rule to 36 hours.

5- If you want to gamble, go downtown. The strip has the nicer hotels and all, but they also come with a ton of overhead. If one place is not working for you, it's a much easier leap to go to another casino downtown.

Tight lines,


Dave

Best Matches in a While

This last weekend, two of the best rugby matches I have seen in a while were on the tube. Both matches contained 80 minutes of non-stop battling for their respective championships, and the outcome of both matches was in doubt until the 78th minute. The matches were the finals of the Guinness Premiership (London Wasps V. Leichester (sp.)Tigers) and the Super 14 (Canterbury Crusaders V. New South Wales Waratahs)

Thanks to the magic of Tivo, I was able to watch both matches at a reasonable hour, instead of waking up at 3am. Below you will find a some video snippets:





The Setanta network is playing reruns of the matches, so if you have the chance, take a look, it'll be time well spent.

Fly of the day: The Black Foam Caddis Courtesy of the folks at Virtual Flybox.

For folks new to fly tying, this one is super easy, and is really good for a dry/dropper rig as it will hold up a nymph quite well.



Tight lines,

Dave