On the Shelf

One of the facts of life if you play a contact sport, is that you run the risk of getting injured. You are guaranteed to have soreness and pain if you play hard, but actual injury is one of those things that you would rather avoid.

It's never a good idea to blow up a joint or crack a bone, but more of a nuisance than the pain and discomfort, is the amount of time that you will spend going to doctors, getting X-rays, killing a day of work for the surgery, and the next 3-12 months going through the frustrating experience of rehabilitation. It's been 8 years since my last significant injury, but the memory of the seeming eternity that is rehabilitation is still clear in my mind.. The key to a successful rehab is that you fundamentally have to start over and refrain from doing even basic exercises. Even though you can take stairs 2 or 3 at a time, you need to take them one by one until the doctor gives you the green light. Even though you know you can start doing slide drills, you have to work with the little rubber band for the next two months. Arghh...


A couple of weeks ago at Ruggerfest, I ended up at the end of a string of passes "through the hands". It was almost like we knew what we were doing. (Oh yeah, we're old and we've been playing for a long time, we're just slow.) I had the angle to the corner, but there was no way I was going to beat the last defender to the try zone. After an amazingly deft move, amazing in that I couldn't believe that he bought it, I turned back toward the middle and was running toward the posts. With each step, I was getting closer to scoring (This happens about every 2-3 years). Right as I was getting to the try line, the defender dove and swept my ankles. As I was about to lose my feet, diving seemed to be the thing to do, as I figured I could reach the try zone and set the ball down. Somewhere shortly after I set the ball down, the rest of my body followed. At this point, the shoulder attached to the arm that was holding the ball buckled (that's technical term). I figured I twinged it pretty good, but no major damage. Guess again, Dave. I've yet to meet the person who has had an MRI and not had surgery, which will likely be my fate in about a month.

Long story short(er), I'm out of action for the next while. One thing that is important for any rehab stint is to have a goal event that you are getting ready in time for. While this may sound strange, my target events are Cowpie and Mother's Day, as in the Cowpie Classic rugby tournament in Steamboat, and the Mother's Day caddis hatch on the Arkansas river. May and July are a long way away, but they'll get here soon enough. About the only thing I'll be able to do between now and then is tie flies, so all is not lost.

The fly of the day is the spent caddis. A particularly hot fly, right after a hatch. (This particular video features A.K. Best, an angling legend in these parts.)



Tight Lines,

Dave

Silver and Bleak

Being a Raider fan is either a blessing or a curse, depending on what year it is.  In the 70's and 80's, life was pretty good in Raider land.  In the 90's they were just plain bad.  In the early 00's things were beginning to look up, and then Al Davis traded his coach to Tampa Bay.  It's funny, but I can't ever remember a team trading a coach.  

Last night, the Raider faithful are wondering of 0-16 is truly possible.  They looked like a JV High School football team.  It was freaking pathetic.  After paying top dollar to bring in that headcase Angelo (sp?) Hall, some rookie wide receiver used him like soap.  The denver quarterback never even touched a black jersey.  Their top draft choices of the last couple years are marginally effective behind their porous offensive line.

In other words, there is no hope, until Al Davis relinquishes control of the team.  I don't care if he sells the team or hires somebody, but he needs to understand that he had his last hurrah in 2002.  Since then they have 19 wins.  If it wasn't for the 49ers and Dolphins, they would run away with the worst organization in the league award.

Once you bleed silver and black, you can't root for another team, so I guess I'll just stop watching the NFL.

I'm too depressed to post a fly, and I can't think of one that starts or ends with "loser".

Tight Lines,

Dave 

Beadhead Caddis Puppa

Not too much that I can say about this one.

Biggest fishing day I've ever had standing in a river. Once I put this badboy on, it was all over. Even as I was pulling it out of the water to show my buddy what I had on, another fish bit it. Sometimes you just guess at the right fly...

Here is an example, courtesy of the nice people at The Fish Sniffer

Click the image for the tying instructions.

Tight Lines,

Dave

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