Updates and the John Madden of fishing

A lot's happened since I last got on here, although a lot of it's boring and I won't talk about it. Such as how my beard very near a perfect, Brett Farve level of scruff.



First, Autonomy Day. Weird stuff can happen to a man who doesn't sleep the night before, then starts drinking, hard, at 3:30 a.m. I took a six-pack of disgusting Costa Rican beers next door, to the 140 block, where a group of about 12 of us downed a fat bowl of some of the most alcoholic punch I've ever tasted. Meanwhile, I got into a jello-shot competition with some Dutch guys, who after years of life on the Discotec floor are apparently impervious to jello-shots. Just when I thought I couldn't take any more, a persuasive Aussy beguiled me into a race where we put a full punch cup on our biceps and empty the thing without touching it. I think it's called an Ironman. Suffice to say when IH met up in the courtyard at 6:30, the sun was just peeking over the hills and I was hammered. Not surprisingly, the strict security at my campus's Bar on the Hill wouldn't let me in. I wandered around for a half hour, leaving the same distinctive American flag bandana on my head, and was denied again by the same guy. So I passed out until 4:30, returned to the bar to dance, and had a strange sleeping schedule until my mom and dad picked me up the next day.



We had a really cool weekend, driving up the coast and stopping off along beaches and in small oceanside towns that reminded me much of the Seasides, Cannon Beaches and Ilwacos of the Pacific Northwest. Dad drove his rented Ford Falcon like a rally car on a high-speed, twisty gravel road through a rainforest. He also mispronounced so many things and places that we weren't sure if he was trying or not. Even some common american words. It was ridiculous.



I read the Children of Hurin, a string of tales written by J.R.R. Tolkien two decades before he wrote the Lord of the Rings, but never published. His son, who now controls his estate, compiled the works and edited them into an epic tale of heroism and evil treachery in the Elder days of Middle-Earth, when Morgoth's black stench filled the land and the mysterious city of Gondolin stood yet. It's the nerdiest thing I've done in a while.



We decided to go fishing, so I called some numbers we found on the sides of charter boats in Coffs Harbour to take us out the next day. The first guy I got on the phone sounded conspiciously drunk, because he'd ramble on about myriad aspects of fishing for huge swaths of time, didn't really let me say anything, and I could understand about half of what he was saying. Granted, some of this was due to his accent, but after a three minute description of what we could fish for, I knew something was up. Introducing the John Madden of Fishing. For added enjoyment you can read the following in either a heavily drugged/ alcohol impaired Australian accent, or in the lingual stylings of the legendary and possibly brain-dead former NFL annoucer John Madden.



Me: "So, what can we fish for?"



John Madden of Fishing: "Well, lesse, everybody thinks that ya gonna go out and do sport fishin, ya know, loik Marlin or swordfish or Bluefin or somthin' loik that, ya know? But what they don't know is this isn't really the toime a' year for those fish. In the summa you could probably even catch small sharks out there. But now we'd probably go fer perch. Yeah, ya can catch perch out there, and that's pretty good, and then there's the (some indeterminable species of fish), and that's even bettah than perch, so we'd fish those, and then there's the (some other indeterminable species of fish) that's even bettah than that. He's loik the king of fish, the king of kings of fish. But he's got a mouth about the consistency of wet toilet paper. I swear the hooks jus' rip roight outa those guys' mouths. It's real tough to hook em, and ya can only do it if ya know what you're doin'. They don't boite like other fish. Sometoimes you'll reel it all the way up in, ya know, and he's foightin' pretty good, and then you get 'im up up to the boat, and the hook'll just slip roight outa 'is mouth. It's just loik toilet paper. But you can throw 'em on the barbie, with some lemon, and they grill up real noice. I was gonna have my son go get some for dinner to grill up, but then he said he'd maybe do it tomorrow."



Me: "oh, ok..."



At which point he'd dive into another diatribe about how he thought halibut were like flounder, only bigger, which is largely true, but not what I needed to hear concerning our plans for tomorrow. After literally a ten minute conversation, I found out he'd thrown out his back and was currently in the hospital, and didn't know if he could get someone to take the boat out tomorrow. Consensus in the family after a hearty laugh was that he was probably strung out on pain pills and was bored and needed someone to talk fishing to. I called another charter and set up a trip in approximately 46 seconds.



Mom and dad's lines were on fire. I not only caught 0 keepers, but had the dubious distinction of bringing up a fish so small that i couldn't see how it got it's mouth around my hook, while the back half of his body had been bitten off by the time I pulled him up. Poor bastard.



On the other hand, I saw a humpback whale breech completely out of the water nearly 100 feet from our boat and heard their song, two of the most awesome and majestic experiences of my life.



Back at uni I impressed my housemates with my pocketknife, learnt-as-I-went fillet job and beer-battered fried fish (including a hold-harmless agreement considering salmonella and a stern warning of bones). I didn't tell them I didn't actually catch any.