My wife called my longtime friend earlier this year and told him he better make some type of plans to take me away this particular October weekend to celebrate my 60th birthday. So last Friday I headed out from the San Gabriel Valley and he headed out from Las Vegas with the plan of meeting up for breakfast in Bishop, CA ( 260 miles almost exactly for each of us) at 9:00 am sharp. We arrived within 10 mins of each other, had a great breakfast, coffee and an hour of catching up since we only get to see each other in person once every year or two. From there we drove up to Convict lake where John had rented a really nice cabin for a couple of nights. The winds were blowing bad enough that the tiny Marina was closed and it was too rough to even try fishing from shore so we heading a few miles back down the mountain to fish the dam at Pleasant valley reservoir where the conditions were both calmer and warmer.
A really quick background on John. He’s within a few weeks of exactly 5 years younger than me. We’ve known each other somewhere between 32 and 35 years now although neither one of us is exactly sure when we met. He started his own printing company and was printing small one color kind of jobs for the engineering company where I was working and eventually headed up the graphics and advertising department. The two of us worked well together and at some point decided to team up to build up his company. That was pretty successful and lasted until about 2006 when I bought out the company and he heading to Vegas as a partner in a concrete construction company and asphalt company. He’s also a lifelong Dodger Fan (I’m a lifelong Giants Fan) so there is constant bickering on everything from sports to food preferences. We’re closer than our own bothers in many ways.
He caught the first fish of the trip, tiny but will end up in a pan anyway. After that we headed back up to the cabins, cooked up and nice
dinner - Hotdogs, beans and chips along with a nice, perfectly paired, amarone della valpolicella pasqua courtesy of Trader Joe’s and some baseball on the tv. Saturday was your typical and beautiful fall day on the lake, fishing and laughing and remembering and eventually vowing to make this a once a year trip to a different spot each trip. I think we only caught 7 fish but what a great couple of days. It’s amazing how much easier life seems to get as you get older. You realize we have a lot of the same problems and same successes in day to day life and just being honest about it all is so much simpler than trying to always put on a certain image.
Headed home sunday morning and will start scouting and planning the next years trip in a couple of months. Some pictures of the lake saturday, some fall colors and the first fish.
Mike
A really quick background on John. He’s within a few weeks of exactly 5 years younger than me. We’ve known each other somewhere between 32 and 35 years now although neither one of us is exactly sure when we met. He started his own printing company and was printing small one color kind of jobs for the engineering company where I was working and eventually headed up the graphics and advertising department. The two of us worked well together and at some point decided to team up to build up his company. That was pretty successful and lasted until about 2006 when I bought out the company and he heading to Vegas as a partner in a concrete construction company and asphalt company. He’s also a lifelong Dodger Fan (I’m a lifelong Giants Fan) so there is constant bickering on everything from sports to food preferences. We’re closer than our own bothers in many ways.
He caught the first fish of the trip, tiny but will end up in a pan anyway. After that we headed back up to the cabins, cooked up and nice
dinner - Hotdogs, beans and chips along with a nice, perfectly paired, amarone della valpolicella pasqua courtesy of Trader Joe’s and some baseball on the tv. Saturday was your typical and beautiful fall day on the lake, fishing and laughing and remembering and eventually vowing to make this a once a year trip to a different spot each trip. I think we only caught 7 fish but what a great couple of days. It’s amazing how much easier life seems to get as you get older. You realize we have a lot of the same problems and same successes in day to day life and just being honest about it all is so much simpler than trying to always put on a certain image. Headed home sunday morning and will start scouting and planning the next years trip in a couple of months. Some pictures of the lake saturday, some fall colors and the first fish.
Mike
