A Good Sunday

Justin and I had our first fly fishing lesson today at the casting ponds in golden gate park. This is no wikipedia explanation, but in regular fishing, you have an almost weightless fishing line. The bait at the end provides the momentum to propel the end of your hook out on to the water. In fly fishing, you have an almost weightless "fly" which is a bunch of feather or string made to resemble a bug. The weight to propel your fly out on to the water is in the fishing line. The idea is to mimic the motions of a real bug to trick fish into biting. Today we learned some basic casting. First it was the roll cast, then the back cast and forecast. Keeping your fly in the air almost looks like a ribbon dance as you make loops in the air. It's a beautiful art form. I'm looking forward to catching my first fish, but it will take some practice before we make it out to a real lake or stream.

It's still a bit of a novelty to me to have free time on weekends without worry about whether a blackberry or cell phone will go off to call one of us back into the office. It's still a novelty to go for a run during a lunch hour (instead of a lunch fifteen), to groom a horse, to cook dinner on sunday night or to make weekend plans in advance.