so this past weekend i went down to college station to visit my friend ashley, at one point while i was driving i passed this truck that belonged to the texas cement company (or something like that) and on the back it had a website texcement.com which inspired me to invent a new word, texcitment, which means when you are either super excited about something( texas sized excitement) , or just excited about something texas related, in general i enjoy teasing texans, they are very proud of their state, which i guess i can relate to but i think they tend to take things a bit overboard, like "texas sizing" your order at fast food joints and things like that, which really, that should only be the second largest size you can get, since alaska is the biggest state, i like to go to restaurants in texas and try to alaska size my order, which they dont appreciate much, and one time aaron and i were driving to el paso and there was a billboard for some beer and the caption said "texas cold" which doesnt even make any sense cuz its generally pretty warm down there, but you know the texans read that and say "hell yeah texas cold beer!", i will give them one thing, as you drive through texas you might see signs on the side of the road that say "drive friendly, the texas way" or something like that, and one thing that i have consistently seen in texas that i have never seen in any other state is if you are driving down a 2 lane road, and you are behind a slow driver they will pull over and drive on the shoulder so its easier to pass them, which is really nice, so i shouldnt make fun of them too much, but i did think my new word was funny so i kept saying it all weekend "oh man! i am texcited about this baseball game" and things like that, ashley told it to one of her friends who was from there and he liked it, so perhaps my new word will catch on ...
anyways, so while i was down there we went to a couple of texas A&M baseball games, and hung out with some of her friends and whatnot, but that is not what i am going to focus on now, saturday we went to this lake and fished most of the day, which was a lot of fun because i am awesome at fishing, and ash doesnt really know anything about it so i was going to teach her a thing or two. now ashley loves taking pictures so we took her camera and took a bunch during the day, and i thought it would be a fun thing if i showed you all the pictures and added little captions and short descriptions and didnt just ramble on forever, they say pictures are worth a thousand words, and i assume that is for a normal person so in my case its probably closer to two thousand, which means these 35 pictures will be saving you from having two read 70,000 words and having to set aside 3 hours to get through this whole thing....
Hey do you remember when i said i am awesome at fishing at ash is not? (you better, that was only about 8 lines ago) well, that was a blatant lie, i am terrible at fishing, and ash fishes all the time and is really good, just to give you an idea of how much of a mismatch this competition is let me show you a few pictures from the last time we went fishing, we were ocean fishing out in california, here is ashley with her fish, it was so big she had to use the special hook on a stick thing to pull it in
My favorite part of that picture is the face my cousin broc is making. so that is one of the many fish that ashley caught, it took me a long time before i caught anything, and i finally caught a fish and we were going to take a picture of me holding it but before we could snap the picture it let go of the hook and fell on the deck of the boat, i hadnt even hooked my tiny fish, it was just hanging on to make me feel better about myself...
so as you can see i had my work cut out for me, but i was full of unjustified confidence and i was pretty sure i was going to win, here is ashley setting up our poles for the day, i didnt really know what she was doing but i tried to keep an eye on her to make sure she didnt rig my pole funny or something and fix the competition in her favor
here is a nice picture of the lake we were at, or it would be a nice picture if you ignore the large industrial plant on the far side of the lake
the sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man sending back soup at a deli
here is me standing on the bank visualizing catching a 55 pound cat fish, that was my plan for the day cuz ash said her dad (or maybe her grandpa) once caught a 53 pound cat fish, ash said she didnt think i was going to do it and my line would probably break anyways, i told her i would just reel it in until it was near land, and then i would jump in the water and punch it in the head and drag it ashore by hand, of course then the water splashed on my foot and it was kind of cold and the idea of jumping in the water seemed less appealing...
ash insisted on taking a picture of me with my coffee from sweet eugenes, she did this because i had recently admitted to liking coffee and she thinks this is a huge deal, i am not real happy about the fact that i like coffee but it is what it is i guess
i am not exactly sure what ash is doing in this picture, i think she might be tasting the bait to see if the fish will like the worms that we had, which reminds me, the worms we had were supposedly fancy worms that had been given something that made them appear real greenish, according to the box they came in this made the fish real excited and ensured more bites and more caught fish, i dont know if i totally believe this, because unless you are a super clutch fisherman like i am and all you have to do is dip your line in the water for a second and pull it out with a fish on it (more on this later) the green stuff really isnt going to help you cuz it washes away almost immediately
(just so you know ash wasnt really eating the bait) Now this is one of my favorite pictures, because i am standing on the bank and i have a bit of a confused look on my face because my line is sticking pretty much straight sideways, in my defense it was super windy that day, it also doesnt help that i suck at fishing, and yes my outfit is completely color coordinated...
did i say i suck at fishing? i meant to say i rock at fishing, it wasnt long before i landed the first fish of the day and i was well on my way to winning the competition, at this point i hadnt decided on the exact rules of the competition, since i was the only one who had caught a fish i was winning in both number of fish and weight of fish caught so things were looking pretty good, the rules could be modified later as needed
ok, ill admit, i may have doctored the last photo just a bit, the picture below is the actual first fish i caught, and its not quite as big, but the fact remained i was still winning
pretty soon ash caught a fish to even the score, although her fish was completely minuscule, she seems proud enough of it though
a little while later ash caught another little embarrassingly small little fish, she actually went on a little hot streak and jumped way ahead but somehow most of those pictures disappeared, i think at this point the score was something like 5-1
the score at this point was pretty much unnacceptable, so then i decided to take it up a notch, i baited my hook with what i would later call my lucky worm, over the next two minutes i landed 4 enormous fishes with the same worm! it was a trully remarkable fishing performance
look at that monster!
i didnt know there were whales in this lake!
ok, so that last one was a bit small, actually im pretty sure i used to have bigger fish in my desktop aquarium back in school, but look at this next one! its almost as big as i am!
unfortunately, that last beast of a fish ate the last bit of my lucky worm, and i would go through a bit of a rough patch, actually it was about this point that i wandered off to go to the bathroom and thought it would be a good idea to go ant fishing with my toes, i was wandering through some grass and low plants and stuff and thought to myself "hmm, there is something prickly underfoot" and i looked down and fire ants were swarming all over my left foot, so i had to stop and pick them all off, fortunately most of them were just on my sandal and there were only a few of them that were actually biting my toes and foot, it was still pretty lame tho, what was also lame was that ash just kept catching fish and i didnt catch anything else for a while
pathetic...
tiny...i dont know why but for some reason ash said i couldnt count the next fish i caught
lame...
look out! if that fish was any bigger he could swallow me whole, i imagine it was a fish like this that ate jonah
at this point you might begin to notice a trend, that for every monster fish i catch, ashley catches two little minnows
i think if you were to combine all of ashleys fish you might have enough meat to make about a half of a fish stick
here is a picture of me desperately trying to pick up a tiny ashley sized fish, normally i wouldnt care because it was way smaller than all the fish i was catching, but i was getting way behind in the score, and earlier ash had dropped one and i said if it jumps back in the water she couldnt count it, and so i had to hurry and make sure she couldnt use my made up rule against me
in the meantime ash kept catching tiny fish, they only look bigger than mine because she has smaller hands than i do (and they are actually bigger)
at this point ash was up 10-7, and it was starting to get a little bit later in the day, so we decided to set a time limit and only fish for another 45 minutes, because we are both super competitive and otherwise we would have stayed out there all day, with about 15 minutes left i was still trailing by a lot, and i hadnt caught anything for a while, so i decided i needed to switch locations hoping my luck would change, it didnt really help
while i was in my new location not catching fish ashley kept running up the score
i realize this fish is really small but if you look hard enough you can find it in the picture there
so at this point ashley was up 12 to 7, and she announced 60 seconds left, and dejected but accepting defeat i walked over to where she was sitting, and i was standing there on the shore, and i had about 2 feet of line dangling from the end of my pole, and i decided to give it one last go, and so i dipped my line in the water, and i said "heeeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy fish!" (and if you know what that is from you are awesome) and i pulled my pole out of the water again and there was a fish on the end of it!!!! it was the most clutch fishing of all time!! and i was really happy, here is the picture of me with my buzzer beater
i was pretty happy, i mean i didnt win, but i at least caught some fish, and my buzzer beater fish was pretty clutch and exciting, so i was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and then ash reeled in her line...
what a jerk!!! she couldnt even allow me my tiny moment of glory, she had to top my last second fish with an even more last second fish, there couldnt have been more than 5 seconds left on the clock, cuz i dipped my pole in the water when she said 60 seconds left, pulled it out a few seconds after that, and we had time to get the camera, take a picture, take the fish off the hook and throw it back, and then she reeled in her line and there was her last fish, securing her 5 fish win, 13-8, no class... needless to say i was pretty dejected
ash was pretty excited
oh man, i was legitimately upset by this, i mean i knew the odds of me winning were slim, but then i was holding my own for a while, and then ash pulled away which was fine cuz she is a lot better at fishing than me, and then i got my miracle last second fish, and then ash completely stomped on what little excitement i had left, this is me, completely emotionally drained...
and what did i win as a consolation prize? how about terrible sunburns on the top of my feet! we had sunscreen but we had forgotten to put it on, and by forgot i mean did it on purpose to spite petey
actually, this picture doesnt even really capture the magnitude of how bad i burned my feet, it does a good job of showing the sick sandal lines, but this was too short after it happened and they werent as deep red as they would get, plus, this was before the ant bites really swelled up and i got yucky blisters in those spots too....yeah, my feet were not real happy with me
