W and the Fish Tickler

I'm at work (on a break, for those of you concerned about my work ethic). When I rode here this morning, the wind was blowing. When I went outside to help a gal with a car rack install it was blowing. I bet when I go home, it will still be blowing. My friend, Paul, calls it "W." I used to think that he was talking about the former administration, but I learned that it was actually something much more high profile. I think Paul probably got the W reference from David James Duncan. He wrote the book, "The RiVer WHY." It's about finding God in fly-fishing. W is never good, especially when fly-fishing. When presentation is of great importance, it is almost impossible to get your fly to do what you want it to do. Paul is a fisherman. When we go fishing together, he always speaks of W in hushed tones, so as not to bring the curse of it upon our fishing trip.

Fishing is probably the worst sport to do when W is around. Unless you do the old Indian trick of tickling the fishes belly while he is sleeping next to the bank and pull him out with your bare hands. That's pretty easy to do in the wind. The second worst sport to do when it is windy out is bicycle riding. It's only half as bad as fishing though, because sometimes the wind can be to your advantage. I'd say that half of my ride to work was against the wind and the other half was with the wind. When you ride your bike against the wind it feels like you aren't moving sometimes. In these situations, I think about how dumb I look straining to pedal five miles per hour as automobiles fly by at forty. They don't have any problem with W, why should I? I sometimes imagine the fellow in the three ton pickup (that I wish I had) rolling down his window and stopping while I'm pedaling at 0mph and saying to me as I'm still not moving, but straining as if I were, "You oughta get yourself a V12, son. It'll make a whole heck of a lot of difference." Then he rolls up his window, adjusts his Stetson and continues on down the road as if W were non-existent. The other half of the ride was with the wind and that's fun. Especially when it makes you go faster than you think you're going. On a fixie this is problematic because you can't stop pedaling. If you lean into a turn too much, you'll clip a pedal on the downstroke and you'll be on the ground before you can flick a booger (which is pretty dang fast when you're trying to be discreet). Fortunately this didn't happen to me this morning, but it almost did. In these situations I feel dumb, because to bystanders, I would be obviously out of control and appear desperate. I am not desperate.

For the most part, though, I like wind. If it isn't windy you can't fly a kite and you wouldn't have anything to blame for a poor day of fishing. W is pretty cool as long as it's on your side.