Landing Lunkers

Tonight I went fishing with my partner in crime, Deanna, at her beautiful little lake at her house in the country. Shortly after arriving at D's house, Luna came tearing through the yard to greet me; Otto was hobbling along just behind her. Luna is a happy-go-lucky black cattle dog mut and Otto is a laid back beautiful brindle Pit Bull terrier with an awesome smile. After a short tour of the house and a quick supper for the dogs, we and the pups piled into the truck to drive to the lake.

We began fishing off the dock and the fish weren't biting much. It seemed the moment D's line hit the water she had a fish yanking on the other end. Meanwhile, in between a few bird's nests, I had a few hard hits but failed to set the hook. We took a short walk over to the rocky bank to try our luck. Again, a few fish checked out my pink worm, but nothing took it. We failed to catch fish off the rocks, so we decided to take the boat for a whirl around the lake.

I sunk my bait just before the vegetation near the edge of the pond. I felt through the vibrations in my pole that something was tickling my worm. I wiggled it a bit and reeled some line in and waited for the hit. Just then I felt a tug and yanked back, the hook was set! The fish gave a good fight and D cheered me on. As I reeled the fish in, I thought about my grandpa - he gave me the custom built rod I was using. I knew how proud he'd be to see me land that fish. I'm going to print some of the pictures and put them in the mail to him.

As the sun retired for the evening, we continued to catch fish while bats flew overhead catching insects on the wing, coyotes howled, screech owls in adjacent woods trilled from their perches, and a lone muskrat swam to his den. We kept five or six fish in all and D let a couple of fish go. She's a real bassmaster! ;)

We had such a blast landing lunkers!

Fire!

This evening Daniel and I attended Dr. Stephen Pyne's lecture entitled "History with Fire in its Eye," at Monsanto Auditorium on the Mizzou Campus. His powerpoint consisted mainly of pictures and paintings of fire, taken from various history books. He took us on a "planetary flyby" through fire history.

He opened by showing maps of the US, the first was historical large wildfire patterns showing most fires occurred in the eastern US with sparse wildfire in the west, contrasted by a map of current wildfire trends that showed most large wildfires occur in the western US. Historically, large fires burned private lands, now they mostly occur on public lands. Not surprising, these fires aren't environmentally caused, but caused by changing human habitation.

Much of Pyne's philosophy on fire management stems from human beings' ecological significance as wielders of fire. He said some animals shred and decompose detritus, others graze, and humans use fire. This is something I hadn't really spent much time thinking about. We're the only animal to be able to make fire, and that IS our ecological significance. Prior to considering this, I had mostly considered our mucking of the planet our only ecological significance.

The overarching message of his lecture seemed to be how we must overcome our natural and instilled fear of fire and stop suppressing fires. People need to start discussing the role of fire as a sower, pruner and harvester of trees - fires ecological/biological role. He also noted that fire management policy has been controlled by the political arena - when it was the government's or Army's responsibility to fight the fires. Now it's back with the US Forest Service to fight fires, but it's still politically involved because the USFS is a governmentally funded agency.

This whole discussion of how to control wildfires must be done at a state level due to the high variation in landscapes across the US - fires in hot, arid southern California are different from those in Florida as are those in the Rockies. So then, should it be the state or federal government that is responsible for adopting wildfire management policy?

These were a few of the points Dr. Pyne hit in his lecture. In fisheries and wildlife courses at Mizzou, we never discussed fire much except in Ecology as it is used to burn prairies to manage grasses. I think that fire plays a much larger role in conservation and thus should be taught not just in forestry classes. Another thing to think about it, how does the fire retardant used to fight wildfires impact wildlife, soil biota, and even water quality? Surely it has some impact...

After the lecture we went for late dinner at India's House on Broadway at Hitt St. I had Chicken Korma and Dan had Chicken Vindaloo. Exquisite... It was almost as if I had warped to India or maybe Thailand. I can't wait to try the lunch buffet so that I may sample many more dishes.

On the drive home, we noticed the moon shining through the crisp, clear sky. We set up the scope and spied on the man in the moon for awhile. The moon is a cool place, it seems.

Here is what we saw:

In this photo, you can see Tycho and Copernicus craters. Tycho crater is 93 km in diameter and Copernicus crater is ~85 km. Pretty neat, ya?

Chicago!

I've been working *a lot* lately - the USGS on weekdays and AES on weekends. Late last week, Dan and I were having dinner and he mentioned how we always work so much. He suggested a short trip to Chicago for a full night of drunken debauchery with DJ Sasha and the swedish techno producer, Samuel L. Sessions. I concurred and we went.

We stayed at the Westin River North, only a short stagger from Vision Nightclub. After spending nearly 8 hours in the car, three of which were during the last 30 miles of the trip, GAH!, we arrived to the hotel at a quarter to 9PM. After a nice, hot (nearly scalding) soak in the tub to relax, we were on our way to dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. We kept it on the small side, with a small salad and grilled chicken on the side for me, and a plate of fries and a tall, alcoholic beverage for Dan.

We arrived at the venue at 10:30PM. The club was labyrinthine with at least 4 floors. The opening talent in the main room left something to be desired. At the second stage, where Samuel would play, I met a lady deejay named Dirtybird. She was excellent! I danced to her beats for awhile then got tired. So, I took a nap in a comfy overstuffed loveseat and waited for either Sasha or Samuel to come on.

Samuel finally started his set at 1:30AM and the drinks started flowing, first they were Ketel One vodka and Redbulls, then Ketel One and tonics with a lime.


Dan took this picture of me after I discovered that I had downed my
beverage...so sad!

Samuel rocked it! I hadn't danced like that since my raving days. ^_^

At about 2:30AM, we found our way to the main room. Sasha had just begun his set. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, I could barely breathe. The dancefloor was shoulder to shoulder with sunglass-wearing eurotrash hipsters, blech! And, sadly, Sasha's tunes were kinda crappy. We tolerated the atmosphere for about 15 minutes and decided there was much more fun and AIR to be had at the second stage, so we left.


Samuel L. Sessions, in from Gothenburg, Sweden on the ones and twos just for us.