Day 22 of pre retirement and I have to say it's pretty damn nice! I'm no longer counting down the jailbreak days anymore. Can't wait for the "Official" retirement party in another 30 years unless of course the winning lottery ticket magically appears before my eyes. Life away from the river? So far so good!
I'm not a twitterer so I'll give you my own version of a twiitter update: Craig Kalpinski woke up this morning next to his beautiful wife Caroline. After Taffy (6lb Yorkshire Terrier), pounced on me, I decided it was time to get up, shake off the mauling and get rollin' with this day by steeping some beans. Now that it's in print and I have reread my tweet, I can honestly say that crap is really stupid. Maybe in thirty years I'll have the social patience to give you some useless play by play of my life?
Actually, what I wanted to write about was my trip to the store this morning. Not sure why I burned the $2.87 on fuel for The Bozeman Daily Chronicle??? Just sorta killing time I guess. Oh yeah, I was going to windex some windows with the local rag - a great way to wash windows! As the blinding sun was rising in the East, the 37 degree morning did nothing for me. I got caught in a little bit of commuter traffic by Montana standards. Lasted all of three minutes before I was racing along again. I was behind a guide rig towing his iced up RO drift boat. Poor guy has to freeze his hands off this morning to tie his clients flies on while they impatiently stood around wondering what the hell is taking so long? "Let's catch some fish before Winter arrives damnit"! He'll probably have to suffer through the tail end of this high pressure. If he's lucky, he will head to the Madison which is fishing well. The reality is his clients will want to go to the Yellowstone because they heard a great report from this past July. At the end of the day he will have to hit the do it yourself car wash bay to rinse out his boat because the Yellowstone R. whitefish bite was strong and every fish caught decided to leave a little something behind. At this point, this poor guide is wondering why these sports even hired a guide in the first place? This is a whole chapter in the upcomiing book. Do I miss being out there on frigid ass mornings? Do I miss high pressure systems and blinding sun? Do I miss chipping the ice out of the bottom of my boat so my clients don't eat shit? Do I miss being second guessed? I was the guide, right?
I'm really enjoying my time away from what I have done for the past twelve years. Man, it was a good run. Had a lot of fun. Have a lot of funny stories some of which I'm writing about in my new book. It's coming along. Writing this book is a new experience for me and a good one so far and I look forward to wrapping it up soon.
