Category: Music

Posted on

Oklahoma Packing List

Stuff We Took

We took my car. It’s a 2012 diesel with 117 thousand miles. It needs the tires rotated and it uses a bit of oil. It ran great. For our other trips this year we’ve flown and rented, and we’re now pretty proficient at hooking the phone through the rental car radio (if they’re still called radios). We can hook into whatever Mitsubishi or Ford or Mazda mid-sized SUV the rental company gives us with minimal stress and only a few harsh words, but it’s still nicer to be in my car. 

I fished with a 10′ 4 wt. Kris fished with her Helios 3D 5 wt. that I gave her for Christmas last year. Chris the Guide wished it was the softer version, but she cast beautifully. Maybe she missed more strikes because of the hard rod, but man was it fun to watch her cast.  

There’s nothing else remarkable about what we packed except that I bought a bag of Cheetos. You can’t have a road trip without Cheetos, unless it’s a road trip with Fritos and bean dip. 

We ate two dinners the night we arrived, just to try things out: chicken fried steak at Abendigo’s and pizza at the Grateful Head.  Both were excellent, and the local beers were excellent. I no longer eat nearly enough chicken fried steak. We had leftover pizza on the river on Saturday, so two dinners was perfectly reasonable. We stayed at the Hotchatown Country Lodge, and had a breakfast burrito at Adam and Eve’s Coffee Shop before we fished on Saturday.  That place has good coffee. 

Beavers Bend is in the Choctaw Nation, but we missed most of the cultural stuff. We did take a photo of the casino. We also walked through the Forest Heritage Center Museum, which is peculiar, but there’s no doubt this is a lumber town. 

I now believe that forest science research is best carried out in white pumps. 

When we started planning Oklahoma, I asked an Oklahoma fly fishing group on FaceBook where we should fish, and here’s what I got:

• Sandies in the spring, but no specifics on places
• Bluegill, but no specifics on places
• Trout on the Lower Illinois
• Trout on the Lower Mountain Fork
• Smallmouth on the Upper Illinois in the summer
• Stripers on the Lower Illinois in the summer
• Carp, but no specifics on places

Personally, any of those could have been great, and I’d already thought about white bass. End of the day, the Mountain Fork was convenient. Kris already talks about Oklahoma more fondly than anyplace we’ve fished, and we were only really there for one day.

The other place I thought about was the Wichita Mountains. It’s the nation’s oldest wildlife preserve, and notwithstanding Yellowstone it deserves credit for preserving the buffalo. Hiking there once I looked up at a ridge line and watched a dozen elk watching me. They seemed to find me peculiar, and many share their opinion.There’s a series of ponds and small lakes spread through the refuge, and it would have made a good place for bluegill.

What I Didn’t Write About

The Cherokees, slavery, and the Confederacy. There are two recognized Cherokee tribes in Oklahoma. They seem to have split over the Civil War: the larger tribe supported the Confederacy, the smaller the Union. The Cherokee who owned slaves took them along to Oklahoma.

The 1909 Jim Crow amendments to the Oklahoma Constitution. Roosevelt refused to approve the Constitution for 1907 statehood until the Jim Crow provisions were removed, then the state constitution was amended in 1909 to put them back in.

Part of district burned in race riots, Tulsa, Okla, .American Red Cross, 1921, Library of Congress

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. One of the bloodiest two day white riots in American history, it’s also known, appropriately, as the Tulsa massacre. Thirty-six African Americans died, and thirty-five blocks of the established African American Greenwood neighborhood were burned to the ground.

Tulsa burning, Alvin C. Krupnick Co., photographer, 1921, Library of Congress

Quanah Parker. I didn’t write enough about Quanah Parker. I didn’t write enough about the Wichita.

Boom Town, by Sam Anderson. It’s on the New York Times’ 100 notable books for 2018, and it’s a fine book about Oklahoma City. It had me checking The Thunder in the NBA standings, and recommending the book. Great book.

Ralph Ellison. Ralph Ellison is from Oklahoma City. I tried to re-read Invisible Man, but couldn’t. It’s a hard book.

The 2018 Elections. There’s now a Democratic congresswoman from Oklahoma City. There’s also a pretty interesting war going on in the Oklahoma Republican Party.

Playlist

I should have known Oklahoma had such great music, but I didn’t. I’ve already mentioned that Oklahoma was the home of five of the finest guitarists I know. And Woodie Guthrie. And John Moreland.

Bob Wills Publicity Photo, C. 1946, Wikipedia
  • John Moreland. In the Throes. I saw a review of John Moreland’s new album in Garden & Gun a few weeks ago, then ran across him in an inernet list of 10 Oklahoma bands you should be listening to now. If Bruce Springsteen sang Americana music he would be John Moreland. This is music about the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, high school prom. Robin, take note: this is great stuff.
  • The Call. Some random songs. I didn’t pay much attention to them the first time around, and gave them short shrift this time. They probably deserve better. Or maybe not. 
  • Garth Brooks. I think I would like Garth Brooks, but his music is only available on Amazon, and I’m not technologically proficient enough to know whether I can download something on Amazon and listen to it on ITunes. 
  • The Flaming Lips. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. My daughter tells me that The Flaming Lips were one of her favorite bands in high school. Wayne Coyne lives in Oklahoma City, and is a central character in Sam Anderson’s Boom Town.
  • Woodie Guthrie. I’d been listening to Guthrie in Oregon. I downloaded covers of his songs from his 100th birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center and some other stuff. Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” is the best Woodie Guthrie song that Woodie Guthrie didn’t write.
  • Charlie Christian. Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar. Charlie Christian invented the electric guitar solo, and then died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. He made some fine recordings with Benny Goodman. 
Charlie Christian, Charlie Christian Family Archives
  • Leo Kottke. Acoustic Guitar once did a list once of the 50 greatest acoustic guitar albums. I don’t know where Kottke’s 6- and 12-String Guitar ranked, but I remember the review. The record came out in 1969, and they guessed that more joints were rolled in college dorm rooms on that album cover than on any other. I bet they were right. It at least ran a close second to Sergeant Pepper.
  • Michael Hedges. Hedges was New Age Music, which was once a thing. I had Hedges’ Aerial Boundaries because of that Acoustic Guitar list. He died in 1997 in a car wreck.
  • Roy Clark. “But I Never Picked Cotton.” He died last week. After a near 50-year interval I once again spent way too much time watching Hee Haw, this time on YouTube. His duets with Glen Campbell in the TV heyday were pretty amazing. 
  • Tuck Andress, of Tuck and Patti. Tears of Joy. Andress is such a fine jazz guitarist. He’s also St. Vincent’s uncle.
  • Jerry Jeff Walker, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” She was, after all, born in Oklahoma.
  • Merle Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee.” The companion piece to “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” Together the two songs form the yin and yang of country music.
  • Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Bob Wills–For the Last Time. Wills was born in Turkey, Texas, near my hometown, but the Playboys spent a good part of their career on Tulsa radio. I took that as enough of an excuse to include Bob Wills on the playlist. I don’t know how I’ll get him into the Hawaii list. There is a steel guitar. 
  • Cross Canadian Ragweed. Cross Canadian Ragweed. There’s an Americana sub-genre of country out of Oklahoma called Red Dirt Music. I picked Cross Canadian Ragweed because I liked the name, but there are several others, and I suspect some may be better. The Canadian River, by the way, is the longest tributary to the Arkansas River. It starts in Colorado, and crosses New Mexico, the Texans Panhandle, and Oklahoma. 
  • Chet Baker. Chet Baker Sings. Chet Baker is a cross between Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and James Dean. 
  • Jimmy LaFave. Texoma. More Red Dirt Music, LaFave left Oklahoma for Austin, and died last year. I can’t say enough good things about LaFave.
  • J.J. Cale. Troubadour. The guy who wrote “After Midnight.”
  • Jimmie Webb. The guy who wrote “Galveston” and “Wichita Lineman.” 
  • Hoyt Axton. The guy who wrote “The Pusher,” “Never Been to Spain,” and “Joy to the World.”
  • Leon Russell. Carney. I always figured “This Masquerade” was a cover of a much older song. It’s not. 
  • Blake Shelton. Red River Blue. There was absolutely nothing memorable about Blake Shelton, except Kris yelling turn him off every time one of his songs shuffled through. My daughter told me that this is a sub-genre of country known as Bro’ Country, which is mostly about drinking, driving pickups, and admiring young women. I did think the song about the honey bee was cute, but then Kris yelled at me to turn it off.
  • Reba McEntire. Reba. Reba has a nicer voice than I expected, and she handles her material well. Some of the material is decidedly mediocre. Some is pretty good. 
  • Gordon MacRae. “Oklahoma!” and “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’.” If you can keep from singing along to “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin”’ you’re a better man than me. That goes into my master road trip playlist, just for the joy of singing along. 
  • David Frizzel and Shelly West. “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma.” In 1981 this was number 1 on the country charts for seven weeks. It is a lovely song, and makes me pine for cold nights on a prairie country road in a pickup. Ok, it’s probably totally manufactured Nashville country, and you can’t go home again, but it’s still a lovely song. 

Guitar. 

I took the Kohno since I didn’t have to worry about airplanes.  My shoulder hurt by the end of the day, but my hands never did, so I worked on Mazurka Marieta by Tarrega. I memorized it a long time ago, and it was one of those songs I never seemed to forget, but then I forgot it.  Relearning went quickly though. 

Posted on

Wisconsin Packing List

We didn’t take any fishing gear to Wisconsin, except for waders, boots, and sunglasses. We didn’t wade, but on the day it rained I wore my boots instead of sandals, and Kris wore her waders and her boots both days to stay warm.  The temperature was in the 40s. It was arctic.

We used the guide’s rods, Orvis Recon 10 weights, and they worked great. We have 10 weights, but we don’t have cold water lines for them, and tropic lines kink in cold water. I could get used to not hauling fishing gear through airports. And as to Recon versus Helios most rods are better than I am.

When we were in Oregon, we asked a waitress what we should do while we were there.  She said she didn’t know, that she’d just moved to Oregon from Milwaukee, so we asked her what we should do in Wisconsin. “Eat fried cheese curds.” Our daughter added that we should also eat fresh cheese curds because they squeak when you chew. They do.

Cheese curds are curdled milk, cheddar in process, and not yet cheese. In the New York Times, Louisa Kamp once described the squeak as two balloons trying to neck. They taste a bit like cottage cheese, with more chew.

We bought a block of cheddar cheese which I stuck in my daypack and forgot about.  At least I forgot about it until the TSA lady pulled me out of the line at the Milwaukee airport to go through my pack. I’m pretty sure that in the scanner the block of cheddar looked just like C-4. “Do you have anything sharp in your bag? Anything that could stick me.” She was pulling on her proctology gloves.

“No . . . yes, wait. I have a block of extra sharp cheddar cheese.”  Wisconsin humor. She looked at me and then laughed. The Wisconsin TSA lady thought the joke was funny, and I’m not in prison.

Cheese

After the fur trade, Wisconsin’s first industries were timber and wheat. The wheat didn’t last, and I can’t remember why. Disease? Poor soil? Short growing seasons? Wheat worked in Nebraska and Kansas, but not in Wisconsin. So Wisconsin turned to dairy, spurred on by the efforts of the University of Wisconsin. I had always assumed that Wisconsin came to dairy because that’s where European dairy farmers immigrated, but no. It was the replacement crop because of the failure of wheat.

Where We Didn’t Go

There was a lot of Wisconsin we didn’t see. There is a peninsula, Door County, in the northeast, roughly paralleling the Michigan upper peninsula on the east side of Lake Michigan. Door County was somewhere referred to as Wisconsin’s Cape Cod. I haven’t been to Cape Cod, but Door County had some appeal to me. The pictures look genteel.

Historically northern Wisconsin was timber, not farming, and Stevens Point was the doorway to the pineywoods. I’ll have a chance to see the north country in Michigan and Minnesota, and it was a long way from Chicago (notwithstanding the draw of the giant fiberglass muskie in Hayward), so we didn’t go. We probably won’t.

The part of the state I wish I’d seen but didn’t was the southwestern Driftless Area.  It is apparently a very fine trout fishery, overlapping Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. It is also the part of the state with the highest concentration of organic farms and rural Democratic votes. It is geologically different than the rest of the state because the great sheet glaciers didn’t cover the Driftless, and consequently didn’t leave glacial drift, glacial drift being the trash left behind by glaciers after a picnic. Consequently there’s not much glacial rock.

There’s a lovely looking trout town there, Viroqua, and I’m a sucker for trout towns. I had already planned to fish the Driftless region in Iowa, so maybe next year I’ll hit them both.

We also didn’t visit the Milwaukee churches.  I’ll go back for that.

What I Didn’t Write About

Aldo Leopold. John Muir. Hank Aaron. The Art of Fielding.

Bud Selig.

Have you ever had someone be so unjust, perpetrate so many indignities, large and small, deliver so many insults that physically you react to their name? Bud Selig. If Fortunato had only been the Commissioner of Baseball, Montresor’s motivations in The Cask of Amontillado would stand revealed.

I’m glad I’m going back. I’ll write about Bud Selig.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bud_Selig_on_October_31,_2010_(2).jpg

Playlist

  • Bon Iver. It was the first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, that was so arresting, so beautiful. I can hum Skinny Love happily forever. I like the other albums, even the strange 22, A Million and side projects like Volcano Choir. But For Emma is beautiful.
  • BoDeans. I’ve listened to the BoDeans since a Stereo Review review of Home back in the 80s.  I miss Stereo Review, but I’m probably the only one. Red River goes into my car trip playlist. 
  • Steve Miller Band. I didn’t really care for them in the 70s, but they’re fun to listen to when your expectations are low.
  • Bruce Springsteen. Cadillac Ranch. Hey little girlie in the blue jeans so tight/Drivin’ alone through the Wisconsin night.  
  • George Jones, Milwaukee Here I Come. There’s also a version by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. If you never saw Dolly Parton on the Porter Wagoner Show on Saturday night, your education is incomplete. Dolly was 21. “Why Porter! You brung me flowers!”
  • Les Paul, The Best of the Capitol Masters Edition. Luckily he designed a great guitar, otherwise no one would remember him. If you never actually listened to Les Paul (which I hadn’t), don’t. 
  • Ella Fitzgerald, My Cousin in Milwaukee. Singin’ sweet about singin’ sexy. 
  • Smoking Popes, Welcome to Janesville. Paul Ryan is from Janesville. It’s a fine song, but I don’t think it’s about Paul Ryan. 
  • Jerry Lee Lewis, What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me). Lewis’s late country phase.
  • Brad Paisley, Alcohol. Paisley is from West Virginia, and should have been on my West Virginia playlist. He wasn’t, but only out of ignorance. I suspect he’s not my kind of country, but this is a strange sort of anthem, and probably fitting for the state with the highest alcoholism rate in the country.
  • Kimya Dawson, Tire Swing.  Didn’t know her, and still don’t. Wikipedia lists her genre as anti-folk. Ok then. 
  • Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Milwaukee is a port. 

Guitar

I took a guitar, my cheap travel guitar, and worked on Villa-Lobos’s Choro No. 1. I gave up on the Bach I’d been working on without really learning it. I did manage to play all the way through it though.

Posted on

Oregon Packing List II

I had some random thoughts about Oregon that I didn’t know what to do with, so they’re going with my Oregon playlist.

Donuts

Baked goods are essential to fly fishing , and fried donuts are baked goods. Portland is famous for its donuts, Voodoo Donuts specifically. We went:  I wouldn’t go back. It is the donut equivalent of birthday cakes, more surface than substance. The counter help is there to move you through the line, the donuts, while highly decorated, aren’t anything special, and I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to contemplate a penis-shaped donut, not early in the morning, not any time. 

Blue Star donuts, on the other hand, is outstanding. It bills itself as adult donuts, and that’s fair. Generally I’m not so much a fan of cake donuts (which their donuts are), but that’s a quibble.  Blueberry bourbon donuts are a flavor to be beholden to, and are delicious.

Lesbians

For most places we’ve gone, there’s been a kind of unanimity of response from Houston folks.  When we said we were going to Annapolis, we were told eat the crab cakes. When we went to New Orleans in August, friends said it’s the best time of year to go: it’s no hotter than Houston and you can get restaurant reservations. For Portland, we were told my girlfriend’s lesbian daughter, or my ex-boyfriend’s lesbian aunt, or our former lesbian law school classmate is there.

It was never our gay nephew (or boyfriend’s gay son) lives there. It was never my girlfriend’s daughter. I’m sure there are plenty of gay guys in Portland, and plenty of straight daughters, but the lesbian response was just inevitable.

When I got back to Houston I found an older Gallup poll, 2015, on LGBT populations in US cities, and Portland ranked second after San Francisco for percentage of overall population. Portland might beat out San Francisco if there were some gay guys.

Fake News

You couldn’t have more confusion about Oregon fish facts if they were reported by Fox News. Ask a simple question, do steelhead feed? You will get many more contradictory answers than steelhead. The best answer seems to be that winter steelhead don’t feed, and that summer steelhead feed, but not a lot.

We heard that jack Chinook, which are undersized male Chinook salmon, are mature small fish that are biologically necessary for low flows, but that kind of begs the question: if low flows are blocking big males, why aren’t they blocking big females?  Why aren’t there lady jack Chinook? We heard that they were confused juveniles who were not sexually mature but were pesky. We heard that they were mature males that just hadn’t gotten big.

The best answer seems to be that they are sexually mature, but precociously mature: they’ve matured too soon.  The number of jacks may be higher among hatchery fish, which genetically doesn’t sound like a good thing.

We constantly heard that Deschutes steelhead are a different fish than Deschutes resident trout. One of the more interesting things I read was that out of any given trout or steelhead population, scientists can’t predict which fish will go to the ocean and which fish will remain resident. Which fish will which has more to do with nurture than nature. If the local environment isn’t optimal, Pacific Coast trout will head for the ocean. It’s the principal reason that trout and resident steelhead are considered the same species. It’s a lifestyle thing.

I could never find fish population numbers. Whatever they are, the future of Pacific Coast trout and Salmon looks pretty grim.

Where We Didn’t Go

I’d spent time in Oregon before. I’d seen the coastline, I’d crossed the Cascades, I’d been to Eugene and Bend.  I’d like to see the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.  I wish we’d had time to fish the Umpqua.

Conservation Groups

I’ve been making contributions to local conservation organizations, and their websites are more often than not the best sources of information about a fishery. You’d think with all that ecological consciousness there would be an obvious conservation organization to join in the Pacific Northwest.  There’s not, not that I could figure out anyway. We found the Deschutes River Alliance, and they make a great video, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they may not be right, and they get as much grief from locals as they get praise. 

Maybe Trout Unlimited is the right organization, but I’m surprised I didn’t find a more localized umbrella group for salmon and steelhead. Maybe the Deschutes River Conservancy would be good.

BattleFish

One of our guides on the Deschutes, Barret Ames, is on a reality show, BattleFish, about commercial albacore tuna fishing. It debuted Friday. The show is kind of brutal to watch, but the fish is delicious. 

Playlist

Dolly Parton wrote a song about Eugene. Jack White and Loretta Lynn recorded a duet about Portland. That right there is reason enough to visit.

  • The Decembrists, The Hazards of Love, Her Majesty, The King is Dead, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. I love the Decembrists. I thought I was being very au courant, until my daugher (who’s 32) told me that they were her favorite band in high school. I did get that song about the father murdering his children in my head for about three days, and I’d rather not hear it again anytime soon.
  •  Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pastures Of Plenty. One of the Woody Guthrie Oregon songs.
  • Esparanza Spalding, Chamber Music Society, Radio Music Society. How a short black girl from Portland became a great jazz musician is a story worth contemplating.
  • She & Him. M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel. We had Volume 3, and found ourselves listening to it in high-stress situations, like when I’d tied my wet wading boots to the roof of the car to dry and Kris freaked out.
  • The Shins, Port of Morrow. 
  • The Kingsmen. The Best of the Kingsmen. Louie, Louie never cycled through, but they were just as bad as I remembered. 
  • Paul Revere & The Raiders. Greatest Hits. They were better than I remembered, but there must have been something in the Portland water in the 60s that churned out garage bands.
  • Todd Snider, Songs for the Daily Planet. 80s music. Dated. 
  • Woody Guthrie, Columbia River Collection.
  • Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out. I might get Sleater-Kinney in 30 years or so, or die trying.
  • John Fahey, The Portland Cement Factory.
  • Joan Baez, Portland Town. It took me a while to figure out this was Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine.
  • Johnny Cash, Lumberjack. They don’t make songs like this any more. It goes well with Sometimes a Great Notion.
  • Dolly Parton, Eugene Oregon. 
  • Carrie Brownstein & Fred Armisen, Dream of the 90s.  We watched a lot of Portlandia.  It’s addicting.
  • Elliott Smith, Alameda. 
  • Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell.  I’m not sure what this has to do with Oregon, but I liked the song. In 2005, Stevens announced he would record an album for each state, and he released Michigan and Illinois, but later he said it was just a promotional gimmick.  This is a man of my own heart. 
  • Michael Hurley, Portland Water. 
  • Steely Dan, Don’t Take Me Alive. The best driving song of the lot. Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon/Don’t take me alive/Got a case of dynamite/I could hold out here all night
  • Lorretta Lynn (feat. Jack White), Portland, Oregon.  
Posted on

Packing List

What do I take on a fly fishing trip that is not a fly fishing trip? Of course I always take too much. In rough order of importance:

Suntan lotion.  I’m heading for the Sunshine State, and I’ve got that whole swarthy northern European thing going on, without the swarthy.

Lifeproof water proof phone case.  I remember to use the waterproof phone case every other fishing trip.  I have drowned many phones, and the next time I dunk my phone in water it will be on the trip when I forget the case.  I did some research on the case when I bought it, but none of the reviews mentioned that the case makes your phone unusable. This is particularly helpful on a fishing trip because it means if anyone calls you can’t answer.

Phone. My phone is critical because it includes my Florida playlist. Did you know that if you don’t like Jimmy Buffett, there’s not much music from Florida? When you look up best songs about Florida, one-third will be rap, one-third will be Jimmy Buffett, and one-third will be songs like Gulf Coast Highway by Nanci Griffith, which I really like, but which is about bluebonnets and Texas. There are some good musicians born in Florida that I never think of as Floridian: Ray Charles, Graham Parsons, and the Allman Brothers. There are some good songs that might be about Florida by Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. There’s a whole Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special Southern rock thing that I never much cared for. There are some good musicians who I identify as Floridian: Cannonball Adderley, Tom Petty, and Arturo Sandoval. On the whole though the state’s music sucks compared to the music from Memphis. But then what state’s doesn’t?

iPad. It’s got both Google Earth and my Kindle. I found a great anthology, The Florida Reader, to read on the trip.

Reading glasses. I can still thread the eye of a size 18 nymph with a 5x leader without glasses, but it’s mostly guesswork. Ok, it’s all guesswork. I like to hang a pair of reading glasses around my neck in case I want to read a menu.

Some underwear, some socks, and a tee shirt.  I need a tee shirt to sleep in. Underwear is always a good thing.

My boat bag. That’s a whole other discussion, but do you know where I put my saltwater pliers?

Keen sandals. I bought these Keens when my 26-year old son was 13 to wear with a tuxedo jacket and swim trunks to a private school gala. I never wore the swim trunks again, and there have been years I haven’t worn the sandals. They’ve become my fishing shoes of choice however, and have been re-glued many times. I keep thinking that they’re not going to last much longer.

Some fishing pants, a fishing shirt, a fleece sweater, rain pants, and rain jacket. The low will be in the 50s and a high in the 70s. It’s supposed to rain. I have to remember, I can always buy clothes if I get it wrong, but wet is no fun.

Running shorts, polyester running shirt, and running shoes. I might get a run in. I do get runs in. I really do.

A guitar and a copy of the Sor 20 Estudios. I have a little travel guitar that’s been to Portugal and Argentina and Mexico and Arkansas and a lot of places in between. I glued it back together once. Sometimes with long layovers I’ll sit in the airport and play. It’s always good for a conversation. I’m working on Sor’s Variations of a Theme by Mozart, and when I get through it to my satisfaction I get to smoke a cigar.

Shorts and my Altuve Astros jersey with the World Series patch. This is for spring training, and did I mention that the Astros won the World Series?

A toothbrush. My nod to Jack Reacher.

A 7 weight and an 8 weight, and some bass flies. In case there’s time to get to a canal. Otherwise we’re using the guide’s rods.

Some resort casual wear. Whatever that is.  We have a reservation at the Flagler Steakhouse in the Breakers on Saturday, and that’s their dress code. I hope that includes Keen sandals. We couldn’t afford to stay at the Breakers, so I figured we’d go for dinner.

Dramamine. This will not be flats fishing, and I get seasick.