D minus 15 - 12.5 pounds

Saturday, oh Saturday.....Fishing Derby day at Rancho Jurupa.  Our day started at 5:45 am....a long time before sunrise.....way too long before sunrise....what is that all about?    Every year on the 4th Saturday of January RJRP has a fishing derby, and why not?  They have two fishing lakes here at the lovely RJRP....the lakes are stocked with 1500 pounds of trout on Friday, and Saturday morning the anglers flow into the park  at 6 am with dreams of catching the big one and taking home 1st prize.  Well, on this particular Saturday the "big one" was a 12.5 pound trout caught using hot dogs as bait....wait, what?  Hot dogs?  No lures, no Power Bait, no worms, no night crawlers?  Hot dogs?  Yep, hot dogs!

On days like this every camphost is required to work, so TLE and I were on the line at 5:45 armed with an apron with $50 in cash to make change for those who had not pre-purchased their tickets.......then they opened the gates and the rush started as hundreds of hopeful fisher type people rushed into the park to stake out their favorite fishing spots with hopes of winning the prize for the biggest trout caught.

By 7 am when the horn sounded starting the Derby the traffic had dwindled to a trickle.  We work anyway on Saturday, but normally from 10 am to 2 pm, so even though we were dismissed around 7:30 one of us had to come back to the Kiosk by 10 am.....for our normal shift...we decided that would be TLE, and then I would come back and relieve her at Noon taking the last 2 hours of the shift.

I went back out to the trailer and began putting the Trek bike (Mike's bike) back together and tuning it up......I found out talking to Mike that he has had this bike for 20 years, and rode it to and from work 6 of those years, but has had it in storage these past 5, or 6 years.  He was thinking it was "dead" until I offered to restore it for him.  Amazingly I only had to replace one small length of cable housing for the rear derailleur, otherwise everything else works.  I did have to re-pack the grease in both hubs as well as the bottom bracket, but that is just normal for a 20 year old bike.

Finally it was time to walk over to the Kiosk to relieve TLE and do my time.  It continued to be busy from Noon to 2 pm, which helped the time pass quickly, and I was back "home" a little after 2 taking  a nap.

This weekend is the 73rd birthday of Neil Diamond, the prolific song writer, and performer, so XM Radio dedicated channel 17 to nothing but his music the entire weekend.  TLE and I spent the afternoon and evening listening to that channel and were transported back in time for a few hours.  The words from one particular song, "If you know what I mean" struck home:

"And here's to the songs we used to sing.  And here's to the times we used to know, It's hard to hold them in our arms again, but hard to let them go"

We spent a few hours holding those tunes in our arms and singing the words we know all too well, and were treated to an amazing, almost Cedar Key like sunset.

Saturday was my day off from dieting so we grilled some filets to which TLE added asparagus and broccoli.  Since Sunday is another Kiosk day we were off to bed by 10 pm.

Thanks for stopping by!