It’s been an interesting week of fishing. Dramatically unsuccessful. There are snakehead babies around and some big fish with them. Most afternoon/evenings I’ve had 2-4 shots. Although none yesterday evening, surprisingly. And none on Saturday evening for that matter either.

My casting has been a bit wild. Not the precise shots I expect and I was starting to lose confidence, which is never a good thing. I thought it was me being a bit off the ball. And spent some time reworking my shot. I haven’t chased babies for some months now.

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A video to show you areas you can take your rental car…photo’s show fish and a wild cat in the forest area.

No fishing this week. No park practice either. Work got me. Running businesses has a way of filling every gap that fishing might have occupied, and this week it filled all of them. So no trip report, and my late haul is no better that it was last Tuesday. Which is to say, improving, but not this week. Although I have a video of last week's fishing and it is interesting how once chasing fish is in the mix your park skills don't seem to work to the level of your best practice - something from Paul article this week as well. I also wanted to incorporate Martyn Whit’s observation on cell phone hollering, but not sure how to apply that to fishing, however I have sympathy for his view.

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Tracy is away this week so I’m on FP. I thought I had a couple of FPs in reserve from Kalyn but I can’t find them! So instead you get me again today. Party time!

Last night was my cooking night. Which has inspired me to write about things that I do once/week. Because, you guessed it, ordinarily I cook once/week. I don’t always cook the same meal and have half a dozen meals that I cook on some sort of random rotation. Last night was spuds. Or “French Potatoes” as I call them.

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Facebook reminded me about things what happened 10 yrs ago. One was that Paul and Ashly visited us after their Varzina trip. Time truly flies. We met in Russian border as some of you might know. Paul amd Ashly were slightly having problems with crossing border.
 
Funny how life throws things to you. So I helped them out that they could go Varzina for fishing and I picked them up week later. It is about 650 km drive one way. So drop them 1300 km and pick up 1300 km, just walk in the park. Afterwards Paul came nickname to me, some will say it with laugh, some won't make difference.... on that point I think my help meant world to them and it is earned nickname. 

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The alarm went off at 4:20 this morning. Get up, brush teeth, say goodbye to Minna and Ronja, carry all the bags down to the taxi and off to the airport. Had to get a taxi to save a lot of time, a little while ago it would’ve meant to save just a little time because then I was lucky to have the airport shuttle passing right outside of my door. And a bit early to ask Minna to drive me. So now I’m in the metropol Örnsköldsvik to participate in the Swedish nationals and next weekend I’ll fly to Italy for the World Championships. Feels like I will just be home to unpack and pack the bags again.

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I heard from my meditation teacher this week. He’s decided to discontinue leading our Sangha which has been meeting weekly, then monthly, for practice and dharma talks for 15 years. The enterprise is running out of energy.  Dan was having a difficult time mining the sutras and the zeitgeist for fresh material. I get it.  The turning point was probably more than six years ago now, the beginning of the pandemic. I’m not sure whether it was the loss of face-to-face contact or just the passage of time - members grew old, dropped out, and in one case passed. Maybe it was neither. The nature of the practice may have seeded its own demise.  Jason Siff traveled to Sri Lanka in the 80s returning with a new practice he called Recollective Awareness - expanding attention to the moment to include recollection of the entire meditative experience. RA is atypical and did not easily attract new acolytes.  It’s also a little exhausting. I’m not sure how the group will wind down but I think I’ll lose touch with the members and I’ll miss them.

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