Swimming!

   

   Completely bored out of my mind after months of back pain one day in December I went birding at Snake Den Farm. Snake Den is a short drive from my house and the birding is along a dirt road. I took my time and watched every step so not to inflame my already injured back. 

   While I was there I ran into a birder I had never seen before. At this point, I'm surprised when I meet a new birder in Rhode Island. After all these years of birding, and birders being a small group, I seem to have met most everyone. He was much older than me with a long beard. We (he) started talking and the conversation dragged on far longer than I would have liked. My back hurts far worse standing in one spot than it does walking slowly and looking around. Finally I told him about my bad back after making obvious positions to stretch it or make it more comfortable. My hope here was for him to let me go on my way and he on his.

    Instead, he started talking about his own medical issues. He told me he was 88 years old. I never would have guess, he didn't look much over 65. He didn't walk with a hunched back or any limp. His gait at full walk was much bigger than mine. To put it plainly, for 88 years old, he was in great shape. He told me that he had back issues the year before. He said it affected his legs and the pain was so bad he was confined to a wheelchair. He thought there wasn't any hope to recover. He then told me that he started swimming at the Y. He said, believe it or not, that he went from wheelchair bound to pain free in a month. He said it multiple times how great swimming was for him.

   I put this in the back of my mind. I was happy for him and I believed him. I also thought that everyone is different and whatever was wrong with his back probably wasn't what was wrong with mine. I still hadn't been diagnosed at that point so still didn't know what the hell was wrong with me.

   Obviously I know swimming is one of the best exercises you can do because it is good cardio and doesn't put any pressure on your joints. However, I was pretty sure I had a bulging disk ( actually I have since been diagnosed with three). I was not sure if  swimming would put pressure on the disk(s) and pinch the nerves even more. I suspected that the motion could and would inflame the already inflamed muscles and joints even worse. So I thought about swimming but wasn't going to until I had a real diagnosis and I got permission from an orthopedic AND my physical therapist Ryan. Ryan has been great and I believe he knows more about backs, spines, and nerves than most doctors. But I also wanted a specialized ortho who saw the multiple MRI's and X-Rays to give me the okay too.

   I got the okay from both in late December. Ryan told me multiple times not to overdue it. He also said if I go a lot I should have at least a second stroke, again so I didn't overdue it. Laurie and I both got memberships to the Foxboro YMCA which is the closest indoor pool to her house at the end of 2022. 

   We went swimming the first day we got our membership. The pool is a standard twenty five yard (or meter) pool with six wide lanes. Sometimes the pool is used for swimming lessons, water aerobics or family time. The times are posted a week in advance on what the pool is used for. When all six lanes are open for lap swim that is when I go. Each lane is wide enough for two people. 

   The first day I went I did five laps. It took a lot out of me and I wasn't sure how my body would react. I took a couple of muscle relaxers when I went to bed because I could feel some throbbing back there. The next morning when I woke up my back felt better than it had in months. No joke, it certainly wasn't healed but most of the pain was gone.

   I was pretty happy with five laps and my goal was to inch my way up to ten. I did not want any setbacks so I wasn't going to go immediately from five to ten. Also, I planned on stopping at ten laps once I finally reached it because that seemed like enough for a workout. 

   So I kept going back to the pool as often as I could. Life gets in the way so I've been averaging two to three times a week. It works out really well that I have physical  therapy in the morning. I go from there to the pool because there are usually lap hours between 12-2:30 pm. 

   My back is feeling so much better. The pattern seems to be I'm a little sore on pool day but the next two to three days my back feels great. Sometimes it doesn't even get sore on pool day. I really enjoy the swimming and look forward to going. I also started using my snorkel in the pool. My form sucks and keeping my head head above water and breathing is something I will eventually need to work on. But for now, using the snorkel I can keep going without stopping to catch my breathe. My logic is for now it is better to work on my cardio than my swimming technique. 

   Getting up to ten laps was much easier than I expected. I went from five laps to 7 to 10 in a couple of sessions. I did fifteen laps today and when I was done I was tired. Which is a good thing. I missed exercise

   So I have to say, I'm with the old guy that told me that swimming got out of that wheelchair within a month. After a little over a month of swimming my back is feeling so much better. I've had full days sometimes consecutively where it doesn't hurt at all. I feel a lot stronger. I can feel the muscles in my abs and core which had already been getting stronger due to PT. I strongly suggest if you have a bad back to ask your doctor if swimming might help. It has done wonders for me.

    I'd been dealing with back pain for so long that when I had my first days that were pain free felt different and wrong. I could not believe the feeling of not being in pain. Really and truly, it was an odd sensation one I am grateful to have. I have been miserable for eight months now, and finally over the last month I've gotten my spark back. I am out of my funk and no longer depressed. I don't feel like I'm bringing Laurie down when I'm around her. I even made some dumb jokes this week that made her laugh. I think swimming for a month has gotten me to the point that I probably won't have any real setbacks and am on the road to healing.

   Note- For the last few months my health related problems have been dominating my life. As I said above, I've been miserable. Because my back, diabetes, and neuropathy have been all I've thought about it gets mentioned in my blog posts quite often. From my point of view anything I've done since June has had to be planned out either because of my diet or my back. My one camping trip this summer required planning on when to take my muscle relaxers. lying in the back seat of Laurie's car to ease the length of the ride, among other precautions. And I'm sure you are sick of me starting every post with a mention of my back. Trust me, it is as tiresome for me to write as it is for you to read. I know I have a long way to go until I'm fully healed even though I am mostly pain free. Ryan told me today that one of the muscles in my back is going to take a long time to "heal" and "relax" because it was literally spasming  for months without rest.   All that being said, as long as I'm going in the right direction, I want to put that part of my life behind me. I'm stuck with the diabetes, but honestly it wasn't hard to change my diet. So.. from this point forward, I'm hoping to start making memories again, and there will by very little mention of my back or my health. I seem to be in very little pain when I drive so I'm going to start doing the things that I thought of over the winter... Let the games begin!!!!!!!!!!!

   

Organization

Just some of my boxes. Not shown are my 
Surf bag and trout box which live in my car.
My freshwater bass tackle box also not shown
is stocked and ready to go.

    In real life I'm the kind of person that is fairly neat. I'm pretty laid back. If we were roommates I wouldn't be that annoying neat freak that expects everything to be spotless, nor am I slob. Chances are 50/50 that I'd have dirty dishes in the sink or not. But if I did have dirty dishes they wouldn't sit there for days.

   On the other hand when it comes to my fishing gear and camping gear I am meticulous. Most winters I give myself projects to keep me busy. Some of these projects are changing out rusty hooks, making poppers, making saltwater leaders, hair rigs for carp, and albie deceivers. 

   Since I spent so much time birding the last few years and not that much time fishing, needless to say I didn't have too many projects. I can't lose poppers to gator Bluefish if I am chasing birds. Also, I didn't do anything, birding, fishing, or hiking last year due to my health. I have plenty of poppers to get me through the next five years sitting in my spare room. The only "projects" I really had to do was make some leaders and change out some rusty hooks.

   The last few days I spent a lot of time organizing my gear. Keep in mind most it had been untouched for the last year, some of it longer. For the most part it was pretty neat and organized to start. However, I went through every piece of gear I own. I went through all of my boxes and bags and made sure they had the lures that I will need to be successful. For example, my surf bag needed the new leaders. I also had to put inline circle hooks in the bag since it is the law to use inline circle hooks when using live bait for stripers. 

I wrote down all the different boxes 
and when I was satisfied that it was 
ready for fishing I checked it off.
I also counted spares of some of 
my lures. Holy crap! I will never 
use all the fishing gear I have 
even if I live to be 100!!

   I went so far as to make boxes for species specific applications. When I go to Wachusett Reservoir (lakers and Landlocked Salmon) I carry my lures in a box that goes into a backpack along with food and water. My tautog box has bank sinkers and thick tautog hooks. My albie box has Deadly Dicks, Pickering Albie Deceivers, Zoom Flukes, bass hooks, and a popper and Jumpin' Minnow in case I come across blitzing Stripers.

   The three most important boxes are my Surf bag, fly boxes and my trout box. My trout box is so tiny it fits in my pocket. Still it is loaded with Rooster tails, Kastmasters, casting bubbles/flies, and small Rapala swimmers.

   My fully stocked fly boxes will fit in my waders and pockets along with a spare leader and tippet. Despite having three fly boxes, if I can get away with it, by far my favorite fly is the ant. I'd use it exclusively if I could, but works best in late summer and early fall.

   My Surf Bag is now ready for fishing this spring. It has lures with new hooks. There's enough leaders to get me through the spring. There are also other necessities such as a snag hook, pliers, and wooden eggs. My surf bag needs more maintenance throughout the year than my other stuff. Obviously my surf bag gets used more than say my tautog box which may or may not actually see the light of day. Also, the bag gets filled up with torn shad bodies, Zoom flukes, and chopped up leaders. After a few sessions, the bag looks like a dumpster fire. So every couple weeks I have to go through the bag and clean it up.

  I went through all of my spare gear too. I counted up my poppers, albie flies, and a few other things. I put back jigs and soft plastics that had been haphazardly thrown on a shelf. I went through my box of new plugs and Kastmaster XLs.

   As I said at the beginning, my gear is usually pretty clean and organized. Over the last week I went over the top. I am not one with OCD. I aimed for perfection not because I am obsessed but because it was fun. It was fun to aim for perfection. Right now I know where every piece of gear is from stuff in my boxes or in my storage room. This will only last until my next fishing trip where I'm bound to leave used stuff in my car and not put it back where it belongs.

Just one shelf full of gear I'll never use

   It is that time of year, if you haven't gone through your fishing gear since you put it away in the fall. Now is the time. You don't want to find out all of your hooks went rusty on a perfect seventy degree day. I still have my least favorite project left. I have to change my line on the reels I use. I went through all of rods and reels too. I decided to narrow down my rods that I will actually use and put the rest off to the side. Still, I have to change the line on thirteen reels. It's one of those projects that I hate doing and procrastinate until the last minute. But once I start doing it, its not really as awful as I make it out to be

Through the eyes of a Child

My letter to PA F&G. Still white
after
 thirty years

    When I was a kid I couldn't get enough of outdoor magazines. I had subscriptions to Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Sport Afield, and The In-Fisherman. I couldn't wait for the spring issues that would have mostly fishing content. My favorite parts of OL and F&S were the middle sections printed on plain paper as opposed to the glossy paper in the rest of the magazine. The middle section would have articles from the region of the country you are from. I would eat up those articles. I would take notes and store them in a notebook.

   In 1988, as I was reading the national articles I came across a story on American Shad. For some reason I fell in love. I had never heard of American Shad until then but after I read the article they were all I thought about. I wanted to know more. Since the article was about shad in the Delaware River, I wrote a letter to the PA Fish and Game. I sent them a bunch of questions by snail mail (pre-internet). I also sent a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope to return my letter.

   When my SASE arrived I devoured the info. Not only did the biologist answer my questions but sent a fact sheet. Needless to say, I was in heaven. Not knowing that there were great shad runs in the Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers I made plans to go fish the Delaware. I tried to figure out the milage and gas costs and added that to the cost of a motel. This was only a pipe dream of course. I was too young to drive and my parents were not going to take me to Pennsylvania just to fish.

The article that I first
 learned about
American Shad

   Yesterday while cleaning out a storage drawer I came across my envelope with the original article, my answered questions and fact sheet. I reread my questions written in cursive along with the answers. It brought back a fond memory of a budding outdoorsman just starting to learn there was more than largemouth bass in this great big world.

   I never made it to the Delaware to fish for shad. I didn't need to. It turns out there are American Shad in the North/ Indianhead River in Scituate about an hour from my house. I used to go there a couple times each spring to catch them. More recently, when I make my birding foray to Plum Island I make a few hours to fish for shad. 

   After that initial letter to PA Fish and Game, I craved knowledge on fishing. I wrote dozens of letters to wildlife depts across the country with return stamped envelopes. Most of the letters were to biologists in the Northeast because they were close and the drive did not seem like a pipe dream. I learned about trout and salmon in northern New England along with Walleye and Kokanee in Connecticut.

My original envelope

    My letters eventually ended, not because I got older or smarter, but because of email. Now it is easy to send an email to the states' fish departments. However, ironically, I rarely do so. Simply because if I want to know the answer to a question I can usually find it online. A simple search of You Tube and I can find out what the best flies to fish the West Branch of the Penobscot in May or August. This is great, but it does not beat the excitement when I came home from school and saw an envelope addressed to me in my handwriting. My heart would be racing with excitement as I carefully opened each envelope.

 Another story below the photo below

   

Fast forward thirty one years past 1989. DJ and I were on our big western vacation. For seven weeks in 2010 we were on the road. After spending a week in South Dakota and the Forth of July at Mount Rushmore we were at Devil's Tower. Devils Tower was the first National Monument in the United States. Teddy Roosevelt declared it a National Monument after he was given the power of the Antiquities Act by Congress. The tower is a 867 foot butte in eastern Wyoming. It is sacred to the plain's Indian tribes. It was featured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

   We spent most of the day at the National Monument. We took hundreds of photos from every angle as we circled it on the trail though most of the photos look about the same. We walked every trail in the park, but not before going to the bathroom when we pulled into the parking lot.

   
   We got to Devil's Tower very early despite a two hour ride from out campground. We may have been the first car in the parking lot. After a two hour drive we went into the bathroom before starting our day. (I promise this is not a gross bathroom story) In the bathroom near the sinks was a white board. It didn't have anything written on it. My guess is that a ranger writes the weather for the day on it. I needed to use a stall while DJ did not so he finished before me. When I got out of the stall and went to wash my hands DJ wrote the following with a dry erase marker

    " Good Morning America, How are ya? Don't you know me, I'm your native son?"

   If you haven't  had your head buried in the sand for the past fifty years, you know this is a song lyric from the song City of New Orleans" written by Steve Goodman and made famous by Arlo Guthrie. When I read what DJ wrote, I damn near cried. It was just past dawn and we were at the very first national monument. We were just a few days past Mt Rushmore on the Forth of July. No other ten words could have described the moment better than those. When I read what he wrote, I knew I was doing something right as a parent. Though we had dozens of cds with us in the car, we hadn't listened to that song while on vacation yet. It was all him and how he was feeling at the time. Since our plan was to use the bathroom then get our backpacks, drinks, and camera, I didn't have my camera to take a photo of the whiteboard.

   The feeling I had when DJ wrote that was the cliché moment of Zen for me. Knowing how DJ felt  seeing the beautiful landscapes and wildlife in America and seeing it through his eyes made me proud. During our trip, we went to iconic places such as Little Bighorn, The Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone and that feeling never went away. Of course, after we came home and over the next thirteen years, both that teenage boy and his father would see things like school shootings, the Marathon bomber, and a pandemic. We watched politicians lie and shit on the Constitution. We watched the Bears Ears National Monument that we drove through in Utah lose its status as a monument only to see it become one again.  Now that DJ is twenty seven and I forty eight we are both a lot more cynical. However, on that vacation and specifically that moment in the bathroom, we both saw the world through the eyes of an innocent fourteen year old and for the moment, all was right in the world!