I'm back. Even if I'd rather not....

I vaguely recall writing something in the last post about plans for doing some actual work on the blog both in terms of look, layout and content.

I had good intentions. And then I went fishing and it all went to hell. Pretty much sums up my love life, my academic record, my professional career and the condition of my yard.

I just got back from a week of family vacation and fishing in Colorado. There were a few days up there, standing in the middle of a river in a pair of shorts and sneakers, that I really could have used some of my duck hunting gear. It was that cool, literally and figuratively.

But now I'm home. And the projected high today is 106. But I'm not bitching. Too much, anyway. Dove season is a little over three weeks away. The early teal season will follow thusly and before I know it I'll be sitting in the middle of a sagebrush flat, bow in hand, sweating and swatting skeeters, silently griping about Oklahoma's miserable early October weather and swearing that next year gawddamnit I'll be in Montana. That's my usual pattern, anyway.

But back to the present. I'm a pretty lousy flyfisherman. Now there are guys who say that and in truth they're really not bad. I'm not one of them. Pretty much any trout I catch on a fly rod is accidental. But I did manage to hook a few while wheezing my way across the 8-9000-foot elevations in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I probably would have caught more, but I'm pretty sure the guy at the fly shop in Estes Park deliberately gave me lousy advice after I walked into the shop and said "I need some help. I'm mainly a bass fisherman, so trout flies to me are kinda like Texans: They all look the same."

Guess where the guy in the fly shop was from? Let's just say his Big 12 South team plays my Big 12 South team every year...

Actually, he was a very nice guy, gave me very good advice and we both agreed the Longhorns really suck.

Tim Romano, who lives in Boulder (the smug, affluent hippie capitol of the world, but a cool place nonetheless) and is one-half of the excellent Flytalk blog over at Field & Stream, also gave me some great suggestions on flies and locations in the Estes Park/RMNP area.

So I apologize. I spent the week fishing, poorly, when I should have been blogging, poorly.

At any rate, in a vain attempt to make amends, in the coming days I shall post some thoughts which I have ruminated upon this past week...observations on national parks, national park visitors, tourist towns, Marty Robbins impersonators, flyfishing and trout.