My Flippy Floppys

So I blew out one of my flip flops the other day.  Or as Tommy calls them, flippys.  I called it though before it even happened.  I could see that the material was fraying where it connected to the flop itself, and so I knew it was just a matter of time before the part that goes in between my big toe would snap. And like the suddenness of a broken shoelace, it happened a couple days ago.  It kinda goes that way for lots of things in life.  Sometimes you know that change is coming, and when it finally happens, it’s almost a relief.  

But I really like these flippys, though.  I could probably just throw them away, head to Belize City and tool around trying to find a new pair, but there’s really nothing wrong with what I have, except for the fact that my left one broke.  No problem, I’ll turn this negative into a positive, and make my flippy even better than it was before.  It kinda reminds me of this situation about this guy I know, who lost his job, and instead of looking at it as a bad thing, he used it as a catalyst to fix his world for the better.  I know this for sure, when my other flippy breaks, I know what to do.

Island Life and Stuff

Well, if I keep blogging at this rate, I’m not gonna have much to show for my travels.  Sorry if have disappointed anyone on the frequency of my posts, but I didn’t realize that I’d be able to keep myself so busy.  I just thought I’d be alone all the time, doing my own thing, but as it turns out, I’ve been meeting tons of peeps and keeping my schedule so busy that I have barely done any fishing at all.  And if you know me at all, that’s just plain weird. 

Just to give you an idea of what it’s like out here, I’ll try and paint a little picture with some humble words.  I got an apartment here on the island, and as I’m typing this right now, lizards and iguanas are scurrying about the courtyard.  There’s a small gecko-looking lizard that lives in my apartment, though I’m not sure where he spends most of his time - I only see him occasionally.  I have named him Littles.  He’s maybe an inch and a half long, and I welcome his presence because I’m pretty sure he’s on constant bug patrol.  When you look to the east here, you always see the barrier reef and its wavy smile, which is such a lovely sight.  Especially when it’s accompanied by the whistling sound that the constant wind on this island creates as it sails over your freshly opened, ice cold Belikin.  A snorkel trip at the reef gave me the opportunity to check out a big old barracuda, stingrays, nurse sharks, grouper, and a million other types of reef fish in about every color you could imagine.  As with most reefs, the life out there is the true definition of rich.  “The Split,” which is where hurricane Hattie broke the island in two back in ’61, is the chill spot.  It’s a great place for a swim or just lounging with a bucket of beer and a few friends. The wind, which as I mentioned is pretty much a constant and always making the palm trees dance, comes in from the east; so the water in all of its shades of turquoise, is pretty rough on the eastern side.   It’s difficult to see much into it if you’re looking for fishy critters (as I always try to do), but if you go to the west side of the island which faces back towards the mainland of Belize, it’s sheltered enough from the wind that you’re usually able to catch a glimpse of a bonefish (sometimes tailing, but mostly as sandy ghosts patrolling the flats for something to eat), small barracuda lazying about, needlefish skimming the surface, or a school of jacks speeding through the grass, sand and mangroves.

It’s weird to think that I have been here for a month now.  One month down, and who knows how many more to go. I said in my original post that I just planned on meeting as many people as I could and hope that led me to new adventures.  Well, in my first week here, I met a group of people who offered me a place to go to in Tulum, Mexico and then to Playa del Carmen, I was approached by a guy who needed help splitting costs and running lines on his catamaran to Guatemala, and I met Tommy who lives here and had plans of traveling to El Salvador for a week with a free place to stay at a sweet house on the beach.   So I picked El Salvador, and just got back on Monday.  The trip was insane.  Tommy, TJ and I were Team Belize, and we met up with four of Tommy’s high school buddies (Todd, Matt, Glen and Paul) at Rancho Cajun.  Rancho Cajun is Todd’s rental house that he manages just outside of La Libertad, El Salvador, in a small town called Playa Sandiego.   In total the trip was 12 days.  We spent the night in Antigua, Guatemala on the way there, then we spent six days in El Salvador, then back to Antigua for two days, then we took a boat down the Rio Dulce down to Livingston (which was some of the most amazing scenery I’ve seen in my life) where we spent the night, then we took a boat from Livingston to Punta Gorda (better known as PG), spent the night there, then took a bus back home to Caye Caulker.

Now I’m home in Caye Caulker for the next month or so, and although I haven’t decided exactly on what my next move is going to be, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be heading for Guatemala to do a home stay language study, probably somewhere on Lago de Atitlan.  From there I may head for Nicaragua, so to all of you who’ve offered advice on places to go in Nica, I’ll probably be hitting you up in the near future.  I wouldn’t be opposed to doing the language study there, if it’s a possibility.  I’ll try and do a better job of updating the blog from here on out, especially now that I have a somewhat permanent residence.

-Peace and reel/real grease

The Catalyst

I know it’s cliché to say that sometimes, out of nowhere, a door opens in life.  And in some cases this door, as unexpectedly as it may have appeared is the one that you desperately need to step through.  It’s like unsuccessfully fishing a river all day and suddenly realizing that you’ve been presenting your offering in the wrong seam, and then finally casting your set up to the right run for a dream fish.  It’s crazy how much one of these doors can be a game changer in regard to one’s existence in this world, and now that I have turned the handle and stepped over the threshold, I fully intend to take advantage of everything waiting for me the other side.

It was actually a pretty easy decision for me.  I’d been working for the past 5 years in what I have always described as an “office job” for a non-profit research company.  I started in more of a project-related, administrative assistant position.  After a couple promotions and transfer from non-exempt to exempt tax status (shit, yeah!  No OT pay and often more OT work!), I was working within the business services department pricing grants and federal contracts.  Sounds fancier than it is, and I won’t bore you with any of the details, but I will say that after 5 years, I found myself in a job where I liked everything about it except for the job itself.  The people were awesome, good benefits, decent pay and a company devoted to a good cause, but holy hell, was I bored out of my mind!  Guess that’s what I get for majoring in English, though.  With a relatively indistinguishable degree, you gotta take what you can get when considering real world job options.  Sometimes you fall into things, and sometimes you fall out of them.  So yeah, when the VP of Business Services and Lead Financial Manager flew out to Seattle from the midwest to tell me that they were consolidating the regional pricing staff back to the main office, and that I had to choose between moving there or being laid off with a bit of a severance package, the decision was pretty easy. 

It’s here that I have to stop and thank the American emphasis upon the importance of home-ownership.  In the last few years, I worked to pay off all of my debt, and save enough money for a down payment on a nightmare known as a used home.  If I could just get my hands on a cheap shortsale, cash in on that 8k first time homebuyer’s credit, and do some renovations, before I knew it I’d be sitting on some respectable equity.  But as it happened, after numerous failed attempts at buying a house (close to ten different offers over the course of about 18 months), nothing ended up working out.  So when I found out that I was getting involuntarily terminated, you can only imagine how happy I was that the house thing didn’t go through.  Not only that, but because of this intended purchase I’d managed to muster a bit of savings which are the reason why this door is so wide open for me.  Had I not been accumulating funds for a step into the land of grownups, I’m sure that I would have easily burned my money on far more important things like fishing gear, bar tabs and the like.  So many thanks to the Land of the Free for helping me curb my consumer ways, although something tells me you wouldn’t have been at all disappointed had I decided to go the other route.   

So now for the wassup on the wassup.  With some money saved, no home, no children, no debt or any other miscellaneous reason to hold me back, the choice to step through this door and see the world, has for all intents and purposes, been a decision that was nearly made for me.  All I had to do was approve.  Consider my approval inked and official.  I have decided on making my first stop of this journey on a warm beach off the coast of the small Central American country of Belize.  I’ll fly there on a one-way ticket and hang out for the first month or so on a small island called Caye Caulker (Google it.  Seriously, you may end up there too).  I’ll be doing this backpack-style, so I’ll only be bringing the absolute essentials: clothes, a shelter (though I’ll mostly be staying in hostels and other rustic, aka cheap, accommodations), a journal, a bottle of Sriracha and my fly rods.  Starting in Caye Caulker I plan to meet as many people as I can and just see where that leads me.  I have no itinerary.  I don’t plan on reserving a place to stay until I get down there.  I mentioned I’ll be flying in on a one way ticket, so that obviously means that I don’t know exactly when I’ll be coming home.  I have never taken a trip like this, but it’s definitely an understatement to say that I’m excited about the concept.  If you forced me to put a duration on it, my best guess is that I’ll be gone somewhere between six months and a year. Hopefully closer to a year or longer. 

So that’s pretty much the gist of it.  Parents are pissed but the kids love it.  Just kidding, the parents and fam are actually really stoked, but for those of you familiar with those two Eminem lines, I know you can feel me on the near impossibility of uttering the former without following up with the latter. 

Notes:

Since this is my first blog, and my first blog post, I thought I should make mention of a couple general things, including the name I chose for the blog itself.  If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I really like fishing.  I’ll probably dedicate a post or two to that idea alone, but just know that I will be making references to this passion throughout my writing.  I hope to do so tastefully so as not to bore those of you who can’t understand why I find it fun to stand in a freezing cold river all day, or get skunked and sunburned in a boat, or stare at a motionless bobber in a lake for hours, or get close to tendonitis after an all day session of double haul fly casts, or hike 22 miles in a day to reach a pristine river, or…you get the idea.  I intend on utilizing this passion as a source of much needed (and free!) protein on my trip.  Harvesting what I can eat from the sea, and supplementing it with groceries from the local markets.  Hopefully this obsession leads me to many people and places and affords you all with some stories good for reading.  I also plan on using it as therapy, a system that has worked for me all my life.  And finally and most importantly, I will have mad fun doing it.

I got the blog name, Open Bail, from a fishing term that describes what happens to a spinning reel when letting the line out.  I’d say the most common theme I learned from my English degree, it’s that you can make any interpretation you want from anything (Shakespeare was okay, but he wouldn’t be shit if the literary community didn’t decide that every word he wrote had some ulterior intended meaning).  So there are plenty of other connotations that go along with the idea of an open bail.  Open to leave.  Open to crash.  Open the door and bail.  Open to fish.  Open or down for whatever.  But I like the idea that when bails are opened, lines come out.  Seems fitting for this application. 

-Peace and reel/real grease.