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Kerry and I left last Wednesday morning at 6am and drove to Wells, Nevada and spent the night in a Super8 Motel, the only one in the area that would take our traveling buddies (ziggy the fat orange cat and joey the aussie cattle dog).

The town was a dive. I know this because the receptionist at the Super8 asked what the heck we planned to do there for 2 days. But the next day we drove up to a little piece of heaven in the mountains called Angel Lake. We got there at around 5pm and the only other person there was busy leaving.

Trout were jumping everywhere. I tied a 22 PMD onto my 5 weight fly rod and in a few seconds had a beautiful 11 inch rainbow on the end of my line. I landed (and released) 1 rainbow and 4 brookies. I lost my only 22 size fly on a bush and tied on an 18 PMD and the fish were a lot shyer (is that a word?).

Then I tied on a woolly bugger  streamer and hooked a big one, but I jerked a little too hard and my 6x flourocarbon tippet snapped right off. Hopefully he spat it out a few minutes later.

Kerry posted more photos and the map location on Geojoey.

There are a few more entries on Geojoey around Wells – OK it’s not that bad. Just the town – the one horse died of boredom a long time ago.

We decided to only spend one night in Wells, then we drove to Ely, NV and did some gambling at the very very quaint Hotel Nevada.  I chatted to a lass who’s worked there for a while and apparently it’s changed hands between owners and their wives and ex-wives a couple of times. But the memorabilia is un-f’ing-believable. There’s a restored 1940’s Indian Chief motorcycle on the wall, right above 4 giant stuffed rattlesnakes. There’s a coin collection in the back of the diner that’s been turned into a relief of a bull – and some of the coins are from the 1800’s.

Next we drove to Vegas and saw Cirque de Soleil’s Ka. There’s a Brazilian capoeira dancer in the show that really blew me away. I’ve been to Salvador, the birthplace of Capoeira and spent a few weeks there. I’ve seen it done on the beaches there in a drum circle and it’s the most incredible dance and martial art. I wish I knew who the dancer was – they had a guy called Berto, but I don’t think it was him in the show. Here’s some background on Berto.

After spending the rest of the night drinking Caipirinha’s in the MGM, we drove to California the next morning. Leaving Vegas on the I15 on the way to SoCal is like being shot from the barrel of a .50 caliber. Everyone’s doing 95, sometimes we hit 100 in a 65 zone. No one cares because they’ve been gambling all night anyway, so what the hell! And then there was this old lady in her little Hybrid that parked in the fast lane alongside a trailer in the slow lane with her spedometer firmly stuck on 65 and the whole of vegas backed up behind her with me as the gimp directly behind her expected to either ram her or honk and flash. I didn’t have the heart to do either and I couldn’t pull over, so I got boxed in by a couple of Ford F150’s making the point for me. Jesus California drivers are insane!!

We arrived in Orange County (The OC Yo!) just in time for a friends wedding reception which was amazing. The afterparty in the hotel room at the doubletree was even better until security kicked us out and then the after-after party on the patio outside the bar with a boom box hooked up to a laptop was even better. Eventually security gave up on us and we wound things up at around 3am. Kerry and I were so blasted we checked into the hotel.

Oh, and lest I forget, we crashed another wedding at the DoubleTree (Kerry’s cousin Kay and Marcus get credit for that idea – you crazy nut cases!!) and as if that wasn’t enough we crashed a 30 year highschool reunion too. And my crazy wife dragged me onto the dance floor in the front of the room at the reunion – we were the only people under 50 – and made me slow dance with her. When these Texans get together they are truly insane!!

So it’s been a fun week and it’s Monday again and I’m back on my laptop working on something new and beautiful and all I can think about is the trout waiting for me later this week up at Bear Lake.

I think free speech is the greatest thing about the USA. It’s what makes this country a true democracy and it’s the benchmark of any country claiming that they are a democracy. Holding free and fair elections is only part of being a democracy. The other part is free speech and freedom of information.

So it’s really cool to see Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University – and it’s even cooler to see Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, exercising his own right to free speech by telling Dinny exactly what he thinks of him.

The WSJ got it very wrong today when they said “Columbia is a selective institution in its choice of students as well as speakers; its choices confer distinction on those whom it selects.”. Columbia is conferring distinction on the principle of free speech and freedom of information. Dinny is just a tool they’re using to demonstrate that even in extreme cases, freedom of speech does more good than harm.

From my (non-red-headed) brother:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22289183-2,00.html?from=public_rss

REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world’s population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.

It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.

If the gingers really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland.

An estimated 40 per cent of Scots carry the red gene and 13 per cent actually have red hair.

Some experts say that redheads could be gone as early as 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant for generations before returning.

National Geographic says the gene at first had the beneficial effect of increasing the body’s ability to make vitamin D from sunlight.

However, today’s carriers are more prone to skin cancer and have a higher sensitivity to heat and cold-related pain.

While Googling a quote from Aldus Huxley, I came across this article announcing a new painkiller called Soma. I noticed the date was 1959. It seems Time Mag has put their entire archive online dating back to 1929. How totally cool. Their search UI is horribly buggy, but I managed to dredge up this interesting pre-McCarthy tidbit titled Rough on Russians.