Paradise lost...to coin a phrase.

If there is a cosmic scoreboard keeping track of my major life mistakes (for those who believe there are such things) then my actions following my infatuation have to be in my top five, okay, maybe ten, but up there just the same.

My Skipper's teenage son had arrived and I was to train him in my position. I was training my replacement. I have done this on several occasions, after being a certain age, and it is never a good time. Especially when you know you are being replaced.

The Charter fishing game is as mercenary and fluid as the restaurant business. Someone is always looking for a better boat, better conditions, a Captain that's not clinically insane, a first mate that's not too drunk to work. But my Skipper lined up a job for me with a boat a few slips away. It was not a Bertram. It was a tubby little Bayliner, with a tubby little Captain from back east some damn where, freaking Yankee...(I couldn't be grateful for the ease of transition, I was too busy pouting.)

It was this same time that my new 'her' went back to California. She asked me to come visit, if I was ever in the neighborhood. Boy was that a mistake.

So I was working on this little gut bucket, not getting any charters, watching my old boat cruise out on trips. I think I even waved, and smiled as they passed, wishing they would sink. What a brat.

I stopped going to meetings and stayed sober the old fashioned way, out of resentment and bitterness, and don't you know that's a good time? Not. So my brain began thinking.

It does this on it's own, when it comes to drugs and alcohol, especially when I am not pulling the maintenance needed to keep it intact. It will wake me in the middle of the night. "Dude, what are you doing sleeping, we could be thinking, and looking at your life right now, you need to be. Jesus, are you screwed. I can't believe you are letting 'them' get away with this. You have every reason to smoke weed, ya know, I mean it's not drinking, so what's the problem. And it's been so long since you had a drink, I think you deserve one. The nerve of these pricks...they don't know who they're dealing with. Shit, a few belts would make all this easier ya know, I mean, you deserve it..." Yeah, that's a good time. And so this litany becomes a constant barrage, waking, sleeping, doesn't matter. Eventually the only way to quiet the noise...yeah, you guessed it.

But here's the thing, and folks who don't attend meetings, or have this affliction don't get it. When I go to meetings, the noise stops. I don't drink, or use, and life is not too bad, although I can screw it up with one bad choice, but meetings also help in making the right choices, providing I'm not believing my own crap, again. At any rate...

The job came to an abrupt and splashy halt during a half day charter with Captain Tubby.
As my brain was was noisier than a room full of cub scouts at Michael Jackson's house, I was not paying attention to my job. And part of my job was to secure the large rods and reels in their holders with a lanyard and clip, lest a large fish take the bait and pull the whole shit and shebang over the side. Unh huh, yep, sure did.

The outrigger popped and in slow motion, the rod came up and out of the holder, over the side and was last seen heading at an alarming rate towards Guam. My Captain turned purple and was struck with the inability to articulate intelligent sound. Our client thought it was funny, "Whooee, look at it go, hot damn, bet ya don't do that again!" Too right, that.

'I'm sorry' seemed lamer than Clinton's definition of 'is', so I put my head down, and we spent a very, very, quiet trip back in. We docked and I walked off. What could I say that would make things better?
I didn't have the money to replace the lost gear, and a charter boat with only one rod and reel was not going to make any money. I was done.

I sold my little used Toyota and used the money for a one way ticket to California.

Once at the San Francisco Airport, I called her, thought the surprise would be nice.

"You did WHAT?"

This was not going the way I had imagined.