So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Coos Bay, Oregon Coast

We're at my favorite spot on the Oregon Coast. This is where I saw the red Coast Guard helicopter rescue diver pluck four dead bodies out of the water. Their boat overturned crossing the bar. The orange life jackets and the boat washed up on the beach, but the bodies kept floating offshore.

One thought struck me
As an ice cube swallowed
that falls near the heart
And just lays there coldly burning
Into fear itself: 

‘When you die
You're part of the furniture.’

Then I whispered
‘Adieu’

Covered his face
And left
-Ronberge (anno tercio)

I go out again with Captain Bill on a 6 AM, five hour, rockfish hunt. He has a high tech fish finder with a 100 foot conical range that tells him the number of fish and their sizes. It seems a little unfair to the fish, but I limit out on seven big black rockfish in a couple of hours. I borrowed a lingcod jig from a garrulous old submariner (my age) who I have been pumping for sub stories on the way out. I use the jig to catch a ling that fillets out to three pounds or four meals. The rockfish each yield two fillets that weigh a pound total, a good weight for dinner for two. We've eaten them twice so far...they have they consistency of halibut and a hint of swordfish flavor.

I find a magic place on my walk today. It's on a cliff that allows access to a deserted beach by lowering yourself with a rope anchored to a tree. I'll make breakfast sandwiches and coffee and take Mrs. Phred to see it in the morning.

Mrs. Phred on the beach. We've been here four nights, which is something of a personal record for being in one place. The white line keeps me asking what's up the road?

Strange things grow on our planet and in the ocean. I'm sorry I forgot my wetsuit. The swimming looks great except for the 55 degree water temperature.

Down the road is a colony of several thousand barking seals.

Crabs are very big along the coast. I buy Mrs. Phred a Crab Louie for here lunch in Winchester Bay today. Next October they will have a community college shooting massacre here that will leave ten dead.

This is the right lower jaw of a 60 foot humpback whale that washed up on the beach near the Umpqua Lighthouse in 1991. We're heading inland in the morning to an RV park about midway between Crater Lake and the whitewater rafting in Bend.

Where Have All the Payphones Gone?

 Coos Bay, Oregon

I have a new avatar on "Second Life" . I've read that some people spend 10 to 20 hours a day on the Second Life site.There are so many new things: Twitter, Face book, Second Life. But the payphones have all disappeared.

Yesterday I went to a place on Second Life that invited me to jump into a "dance bubble" with a randomly selected member of the opposite gender.You can almost hear your own brain calcifying as the Nation's youth jump headlong into the next new thing and a 20 year-old Internet billionaire invents a new word..

You can pick any gender you like in Second Life. I tried to modify my avatar to be wearing glasses, having wrinkles and a big belly, but those options were not available. Everyone in Second Life is young and beautiful,  even me. It might be that the Internet is just a better place than the real world...

So...here I am in a "dance bubble" with a beautiful young girl who might be an overweight Italian-American man from Cleveland wearing  a wife-beater t-shirt...But.....does it even make a difference from the viewpoint of virtual reality? Two American men were recently unmasked as fake Syrian Lesbian bloggers. They were both from somewhere in Ohio.

I like to see the lovely tide pools in Coos Bay.

We play  some tennis, read several books and check out the Shark Bites restaurants in downtown Coos Bay. I read "Hunting Eichmann".  My basic belief is that the nature of man is plastic. You get your Mother Theresa and your Doctor Mengele...Your own job is just simply to behave in a way that reflects credit on your species....I am an existentialist. It's on my dog tags...I love America... the only question the sergeant had in making the religious preference on my dog tags was "how do you spell it?"

Fish heads fish heads
Roly poly fish heads
fish heads fish heads
eat them up, yum!
In the morning laughing happy fish heads
In the evening floating in the soup
Ask a fish head anything you want to
they wont answer they cant talk.
I took a fish head out to see a mooovie
did.nt have to pay to get it in.

 

The fishing trip in Banden was typical for Oregon. I caught big black Rock fish, Quill backs, Vermilion's, Ling Cod and other Pacific bottom fish.  One young man caught a 45 pound halibut. I've been cooking every day, using my halibut recipes for the delicate white flesh of the bottom fish.

Death In The Morning

Coos Bay, Oregon - 10 May, 2006

I'm writing at the Coos Bay public library. We wait for UPS to bring a replacement laptop. Up at dawn to clean, oil and tighten the motorcycle chain. The beach is 75 yards away just over the sand dunes.

I see and hear a red helicopter... whump! whump!... it's making slow passes along the surf line. There are emergency vehicles on the wide sand beach and an overturned small boat washed up on the beach. The same red helicopter was on the news for weeks after Katrina.

Yesterday I went fishing. The captain said the water was about 47 degrees F. The pounding cold surf breaks on the coast rocks and sand beaches with great force. I caught five black rockfish and we ate one for dinner with a cold very good Oregon Riesling wine and fresh spinach.


The helicopter pauses and comes very low to the ocean. It kicks up a great circle of spray. They winch down a rescue diver. I'm a certified rescue diver myself. Once I saved a two-year old from drowning. She's 18 now, very lovely, a daughter of friends. College on a volleyball scholarship in the fall.


The diver swims in with his burden. There are three bodies on the beach now. The helicopter runs search patterns for two more hours. There is no one left to tell him how many were in the capsized boat. The unused red life jackets float easily to shore.The  new laptop arrives at noon. It works for an hour and crashes hard with the blue screen of death.


Any day you wake up is truly a wonderful day. We are heading further up the coast. Hiking in the Washington Olympic National Park will be the turning point.