The Grind

So it has been a very long time since my last post.  To be honest, I haven't had the motivation to do it.  It has gotten to the point of the summer where I'm finally feeling the grind of working six days a week for the last 4 months.  It sometimes feels as though the candle is being burned from both ends leaving nothing but a hardened puddle below.

This week, we don't have very many people on the ranch, but of the 20 or so guests, all of them are fishermen and have requested guides for the entire week for both the morning and afternoons.  This is the week we've been working towards.  Our guiding skills will once again be tested not only in getting mediocre fishermen consistently bent, but also in our physical and mental stamina.  After a summer of taking mostly half day trips, the jump into taking a week's worth of morning and afternoon trips wears on you, especially if the fishing gets tough.

Today, I took an older guy out on the stream that was probably in his early 70s.  He is a retired gynecologist from Indiana who served in Vietnam specializing in the prevention of venereal diseases.  Supposedly he did a pretty good job within his section of troops.  I asked him how he prevented the spread of these diseases.  Condoms?  Nope.  Abstinence?  Nope.  They shot these dudes with a ridiculous amount of antibiotics to kill anything that even thought about entering the badlands.  I'd love to see down the road whether anything worked for these vets when they came down with a simple case of strep throat or an infection of some sort.  Regardless, he had endless amounts of jokes about vaginas.  I'd assume that most OBGYNs have at least one or two of those in their back pockets for the dinner table at their gyney medical conventions.

I got everything ready and finished rigging him up and started heading towards the stream at my normal pace when I looked back and noticed he hadn't moved more than about ten feet from the vehicle.  I watched him slowly make his way towards my direction.  I tried my best to walk as slowly as possible, but I could not match his speed and gait.  As a result, I would walk up ahead and check back to see if he was still back there and usually end up waiting for him to slowly catch up.  Later, I found out he had just received heart surgery and couldn't over-exert himself while fishing.  Had I known that, I probably wouldn't have pushed him as hard as I did.  

The morning sloooowly passed by and we had put a few fish to hand, took some pictures, snapped off and tangled plenty and had an overall good morning on the stream.  We head back to the ranch and I dropped him off at his cabin and helped him put away his rod and vest and then turned to leave.  He stopped me and said he wanted to settle up with me.  He unbuckled his waders and flipped out the inside pocket. As he was pulling out his cash I initially notice Abraham Lincoln's smirking face staring me down.  Two thoughts went through my mind.  Either the bills enveloped within honest Abe's folds are Hamiltons or Jacksons or they'll be littered with George Washington's stupid face.  So he asks me, "Do you get paid at all for taking out trips?"  I proceeded to give the sugar coated answer that we don't get paid any of the guiding fees but get paid hourly, AKA, we get paid shit, please tip me generously.  For anyone who relies on tips for a living, that question of "should I tip you?" or "how much should I tip you?" is the most uncomfortable, awkward question known to the service industry.  Meanwhile, as this conversation progressed, I notice him unfolding his five dollar bill to reveal three one dollar bills.  After contemplating whether he should give me the full eight dollars while asking me whether I get paid for my services and me indirectly responding that I only banked around $27 of wages for a half day trip, which after taxes is more like $24, he generously opted to give me the full $8.  He shouldn't have.  I was half expecting him to ask me if I'd like to come mow his lawn for 50 cents.  When your making a minimum of $30-40 and upwards of $100 per trip, eight bucks seems like a slap in the face.  It was almost comical, especially when returning to the other guides eating lunch.  We all had a pretty good chuckle over the whole deal.  I guess, I can get excited for a weeks total of 40 bucks for over 30 hours of guiding him on the river.  Fantastic.

As nice as money is, I have to remind myself that I'm not doing this for the money.  For what he lacks in monetary generosity, he definitely makes up for in vagina jokes.