A bad day of fishing ...

Is definitely better than a day of work!

This weekend Patrick and I met in Charleston, S.C. and went deep sea fishing.

I haven't seen Pat in a while since he was living in London for a few years and once school starts it is hard to get together.

I picked him up at the airport on Friday after driving from Atlanta. We went downtown to the 'tourist' area as our hotel receptionist called it. We had a few drinks and ate dinner at a nice brew pub. No I don't remember the name.

Knowing we'd have to be up at 4:30, we went to sleep early. Really Mom, we did.

At 4:00 some as*hole pulled the fire alarm in the hotel. We got dressed and headed for the stairs when it stopped. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn't. Pat of course had no problems.

The guy Pat contracted with for the boat had called him Friday afternoon and said that his boat was broken, but he found someone else to take us out. Except it was 45 minutes away. Most cities at 5 am on a Saturday are scary, but Charleston was bizarre. A few minutes outside of the main town, we're in a bog with fog and deer and cops everywhere. Strange ride, but we made it.

The boat was really cool. The skipper and mate were really nice and really did all the work. We were 58 miles off shore at our longest. The ride out took 2 hours and we tried to sleep but we hadn't eaten anything yet so it was hard. Once we got out and started trawling we ate breakfast and started catching fish.

Or tried to. Our guide said this was one of the worst days of fishing they had all month. Should have caught a lot more.

In the end we caught 7 mahi mahi, including a monster 38 lb one that I landed. It took a while to get down and it was spewing blood everywhere. Look at the pictures to see some of the carnage. (If you want more send me an email and I'll send the nasty ones.)

The weather was perfect. We had lots of sun, mild seas, just no fish. The sea was a beautiful blue. It was a couple of hours of looking around and talking followed by a few minutes of excitement as we reeled them in.

We were reasonable in our beer consumption, tempered it with water and diet coke. But we did drink a little bit of beer ;-)

Once we got back to shore we watched the Mate cut up the big fish. I got to hold the head while he pulled off the skin. I had to stick my thumb in the eye socket ;-)

Reeking of fish, sweat and salty air, we went back to the hotel. Did I mention I looked like I had killed someone? My shorts are covered in blood.

After a quick shower we called our new friend, who runs the 'green taxi' service in Charleston (all hybrids). We found an Irish pub, 'Tommy Condons' off one of the main roads and had a nice dinner. Being dead tired, and still felling the ground move if we closed our eyes, we decided to go watch the hockey game at 'Bubba Gumps'.

We were in bed by 10:30 again. Damn we're old.

We got some sleep, went to IHOP for breakfast then I took Pat to the airport. Oh yeah, Pat is a Tea Snob. He also had his first introduction to southern tea. He ordered 'Tea' and the waitress asked him if he wanted sweet or unsweetened. It took a second for him to tell her he wanted hot water and a tea bag ;-)