Big Mac

Every year about this time I think about the big one that DIDN'T get away – the 25 lb. flathead catfish I named Big Mac.

I know there are bigger fish out there. Shows on cable constantly make Big Mac seem like a guppy. So be it. As any fisherman – or fisherwoman? – knows it's the story about the fish that lasts forever so Big Mac lives on, again, as I recap that great angling event several years ago.

Why Big Mac? This was the year Mark McGuire hit his record* number of home runs in a single season (yes, I asterisked record). McGuire's jersey was 25. The stars aligned and so it was named.

To set the stage, I was living in Kearney, Nebraska, at the time – over 10 years ago. Wow, didn't realize it had been that long. I worked right next door to Cabela's and often stared at the fish in their huge aquarium. Fishing in Kearney was great so I frequented Cabela's as necessary to replace line and try different tackle. Well, the best place to fish in Kearney for me and my son was right behind the Ramada Inn.

One day, we set up for a day at our spot. I threw my line in, turned around to get my pole holder and next thing I knew, my pole was heading for the water. I grabbed the pole and my 12 lb test snapped like it was nothing. Whoa! up to that point, a 9 lb fish was the largest I'd ever caught. What was in this sand pit lake?

Next time at Cabela's, I purchased some 25 lb test line. I was going to get whatever that was.

In a separate fishing excursion, I was fishing a spillway and tried to lift a bass up the wall but ending up breaking my pole. Not the brightest thing I've done but it is still several steps smarter than hooking one's self so I shrugged it off.

Who knows why but I saw an antique bait casting reel at a garage sale and bought it to put on the broken stick of a pole that I had left. Waste not, want not. No, that sounds too intelligent. How about "You know if you're a redneck if ..." That's better.

Of course, I put the 25 lb test on the antique bait casting reel on a broken pole. Why wouldn't you? After all, the reel had no drag so I needed heavy line.

Fast forward to visiting my parents who live on a lake. I take my Frankenstein set up just to get a laugh from everyone, and believe me, I took a lot of heat for the 25 lb test line. At 11 pm, I throw out some line – literally, with my son holding the pole, I walked off 30 feet of line then threw out the bait. Laid the pole in the back of my dad's boat on shore and went to bed.

The next morning I get up and look out the window. Even with sleep still in my eyes I could see the piano wire I had on my pole was taunt. I became instantly alert, awake and eager to see what was on the end of this contraption.

I walk up to the boat, trying to absorb what I am seeing. The broken pole is pointing almost parallel to the water, with line shooting straight out from it as far as you can see, never reaching the water before it disappears from sight. Whoa! The only reason the pole is not IN the water is because the reel is stuck on the lip of the side of the boat. Cool!

Grabbing the rod and reel, I crank the handle. No sign of life on the other end. I figured the fish wrapped around a log or something. Dang. A few yards from shore, the "log" came to life and pulled on the line so strongly that the pole was cracking from the tension. With no drag on the line, I had to unreel as fast as I could so the reel wouldn't come off the pole. Then reeled it in again. Let it out again. Reeled it in. This went on for half an hour. Finally, the fish was too tired and came to the surface (catfish hate the surface). A big swirl in the water gave it away. Half a second later, another swirl over three feet away. What the ... ? No way! This was a big one.

Without a net and nobody else awake to witness the event, I land a flathead that was almost three times heavier than the biggest fish I'd ever caught before. Measuring 42 1/2 inches long, it was the most exhilarating catch in my life. Finally, witnesses poured out of the house and we all gawked at this formidable thing on shore.

I put it on a stringer, called Cabela's, and asked if they wanted a 25 lb catfish for their aquarium. Sure!

My dad let me have a large container and off we went. I chuckled to myself thinking of scenarios of getting stopped by a police officer "Let me see what's in the container...". But, alas, no police stoppage.

We arrive at Cabela's and I feel like a champion fisherman – can't wait to tell the guys at work that the huge catfish in the tank is MINE. Well, this wasn't the first fish Cabela's ever saw ... they knew it had to be quarantined for a week to make sure it was healthy enough to put in the tank. A few days later, I got the sad news that Big Mac had died of a fungus. So close!

I've caught bigger fish since then but they were nowhere near as exciting as that first 20+ pounder. Once you catch a fish that takes almost an hour to reel in, you really want to experience it again. A lot of things in life are like that – just cool and awesome and very infrequent. They laughed at my thick line when I arrived that day, but not after Big Mac. I had the vision to catch a fish bigger than they could imagine and took the steps to achieve it.

Have a vision to do something extraordinary with your life and see if you can pull it off–even if those around you don't "get it" and scoff. If you fail, keep trying. Make special things happen with your life rather than watching other people do them on TV. Start small and keep reaching for the next brass ring.

story is ©2009, Kurt Holdorf photo is not actual, but looks exactly like Big Mac

Why Taligate?

Ever get someone driving behind you riding up on your bumper? Do you care? Does it make you mad? Do you not give it a second thought?

Well, today, I had one of those experiences that make you think about the dangers of driving--the SUV ahead of me pulled sharply away from a traffic light as it turned green. Whatever he was hauling wasn't secure and rolled into his back window, thus shattering glass all over the intersection in front of me. (I didn't actually see it at the time, I just saw glass flying and landing. Took a few blocks of following the guy to put the evidence together so I am just guessing that's what happened.)

Today I am asking the question "Why tailgate?" Forget images of hot wings and beer before a football game. That's not what I am talking about here.

Every day I drive to work I notice people driving a mere 15 feet or so behind another vehicle while driving 65 miles per hour. This isn't a video game, folks. Lives can change in a bad way in a heartbeat. And what is gained? Two seconds. For two seconds of getting somewhere faster you are going to risk your life? Your passengers' lives? The life (lives) of anybody you smash into?

Normal human reaction time is .25 of a second. Pretty fast, alright. In that .25 of a second, you just traveled 23.8 feet. SMASH. You lose--guaranteed. Actually, you would go 47.6 feet because first you would have to react by identifying what you are seeing (e.g. road hazard, car stopping, etc.) then you would have to act by using the correct controls to avoid the hazard. Double loser.

At 95.3 feet PER SECOND, the two second rule minimum gives you 190.6 feet between you and other cars for safe reaction time. Put in sports distances, that's well over half a football field and well over the distance a professional baseball player runs from 1st base to third base. That's the MINIMUM safe distance. (three seconds is recommended)

Add distance on top of that if you are eating, talking on a cell phone, smoking, applying make-up (I heard this one on an insurance commercial and thought they were making it up but I have actually seen this take place.)

We had a minivan several years ago and that thing weighed 4,000 lbs. If 4,000 lbs. could stop in 15 feet, the energy it would take to do so would kill you even if you avoided hitting the car ahead of you. Think people!

Ok, so you don't like science and never had physics. Well, ignorance of the law(s of physics) is no excuse. Just because you don't want to do the math doesn't mean your car can ignore friction vs. momentum, too.

I really don't care if people think I drive too slow because I am driving the speed limit. Go around. That's why there are more than one lane on a highway. But if you can't go around, you don't have the right to jeopardize my life because you can't wait two seconds longer to get where you want to go. BACK OFF! Or at the very least plan better so you are not in such a rush. It's not my fault you can't manage your time.

Where does my caution come from? Real life experiences. I've been on the road long enough to know that the unexpected DOES and WILL come at you when you least expect it.

Examples:

1) I was driving next to a semi just as it blew a tire and most of it flew right over my car. Could someone tailgating me avoid that? No. Loser.

2) A semi passed me one day. Just as it cleared my car, one of it's highly tensioned support straps snapped and whipped the concrete right ahead of me. I braked hard.

3) I've come up on no less than 5 deer standing directly in my path and 3 running across my path at night. More brake slamming.

4) I turned a corner on a dark highway one time and a TREE was blocking both lanes of traffic. No matter what they say in golf, it didn't look like 80% air.

5) Don't even get me started about slowing down in fog. Multiple car pile-ups are just plain dumb. If you can't see, don't zoom. Hmm.

6) On a two lane highway, a car two ahead of me braked suddendly. The car directly ahead of me and the truck behind me weren't paying attention. Fortunately I was and had time to actually miss the car in front of me and come up with an exit strategy so the truck behind me didn't hit me. Three cars ahead was turning left. As soon as the vehicle they were waiting for passed me, I went into the opposing lane. By the time the truck stopped, it was even with the middle of our small car. This is real stuff, people.

7) Another time, a trailer hitch came undone ahead of us and separated from the vehicle.

8) A mattress flew off a truck coming the opposite direction and flew right over my car. What would you do if you were tailgating me when that happened? Again, LOSER. There is no way you can see what is coming if you are that close behind someone.

9) Another mattress fell off a truck in front of my wife's car.

10) Heating duct material flew off a truck directly in front of me. I was able to avoid it.

11) ICE! Hello? What are people thinking? So what if you have 4-wheel DRIVE. All cars have 4-wheel STOP and ice just doesn't care.

12) Years ago, my wife had a window SHOT OUT while on the highway. Do you think that was a calm smooth slow down? Do you think you could have seen it ahead of time if tailgating? Nope.

13) A huge piece of muffler pipe got kicked up by a trailer and came spinning in the air right at me. Nothing I could do about it at 75 mph. Fortunately, it hit almost dead square on my front bumper and I watched it skidding to the left of me, shooting up sparks. Hmm. That was close. I said calmly to my family who had no clue how close we were to disaster.

14) Oh, here's a good reminder: pot holes. When you insist on gaining that extra 1.85 seconds of getting somewhere faster, there is no way you can see pot holes, dead animals, debris, wood with nails sticking out or any other such road hazard. You will hit it. Period.

Maybe it is true that old people drive slower. I am getting old(er). I am driving slower. But I have seen the wisdom in it. You younger drivers who need to power zoom in and out of traffic, you are not impressive. All you are doing is showing you either can't manage your time, don't have emotional maturity, or don't have a clue. I wish you well ...

®2009, Kurt Holdorf story and illustration

Custer State Park, SD

As I was loading some photos from LifeLight 09 and a fishing trip to my computer today I thought a trip down memory lane would be nice so I reviewed some of the thousands of photos I have on my iPhoto catalog. By the way, if you don't take photos of your activities, I recommend you start. It is a wonderful way to remember that your life is full of fun activities. If you don't have fun activities in your life to photograph, recommendation two is that you start putting fun things in your life. I don't care how physically challenged you are, if you can think, somehow start putting fun things into your day-to-day activities so life is a joy.

As usual, I digress.

Back to this photo. As soon as I saw this buffalo amongst my photos, it reminded me of our trip to Custer State Park in the western part of South Dakota. If you enjoy seeing animals in the wild, this is an awesome drive. Recommendation three goes something like this: Don't drive a Rosewood colored minivan through buffalo herds.

In case you don't know what color Rosewood is, just check out the buffalo. I think you can see where this is going. One of the bulls, though he was somewhat sight challenged, tried to add our minivan as one of his fun activities in his life. Ok, not to the extent you might be thinking–we didn't have hoof marks on our roof. But he was thinkin' about it as he was sniffin' around the tail pipe for way too long. (I didn't know carbon monoxide was a buffalo aphrodisiac.)

After several tense moments, he decided not to buy us a drink and went on his merry way. Thankfully, we got the nerd buffalo who was too shy to ask us out. All I could think was "what could you possibly do if ... "

A few minutes later, we see several motorcyclists driving through the park. My thoughts changed to "there ain't a biker tough enough to handle that kind of situation." Fortunately, we didn't witness any buffaloes misbehaving so no reports were filed with campus police.

I drive a convertible now so I just don't see myself driving through Custer State Park in THAT. For a curious buffalo, it's just an annoying wrapper. And I know I am not "biker tough" so I won't be grinnin' any bears or buffalo into submission nor could I ever get that Crocodile Dundee hand thing to calm a wild animal either.

Back to my point about filling your photo album. All these fun memories were sparked by a simple buffalo picture. I have over 4,000 photos in my iPhoto album. There's never a need for a day to devoid of something fun–whether it be actual events or photos of them. Keep reminding yourself just how precious life and LIVING really is.

Get out there and ENJOY!

©2009 Kurt Holdorf, story and photo