Tournament Fishing Quotes

Somewhere along the line, it occurred to him that he hadn't spoken to Virgil Flowers. He'd probably taken the day off, and knowing Flowers, he'd done it in a boat. The thing about Flowers was, in Lucas's humble opinion, you could send him out for a loaf of bread and he'd find an illegal bread cartel smuggling in heroin-saturated wheat from Afghanistan. Either that, or he'd be fishing in a muskie tournament, on government time. You had to keep an eye on him.

When I was in London in 2008, I spent a couple hours hanging out at a pub with a couple of blokes who were drinking away the afternoon in preparation for going to that evening's Arsenal game/riot. Take away their Cockney accents, and these working-class guys might as well have been a couple of Bubbas gearing up for the Alabama-Auburn game. They were, in a phrase, British rednecks. And this is who soccer fans are, everywhere in the world except among the college-educated American elite. In Rio or Rome, the soccer fan is a Regular José or a Regular Giuseppe. [...] By contrast, if an American is that kind of Regular Joe, he doesn't watch soccer. He watches the NFL or bass fishing tournaments or Ultimate Fighting. In an American context, avid soccer fandom is almost exclusively located among two groups of people (a) foreigners—God bless 'em—and (b) pretentious yuppie snobs. Which is to say, conservatives don't hate soccer because we hate brown people. We hate soccer because we hate liberals.

Fortunate beyond measure… wise and provident in counsel, well-learned in law, history, humanity and divinity. He understood Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and High and Low-Dutch, besides his native language. He was of quick apprehension, judicious and skillful in nature, elegant in speech, sweet, familiar and affable in behaviour; stern to the obstinate, but calm and meek to the humble. Magnanimous and courageous above all the princes of his days; apt for war but a lover of peace; never puffed up with prosperity nor dismayed at adversity. He was of an exalted, glorious, and truly royal spirit, which never entertained anything vulgar or trivial, as may appear by the most excellent laws which he made, by those two famous jubilees he kept, and by the most honourable Order of the Garter, which he first devised and founded. His recreations were hawking, hunting and fishing, but chiefly he loved the martial exercise of jousts and tournaments. In his buildings he was curious, splendid and magnificent, in bestowing of graces and donations, free and frequent; and to the ingenious and deserving always kind and liberal; devout to God, bountiful to the clergy, gracious to his people, merciful to the poor, true to his word, loving to his friends, terrible to his enemies… In short he had the most virtues and the fewest vices of any prince that ever I read of. He was valiant, just, merciful, temperate, and wise; the best lawgiver, the best friend, the best father, and the best husband in his days.5

I thought about Gobi and her sister and the way it had all come unraveled. I thought about my dad. When you’re young, you think your father can do anything. Unless he was this severely abusive person and beat you or got drunk and smashed things, you probably worshiped him. At least most of the guys I knew were like that. They might not have used those exact words, but they all have some cherished memory of something they did with their father, even if it was just a shiny, far-off moment. I remembered being eight years old and making a Pinewood Derby car for Boy Scouts. Dad had brought out a gleaming red Craftsman toolbox that I had never seen before and helped me carve the car out of a block of wood, and we sat at the kitchen table painting it silver and blue with red flames up the side. I drank Pepsi and he sipped a beer. When we finished, the car didn’t weigh enough, so we put lead weights in the bottom and sprayed lubricant on the wheels until it rolled freely from one side of the table to the other. I won third place, and he said, “I’m proud of you.” I remembered going fishing with him up in Maine, taking a little motorboat out across the foggy lake until it was too dark to see our bobbers. I remembered him teaching me how to tie a necktie on the morning of my cousin’s wedding. I remembered seeing him in the stands at my first junior high swimming tournament, standing next to my mom and cheering. I remembered waking up very early in the morning and hearing him downstairs making coffee before slipping out to work. I remembered the first time I ever heard him swear.

December 19 Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. Aesop As a warrior, you have to see things as they really are, not just as they appear to be. The majority of people are moved by hollow appearances of things. Just look at how many people actually believe the empty campaign rhetoric spewed out by politicians each year. Rational people realize that these politicians are little more than pandering liars, but people still vote for them. It is disgraceful! Don’t be like the sheep that just go along, believing whatever is presented to them as the truth. Look beyond the shadow and see the substance that is casting the shadow. It is easy to lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. Fish never see the hook, only the bait. You have to remain aware. Don’t be conned. Don’t allow your attention to be side tracked to the shadow, while the substance goes unnoticed. This is what seems to happen to the majority of the people; they focus on the shadow instead of the physical reality. The substance of your martial arts is self-defense and character training. The shadows are tournaments, perfecting your forms, points, decorum, or anything that distracts you from your true objectives. I’m not saying that all of these things do not have a place in the martial arts, but the warrior must never mistake these things for the actual purpose of his training. Don’t be caught striving to appear to be a warrior, be a warrior. Cultivate the root and the leaves and branches will take care of themselves. I always look at the reality behind the shadow.

Because he was unable to see out of the wind hole (window) Robin had learned to guess at what was going on down in the street. He knew the sound of armor and knightly equipment, for the King’s men passed that way going to and from the Tower or Westminster, to joust or tournament, to parade, or on business for the King. A horse was passing now, but Robin was sure it was not of that order. It was probably the shire reeve’s horse, for above the slow clatter over the cobbles Robin could hear the grating of runners on a kind of sled the horse was dragging. From the odor that came through the window he could guess that Wat Hokester had been taken again for selling putrid fish in the market stall.

Mr. Wardlaw Scott, for example, with genuine, if unconscious, imagination, says that according to astronomers, 'the sea is a vast mountain of water miles high.' To have discovered that mountain of moving crystal, in which the fish fly like birds, is like discovering Atlantis: it is enough to make the old world young again. In the new poetry which we contemplate, athletic young men will set out sturdily to climb up the face of the sea. If we once realize all this earth as it is, we should find ourselves in a land of miracles: we shall discover a new planet at the moment that we discover our own. Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal and catastrophic lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten that they are living on a star. We might have been proud of what our star has wrought, and worn its heraldry haughtily in the blind tournament of the spheres. All this, indeed, we may surely do yet; for with all the multiplicity of knowledge there is one thing happily that no man knows: whether the world is old or young.

I imagine that Carlos knew that Jack was ex-military when he was searching for idiots to go to Cuba, and I also wondered if Jack would be up for a late-in-life adventure. Carlos said that Jack’s life would not be in danger, which was true regarding the fishing tournament, but not true regarding sailing out of Cuba with sixty million bucks onboard if Cuban gunboats were on our ass. If we made it that far.