On Oct 14, 1:52*pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:
I was just asked about falling out of the boat last week. *"Wasn't
that on the Lower Sac?" *Naw, went swimming on the White in Arkansas.
On the Lower Sac, I got a hook embedded in the node of my trigeminal
nerve (which got infected causing excruciating pain and Bells Palsey)
on the Lower Sac. *Did fall off a cliff on the Rapidan, which wasn't
flowing as fast as the water on the Rapid when I slipped in went
through a chute. *I was savaged by the Savage where I stepped off rock
and did a feeding duck routine, which was nothing compared to the
flood on the Rapahannock, which rose so fast I almost didn't make it
across. *We really can't forget Penns, where there have been so many
memorable spills, but none really can compare with getting hung by my
net over the 60 foot cliff on the Severn. *I think that was after the
tree fell around me on the Gunpowder. *I did have that white water
rafting trip on the Madison, sans raft, but I've also done that on the
Kern, where the combination of tequila and eggnog nearly got me
arrested for chumming. *There was that killer catfish and leech combo
on the Sacobia River in the Philippines, or the mines on the DMZ in
South Korea outside of Gosong. *The butt luge down the hill to the
Swiss Millstream in Germany rivaled the semi-drowning on the Platte in
Colorado.
So, no, I didn't fall out of the boat on the Lower Sac.
Frank Reid

I recall a day on a stream somewhere in central Pennsylvania, lo these
many years ago. There, upon the very bridge once traversed by the
three billygoats gruff, stood a clutch of erstwhile fishermen who
smelled of strong drink, and the truth was not in them. Eagerly and
breathlessly, OH so eagerly and breathlessly, we watched the merry
Frankster, standing stolid and steely-eyed in the foam and the froth,
casting ever so persistently to the presumed fish which had long ago
fled the wobbling shadows of the equally steadfast (and, admittedly,
somewhat bloated) forms defiling the very asphalt above.....which
latter, if you've ever seen it, you know is a pretty impressive
(though not at all pretty) accomplishment.....asphalt ain't all that
easy to defile.

Anyway, back in those days, the magnificent "bend like an oak or break
like a" Reid was already (and justifiably) famous for having
repeatedly (and with malice aforethought) ****ed in the very face of
death.

Um.....not real bright, some doubters might suggest, but panache,
spelled with a capital.....uh.....whatever that first letter is, to
the afficianado. We loved it. We ate it up. We waited with 'bated
breath. We giggled in anticipation and elbowed each other in the
ribs. We smiled. We laughed. We stank.

And then.......

g.