It's not very often that I get to have a couple of days with no women. Now, I know that that might sound really glamorous to all of the single guys out there, but trust me, when you live in a house with six women, it's nice to have a few days with just your brother every once in a while. Since last Friday was Jeffrey's birthday, I left work early and headed over to Shreveport to celebrate with him.
To start things off, I packed all my things the night before. My plan was to leave straight from work and head to Shreveport. If I got there early enough, we could play an entire round of golf before dark. That plan misfired. For all my planning and packing, I still managed to leave one essential item at home. Around 9am Friday Leah called my office, "Did you mean to leave this duffel bag full of clothes in our bedroom?" Dang it! I still left work early, but I had to go to Shreveport via Sachse, which added about an hour to the trip.
The good news is that I still got there in time for golf. Of course, Jeffrey had already started celebrating his birthday with some friends from work. I don't know how many margaritas he had there, but I know he had two beers before we started playing and a White Russian after hole number 3. It all worked in my favor, though, I had him by a couple of strokes most of the round. In the end we ended up tied, and everyone keeps asking what was wrong with Jeffrey. Why can't anyone be proud of me for finally coming close to beating Jeff in golf?
I mean, so what if his average score is probably is an 82 and he shot a 102 on his birthday? That doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't intimated by my amazing grasp of the game. I think he was pressured by the fact that I kept consistent pressure on with one double-bogey after another. John (my cousin), on the other hand, thinks I'm just bad luck on the course. He swears he played his worst round the last time the two of us went out, so he wasn't surprised by Jeffrey's score at all. Thanks, John. That's almost a compliment.
After golf, we went to see The Ruins. Oh yeah! None of the ladies I live with are interested in seeing scary movies, so it was perfect. A Newman brothers movie event. We even picked up Logan and let him tag along at the risk of giving him nightmares for the rest of his natural life. Now, I'll be honest and tell you that this was not a completely women free event. Melissa and Megan (two cousins) were in town and also wanted to see Jeffrey on his birthday. We let them join us at the movie, and if you've never watched a horror movie with Jeffrey and Melissa then you are missing out. How could anyone be scared with the two of them making wisecracks at every boneheaded move that the characters made? Megan even got in her fair share after she recovered from the trauma of being scared half to death by a move trailer preceding the show. Yes, that's right, she was scared by the trailer, so I'm pretty sure that there is no way on earth she'll be going to see The Strangers.
It was pretty late after the movie, so we headed back to Jeff's to hit the sack. Bright and early the Saturday morning, we got up and prepared to go fishing. Now, one of the first things I generally do in the morning is eat breakfast, and I know that my brother loves cereal. I figured he was sure to have a box of something and some milk stashed away somewhere. I took one look in the fridge, though, and was quickly reminded that I was in a bachelor pad. My choices for breakfast were Coors Light or Corona. We stopped at McDonald's on the way to the lake.
When we were planning this fishing trip, we had to consider where to go because Jeffrey and I only have Texas licenses. Well, Dan (stepdad…okay, ex-stepdad, technically), told us that we absolutely had to go to Jeem's Bayou to catch fish. It feeds Caddo Lake, it should be protected from the wind, and it should be full of bass. The problem is that it's in Louisiana, so we needed a day license to fish in Louisiana.
We had already stopped by Dick's Sporting Goods before the movie on Friday night to pick up our licenses, and one thing I can say about that is that they won't be winning any awards for customer service. We went back to the hunting/fishing section to ask about a day license, and we were told that licenses were sold at the customer service desk in the front of the store. As we started to the front of the store, Jeffrey noticed a guy checking out a spotting scope, and he stopped to ask the guy about it. I hope I'm not being paranoid, but would anyone else think it odd that a Caucasian guy who speaks no English is checking out a spotting scope that can pinpoint a target probably half a mile away during an election season where a woman and a black man are candidates? It felt like a scene from a movie, and now I'm really hoping that nothing bad happens to either one of them so you can't say I was complicit.
Anyway, back to the story. We made our way to the front of the store where we found a line of about 8 customers waiting at the one open register. Of course, there was no one at the customer service desk, so we started searching for help. Moments later, the same guy that had directed to the front of the store shows up at the customer service desk. Now, why couldn't he have just walked with us and helped us if he was coming that way anyway? He said that he still couldn't help us because we needed an actual customer service oriented person. At this point, that seemed like an unlikely find in this store, but he came up with a person that was sure to get us what we needed.
We told her that we wanted a single day fishing pass. She told us that there was no such a thing. We told her that it was listed on the internet and it was supposed to cost only $5. She told us that she had never heard of such and that she didn't see it on her list. We asked her where people from out of state would need to go to buy a day license. She said, "Oh, a day license! For out of state. Yeah, we've got those. They're like $5." Brilliant.
She started processing our licenses, and Jeffrey and I noticed that that single register was still working on the same customer they had been on when we got to the front of the store. The line just kept longer and longer. I'm sure the store manager was looking for someone with customer service experience (or at least enough sense to count to ten without using their fingers) to run another register, but apparently all of those employees had the weekend off. Finally, our licenses came out, and we handed her $5 apiece. She looked us right in the eye and said, "I can't take that." What?
She explained that we now had to go wait in line at the cash register to pay for the license so we could get a receipt. We took one look at that cashier who was still struggling to finish checking out the same customer (I think they were buying a pair of shoes and a shirt, and the shoes were throwing him because there were two shoes and only one price tag), and we said, "Why would we need a receipt? We can't bring the license back, and having it is proof of purchase." She was already holding the cash, so we just told her that she would need to figure out how to get the money in the register on her own, we were leaving. That poor cashier's head would have spun on his shoulders if he tried to figure out how to ring up a Louisiana license, that had already been printed, for a guy from Texas.
Jeem's Bayou. That's where we needed to go, Dan had said. It seemed like a good plan on paper. In reality, we got up there, and saw a strong north wind coming down the north-south running bayou. Honestly, I told Jeffrey that I wouldn't normally put kayaks in the water in the conditions we were seeing, but since we came all that way, we were determined to fish. It took us about 15 minutes to make our way about a mile north against a crazy strong headwind. Once we got there, though, we were a little protected by some trees, and we enjoyed several hours of fishing. No catching, but good fishing.
Then it was time to head back to the dock. In the hours that we had been up in the trees, the wind had really picked up speed. I kid you not, it was probably blowing about 30 miles per hour. The bayou was covered in white caps. The wind coming down and the waves bouncing back and forth between the trees and the shore made the open water extremely rough with probably 2.5 or 3 foot waves. It was so rough, that several times we found our kayaks on the top of wave and our paddles didn't reach the water in the trough for the next stroke. And missing one stroke in those conditions had you spun around or pushed into something. The kayaks performed well, though, and neither of us was ever fearful of flipping over. The waves just made it a little more interesting.
As we were taking the boats out of the water, we started talking with the guy that manages the boat ramp there. He was busy pulling water hyacinth and salvinia out of the way of the ramp. If you don't know, those are two problem plants on Caddo Lake (at least on the Louisiana side). The salvinia is particularly problematic because it grows very fast and can completely kill a lake by blocking sunlight and using up all the oxygen and nutrients in the water. He said that he has to pull it out of the way of the boats several times a day or the ramp will get so clogged that you can't use it.
Towards the end of the conversation, though, he pulls up a little of the salvinia to show us exactly what it looks like. He grabs one small piece; maybe three leaves on small stalk. According to this guy, a piece that small will create 60,000 small shoots that same size in a week. He says that it could cover hundreds of acres in a single week. Amazing!
On the way home, I look over and I can tell that Jeffrey is deep in thought, so I ask what he's pondering. He says, that he's trying to figure the number of seconds in a week. Okay, I'll play. Two moderately intelligent guys driving down the road started running some numbers and…
Carry the one…
Multiply by seven…
Divide by 60,000…
To our way of figuring, for that one small shoot to make 60,000 shoots in a week, a new one would have to grow about every 10 seconds. We stood there and looked at the thing longer than that. For that matter, we talked to that guy for probably 15 minutes. How come the whole front of his tractor wasn't covered in the stuff by the time we were ready to leave? Shouldn't it have been practically growing around his hand while he held it? I don't know about you, but I'm gonna have to call BS on those stats. I'm sure it grows fast, and it's definitely a problem, but it ain't growing so fast that you can literally sit there and watch it spread.
To finish off our time together, we headed up to the Buffalo Wild Wings for a surprise party for Jeffrey. Lot's of friends and family were there, and we all enjoyed good food and visiting while we helped Jeffrey enter his thirties. This party was mainly organized by a girl named Brandy, and at one point, John leaned over and asked me if it was Jeffrey's girlfriend. I could only respond honestly with, "I don't know." In the time that I was there, I saw that he had birthday signs placed in his yard by April who signed them "I love you." He got a call from a girl in Chicago asking her when she was coming home so they could go out again. He got a text from a girl in Dallas asking when he was coming to visit her again. And he got party from Brandy.
I guess Jeffrey probably enjoyed having some time without women, too.
