Kayaking with Parkinson's

I took the dogs out for their morning constitutional and instead of the usual rain, the moon was shining through wispy clouds. It looked like it was going to be a decent day, so I decided to get off my butt and drag my kayak over to the lake.

I've been making excuses for not kayaking for quite a while now; it's too windy, it's too rainy, I've got too much to do, etc., but I really need the exercise. Going for a walk every day has helped keep my legs in shape, but my upper body strength is fading away.

When I got to the lake, I removed the little lawn mower-wheeled cart off of the boat, tucked it in behind the seat and slid the kayak down the grassy bank to the shoreline. The lake was smooth and glassy with fog rising off the water. Just the way I like it!

There's a feeling that I never tire of, gliding out onto the water and quietly paddling, trying not to disturb the silence. For me it's a time for peaceful meditation. My mind clears and my arms and hands work the paddle on their own; I don't even have to think about it.

I got out to the middle of the lake before my meditation was interrupted by my once dependable arms and hands telling me that they were getting tired! I stopped and drifted for a while, resting. When I started paddling again I could feel the tremors in my left hand getting worse, and in a few minutes I had to stop again.

I slowly worked my way to the south end of the lake and into the little stream that feeds it. Paddling against the current was a chore, but I made it to the inlet where a culvert lets a road cross and I stopped for a long rest.

Letting the streams current do most of the work on the way back out onto the lake, all I had to do was keep the little boat between the banks, but when I got back to the open water a slight head wind had started up. I knew that I had my work cut out for me getting back to the put-in.

The tremors had spread to both of my arms and hands and it was difficult to keep a good grip on the paddle. With every stroke my arms had a cogwheel, ratchet feel to them. I was really tired and the boat dock where I usually get out looked like it wasn't getting any closer.

After what seemed like an eternity, I made it to the dock and slid in on the leeward side. Normally I can put my hands on the dock and roll up and out of the kayak, but I was almost too weak to do it. Somehow I managed to squirm up onto the dock without falling in or overturning my kayak.

I pulled the boat out, put the wheels on, and trudged back to the house. When I went to the kitchen sink to get a drink of water, my tremors were so bad I couldn't get the glass to my mouth, even when I tried using both hands.

Next time I'll take it a little easier!

Old Yellow

I'm thinking about renaming the old, yellow, beat up, threadbare recliner that Carol bought at a yard sale years ago. I loved that chair and spent many hours in it, dozing, reading, watching TV and dozing some more. I always thought of it as “Old Yellow.” The mechanism has broken several times, and the last time I fixed it by replacing the busted linkage with a piece of electric fence wire. Several generations of dogs have left their smell and some of their hair is embedded in it, but to me it smells like home.

Eventually we bought a new recliner and retired the old one to storage, hopefully for a yard sale of its own. The new one, while a lot better looking, just never felt right to me. After several failed attempts to sell the outcast, it sat forgotten in the back of our shop covered with other junk, until some friends who were furnishing a new house came over. They were looking for good deals on furniture so Carol took them out to the shop to see if we had anything that they could use.

They picked out a desk, some old end tables, an office chair, and the old recliner. I helped them load their pickup, but when we got to Old Yellow I suddenly felt like I was losing a dear friend. “Wait a minute,” I said, “There's another one in the den that you would probably like better!”

“You can't be serious!” Carol said, as we went in the house. A few minutes later we carried out the newer chair and loaded it up.

“I never liked that chair.” I said, “It just didn't feel comfortable, and I can fix anything that's broken on the old one.”

The old yellow recliner resumed its place in the den, and after I sat down in it for the first time in several years, I realized what I had been missing; all of the lumps, valleys and creases were in exactly the right place, and I could have easily dozed off right then and there.

Sitting down and pulling the foot rest lever back is like sinking into a comfortable cloud, and to read or watch TV for any length of time without falling asleep is a real challenge for me. Sometimes I'm awakened by a loud rattling noise and it takes me a few seconds to realize that it was my snoring that so rudely interrupted my dreams.

When the dogs hear the clunk of the footrest going out they know that my lap is available and it only takes a few seconds before they both have joined me. With them in my lap it's difficult to read, so I usually turn out the lamp, lay down my book and ...zzzzz.

Maybe I'll name it “Serenity.”

Venting

Parkinson's Lament

I feel more than a little guilty about complaining, since so many other people with Parkinson's have symptoms that are much more advanced and serious than mine. I consider myself fortunate that my symptoms are still mild, but every now and then, like everyone, I need to vent a little bit.

I guess the symptom that I hate the most is my deteriorating manual dexterity. I used to be proud of my ability to work with my hands and I enjoyed putzing around in my workshop, sawing, sanding, soldering, welding, and building various projects. Now the shop is littered with unfinished undertakings left behind in frustration.

The medicine (Dopamine) that I take to reduce the tremors, works most of the time, but sometimes I feel like I have two left hands. Eating in public is embarrassing, a knife and fork just won't work for me the way they used to. It almost feels like I've never used them before, and sometimes I think I could do just as well with chopsticks. Inevitably the morsel of food that I've struggled so hard to get on the tip of my fork will shake off just as I bring it up to my open mouth, and the more frustrated and stressed I get, the more the tremors increase.

The second most irritating symptom for me is the gradual weakening of my voice. If I haven't spoken for a while and try to answer the phone, about all I can get out is a garbled croak. It usually takes a couple of tries before I can say a clear “Hello?” Other times it's difficult to speak loud enough to be heard, especially if there's any background noise.

Thirdly, I really miss my sense of smell. I remember what the Northwest rain smelled like early in the morning; “Green ice, silence and minnow breath,” as Tom Robbins wrote. The odors of Lilacs, fresh coffee, newly mowed grass and puppy breath are just memories now.

My upper body strength is poor, especially the grip in my hands. The weather's been too crappy to do much kayaking, which would help. Walking keeps my leg strength up and I squeeze rubber exercise balls while I walk, (Carol likes to remind me to keep squeezing my balls while we're walking,) but so far it hasn't helped much. (My grip that is.)

Memory lapses are getting more frequent, I even forgot how to tie my shoe the other day. Mostly it's just temporary though, a missing word or name will eventually come back, sometimes in the middle of the night. My other symptoms; dizziness, loss of balance, difficulty swallowing, are all mild.

I'm going to resist everything this disease throws at me and I plan on keeping my sense of humor while I'm doing it.

Housebreaking Squeak

I can't believe that I've been doing this blog for over four years now!

In that time our grand kids have grown up, and great grand kids have been born. Carol logged hundreds of calls driving the ambulance, we said sad goodbyes to our dogs Boom Boom and Chewy, said hello to two new puppies Taz and Squeak, had a couple hundred of our weekly barbecues with my brother, weathered wind storms, ice storms, snow storms, power failures, and heat waves. One of the Pine trees in front of the house blew down blocking the highway, and I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

We caught Salmon and Trout, went kayaking, and hiking, landscaped the back yard, painted the house, turned an old dock into firewood, and Carol traced our family tree back to the Pleistocene era. I try to walk at least a mile every day, Carol usually walks two or more, but when the weather's stormy we do jigsaw puzzles for exercise.

Writing about our boring lives and trying to make it interesting is a challenge, but it's also a lot of fun.

Teaching Squeak

After just two days Taz has matured from a care free ne'er do well into a mentor and teacher. It's unbelievable how much he's changed since we got the new puppy. Squeak follows Taz almost everywhere, but if she gets too rambunctious she gets a quick warning growl to settle her down.

Amazingly, Taz lets Squeak play with his precious toys, (he won't let the great grand kids play with them!) and he even lets her drink and eat out of his bowls. It's almost as though he's taken on the role of a wise Kung Fu master.

“Follow me grasshopper, and I will show you things that you have only dreamed of!”

“Do not chew on the table legs, or scratch your rear on the carpet. Those are NO!s.”

“If you bite this toy like this, it makes a good squeaky noise! See?”

“Do not worry, you will be able to do it someday. I will teach you.”

“When you growl and whine like this, they will let us outside to do our business.”

“Always do this outside, never in the house. That is a very big NO!”

“Here is a good spot to...Why are you pooping like that? It is very undignified!”

“Here is the very spot where I killed a mole when I was still a pup.”

“Over here is some good tasty grass to eat.”

“In the summer I will show you how to eat apples, too.”

Squeak

The vet called the other day and asked if we still were looking for a companion for Taz. Carol said yes, I said no. Guess who won?

We drove to the little town of Alsea and picked her up. She's supposed to be a full blooded Papillon but I think she's got some Meercat and maybe a little alien from Mars blood in her. Have you ever seen a real dog balance on her two front feet, with her hind legs off the ground to poop?

She's a real ball of fire, Taz just walks around looking confused most of the time. I was afraid he'd be super protective of his toys, food and us, but Squeak is into things so fast Taz can't even keep track of her, let alone protect anything.

JC's Deck

Just about every day for the past year and a half now, I've been walking almost a mile to my brother JC's house. It's good exercise for me and if I get rained out, or for some other reason can't make it, I feel like something important is missing from my daily routine.

When I arrive, usually around 1:30 in the afternoon, JC is either sitting at the patio table on his deck reading a book or inside playing with one of his computers. We almost always end up out on the deck sitting under the awning out of the sun and sometimes, out of the rain. Even though my voice is getting weaker, and JC's hearing isn't too good, we still manage to have some good conversations.

We sit and sip cheap wine, (his white, mine red,) and talk about computers, or movies, or fishing, or old times, but since we're on opposite sides of the political spectrum, seldom politics. Arguing about politics is too much work, anyway. Talking about religion is fine, since we both believe that organized religion is responsible for most of the problems in the world today, and that the so called “holy” books, rites, ceremonies and sacraments were invented and created by man, not by any of the many mythical gods.

When we run out of subjects to talk about, we become nature observers, watching Hummingbirds, Bluejays, Crows and spiders. We spent one afternoon watching a female orb weaver spider literally kicking a horny male repeatedly out of her web. Finally after a dozen attempts she let him quickly mate with her and then promptly kicked him out again. We captured mealy bugs and dropped them onto her web to watch her dart over and wrap them up for later. One day we watched a bunch of tiny, newly hatched baby spiders sending out almost invisible strands into the breeze and then launching themselves from their nursery out into the world. Another time JC was showing me the last Blueberry on his potted plant. “I think I'll pick it before the birds get it,” he said. As we were looking at it, a Bluejay swooped down, grabbed the berry and flew off.

JC built planters on the outside edge of his deck, and shelves to hold potted flowers and plants. In the summer the deck is surrounded by Columbines, Hostas, Petunias, Blueberry plants and pretty flowers that neither of us can name.

The weight of all the planters and pots came dangerously close to collapsing the deck and sending it, and most likely us, on a merry trip down the hill and into the trees. We had noticed the gap between the deck and the trailer getting wider and when JC checked underneath he discovered that in many places the supports were large tree branches and rotted lumber, all leaning downhill. Needless to say he replaced everything underneath with pressure treated wood, and fastened the deck itself to the side of the trailer with turnbuckles. He also replaced most of the decking with new boards and of course, after a few failed attempts, installed the awning.

Recently, for lack of anything else to do, we've been keeping track of how many times we have to go inside and pee. It's become a competition and we even talked about putting up one of those pool hall gizmos with sliding disks on a wire to keep score. A lot of times he says he has to go check on one of the movies that he's constantly copying on his computer, so now to keep him honest when I have to go, I say, “ I have to go check my movie!”

We're starting to recognize the sounds of the cars that come up the steep road to his neighborhood. “Here comes Andy!” I'll say. Going to see his girlfriend!”

“Yep,” JC will say.

“That sounds like Howard's pickup!” JC will say, “Looks like he's been out crabbing!”

“Yep.” I'll say.

“There goes Mary! There goes Andy!”

“Yep. Yep.”

As you can see, we're easily entertained.

Lightning Strike Lures

In the fall of 1981 I caught my first Steelhead on the Yachats River. Little did I know that it was the beginning of a twenty year fun filled business.

My wife Carol, our son Rick, our Cocker Spaniel Rusty and I had moved to the Oregon coast the year before, and despite taking a Steelhead fishing class taught by Dr. Howard Horton at the Marine Science Center and on the Siletz River, we still hadn't caught one. It wasn't from a lack of trying, we spent many hours casting and retrieving various lures and drifting globs of smelly salmon eggs through the deep holes on the Yachats, Ten Mile and Alsea Rivers.

I had left Carol to fish at what we called “The Big Hole” about three miles up from the Yachats rivers mouth, and walked downstream with Rusty. I had bought a green and gold spinner at True Value and I was anxious to try something a little different from the Mepps and Rooster Tails I usually used.

At a bend in the river overhung by Alder trees, Rusty and I slid down a muddy bank and I made my first cast. The spinner sparkled and flashed in the fast moving current and then disappeared. I suddenly realized that I had a fish on!

Boy, did I have a fish on! After a splashing jump right in front of us, the silvery bright Steelhead headed downstream making my reel scream and Rusty bark. There was no way to follow it because of the overhanging trees and brush, so all I could do was hang on and pray. When it reached the next bend in the river it stopped and started jumping and thrashing. Rusty was still barking, up to his chest in the water trying to decide if he could swim down stream and help. He was a great swimmer and if I hadn't called him back he probably would have tried.

I started pumping and reeling, and after about fifteen minutes I had the fish back in front of us. Our net was back at the big hole with Carol so my plan was to slide the fish through a shallow backwash and up onto the bank. Things were looking good until Rusty couldn't contain himself and tried to jump on what we both thought was a tired fish. Rejuvenated, the Steelie raced back down stream toward the Ocean, stopping again at the same place and jumping to show his defiance. For the second time I had to call Rusty back out of the water.

Three times I had to crank that fish back up stream and when I finally slid it into the shallow backwash, it started flopping and splashing, turning the once clear water into a muddy soup. I threw my rod down and Rusty and I jumped on the writhing fish. It was an epic struggle, I lost my grip on the slippery, mud coated Steelhead several times but with Rusty's help I finally slid the muddy fish up onto the bank and conked it, on what I hoped was its head, with a rock. I washed the Steelie off in clear water and hung him from a broken limb in an Alder while I tried to make Rusty and I presentable, or at least recognizable.

Carol, hearing the barking and yelling, had started down stream to see what all the commotion was about. She stopped in her tracks when she saw her wet, slimy, bedraggled husband and a muddy, dripping dog walking toward her. “What happened to you two?” she yelled.

When I saw her, I raised the fish with a flourish and a Ta Da! She was almost as excited as Rusty and I, and later we drove into Yachats to show the eight pound Steelhead to everyone we knew and some we didn't.


I went back to True Value hardware and bought some more of the green and gold spinners. They had a heavy brass body that made them sink quickly and get down to where the fish were, but they weren't cheap, and they were always hanging up on snags and rocks. Usually we would break our line trying to get them free, so even though we were starting to catch fish, replacing lures was turning into a big expense.

One evening while I was going through our gear, I looked at one of the green spinners. “I bet we could make something like this ourselves, and it sure would be a lot cheaper!”

The next day we visited a tackle shop in the little coastal town of Seal Rock and were surprised to find that they carried almost all of the components we would need. With a little innovation and model paint we could build our own green and gold spinners.

The fishing tin the 1980's was good, and we were catching Coho and Chinook Salmon, along with Steelhead and even some Calico, or Dog Salmon from the Necanicum River near Seaside. Our lure making was evolving, we discovered prism tape and ¼ inch lead wire for the spinner bodies, and we started putting a stripe of prism tape on the blades to make them even flashier.

We kept experimenting and improving our spinners, trying out different colors and sizes and giving them to friends to try, asking for feed back. Just for fun, I cut a lightning bolt out of a scrap of prism tape and stuck it on the blade. I showed it to Carol and said, “Hey, we could call them Lightning Strike Spinners, and use a lightning bolt for a logo.” I don't know how many lightning bolts I cut out with an Exacto knife, but I know it was a lot, because we started selling spinners, first in a little sporting goods store in Yachats, then when Jack Green, a friend of ours who lived in Seaside, got them in 12th avenue grocery next to a fishing bridge over the Necanicum River, we were hard pressed to keep up with the orders.

Finally, we found out that the wholesale tape company where we got our prism tape would make a die to stamp out the lightning bolts for us. That really sped things up, and by then we were selling enough that with a little bit of fibbing about how big we were, we could get the wholesale wire, lead, hook, and blade manufacturers to sell to us. We could buy our components by the thousand instead of in small, more expensive quantities.

We tried every color and pattern of prism tape we could find, and of course we tested them on the local streams and found out which combination of color and size caught fish. When we encountered other fishermen we'd hand out free lures, and we traveled up and down the coast selling them to hardware, sporting goods and convenience stores. We always took our fishing gear along with us.

By the early 1990's we were selling several thousand spinners every fall. Almost all of our sales took place in September, October and November. We had narrowed our selection down to the most popular colors and sizes by then and we would start making them in the summer trying to anticipate which of the five colors and three sizes would sell the best that fall. One year, early in September, the first Salmon caught in Alsea Bay was caught on one of our florescent orange #5 spinners. The local stores sold out immediately and we were getting phone calls in the middle of the night asking if we had any. We gladly sold to people who visited our shop and we made a lot of friends that way. A young man by the name of Martin Link stopped by to buy some lures and later he sent us a picture from Venezuela of him holding a Snook he caught on one of our spinners. One fisherman asked if I would put our lightning bolts on his Mepps spinners, as he was convinced that there was something magical about the lightning bolt that Salmon couldn't resist.

The sporting goods stores, truck stops and convenience stores in Seaside were always our best customers. Our lures were the local favorites, and you could always find them hanging from the power lines that crossed the river over the fishing bridges. One time we drove our pickup and camper up the coast to Seaside and camped next to the river. The next morning while we were eating breakfast we looked out the window to see a fisherman fighting a fish. We helped him land a nice Chinook and we were pleasantly surprised to see that he was using one of our lures. I took his picture holding up his fish and later we had it framed and took it back up to him. There's a story told to me by Jennie Logsdon-Martin of I fish.net, about her using a Lightning Strike spinner in Seaside. While she was walking to the river to fish, she found a piece of pink ribbon on the ground. She picked it up and on a whim, tied it to the hook on her lure. Needless to say she caught a big Chinook and the next day almost everyone was using a piece of pink ribbon tied on a Lightning Strike spinner.

Link's sporting goods store in Seaside surprised us one August with an order for a thousand of our lures. He was smart to order a month or so ahead of time, because it took us two weeks to crank them out. We learned a lot about building lures and packaging, filling that order. Carol did all of the packaging and she was constantly improving their appearance and convenience. We started with a yellow card stock with our logo printed on it and four holes; one to hang it up with and the other three to tie the top of the lure and the treble hook down with. Unfortunately this left one hook sticking straight out, and when a kid at the Newport Fred Meyers caught his sweater on one of them and yanked the whole display over, we had to start gluing a plastic cover over the lure. Eventually we found a plastic clam shell that fit our spinners like a glove, and later we printed our own display cards on the computer printer.

When the computer age came along we drug our feet for a while, but finally my brother talked us into buying one. It wasn't long before we were doing inventory, spreadsheets, fliers, price lists and a host of other things including starting up a web site. It was quite a learning process but we did it all ourselves, using Go Daddy as a host, we registered “lightningstrikelures.com.” We had a gallery of big fish pictures and I even created an animated Lightning Strike spinner. We didn't use PayPal or accept credit cards, we just had a list of the sizes and colors, a printable order sheet, and basically said, “You send us a filled out order sheet with a check and we'll send you the lures.” We never got a rubber check and we never failed to fill an order, some of which came from all over the world.

Over the twenty years or so that we sold those lures, averaging from 2,000 to 5,000 every fall, Carol assembled every package and I hand made every lure. Eventually my fingers began losing their dexterity and we decided to sell Lightning Strike. Carol phoned Jim Brien, who owns a salmon egg bait company in Seaside to ask if he'd be interested, and he was. A few days later after a handshake, Lightning Strike Lures was his.

Austin

Our 13 year old grandson Austin, who we hadn't seen for almost 6 years, spent some time with us last month. His mom, dad, little sister and he recently moved back to Oregon from the Huston area, and he's full of Texas tales.

They hated the hot weather and high humidity, the insects of every description, and they survived hurricane Ike, which went almost directly over them, knocking down trees onto their house and leaving them without power for days in a sea of mud.

Austin likes to talk, and he told us all about it, with typical Texas exaggerations. (Thankfully, and to his credit, he didn't acquire a Texas accent.) “The mosquitoes down there were twice as big as they are here, and there were giant hornets, huuuge snakes, fire ants, wasps, ticks, chiggers and tarantulas.”

We set up an old Dell computer for him in the den and he and I loaded it up with games for him to play when he got bored with us. Like most teens he whizzed though them in no time, so I had to scrounge up some more. Once I came in to watch him playing a flight simulator game that had proved way too hard for me, and he was operating a joy stick, typing on the keyboard and working the mouse, all at the same time, flying like an ace.

We went to the lake where I showed him how to paddle a kayak, and he quickly caught on. He even challenged me to a race back to the dock. (I still maintain that I let him win.) Every day he went with grandma for her daily walk, and then later with me up the highway to Uncle John's house, talking 90 miles an hour all the way.

On one of our treks he said, “Wait a minute grandpa!” and he climbed down the bank beside the highway. When he climbed back up, he proudly showed me his find, a wheel cover that had fallen off of someone's car. “What in the heck are you going to do with that?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said with a smile, ' I'm thinking about building my own car, and this will be the first part!”

I''m not sure if he was kidding me or if he was serious, but it wouldn't surprise me, in a few years, to see him drive up in a car with a very familiar wheel cover on it.