I can’t recall exactly how many times through the years I’ve been asked by the clueless, “What the #*%^ is so addicting about fishing? You’re always up before dawn rumbling off with your pockets stuffed with weird lures and/or baits that would make a turkey buzzard hurl. You fish when it rains, blows, snows and in freezing conditions that would have a polar bear po’d. Have you considered seeking help?”

I’ve never been able to come up with a sociable answer other than a simple gesture I usually reserve for Neanderthals displaying the driving skills of an unhinged howler monkey.

I've heard grumbles lately that I haven't been doing enough to bolster fishing trips to the Homer area. I'm sorry about that but even mental hairballs who couldn't land a deceased perch must be cognizant enough to realize that fishing stories require the presence fish and open waters to stalk them.

I have a tendency to regress sometimes and just recently fell victim to part of my past which I thought had been successfully sublimated. It has to do with motorcycles, springtime and my, until now, ability resist leaping onto over a quarter ton of screaming steel to try and Evel Knievel my way across the frost heaves our Department of Transportation has declared as roads.

It all started innocently enough when I had to fly to the Lower 48 to take care of some personal matters.

I am not the type of guy who needs the latest model of a vehicle every year but I do suffer from what is referred to by our clan as The Varney Tens. The Tens is a generic quirk of the males of my lineage to buy a new rig when our old one passes its decade milestone. The irritating impulse is as dependable as another inane squabble in our state legislature but far less expensive and has some logic to it.