Lesson Two: Murderous Heat

Jim called today to see if I were up for a casting lesson this afternoon.  Reason being I guess because of the temperature. It's been so murderous hot today, he might've been thinking I would decline.   Delicate skin, perhaps.  Fear of heat rash.  Too many freckles as it is. 
But no.
I'm in, I said.  Be there or be square.
Just before I left the house, the radio said it was 92 degrees F.  The radio also said to drink plenty of fluids, avoiding alcohol, and to wear as few clothes as possible.  A condition of oxymoronity if ever I've heard one.

I donned as few clothes as possible and sallied forth, knowing that we would bake quickly on the open lawn of the municipal park in Adrian.  I brought water and soda pop.

Other than two days in which my husband and I went fishing, I had been a good little student and practiced faithfully every day, reducing all energy, just as Jim had tutored, until I was casting as slow as a heroin addict.

Perfect weather for it, too.

No vehicles were in the park when I arrived. The park had a post-apocolyptic feel to it. Ah, but life will out, won't it? When I reached into my truck to get my hat, there was a little visitor sitting exactly where a souvenir fly might be pinned: a Raisin River hexagenia. Something had swept him into the open window and there he sat, alive but stunned by the heat, on my Tilley broad-brimmed hat. He was breathing heavily, dressed in as few clothes as possible.  Demurely, he allowed me to take some photographs for this blog, and I said I would protect his anonymity and not publish his name.  I understood when he declined my offer of some Diet Coke, though I never got an explanation for why he only glanced at the water.   But he seemed to trust me, because he stayed on my hat for a long time and even came out to observe my casting on the lawn.

By now my fellow students, Doug and Cole, had arrived, and Jim himself was setting up his rod.  The heat was without mercy, but for some reason everyone seemed to be wearing the usual amount of clothes.

There was no need to warm up, of course.  I began casting, showing off my somnambulate  new strokes, and presently Jim shuffled over and drawled something by way of a greeting and then, I think, a question about whether I had had a chance to practice. The question felt insulting -- couldn't he see that I had been practicing? Couldn't he tell by the slo-mo false casts that lazily curtsied over the burnt grass of the outfield?  I tried to bristle with irritation, but the damp heat made it look more like a stomach cramp.

With no other alternatives, I reverted to what I do best: complain about myself.  The problem was this, I explained: I've got my cast all nice and languid, see?  Nice loops, everything looking jake.  Then when I re-introduce the haul, everything gets f**ked.  The line collapses, the cadence gets lost, and the loop opens up like the jaws of a Baleen Whale.  See?

He saw.

I can't seem to square the lazy-ass casting stroke with the hurry-up haul stroke.  Weren't the cast and the haul supposed to mirror each other? I'm confused, I whined in my best east-coast girl whine. 

Yes, they mirror each other, he coached patiently, but not necessarily in speed, just in size, in length.  It will take – and here we both paused for emphasis – it will take practice.

Practice.

We nodded in the glare of the sun.  Nothing new under it, that's for sure.  Practice.  I think that might've been when the hex few away.

"Well, what about this, then," I broke in, moving to the next grievance.  "Here I am false casting away, shooting line, everything's working, and then on the 5th cast or so, with no warning, no explanation, for no reason whatsoever, mysteriously, my haul hand is carrying slack line on the back cast!"  I showed him by recreating the indecent pose, gasping at such a calamity. 

Jim wagged his Jim head.  "Well, nothing happens for no reason whatsoever," he said.  "You've got enough line out, but your rod isn't loading, I would say.  It's probably because you're not stopping. By your fifth cast you're probably thinking about other things besides stopping.  Right?  Because stopping abruptly loads the rod. Make sure you're stopping the rod."

Okay, I thought.  That I can do.

"The other thing you're doing," he went on in spite of my contentment, "is you're tending to raise your arm up at the top of your backcast.  Remember the straight path for the rod tip, right?"

"Ah, well, I think I was stabbing the sky," I offered, referring to a Lefty Kreh proscription that we had talked about the previous week.

"Okay, well, forget stabbing the sky and just stop the rod straight up."

He went away and I worked on these things:  keeping that weird new upward lift out of the backcast stroke (before it got too ingrained in muscle memory), and stopping the rod.  In the meantime, I was mindful of that haul as the sun beat down hard on the back of my bare knees and sweat gathered between my shoulder blades.  God, it's like talking to your neurotic sister, watching a toddler handle a kitten, calculating collatoralized debt obligations, and recalling a recipe for ravioli made from scratch all at the same time while putting on mascara without a mirror as you're driving a stick-shift to work in rush-hour traffic.  With no air conditioning on and wearing no clothes at all as big trucks pass on both sides.

This isn't a nightmare, I reminded myself, it's a hobby.

"But there are some other things you can do, too," Jim's voice sounded, rousing me from my darkening thoughts. Several minutes had elapsed. He approached from the direction of Cole, who was casting on even browner grass.  I blinked and wiped my eyes with a bandanna.  Jim then began to demonstrate the notion of moving the upper arm, shoulder, and upper torso.  I had been a little too limited to my lower arm, he said, demonstrating the difference. He imitated Joan Wulff's elongations, Lefty's colossal reaches, and then my own measly swipes.   It was good to see.  Jim said that if I incorporated more of my body into the cast, perhaps my wrist soreness, weakness, and repeated injuries would abate. 
Naturally, I liked all this, not just because it might address the frequent pain in my hand and wrist, but because it was, well, a little like dancing.  I used to swing dance, and even teach it, so movement is fun to explore for me.  I don't care how silly I look, either, thank god, or I would never leave the house.

A few other tidbits and helpful hints were exchanged among the four of us, thoroughly drenched, spent, thirsty, and wilted,  as we wound down the session.  I made them pose for these shots. The guy in the blue hat is Jim, our teacher.  Yellow hat is Doug, young dude is Cole, his son (maybe son-in-law, I'll check).

Next time I'm bringing water and snacks, I claimed.  It would just be a nice thing to do, I thought.  Jim's giving his time to us, purely out of some kind of sickness and devotion. The least I can do is water him down and bring a cookie or something.  There will be more things in store, of course, but I haven't the ability to focus on what those would be right now, what with all the other things I have to keep in my head as I retrain myself to cast decently.