HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Howdy from Texas on this New Year's Day, a time of new beginnings and a new year.

I've been silent for several months, if not more than a year, compared to my previous output. I've had a lot going on. It's all been good occupationally and with the family, but the plate has been full for months and months on end. I recently had a serious bit of medical stuff going on, and fortunately I'm well on the road to rehabilitation and redemption. Not a heart attack or cancer, but something almost as serious that I've been dealing with for over a decade that finally required the surgical steel solution. I'll talk more about that later.

There hasn't been a lot of exciting news in firearms or fishing lately, but there has been some news. Glock is coming out with two new guns, one being some kind of competition ready .45 auto that will be optic ready and full size. The other was recently and supposedly revealed to be a mini-.380 Glock. Guys like me have been hoping for a thinner single stack 9mm for many years, and if the forums and blogs are to be believed (probably won't know for sure until the SHOT show later this month), instead the gun is a just under 14 oz unloaded .380, which is not what I and many others have blogged on about for the past decade or so. 

So here's another longtime Glock user's opinion. I will not buy a .380 Glock. I would buy a slimline single stack 9mm Glock but it just can't have a narrowed grip, that slide needs to get skinny on a 9mm. For years, Glock fans have lamented that a single stack 9mm might resemble a Model 36, no doubt a cool carry gun (I know, I frequently carry mine) but still a bit bulky in the slide department compared to a 1911.

They've got rainbow trout stocked just down the road from my house, with one stocking a couple of weeks ago and another one in a few days. I'm going to try to find out when the stocking will happen because it is a pretty cool site to behold and I think Mrs. El Fisho and El Fisho Jr. would enjoy seeing it. It's been cold lately, and those stocked rainbows are always friskier with a little chill in the air and in the water. I've been thrilled by winter trout fishing in Texas for forty years now, and it's always so fun. I really want to move to a place that features trout fishing year round. That means a place where it snows, and we're trying to find a place that has that happy medium of usually not having too much snow but cold enough that stocked and native trout populations thrive year round.

I've been putting bad guys in jail occupationally for a long time now, and I've gotten to the point where I think I'm ready to sell fly rods or guns or something in my own store. Maybe some choice vintage used musical instruments and vintage gun holsters as well. Of course, common sense would say make it a web based business, and I may very well start it as such. I'd like to sell a lot of cool used gear. 

I know I have a pretty good grip on what is a cool used gun or fishing rig or holster or piece of musical gear is, and judging from that stuff I've bought at auctions, others share my interest in many of the items like this I fancy.

This is not a great idea of mine. My bride tried to get me to leave law enforcement decades ago and open up a storefront called the Fishing Musician in a then quaint Texas Hill Country town called Boerne in the pre-internet days. 

But my mindset has changed in some ways about the things I think are important now. My bride tells me, and I have to agree, that I have done my fair share of trying to "save the world" over the course of my career and that it's time to have some fun. I'm now in agreement.

Once upon a time, during early college days, I was a mechanic at a mini-race car place called Malibu Grand Prix. I did everything there including rebuilding the race cars from the frame up. I enjoyed that level of mechanical rebuilding, which was far less than that required for a full size car. 

Similarly, I was a big motorcycle rider when I was a teen. All of my friends and I had bikes like the Honda XR-75, the Hodaka Wombat, the Honda Trail 70, an Indian 100, the Honda SL70 and a host of others. 

I think I'd like to start rebuilding some older motorcycles, those for which parts can still be found. Something not as daunting as rebuilding a car (I've helped re-build two Mustangs and an El Camino in my earlier days). A friend recently did a five year rebuild on a '55 Chevy, and another guy I know built an AC Cobra replica from a kit. More work that I have the space for, and again, a single cylinder motorcycle rebuild is a far less daunting task.

I did a lot of working and rebuilding Hondas and Hodakas when I was a kid. I was never a rock star rider but I did enjoy dirt riding (the easy kind) a great deal. Now that we have bought an RV motorhome with a substantial rear bumper, I think the time has come to invest in a couple of bikes for El Fisho Jr. and myself.

For Jr., the choices are easy, something like a Honda 100, and I've more or less decided that the Honda CRF250L is a good choice for my re-entry into cycling. This 250 has lights and is street legal so it'd be ideal for a rear of the RV deal to run errands, hit difficult to reach fishing spots and scoot to meals while traveling in the RV.

I'm not looking for a big time power off road machine. I'm pretty sure that the 250 I like has more power than I can use on the backroads and trails I intend to use it on. I'd also like something that I could pick up when I do inevitably lay it down in the boonies.

My friends who are much more into bikes than I am try to steer me toward dual sport bikes that are WAY more powerful than the 250. I'm not looking for a road bike that can sometimes go off road, I'm looking for an off road bike that I can sometimes drive legally to the store or down a road to get to a trail or to the beach. My friends ride high end dual sport bikes like BMW's and crazy stuff like that. Nice bikes to be sure, but that Honda reliability goes a long way.  

So the big two items on the family agenda for the first part of 2014 are to find a place we'd like to live where there are some mountains nearby and move into some new occupations. Mrs. El Fisho has gone and gotten a Master's degree in an entirely new area from her previous career and is ready to forge on with that.

It's a time for big changes for us. I hope your changes this year go well also!