San Juan Island
The San Juans are a group of islands in the Puget Sound, near Victoria BC and the straits of Juan de Fuca, they retain names from the old Spanish explorers who came here in the 18th century. They are generally small, lumpy and wooded, with small scale farming on the largest islands. Since there are so many small islands, beautiful views and protected waterways abound.
At one time, it was just another semi-depressed northwest fishing and agricultural region, then became the haunt of hippies, back-to-the-landers, and other societal drop outs, but today is rapidly becoming the northwest Hamptons: their big growth industries are millionaire housing and tourism.
Reba’s pal and one-time boss, How-how (aka Howard) lives on San Juan Island, the largest of the San Juan Islands, with his wife Gina and their two children, in a swell little patch of fields and orchards. The views of the Olympic mountains, other islands, and bucolic valley they live in are gorgeous, and relaxing just to take in. There is a small University of Washington laboratory on the island, this is where How-how works. He’s probably the exception as far as locals go: I think the typical San Juan islander is either a millionaire, tourist, or works in some sort of business servicing millionaires or tourists. We spent the night with How-how and company, doing what Reba and I have found that we apparently do best: getting to the destination, bullshitting, eating and drinking. Unfortunately, we have yet to find a way to make this skillset pay.
Lopez Island
After leaving How-how, we caught the ferry to Lopez Island, which is a smaller, more bucolic place than San Juan Island. I spent many summers here fishing and hunting on a small farm here during the 70’s, but haven’t been back for many years. The place hasn’t changed a ton, but has certainly incurred some degree of growth, but nowhere on the level of that on San Juan. On the first night, we ate dinner at the Bay Cafe, a typically arty-fancy northwest style joint. To give you an idea of what this entails, we had their “seafood tapas” entrees. Each person got crab cakes (typical), garlic seared prawns with yellow beets (weird, but good) and smoked salmon spring rolls (super weird). Dessert was burnt cream made from coconut milk, and we drank Lopez Island Winery’s Siegerrebe, which is a sweetish white wine hybrid of Gewurztaminer and Madeline Angevine, both of which are typically grown in northern Europe. This sort of thing has at least some chance of growing in our wet, low sun climate, as opposed to the more southern euro varieties that are grown over in eastern Washington.
Neo-cons and charter fishing captains
On day two, we did some charter fishing with Captain Monty, a local salty seaman. Monty is a nice enough guy, but is victim to what I call the “Don Rumsfeld Syndrome”. The concept behind D.R.S. goes like this:
Q: Is Don Rumsfeld responsible for the failure of the occupation of Iraq?
A: No, the American voters are responsible, Rumsfeld provided the (failed) occupation voters wanted.
How did I get from Q to A? Check it out:
Assumption: a small military will not be successful at occupying another country (duh).
1. American voters (twice) elected a neo-conservative government.
2. Neo-conservatives, by definition, seek to effect international change via military force.
3. Therefore, American voters want a government that seeks to effect international change via military force.
A. American voters are unwilling to consider re-instituting the draft.
B. Without a draft, the US has an all volunteer, and therefore small, military.
C. Therefore, American voters want a small military.
Given our assumption, and items 3 and C above: American voters want their government to effect international change via a small military force, even though this is unlikely to be successful.
Many would blame old D. Rumsfeld for this, and while I am no fan of the Secretary of Defence (or his president or the war), I can hardly lay the blame for an under-manned foreign occupation solely at his feet. He gave us exactly what we asked for: neo-con policy with a small military. However, many still blame Don for the fiasco that occurred when he did what we told him to do. D.R.S. in effect.
How does this relate to captain Monty?
Captain Monty runs fishing charters in the San Juan Islands area, and goes after salmon, despite the many other more productive Puget Sound fisheries: rock cod, flounder, shark, etc. This is not unreasonable: salmon are tasty, fight well, and can be quite large; thus anglers prefer salmon to the alternatives, and generally patronise salmon fishing charters. On Monty’s boat, and I suspect on most boats, the typical charter is a half day affair costing $135 per person. The problem with Monty’s charter arises only when considering the odds of actually catching a salmon! In Puget Sound, for many reasons, it is very easy to troll for salmon for several hours or even days without a bite. The chances of everyone on a 6 person charter boat even hooking, let alone landing one salmon each on a 1/2 day trip are very very low. On the day we went out, no salmon was (verifiably) ever hooked. After 3 hours of unproductive salmon trolling, Monty switched to bottom fishing for rock cod, we collectively hooked at least 8 of these in the remaining hour.
Q: Is Monty responsible for the failure of the 1/2 day, 6 person salmon fishing expedition?
A: No, the anglers are responsible, Monty provided the (failed) charter that anglers want.
I submit that Puget Sound charter anglers want 1/2 day salmon fishing trips, even though they are unlikely to be successful. Blaming poor Captain Monty for failed fishing trips makes him a victim of the same syndrome as our Secretary of Defence: D.R.S. At least folks still like Monty. I suppose that another way to put it is: our captains give us what we ask for, even if it’s not what we want!
