ForbesOnTech

Life With a Little, Observant, Dog-- Notes on Senor Perro

The best parts of my life today are little routines:

Spending 45 minutes in the evening on my glider on my front porch watching the sun set over the Camp Pendleton coast--, my little dog, Senor Perro, tucked against my right hand side with his snout laid on my thigh as he cautiously sniffs twilight breezes. Tonight, he took a deep breath and instantly alerted, popping up and giving a ferocious chihuahua growl to enemies real and imagined. he heard and smelled the two coyote pups in my front lawn-- about 35 yards in front of my porch-- long before I heard their footfalls in my lower garden. It's behavior like this that makes me laugh and appreciate my 12 pound chihuahua all the more. Nothing escapes his attention and he's just as attentive to the sound of the UPS truck whining it's way up my half-mile driveway as he is to the presence of the infrequent coyote or weasel. Spending time with Perro on the front porch in the evenings helps me understand how this little dude made it two years as part of a ferral pack in an old avocado orchard in north Escondido. He doesn't miss much.

Night time with Perro-- I go to sleep long before Perro does, but we do have a routine.  I go back to my bedroom, turn on the TV and watch a show, and he trots in, jumps on the bed and walks lightly over to the nightstand. My part of the bed time gig is to make sure there are two milkbone biscuits in his favorite flavor on the night stand. He likes the beige colored biscuits but will take a green one if nothing else is available. Even a studly little chihuahua apparently has some standards.

Perro is my first dog. I use to travel too much to have a dog as a pet, so I settled on cats. Perro gets along famously with my cats and enjoys his daily hallway races with the youngest of the feline overlords.

When I first met Perro as a volunteer dog walker during the great Escondido fire of 2004, I had no idea I would bond as thoroughly as I have with this Dude. He makes me laugh and I've come to think of him as a fractious 10 year old boy. And yes, when Perro and I make long road trips, I do talk to my dog and he does look at me like he's interested in what I say.

Ahhhhh, life with a little dog is very good indeed. Jim Forbes, Escondido, CA 08/23/2007

Bait too Big, Dog too Sick, Trip to Fuller Lake Gets Nixed

This was to have been the week when I make one of several annual pilgrimages to my favorite trout fishing spot in the entire world, Fuller Lake, off of Highway 20 between Grass Valley and Truckee, in northern California.

Before I was scheduled to leave for Fuller, I wanted to test my luck with the Fishing Gods by taking my best friend,  McDoo,out fishing in San Diego Bay. Launched the boat --making sure the drain plug was firmly in place, parked the truck and treiler, and motored out o Everingham Brothers Bait Barge in Mission Bay, where I traded a crisp $20 bill for a four-pass half scoop of lively bait. the guy on duty on the barge apologized and said they only had sardines. "What the hell," I thought to myself, "Bait is bait" so I cast of the barge and motored to one of my favorite inshore halibut fishing spots. McDoo gave me on of his Arturo Fuentes Special cigars, and we filled the aiar with a thin blue haze of finely cured Domincan cigar tobacco and proceded to bait up.  Lots of nibbles, but no fish coming into the boat. " What the hell," I said to  McDoo emptily "the bait is morer active than the target species."

Eventually, I got hiotr that slammed my pole into its holder in the back of the boat, pulled up my bait when I realized the fish hadn't tyaken the hook. I took a close look at the 7-inch sardine, which had the rake marks on its side and was missing its tail, all good signs of a feeding Pacific halibut.

I rebaited and the bites stopped. Evenutually I came to the conclusion that the  bait was too big and may have been scaring away the fish we were trying to catch. how about that?  the bait was too big and was scaring away the fish! T"hat's right up there witgh being told by my grandfather that the reason the fish weren't biting my dry fly was that I "wasn't hold my mouth right."

yeah, right Gramps, I believed it too.

            Back to Fuller. I   spent most of last week anticipating the trip up to Fuller. Two of my fishing scouts who hit this little known lake pretty regularly fed my anticipation by telling me of their quick limits on  evening bites and even went so far as to send sending me pictures  of the 16- to 18-inch rainbows they ‘ve been catching for the last two weeks using nymph and deer fly pattern flies tied on 14 and number 16 hooks and fished from float tubes about 200 yards up from the face of the dam that forms Fuller. I had my Prius serviced earlier this week and had made plans to overnight at a friend’s house in Rescue, CA, before heading up Highway 49 to Grass Valley and hooking east on Highway 20 to the turnoff leading to Fuller.

            But Mother Nature smacked my plans right down just before I had planned on leaving. First, my buddy and constant companion of the last four years had a bite on his flank that got abscessed. As if that weren’t enough, one of his anal glands abscessed as well. so, off to the Vet I went, sickly Chihuahua in tow. Nearly $200 later, Perro came home and I decided to fly part of the way to San Jose, to meet with someone, have dinner before heading off to the Gold country and getting a line wet at Fuller Lake.

            Alas, Senor Perro was not doing well, So I flew back home Sunday, to be greeted by wild yipping, considerable lap running and lots of doggy kisses.

            It’s still amazing to me how a waif Chihuahua hybrid, scooted his way into my life, licked me into submission and quickly created the pack of his dreams.

            My kids are all grown, and Perro has become a surrogate child. I’m not ashamed of it in the least. I’m just an old man with a small dog; ”Un Viejo y perrocito” as they say on the shores of Tripoli or the Halls of Montezuma, I forget which.

            So my fly rods are back hanging on the garage wall, my spinning outfit sits ready to answer the call at a moments notice, and I’m determined to make it to Fuller before Aug 10, come hell or highwater.

            But for now I have a couple of projects to complete using my best of breed X60 tablet convertible notebooks.

Just trying to live up to the logo of my glog, “Mobile computing, organic gardening and occasional fishing strategies.”

            Sometimes you catch fish other times you get hooked by something unexpected. It’s all part of life on a little mountaintop in rural northern San Diego County, four years removed from Silicon Valley and an equal amount of time being a member of a pack, led by a small 11-pound hybrid suffering at the moment from an abscessed butt.—Jim Forbes 07/07/2007.

Yellowtail Fin Into Town on Warm Water--Hurray!

I thought I'd go out for a putt-putt in my boat this morning. So.......... I get up before sunrise, hook up my Panga to the back of my 4Runner and head down I-15 to the Harbor Island boat ramp. I push my boat into the water, tie off to the dock, then run to go park the Toyota and trailer someplace where it won't be stripped down to the axles when I return.

The parking lot was unusually full, loaded with massively manly pickups attached to two and three-axle boat trailers. I lucked out, found a handicapped spot locked up and jogged back to the boat.

Off to Everingham Brothers Bait Barge quick as a flash and I realize I'm fourth or fifth in line. Time for a quick shot of coffee as I make sure my bait tank is filled and the new pump is still working. All is fine as I inch forward in idle, tie up to the barge and pull out $17 that I've set aside for a half scoop of fresh wiggly sardines. The transaction takes seconds, and I make sure the deckhand knows there's a deuce (a two-dollar bill) in the folded money for him. four passes for a half scoop is a great deal in my book, so I warp my boat away from the barge, slowly idle away, then shove the throttle forward until my outboard is humming along at about 3,200 rpm. I"m out on the Pacific with minutes, my coffee is warm, the waves are only two feet high and 10 seconds apart and the wind is a calm 7 knots out of the west.

I trim the boat up, it surges forward on plane and I look at my watch. At about 18-20 knots, it's going to be a 55  minute run SSW from the harbor and pretty soon Point Loma is behind my back and I can see the tip of North Coronado Island in the distance.

I make North Coronado right on the hour, throttle down and notice that everyone and their fishing partner brother-in-law is playing hooky today and chasing the 62 degree thermocline, which has now reached San Diego. The arrival of the warm water is big news down here at the southwest tip of America, since it brings with it the annual schools of yellowtail, and farther out for people with bigger boats, albacore.

Since moving down here I've become hooked on thunnoid fishing. Having a 20-30-pound yellowtail hit your bait is about the most fun you can have with your pants on. And even better than that when the water gets even warmer, is hooking an appropriately named fish called a "Wahoo." but none of that compares to fighting a cow 100-plus pound yellowfin tuna, schools of which are still hundreds of miles away, down off the Baja California coast.

But everyone and their brother was down here at the Coronado Islands today. I mean the ocean looked like a boaters parking lot. Alas, i didn't ;and a yellowtail, although I did have two hookups. the boats besides me were landing 15-20-pounders so I'm encouraged that this could be the big season for me. I did land a nice legal barracuda, which is being Barbecued as I write this.

And that's the big news in my life right now: the yellowtail are here in San Diego waters, my boat is running and I'm ready with the correct tackle, a working bait tank and sharp hooks. Honestly, it doesn't get a lot better por un viejo y su perrito ( literally an old male "character" and his small male dog. Jim Forbes from Escondido, CA on 05/16/2007

Exploring Old California--A Retirement Todo List Item

In my second life as a still auburn-haired retired person I’ve tried to focus on recreational activities that keep me outdoors and which tap into my love of California history (including gold mining) and the development and infrequent abandonment of settlements.

            Poking around old building foundations is one of the things I really love to do. And I’m not very particular about this hobby. I’m just as happy looking for signs of abandoned civilization in the backcountry of southern California as I am up in the Gold Districts around and near Placerville and Auburn California. A small day pack is big enough to hold all of the “tools” I need for this hobby. Stuck inside I keep a water bottle I’ve stashed the night before in the freezer, a pair of lightweight field binoculars, copies of 19^th century county maps, a pocket knife, a paper notebook, pens and pencils for jotting down observations, my cell phone, some fresh fruit, digital camera, a first aid kit, and a collapsible water dish for my dog. With my entrenching tool strapped to the back of my 10-pound pack, I leash up the hound and head out. The “other” tool that has become an indispensable part of my kit in the last year is a $100 metal detector; I carry in my free hand.

            I normally begin my explorations by finding a promontory that overlooks the area I want to explore. By glassing the area below, I can get an excellent idea of where people may have camped, built 19^th century houses, or kept corrals.  Among the things I look keenly for are patches of vegetation with rough geometric shapes. It’s the verdant green and distinctly human influenced shape of these sites that I home in on. Most often they mark the locations of privies, and it’s at the entrance of these privies that you find artifacts—metal buttons, small denomination coins and maybe an old pocketknife or two.

            Once I’ve located the site of an old privy it’s not hard to locate house foundations or the places where pioneers erected their canvas house. Most often they are located about 100 feet away upwind and oriented with their fronts facing the rising sun. I use my metal detector to explore around the front and edges of a structure. The next thing I’ve learned to look for are two old tall trees beside or behind the structure. Once I’ve located them, I use my field glasses to look for thin notches about 10-20 feet up the trunks. Most often, the notches have been self-repaired by the trees, but once you’ve located the discolored bark you know you’ve hit the mark.

            The notches are the signs that the trees were used as anchor points for a clothesline. The ground under those settlers’ clotheslines is pay dirt for an amateur treasure hunter. It’s where coins that were left in pockets before wash day fell to the ground and were buried in the detritus of time. It’s those coins, rusted away pocketknives, old metal buttons and other things that I seek.

            I’ve located trash dumps on my explorations too, but I know enough about amateur archaeology to leave those for the day when I have enough time to map out grids and have the fortitude to haul in the wood and screening I need to correctly sieve old trash. Besides, on a good day about the most interesting thing I’ve found in old trash pits are: broken clay pipe stubs, trashed china and once a couple of bent spoons made of badly corroded, cheap, metal.

            I’ll never discover an American Troy, but I’m not shooting for that. What I’m doing is having fun outdoors and gaining a little better understanding of the immigrants and Californios who populated early California. Oh, and in my treasure chest is a nice collection of old buttons, small denomination coins from the 1850’s, 60’s and 70’s and about 20 cents in corroded Indian head pennies. And that’s on top of religious artifacts, old lead bullets carved out of trees and a broken lance tip from the edges of the San Pasqual, California, battle site, where about 150 California lancers soundly defeated the superior armed 1^st Cavalry regiment under the command of General Steven Watts Kearny. Those lancers must have been some bad ass dudes.

            The two things I do want to locate and explore are still at the very to of my list: 1. The location and layout of Leland Stanford’s first store on Coldwater Creek north of Placerville ( which is most likely now covered over by houses); and the site of the Indian village that became my home town of Azusa, CA. (I’ve looked for years or evidence of that site and the only thing I’ve found was a trash midden on the north edge of the old Foothill Dairy and some lodge pole sockets in ground that’s now part of the Azusa golf course north of 12^th street.)

            I may never find these sites, but for me the search is “another trip of a man and his small male dog “Viejeros: un hombre y su perrito”: Jim Forbes, un Viejo en Escondido, Alta California 05/16/2007.