Sketching & A Early Christmas

  It seems that those little buggers that have infected nearly everyone I know over the previous weeks have finally caught up with me.  A massive head cold is never fun and I have spent the last two days with a head full of gunk but as I try to look on the bright side, it has allowed me more time to spend with the family instead of being on the road for work.
  It also has allowed me to complete some online testing for my job that I have been putting off.  Unfortunately, as I sit down in quiet studio to work I find myself doodling and reading the fly fishing news from around the interweb instead doing of what I should be doing. I believe that the quote is: "Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow".  Its not a lesson I encourage anyone to live by but occasionally I find myself doing just that.

  This morning I was dreaming of watching trout rise on that placid stretch of river my brother and I fished last year in northern Idaho.  A simple sketch and color pencil shading had to do to satisfy my urge to wet a fly because with the cold I am battling there was no way I was going to get waste deep in a chilly mountain stream.  Not by of my choice - I'll fish through just about anything - and have - but if my wife found out then there would be hell to pay.
 

    One more benefit of staying home with a box of tissues is that I get to greet the FedEx truck.  This time of season he usually brings packages for the kiddos from long distance relatives but today he dropped off something for me.
   Christmas came early for me and I wasn't going to wait to open it.   Thanks once again to the OBN, I was the privileged enough to be picked to test out a new product.  The boys over at Jetflow Hydration Systems sent me this sweet looking pack to try out.  This Tomahawk pack is unique because of the no-bladder system which eliminated the tedious cleaning of a that enclosed bladder.  Instead it uses everyday bottles one can get in any store.  For a guy like me that loves to trek into the farthest reaches of trout streams - this pack is fantastic.  Load up with a single bottle of water - add a few purification tablets in the pocket to refill the bottle on the stream - stuff my spare fly box in the perfectly sized pouch, and hit the trail.
  Now if I can only shake this cold so I can test it out!