The Price We Pay

Be it resolved there is a price to pay for what we enjoy and do.
We lead a slightly self-indulgent lifestyle b/c we can. No children and my mom is living in a nursing home.

We know people who are contemplating, assuming a mortgage for their son and family.
This, as the two were retired or semi-retired.

Another couple is switching a holiday for mortgage payments for their daughter and family.

We will not face such problems but will have others - no doubt.

Apparently, Lance Armstrong may lose his Tour de France titles. Our heroes are frail, it seems.

Movies to see : ' Robot and Frank '. The trailers are out and look interesting. The movie received 3 1/2 * in the Torstar newspaper.

I watched ( while ellipticking ) " the Legend of Bagger Vance " directed by Robert Redford, starring Matt Damon, Charlize Theron ( nee South African ) and Will Smith as ' Bagger '.
Redford says that sport is a good metaphor for life. Golf is a great example b/c you play against yourself and no one else. Trials and tribulations and some success.
At the ' Porch ' , our bar and lunch place, I mentioned the allure of sporadic reward as a driving force for compulsive behaviour. One of the bar inhabitants said ' try golf, a nestful of bogeys and 1 birdie '.

I, of  course , think of fishing as the ideal metaphor. Robert Redford can say ' been there , done that ' b/c I'm pretty sure he directed, Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt in the amazing ' a River Runs Through It '. The movie focusses on the lives of two brothers growing up in Montana w/ fly-fishing as a passion from childhood. Their father ( Tom Skerrit ) is a reverend who fishes.

My dad took us fishing from 6 and 7 yrs of age. Dad bought some land nr Ptrbro on L. Chemong. We fished on Chemong for 15 or 16 yrs.
That cottage got sold ( for a humungous profit, of course, my father would do it no other way ). My brother and I were fishing vagbonds ( read, the way most people fish )
for 2 years.
Brothers bought a small cottage of fair vintage ( read here, fishing hut ) on the Nottawasaga R. The ' Notty ' was once called Ontario's rainbow highway. The rainbow trout were plentiful and reknowned throughout N.A.
as the finest strain of rainbow trout.
The eggs from Nottawasaga trout were used in hatcheries all over in On.
The fishing hut got used from 1984 to 2006. Those last years were fitfully good b/c I used the cottage by myself. Brother died in '96.  Finally, I took the plunge and put the cottage up for sale. No easy decision that.
The next buy was the trailer, yick.
So, I've had the luxury of fishing from a cottage , my whole life.
As I've said, most guys travel to and from a fishing place. I'm there, for good or bad.

In Fla. the condos next door came w/ the option of purchasing a boat dock. We marvelled at the price of the condos, the units started at $ 440 K and reputedly got as high as $ 800 K. Reputed b/c we heard rumours of rising and falling prices.
This was the equivalent of fairy stories.
However, I remember, laughing at the man who said the price was not the point, the owners got docking facilities.
Be careful who you laugh at. Many times, on the 'bee, I've come home from fishing and while coming to dock or raising the Stratos, I've thought " this is one expensive boat dock ( meaning the whole cottage thing )"