Not Caffeinated

To Caffeine or not to Caffeine.

 

The previous night’s spaghetti dinner mishap was only compounded by the morning’s coffee kerfuffle. I had the water heating up on the Coleman two burner stove in anticipation of camp coffee. Which is the best coffee. To build the pot, you throw out the coffee pot percolator parts and boil lake water and coffee grounds together. Anyway, I ransacked the food pack looking for the bag of coffee grounds. I asked Paul if he had brought the coffee. He simply stated, “ah, no, I thought you brought it.” 

 

We had this discussion about who brings coffee in this trip’s planning stage weeks prior. Neither one of us remembered who was to bring coffee. The correct answer should have been both of us. We braced for what lay ahead for us; we were both one pot a day coffee junkies. 

 

We prepared for our day and the coming days deep in the BWCA caffienless. We each popped a handful of Excedrin and set out for a day of walleye fishing. While in the canoe fishing, we debated the merits of canoeing/portaging back to the truck, drive into town, buy coffee and paddle/portage back. We estimated if we left at that particular time, we’d be back before dark. 

 

Our answer was in our heads. Our heads pounded with caffeine withdrawals. We were crabby. We were irritable. We hated the world. That and we were doing so well with canoe tied up to an old pine tree half submerge over an eighteen foot dropoff. Well, we estimated it to be eighteen feetish deep, we really didn’t know for sure. Nor did we care. From this spot during our “flee for caffeine debate”, we were catching walleyes. We quit counting after a couple dozen and managed to put 6 nice filleting sized walleyes on our stringer.

 

Our two companions, who were non-coffee heathens, paddled by. They had brought in the latest electronic gadgets to hone in on the fish. They stopped by noting the depth in front of us. They knew our caffeinless addled brain plight and took pleasure in it…or so we believed. They mocked us and bragged about their fishing adventures on the north side of the lake targeting specific depths. They annoyed us greatly. But we got the last laugh. Well we really didn’t laugh at that particular moment in great pain. 

 

They were smiling as big as life when they raised their stringer of two little walleyes. Paul scowled and hefted out our stringer of seven beautiful walleyes, he had caught one more during their annoyance parade secretly adding it to the stringer.

 

Funny, they paddled off in a huff not saying a word. And for a moment, the dark caffeine mind fog was lifted as we triumphed in our delight of out fishing our island mates and their electronic gadgets.