The Severed Cortex

Is there anything better to do in January in the midwest than to go to the annual fishing show at the Gateway Convention Center? Yeah, there probably is, but when you combine it with the fact that Fun Stop is just across the street then there is no way you could come up with a finer afternoon of activities, especially when it's winter outside.

I picked Robert up and we headed to Collinsville for the fishing show. I've got pretty much everything I need for fishing (although I did buy a nice 2 pc., 10 ft. crappie rod the other day), so mainly all I was interested in was looking at the boats. I was running low on cash and it seemed like every ATM I went to was busted so we spent the first half hour trying to find a working US Bank ATM. For those familiar with US Bank, that's not an uncommon problem, but eventually I found one on the Beltline road that actually worked. Of course the person in front of me was simultaneously cashing a 3rd party check drawn on the Bank of Bolivia and single-handedly cornering the silver market so it took another 10 minutes or so to actually get some cash. Once I was cash heavy, we headed to the extravaganza.

As soon as you walked in you were slammed in the face with the smell of plastics. I don't really mind the oily chemical smell of plastic bait, but Robert kept making the funny smell face as if he were standing next to a full diaper. We browsed around the room looking at merchandise, then headed into the newly refurbished main room where approximately 50 boats had been brought in. The first one was the best; a slick two tone metal flake red and black Ranger Z21 equipped with a V6 250 HP VMax outboard, 80 lb. thrust 24V trolling motor, front and driver side fish finders, 4 rod boxes, etc. Let's not forget the trailer which was a double axle with swing-away trailer tongue and matching fiberglass fender skirts. How much for the Mercedes of bass boats you ask? $59,000. Yes, for the price of a small vacation home, you can have a bass boat to lug around too. You'll need at least a $40,000 matching truck to pull it too because the boat and trailer weigh over 7,000 pounds. No thanks. I'll stick to my $15,000 V6 Dodge Dakota and $15,000 Lowe 170WV, both of which are already paid for. Which leads me to the latest model of my boat, also on display here. I love my boat. For a general fishing boat, it's got a lot of amenities: three live wells, bait bucket, 24V trolling motor, 90HP 4 stroke Yamaha outboard, etc. But what it doesn't have is a bait bucket up front, a front deck fish finder, and cup holders. Guess what the 2008 model has. Yes, all three. They've reduced the two live wells up front to just one with a bait bucket, which I think is a much better design. No, I'm not trading my boat in.

Robert and I looked around at all the other boats, and that killed about 15 minutes. In the same room the St. Louis Herpetological Society had a couple turtles, lizards, and snakes. Robert had no problem checking out the snakes and he even petted one of the ball pythons there. It sort of shocked me given his utter fear at what he believed to be a snake while hiking at Pere Marquette last fall. We took a quick jaunt back through the merchandise where I picked up a cheap $15 knife that had a cam action lock blade. I can open it with one finger and how this thing is not classified as a switchblade I'll never know. My guess is that buying questionable knives at a fishing show is not unlike buying questionable guns at a gun show. I can feel the far left nutbags cringing from here.

So after 30 minutes or so of being bored at the fishing show, we headed across the street to Fun Stop, or as Robert corrected me, Gateway Fun Center. Robert told me it was like Dave and Busters and I suppose in the summer when it's warm and you can hit baseballs in the batting cage and ride go carts it probably is. In the winter all there is is the game room, which is very small compared to Dave and Busters. We still had a lot of fun though and Robert amassed a giant bag of tickets in the two hours we hung out there.

Want some insight into the brain of Robert? He cashed in all his tickets on gifts for everyone else first and used whatever was left over for himself. What a great kid. He bought a stuffed animal for his sister and a box of Everlasting Gobstoppers for me. He was left with the little small trinkets like the parachute army man that you huck up in the air and he floats down slowly, provided of course that the parachute opens.

I dropped him off at the movie theater where he got to see a movie with his mom and sister. What a great afternoon for a 10 year old, boats, video games, and a movie. Does it get any better than that?