Opportunity Knocks Twice: Prologue

Nobody likes a whiner, so the saying goes.  Thus, society tells us to make lemonade from our misfortunes and toast our own successes.  Very well.  I'll take a nice helping of Bacardi Limon in mine, please...

Anyway, I'm trying to find an artful way of telling you, Dearest Reader, I have no intention of whining about the condition that's invaded parts of my brain nor the symptoms.  So, let's start with a review of the facts:

1. Clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease 
2. In these early stages, it affects my right side more than my left
3. I am not left handed
4. I have stronger symptoms of stiffness and lack of fine motor control than shakiness/tremors
5. I love flyfishing 

The last fact is the most significant part.  I love it and I want to get better at it.  This creates a race: in order to improve, I must do so faster than PD subtracts from my abilities.  And, speaking factually, Parkinson's has most affected my fishing  in two areas: casting and tying knots.

Having identified two problems, I will discuss my efforts to find solutions or at least opportunities to improve quickly.  Parts II and III of this series will cover mechanics, successes, and failures of my adventures in the Gordian arts and waving a stick at a river.  Part IV will be a philosophical discussion of Parts I - III.  No doubt this will be uninteresting to most. No matter, because it keeps my psychotherapy bills in check.

All of this, in pursuit of a few trout.  And Jeffersonian Happiness.

(This is Part I of a four-part series.  Continue to Part II, then Part III and Part III-and-a-Half.  So much for four parts...  Or, if you're slightly more daring, you could jump to Part IV in true Princess Bride style.  But please come back and peruse the middle parts if you do "skip to the end"...)