Opportunity Knocks Twice, Part IV: A New Hope

This is the final installment in what was planned as a four-part mini-series.  Things didn't quite work out as planned.  You’re invited to start with the prequels if you haven’t read them, but I won't insist that they're prerequisites.  After all, George Lucas started with Episode IV...

• Opportunity Knocks Twice: Prologue 
• Opportunity Knocks Twice, Part II: It's Knot a Problem 
• Opportunity Knocks Twice, Part III: I Am Not Lefthanded 
• Opportunity Knocks Twice, Part III-and-a-Half: Pride and Parkinson's

 A long time ago in a magazine far,
 far away...

Knock knock!

Who’s there?
Opportunity.
Can’t be.  Opportunity only knocks once.

Cute.  But untrue.  In my case, Opportunity is leaning on the doorbell.  My life thus far has been filled with improbable second chances.  I got a second chance with my newborn son, when a doctor revived him after he quit breathing.  Another when he clung to life by a thread for weeks following complications from his first open heart surgery.  Another chance after the accident.  I was 19, and my brother was 16.  I came home from college for Easter weekend on a Thursday night.  In a moment that could have been inspired by “A River Runs Through It,” my brother and I made plans to go fishing the next morning.  We left early, and we didn’t come home for a long time.  One of us never really did come home.

The Great Folks at Sage

Mrs. Fading Angler and I took a quick weekend getaway trip to the Seattle area in October last year.  No real purpose, just a chance to get away for a few days.  We did have a few items on the "might do" list:

• Visit Red's Fly Shop, a 2 hour drive from Seattle, east to Ellensburg then a few more miles south along the Yakima River.  The idea was to scout for future fishing water, and see if they might have any wading boots for her to try on.
• Lunch and beverages at the Pyramid brewpub across the street from Safeco Field.
• A ferry ride out to Bainbridge Island for a quick visit with some folks at Sage.

After lunch, a flight of beer samples, and a pint of the selected barley juice, we waited in line to board the ferry out to Bainbridge.   We've taken probably 20 ferry rides around Puget Sound.  So far, the novelty has not faded.  We arrived in short order at the Sage (Far Bank Enterprises) HQ and hoped that we'd get the same hospitality as we received on our first visit and factory tour in 2012.  We were not disappointed.

Gravity

Shall we wax metaphorical for a moment?  If the future is like the sun, then I can confidently state that I'm living under a cloud layer.  Occasionally, a brilliant shaft of light penetrates the gloom,  but cold half-tones and thunderbolts are my future forecast.  Call it a low spot, but I seem to have given up most of my hope for the future.  The alluring radiance of the future has become obscured by the fog of a progressive, degenerative neurological disease with no cure.  As Parkinson's Disease gradually slows me down  physically and mentally, many of the things I used to dream of no longer make much sense.  So what does make sense?  I tell myself that I should hold tight to something I'm passionate about, pursue it with as much energy as I can spare.  So why fishing, and why fly fishing for trout?