Thursday, October 11, 2012

A great place to fish

Today has been a different kind of day for me at work. I went to Charleston and picked up 18 boxes (110 copies each, about 50 pounds each) of our Compass edition, which is geared to high school students. I delivered them to people at various schools here in the Huntington WV area where I live. I needed to call the boss to let her know the mission had been accomplished, so I chose a nice spot at a park along the Ohio River to make the call.

Before I headed out to finish my work day doing other things, I stopped by the park and boat ramp at the mouth of the Guyandotte River. I really wished I had my good camera with me when I took this bridge of the Frank "Gunner" Gatski Memorial Bridge, known locally as the East End bridge or the 31st Street bridge, or on this blog as my favorite bridge. So I had to use a camera in a phone.



What got me about this scene was not the wonderful October day or the fact there were ducks and crows all around me. If you look at the pier on the right of this picture you might see a guy in a boat, fishing.



As I took in this scene, I understood that the beauty of his fishing spot had nothing to do with whether he was catching anything but with how he could enjoy the sun and the river and, thanks to the pier, be shielded from towboat wake. I know a boat had passed by a little while before I got here, because I could see it in the distance heading away from us.

But I was thinking how nice it would be to sit in a small boat out in the river, fishing or pretending to be fishing, taking in the sun on such a great day to be outdoors under the best-looking bridge on the Ohio River.

Mercury mixing zone extended

The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission has voted to give PPG Industries at Natrium, W.Va., in the northern part of the state, another five years to comply with new rules that further limit how much mercury plants can discharge into the Ohio River. Details here.