From time to time you sit in wonder of the people you meet, the places you go, and occasionally if you are lucky the life you live. Usually this is done in the quiet of an evening with a glass of smooth bourbon disappearing from your hand. The angels drank their share now it's your turn. The gift of the bourbon is to quietly reminisce. To sit and think alone and in my case with a cigar or pipe slowly burning away in my other hand.

There are times though when this realization hits you slap in the forehead in the parking lot of a fly shop. A busy one at that which is as rare as hen's teeth these days. This happens to be the occasion I am talking about this time.

I stopped by Charleston Angler to meet up with a man I had only met via the internet. Yet we have kept in touch really well for a year now. Pictures of kids, fish, battle zones and prayers have gone back and forth. Only fishing and in particularly fly fishing can bring this type of bond. We spent a good solid 3 hours swapping stories over fly rods, feathers, and dreams of future trips and plans for helping others less fortunate than ourselves.

Along for the journey is a younger version of what we used to be and sometimes long to return to. Madmike. A fly shop junkie. A recovering trout hippie and a fly nut. Madmike is hysterical to be around.

The friend I had come to meet and hang out with was Msgt Ken who has served our country faithfully for almost 22 yrs now. We taught our kids about the middle east and the lands of Persia and Mesopotamia with Ken as an example of our men and women who were serving far away. To my kids the image of a soldier is Ken. That's who they asked about every time they saw the news.

We cast a few rods and dreamed over the talk of people fishing in the Bahamas for bones. This is the anglers' escape. After a few rough weeks it was a pleasant surprise to be able to sit and chat with a man such as this in one of my favorite places in the world. A good fly shop.

Today with our cell phones, email, facebook addictions, tweet, and etc we tend to miss the little things. The idea of talking face to face seems far away and even foreign to today's culture. We share ideas via the web not over the blueish gleam of a good fly rod and green glow of the fly line zipping thru the air.

Occasionally we still meet face to face. We stand in the heat of an asphalt parking lot in the lowcountry and play with toys! We share our dreams of the future and our fears for our country. Our love of our wives who for some reason have put up with different types of insanity for way too long.

Ken you guys are in our prayers! And here's to the next time we get the chance to shoot the bull and play with toys!