Ready for an Adventure?

"We might be gone all day. We might get home at midnight. It's the thing to do," Genna says. "I might be upset when I start fishing, but I can't think about that after a while. It's an escape and an adventure."

Of course, she's been brainwashed. For the past ten years, just before hitting the road on a fishing trip with his granddaughter, Pete has always turned to Genna and said, "Well, kid, ready for an adventure?"

"I didn't know what he meant at first when he said it," she recalls. "But now I get mad if he doesn't."

In the middle of our adventure, there is a state-of-the-art fishing pause. No one is talking, but everyone's doing something. My three-month-old is napping. Genna is fishing, her line making a loop as it falls into the water.

Pete is a few yards away, and he has decided to teach my eight-year-old to cast. "That's it," he says, "exactly, perfect, perfect," and she already has that perfect-perfect look on her face.