Paul Arden | Monday, 12 October 2026
I feel a bit like I’m living in a mental haze at the moment. Certainly my brain is foggy when I wake up in the mornings. I think this is because I’m training hard and the body is constantly recovering. It’s not because I’m drinking booze, because there is very little of that!
But I am actually living in a literal haze too. Indonesia burns off at this time of year. There are thousands of fires, most started intentionally. The haze was so bad last Friday that they closed the schools here in Malaysia because the air quality was deemed so unsafe.
And Friday happened to be the day I wanted to book my ferry ticket to Langkawi for the IM. The truck papers were in my truck (of course) and so after dark I made my way to the truck by boat. This I found surprisingly difficult. But on the way back however, I managed to get completely lost.
I’ve been on this lake for over ten years. I can drive the boat at night, no moon, anywhere. I’ve done so countless times. So how the hell did I manage to get lost? The way I normally navigate is by looking at the surrounding topography; the shape of the hills and troughs between them. But because of the haze I couldn’t see this.
I almost ran aground at Snake Island. Which surprised me because I didn’t think I was at Snake Island. But once I was there, then I knew where I was, and then immediately got lost again. I wanted the next bay down but missed the turnoff.
Finally I did actually get back to the Battleship, but for a while I thought I might be sleeping out. No big deal of course; I spent years sleeping on the Rocket C. But very unexpected and very disorientating.
Anyway it was too busy over that side of the lake. Every day I saw people. One or two, sometimes as many as five boats per day. That’s like living in the metropolis. Screw that. I only want to see people once/week and even then I’m not enthralled by it.
So I’m now in “Lockdown Bay”. This was the bay that I spent three months of lockdown in, until the police found me and said I couldn’t be here. Which was a bit odd because I could have been the Omega Man (the original movie version with Charlton Heston). And between me and you, I was all for it. Just saying.
Lockdown Bay is also Big Fish Bay. I’ve had some really big Snakehead here. 6.8 and 7.8Kg and another of these would be very welcome to find while fishing — not so welcome while swimming. 6 weeks to Ironman so my swimming starts tomorrow.
Things are pretty good, pretty chilled. The haze is lifting. Coffee helps. I put in some pretty poor shots last week. I’m not happy about that. I was landing the fly too close; with large babies you have to put the fly almost on the adult’s nose, but with small babies you must lead the adult. I know that of course, but the rod apparently forgot.
Andy is producing immaculate rods and has invented a new method so that decals go on perfectly straight first time, and not 1 degrees off centre. This is great because we were both losing sleep over it.
Malay lesson for me today, then a scoot around Lockdown Bay, and I have one or two Zoom casting lessons tonight (one depends on the weather in Pennsylvania). It’s all happening.
Have a great week!
Cheers, Paul