done

That's a tough call. I liked the "golden" years with Col Jack running SG-1. You just could not beat them. Once they got the new dude, Atlantis started to rock a little more. I am still more of a Star Trek dude though. I love most sci-fi, but Next-Gen was awesome when it came out and the way they ended it "See Ya out there...".

It is tough. If you are not already make sure you are in the local yellow pages, a mid sized ad that lists the years experience in your shop would not hurt. If you are a member of the BBB then advertise that, if you are not, then join. The mechanic I generally use now, took me 5 years before I found him. He gives me a good price, he is honest, will bring out the part he replaced and show me how messed up it was. I have never ASKED him to, he just does it. When I make an appt he works on my car that day, he actually calls me when my car is ready does not wait till 4:30pm 10 minutes before his shop closes. I found him in the yellow pages after getting ticked off by 3 other machines I found by word of mouth. Another thing to try, see if you can buy an ad in a local High school year book. Or find some way to get your name in there. You treat one of those guys good, their buds will come and see you and you will literally grow your own customer base. Another thing to do, sounds cheesy but it is appreciated, give you customers a customer service form they can fill out when they leave. If they fill it out and mail it in or drop it off give them a small discount on their last visit. If they are extremely unhappy with something give them a larger discount. That way if you d mess up you can still keep the customer. From working in consulting, we have the same issue. You need to build your name, which is tough. Once you build your name you get all the customers you can handle. We literally had to scratch and crawl to get what we could get. Another thought....approach a local business that maybe has an old fleet of used vehicles. You may be able to swing a deal with one of them to do their oil changes, or maintenance. That might make them worth your while to pitch to them on person. Just some ideas, sales is tough.

With mine I tend to base it on a couple things. In some cases size. The huge ones in my lake are almost always Catfish. Mid-sized will be bass or catfish(usually catfish). Smaller to almost mid-sized brim or white bass. It is not 100% effective, more of a guideline than a rule. Course I have a $79 finder too so you would not exactly call mine state of the art. But it works for me. The bg things for me was to see the structure on the bottom more than the fish.

For the brand I wondered the same thing. I got a Tracker but that is because i was looking to spend a little. If you got $1000 I would not look there. When looking at the boat, take along look at thickness of hull, riveted vs. welded, if you are putting a gas motor on it take a look at the transom, and how sturdy it is. What I would suggest, look at the tracker boat site, look at their jons, and grab the stats I mentioned there. Take those as rock bottom. What you want will be better than that. Other brand names I have heard good things about but never used "Lowes", and "Alumacraft". Those are the brandnames I found around here. If I had to buy again I would probably get a Lowes. One thing I noticed at the construction sites hear here where they go over the lake/river. When they do have a Jon boat on site (and a lot of them do), they are almost always LOWES boats. The wider the better, I got a 1436 that I love to fish with but you get 2 guys in there you can get it rocking. Not a problem with 2 young guys, but I get my grandfather in there and I got to worry about him flying out. I went with Aluminum. It is lightweight, takes a pounding, and last a long time if you take care of it. Also when you buy it, some good stuff to know ask them if they can repair your hull should you run over a log and pop a hole in it(not that anything like that would happen) : I had to drive 40 miles to find a welder to fix mine.

I bought a 8 hp 4 stroke Mercury Outboard. It hauls with 1 person and still moves good enough with 2 full size adults.

yeah, that was a bit harsh. The principal is not in high school and he should have enough experience to deal with his students. Heck I have been out of school since 1993 and I would not go pulling the police into it. Neither would my principal. Mr Slavin (Or principal was scarier than the police anyway).

Who actually owns the walls of a school? It certainly isn't the principal. I doubt that he'd be able to afford the mortgage on a place that large on an administrators salary. But it is the principal who is tasked with being the steward for those walls. It is his job to run the school, keep lunatics from shooting it up, keep test scores high, keep parents from calling the school board, and stroking egos at the Board of Ed. Admit it, he took actions you felt were unfair, he got you riled up, you posted the 4th amendment to stick it in his face. Granted it is MUCH better than many other avenues you could have taken. The staff should not have helped you out in this. IMO, best way to do this, go to his office, just you and him face to face, and respectfully tell him how you feel. If he ignores you, go to a school board meeting with your parents and as many students as you can muster. They are politicians they HATE having lots of people screaming at them. 9 times out of 10 they will force the principal to some middle ground (provided you can come to some). Putting the 4th amendment up though like that, it forces him to escalate. The "system" does work, you just have to know how to work it. Honestly, your principal has more important things to worry about, If you give him or the school board a way to settle this and move on without locking horns with them, they will take it. Good luck though, and really do not take it too personally, you will be out of there before you know it and everything will change faster than you believe it.

I agree with the other guys man, face to face. Be sincere, and take the time for face to face, if you really like her that much, show her she means more than the other stuff in your life. Actions speak louder than words or notes. Also, if it makes you late for practice or something, tell your coach, teacher why you were late. Chances are, at some point in their lives they were young too, most of them would understand and if they don't, ask yourself, is she worth it? It's all about sacrifice man. Good LUCK!!!!

If you can fit a 12 into your bed, do it. You will not regret it. a 10' will work, but you will appreciate the extra couple feet in the 12.

I know of a few places from the bank. A good bet is to query Duke Energy for their public access points. I used to have the link. LEGAL public access to water in Charlotte is really a joke compared to other places I have gone. It was one of the big reasons I got my Jon boat. I know of a good place in Gastonia, off lake Wylie for Catfish and brim. I would be glad to share. A couple good open access points on the SC side of Lake Wylie. There Lake Norman State Park which is supposed ot have some nice spots (never fished it myself) Found the link http://www.duke-energy.com/lakes/access-information.asp

It actually cost me $100 for the weld but that was because while I had it in there, I asked him to put in a couple reinforcements. Not much but enough. It cost like $30 in gas round trip. I swear, if you had a welder who knew how to do jon boats he could make some money in Gastonia. If he sold marine paint, and some other things, he wuld do well. Not a fancy BP type store, but a good old fashioned hole in the wall type neighborhood shop would do well. We have a BP about 30 miles from here.

Well at least you got some bait in the water. Last time i went out got a hole in my boat but I got a couple hours fishing in and while it sucked having to go through all the repair garbage, it seemed to be some consolation that I got to fish.

On that note....you guys reminded me of the funniest shipping thing i ever saw. We were in a conference room at the front of our building. Imagine about a dozen men in suits sitting across from us all tight laced sitting straight up. We had a wall of windows on one side. a Nice brown UPS truck there. We start into our presentation and my manage just starts a sidenote about how we were getting a mess of brand new Dell servers, when a suitcase sized dell box comes flying out the back of the truck into the parking lot. The another, and another. The conference comes to a stop as we all stare at this truck, we still have not seen a human just flying Dell boxes. Then 5 or 6 monitor sized boxes come flying out. When all is said and done about 20 Dell boxes are lying in a pile at the back of the truck. Before the guys finally comes out of the back throws a smaller box on top of the pile and starts to load them onto a dolly for a trip into our building. Luckily they were not ours but we did meet a guy from a consulting business upstairs who told us about how they ordered all these Dell computers and most of them did not work.

Any chance you'd consider moving to Gaston county NC? LOL. I had to go 40 miles to find someone who'd weld my Jon boat. Heck with the price of gas it would have almost been cheaper to go to school for it and weld it myself.

Well, depending on how strict you are on your definition of "Kitchen". I could think of a way to rig a live well with a pump, a walmart cooler, and a small propane hibachi grill that would fit in a jon boat. i reckon that could be considered a kitchen. That might almost be fun to try to build too. LOL!

Good ideas! I think I may have to go with the silicon filled tennis ball idea. I keep mine in the middle of the boat, helps it plane out more. And with a gut like mine, I need all the help I can get.

On the plus side, that would cut the number of delivery companies to hate in half in a lot of cases.

I would second the moral of your story (not about being old...but getting to know your elders a bit). I got to know both my grandfathers a bit and really got a lot of knowledge and history out of them. My one grandfather fought in Patton's corp and fought to liberate Bastogne. Has Me 262 strafing his tank column. I have heard countless other stories about the US during those times. As well as gotten some nice fishing advice, actually useful marriage advice (between the 2 of them they had 100 yrs of combined experience there). I found out from them, it was as nice for them as it was for me. So definitely get to know those crotchety old men (or women) in your family.

That looks sweet! Thanks for the pics.

What type of rivers/lakes you looking to fish. When I grew up my father had a nice 23 ft citation aft cabin cruiser and my Uncle had a 21 ft Bayliner Trophy. We did a lot of fishing from both. But we fished DEEP. Like Lake Erie and Ontario DEEP. Which the boat you are describing would work fine. Now I would never consider taking those boats bass fishing the way I do now. Their draft was just too deep. I would have sunk them in 10 minutes in some of the coves I hit on my lake. If you are looking to do some trolling motor, snaking into coves, and through debris and shallow structures you will want different type of boat. I assume you want the kitchen so you can do the family thing, go cruising, etc. I totally understand that. So you can do a couple things, get that boat, and maybe find a cheap Jon, Canoe, inflatable that you can spiffy up and use for your bass fishing when you got the itch. As for towing, I would be VERY careful in exceeding or even meeting the restrictions on your vehicle. My grandfathers neighbor decided to tow his trailer which was just barely over his towing capability 8 hours to FL. He got about 3/4 way there before he ended up replacing his transmission. You also need to consider your wheelbase. My Uncle used to tow his camper with a Dodge conversion van, it was tough, blew him all over the road even with the anti-sway bar. He got a Chevy Suburban and you barely knew the camper was back there anymore.

When you do it, make sure you take care to ensure that you can still reach the rivets (as much as possible). With mine, i have a few wood screws I would take out of the storage compartments that would allow me to access them.

Links would have helped. Mine : http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1218820005 AWESOME sample to follow with step by step: http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1214100879 Boat rebuild/restore threads http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1206322448

There are a lot of awesome threads on here for doing this. I recently did my tracker 1436, I have a thread on here with my picks and I followed an AWESOME thread on here with step by step pics on the Aluminum frame, decking, etc. There are a TON of guys on here with a lot of good info to help you out, particularly with the gotchas like not using pressure treated lumber on your jon

Yes it is! Like I said though, it was free, if it was not, I would not have it. The real point i was making for you was that even 18lbs of thrust is enough to troll with a Tracker 1436 Jon with a couple of heavy guys. In a perfect world (or when this free motor dies), I would probably up mine to maybe 25 lbs, 30 at the absolute highest. The thing I like about it, it uses very little battery. I have 2 batteries on my Jon. One runs lights, bilge pump, and anything I would consider critical to safe operation of the boat. the other runs my fish finder and trolling motor. I have gone out for a long time without any issues on either battery. For the money you pay, they are good little boats. But I will warn you on the Tracker Jons, the welds on the back of the boat, on the bottom of the transom are not the best. They can crack rather easily so keep your eye on them.

I have a Tracker 1436 woth some mods in there and i run this motor: http://www.leisurepro.com/Prod/SLRBM.html I got it for free (which was why I got it). It has high and low speed setting. It actually moves my 1436 the perfect amount for me in the coves on Wylie. I would not reccomend actually paying for it, it was now designed for my boat and was a PITA to mount. However, it has 18lbs thrust and with 2 guys in the boat I was susprised how good it did.