“Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average…which means, you have met your New Year’s resolution.”

As Americans waistlines expand, there are so many ripple effects. From healthcare to clothing, design considerations to travel safety, more personal bulk means changing laws, rules and preconceived notions. I have heard sad tales of folks unable to squeeze into rides at Amusement Parks, being banned from bungee jumping, even forced to purchase two plane tickets because of size. That doesn’t even take into account self limitations because of shame or inability to maneuver. But, what about weight limits for boats, buses and other vehicles? More and more, places and companies are upping the average weight limit per person.

In the mid-twentieth century, 160 pounds was allotted per person, taking into account the portly and stocky, and on the flip side, children and the svelte. Fast forward to 2012 and the average American weighs 185 pounds. This has huge repercussions for everything from city buses and ferries, to small private fishing boat operators. According to a story in the New York Times today, the fleet of Washington state ferries are reducing the number of passengers allowed on each boat. Private vessel operators are also looking at reduced revenue because of Coast Guard rules that are popping up around the country. Even the Circle Line in NYC has been affected, although they prefer smaller loads to offer more comfort and ease of movement.

Many newly-designed public space seats are “banquettes” without arm rests to accommodate the larger backsides. Certainly the tiny divets, for bottoms are being rethought on many mass transit upgrades. This is not isolated to the U.S., as countries around the globe struggle with fat stigma and the consequences of the global obesity epidemic.

No one is actually suggesting weighing passengers, but it’s certainly food for thought as we all take stock of what we ate over the holidays and consider our New Year’s resolutions to slim down.

Recently I joined a mini reunion of college pals in Sun Valley, Idaho for a trifecta of outdoor activities: mountain biking, fly-fishing, and river kayaking.

Read all about it in the San Francisco Chronicle travel section: Sun Valley’s Summer Rush.

There are many popular canoeing rivers in Northern California. The Sacramento River, from Red Bluff, 30 miles downriver in the shadows of Mount Shasta, to Woodson Bridge, is not one of them.

It was July 4th weekend so we were expecting crowds, and save for a few kayakers and boat enthusiasts, we pretty much had the river to ourselves.  We had planned a moderate backpacking trip but when one in our party had abrupt knee surgery in April, we opted to paddle to our campsite instead of forcing the kids to hike with packs a la the Bataan Death March.  The preparations were similar to a backpacking trip, but we could bring comfy pads and a cooler. I was concerned about tipping the canoe, but my friend hails from Minnesota and has done this sort of thing before.

We rented canoes at the Driftwood RV and Fishing Resort in Los Molinos, CA. The crowd at the park was definitely more of a beer drinking, horseshoe throwing, BBQ crowd, some more hardscrabble than others. The equipment we rented was in great condition and they provided life jackets (of course) and unexpected cushions and small portable seat backs, which made the trip that much more comfortable.

It must be said that the Sacramento River flows, so the canoeing is anything but arduous. We actually did a lot of floating, which was fine with me, since I was in a canoe alone with my two boys, ages 10 and 6. It was glorious, and gave us time to enjoy the scenery. We saw tons of birds: osprey, pelicans, an eagle, egrets and even though the water was chilly we often pulled ashore to frolic and sort of swim. The temperature was in the 100’s so the snow melt temperature of the water was much appreciated.

The first night we canoed back to the Driftwood, feeling a bit insecure about the whole thing and wanting to get our proverbial feet wet first. This spot is clean, well maintained and has that feel of most camp sites, like perhaps they had their heyday in the ’70s. The manager was sweet and brought us pastries in the morning and charged the kids 40 cents for cans of generic “pop.”

The second night, we decided to pull up on shore and set up camp. We were told (and did a bit of research) that the banks are pretty much public land, so we could pitch a tent anywhere we pleased. The challenge was picking a spot and not feeling like there might be a better one around the bend.

It was a perfect spot and the kids enjoyed the clay-like mud. Having been engrossed in the FIFA World Cup, they were smitten with South African names and promptly named the mud “Mbele”… literally hours of mud play ensued, what more could you ask for an outdoor adventure? No ipod, video games or TV, even if the photo looks a bit like Lord of the Flies. We cooked on backpacking stoves, enjoyed the sunset and slept surprisingly well.

You can explore the small offshoots of the river, finding a variety of small beaches and spots to investigate. We finished up our journey and the Driftwood folks met us to take our gear back to the RV Park. They hired a local to drive one of our cars to meet us — all in all a pretty seamless adventure.

I recast and landed the fly in the same spot, watched it run with the current in the shade, under the willows and through the deep water again. But no strike.

“People say they catch fish but only small ones, and I tell them they’ve got to put the fly where the big fish are. That cast was right where the big fish are,” Jim mused, as I couldn’t tempt a trout to rise to the fly.

“I’m pretty good,” he continued, “but I couldn’t make a better cast than that.”

That, of course, was music to my ears, even though I suspected that he said the same thing to everyone.

We were fishing Wild Horse Creek, a quintessential Idaho trout stream in Copper Basin in Challis National Forest 26 miles north of Sun Valley. Jim was leading me and three of my best friends through a morning of fly-fishing that promised lots of contemplation and — we hoped — a few fish.

I’m not an avid fly-fisherman. I don’t have the gear, the box of intricately tied flies arranged in rows like museum specimens. When I fish at home I still use the $10 fly rod I bought more than 30 years ago after good buddy Lee showed me why fly-fishing was more fun (and usually more productive) than spinner or bait fishing. In a good year I fish maybe three days, and I usually spend more time pulling my flies out of trees and shrubs than tempting trout, but today I had Jim Santa to tell me how to do it.

“When I was an eight-year-old in Duluth I cycled to Amity Creek as often as I could,” Jim said when I asked how long he’d been guiding. “That’s where I learned to read water. I guess I’ve been guiding here since about 1997. I majored in ‘Steelhead Fishing’ at UMD and minored in Accounting.”

For me being here was a last-minute decision to join a mini-reunion of my Dartmouth pals — the only impediments being the usual ones of time and money — and in the high mountain sunshine I couldn’t have been happier that I’d come. There were bragging rights, after all, to be fought for.

Lee and George had their own gear, everything they needed to both look the part and entice trout to strike. Dave and I needed everything from Jim and Sturtevants Mountain Outfitters in Sun Valley. Dressed in waders, rigged up with a Parachute Adams fly on the line, Dave and I were ready to join Lee and George as we fished upstream.

Idaho is legendary country for fly-fishing. The snowmelt streams that flow out of the high-desert mountains and cut through the valleys are loaded with trout and have drawn avid fishermen (and fisherwomen) for decades. Names like Big Wood, Silver Creek, Big Lost, and Trail Creek get the blood flowing, not to mention such renowned rivers as the Salmon and Snake. Fishing here is as good as it gets.

“We’ll just pick and move,” Jim said, fishing a pocket here, a riffle there, leapfrogging each other so we’d all get a chance to hit different stretches of the stream first. The river was shallow enough to easily cross back and forth to fish the deep water in the bends.

It didn’t take me long to get my baptism. I was feeling my way across the stream in calf-deep water when I lifted a foot to step over a boulder. The fast-flowing river wasted no time in pushing that raised foot downstream, pivoting me on my one solid foot and planting me nearly on my face. Lucky for me I caught my fall and kept the water out of my waders, but I was otherwise soaked.

The good thing about being out of sight of your fishing buddies at times like this is they don’t see your pratfalls. The bad thing, though, is when you do catch a fish, no one will believe you unless you produce some evidence.

About 30 minutes later, after having got my bearings and made my way upstream, I cast into a ripple glistening in the sun. I felt a sharp tug, pulled the line to set the hook or see if it was a trick of the current, and sure enough I had a fish on. He pulled like mad, as strong a fight as I’ve ever felt with a fly-rod, this way and that across the stream, downstream and up, and when I finally saw him he was a nice big guy with a broad head, bigger than any trout I’d ever caught.

I got him to the streambank but wasn’t sure how to land him without a net, and since we were catching and releasing I didn’t want to keep him out of the water long, but I had to have some proof. So I managed to get him next to my boot, pull my camera out of a dry box and snap a shot. A moment later, fly extracted, he was swimming again. And I’d caught the first fish of the day.

But as often happens when fishing, the day was more about the practice of fishing than the actual catching of fish. The stream bubbled over the stones, cutting a sinuous path marked by green willows through the valley. Sage ran to the brown mountains, casting its earthy kitchen-spice scent everywhere.  A songbird atop a willow protected its territory or simply enthused about the happy existence it had here, repeating its call over and over much like I repeated my casts and tracked the fly over the clear water.

Jim stopped by and gave me just the right amount of advice: “see the line dragging you under, get the tip up a little”; “you’ve got too much line out, if you cast and hit the bush, then you know, reel some in”; “see that bubble line, that’s a good spot”; “hit that pocket”; “fish the green water.”

We leapfrogged each other, Lee caught a fish about the same size as mine, I had another big strike but he got away, and after I abandoned that pool, Lee moved in and caught a couple.

“This pool’s loaded with fish,” he said, but it was his hole now.

George and Dave got skunked, but the experience of the winding stream, sharp-toothed mountains, pale sky, and no sounds other than the breeze and the stream and the birds brought enough satisfaction.

As for bragging rights, well, they weren’t much. Based on the photo of the size 11 boot next to my trout, Jim guessed he was about 16 inches. “But every day it’ll grow two inches!”

Whatever the size, I was glad I caught at least one fish, and got to hang out and trade yarns with old friends in the fresh mountain air.

I spent the 4th of July holiday weekend there, my first visit in 25 years, which told me a couple of things: just how quickly time can pass and a quarter of a lifetime can slip beneath your feet; and how short-sighted I’d been to allow so many years to drift away without making the simple four-hour-plus drive up from San Francisco. I swam in Tenaya Lake, fished the pools and streams that fed into it, got some strikes in the Tuolumne River as it wound through the meadows, and later, at Cathedral Lake, saw a trout with a head as big as my fist emerge from the depths to strike my lure repeatedly before losing interest, too smart to be caught by an occasional fisherman like me.

And I vowed to get up here again a lot sooner than 25 years from now.

So imagine my surprise when my daughter’s 6th Grade class planned a field trip to Tuolumne Meadows and Mono Lake for September. I signed up and barely two months after my summer visit was here again.

This time I joined the kids to explore Mono Lake and its strange tufa formations that grow when freshwater springs bubble up into the saline lake and create chemical reactions. We hiked to the top of Lembert Dome, the final 50 feet a steep and intimidating scramble up a smooth granite mound to views over the meadows and river and surrounding peaks. We cast flies in the river and swam in pools, later drove to Tioga Pass and hiked up the steep trail to Gaylor Lake where the fish were starving and hitting anything red (but we’d left our rods at camp!). We swam in the frigid lake that put an ache in our bones but banished the heat and left us refreshed and ready for more.

At night, with the crescent moon long gone over the horizon, we lay in the meadow to gaze at skies as brilliant and awe-inspiring as any witnessed by our ancestors over the millennia of human history, identifying such common constellations as the Big and Little Dipper, Scorpius, Hercules, Capricorn, and lesser known ones such as Delphinus and Equuleus, the little horse.

On our last day we strolled across the meadow through the golden grasses along the river to Soda Springs, where naturally carbonated mineral water bubbles up through the mud. Some of the kids were skeptical but most drank their fill after tentative sips, enjoying the fizzy iron-flavored water.

Campfires are permitted in the campsite fire rings, and there’s nothing better than conversation, reading aloud, singing, and keeping warm around the fire before slipping into sleeping bags and dreams. For me, this second trip to Tuolumne Meadows sealed my appreciation of the place. I’ll get up here again soon, next summer, or the summer thereafter, because this high country region of this wondrous national park is a treasure for us all, not to be underestimated, and not to be missed.