The Sublimity Life’s Recipe: How to make Garlic Powder
in the middle of a Pandemic
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| I'm sure there is garlic powder in this meal. Photo by Carrie. |
Corona Virus Update: The
editors of this blog are concerned about our lack of earnings and the decreasing
number of people that are reading this blog during the shelter-in-place orders.
With the Corona Virus and many kayakers
who have been told to “work from home” hitting the river for solo trips; the
readership has dropped to a new low. To
further complicate things some of our editors are facing major hardships. Editor 1 has been forced to move back in with
his mom, an unhappy scenario. Editor 2,
one of our favorite editors here at The Sublimity Life has been forced to
transition from her regular line of work to delivering food with a Portland
start-up called Boober. In an effort to
increase readership, I have been forced by the editors to reinvent our look and
transition to a food blog, you know, a long story, lots of pictures of food and
how it was made, and then the main thing you wanted at the end after you
scrolled down to see all the adds, a recipe.
We have reached a compromise and I’m still allowed to give my “Summer
2019” adventure reports as well. The
market reports have shown that readers want a good story to accompany their
recipe. To further complicate things
they have put me under a deadline to get this thing published; I was already
running late on my previous deadlines.
We here at The Sublimity Life would like to show you how to make Garlic
Powder while stuck at home during this crisis.
“I’m embarrassed to be in bed when you arrived. It’s nothing, just a little fever that I’m
treating with gin.” Camus
The first thing you need to do is plant the garlic, usually
sometime in October for Oregon. This
photo is a re-creation I didn’t have any pictures of planting the garlic. Don’t forget to cut the scapes off the top of
the hardneck varieties in early summer.
If you don’t cut them the garlic thinks it is going to seed and you will
not get a good crop. Plus scapes cooked
in butter are amazing. Maybe, I’ll give
you that recipe in next year’s blog.
OK, while the garlic is growing, “Summer” 2019 started a bit
early for us here at The Sublimity Life. It was time to once again take a Winter Term
vacation in exchange for working Summer Term.
“Why?” you might ask. The answer
is easy, it was time to go to the other side of the equator and visit New
Zealand.
“Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have
held up as a model such an immoral character as A Hero of Our Time; others
shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances …
A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual;
it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest
expression.” Lermontov
Lacey and I spent a month touring the South Island in New
Zealand, and then my sister and some boaters came in to do another month long
tour. Since this is mostly a boating
(cooking) blog, the main kayaking Lacey and I did during the first month was a
guided sea kayak trip in Doubtful Sound.
Although a little expensive, it was worth paying for the guided trip to
see an isolated part of New Zealand’s South Island Fjords. The trip involved a bus, then a boat ride
across a lake, ditch that boat and take another bus over the pass, hop on a
smaller boat, launch the sea kayaks from that boat out on to the Doubtful Sound
Fjord. After a good day of scenery,
birds, and paddling around; the little boat picked us up and we reversed the
process to get back home. The road
system that we used to get to the Fjord is kind of interesting. In the 70’s an Australian company made a
power plant by diverting the flow from a huge lake in the interior, through the
coastal mountain range in a tunnel, and into the fjord to manufacture
electricity for a huge aluminum smelter that converted Australian ore to
aluminum. The local community wasn’t
able to stop the dam, but they did keep the dam from raising the level of their
lake the proposed 30 meters that the Australians had hoped for to a much
smaller height increase. Despite the sad
story, it was a good way to explore deep into the West Coast. Remember to recycle your aluminum.
The other outdoors adventure Lacey and I embarked on was one
of the famous New Zealand Treks through some native bush on Stewardt
Island. The amount of native bird life
on the island is substantial. Remember
that New Zealand had no mammals before colonials messed that up. The islands had only birds, including a giant
extinct flightless bird called a Moa that the Maori hunted alongside an also
extinct giant Haast eagle; the biggest eagle ever known to exist. We got to see lots of Parrots and other
native birds in the wild and the adventure was well worth the effort. Lacey and I had lots of other non-boating adventures
over the month including a trip to see some penguins in a reserve.
After Lacey left, I had a few days to kill before my sister
and the boaters showed up. I reserved a
couple of guided rafting trips. The first
trip was on the Shotover River, which gets a lot of traffic thanks to its
proximity to Queenstown. The road into
the river had some extremely narrow spots that would have been a bit sketch if
we had run into any traffic heading in the wrong direction. The river was quite fun and one of the more
difficult guided rafting trips I have taken.
I personally wouldn’t want to take a bunch of clients down through the
steep drops and sharp rocks in the canyon.
My paddle raft even had to be roped out of a hole that it was stuck
in. I hope my draw stroke is what helped
us stay upright while we waited for them to hit us with a rope on the second
try. That said everything was pretty fun
until we got to the tunnel. Similar to
the American River in California, minors cut a tunnel through the cliff to
divert water and help them dig for gold.
The easier line down the rapid is through the tunnel because a large
class 5 drop is waiting on the main stem of the river. That said, the exit to the tunnel is much
more difficult that I was expecting. The
tunnel empties out into a sharp bedrock slide.
The raft slid down it just fine, but I wouldn’t want to kayak it at the
low flows that we had. It seemed to have
a bunch of sharp fins of rock. The next
day I took another guided trip on the easier Kawarau River and honestly I
enjoyed it just as much. It had 4
different rapids with fun big wave trains that were totally entertaining. We even boated through a Hobbit filming
location where the Gates of Argonath were filmed. The
“gates” weren’t present since they had been created with computers, but it
still was a pretty fun spot. We got to
see people bungee jumping from one of the more famous New Zealand locations.
Ok, our favorite editor who is currently working at Boober
is getting tired of her new job (she gets carsick, especially with the smell of
cheap food in the car) and wants me to get back to the point of this blog; how
to make garlic powder, so that we can get some ad revenue coming in. I don’t have any picture of some of these
steps, but you harvest the garlic and dry it in the garage for at least a
couple of weeks and up to about 8 months.
For the following photos we are using the last of summer 2019’s crop. The first step of cooking is the most
difficult; shuck all the garlic.
“Of course there is a cause somewhere. Can’t be an effect without a cause. You can’t make an omelet without breaking
some eggs.” Murakami
Now for a quick mini lesson on New Zealand, while you shuck
the garlic. When all of the other
continents were pushed together into Pangaea, New Zealand was under water. It was only pushed up out of the ocean after
the supercontinent broke up. Before
humans arrived, the birds existed as the top predators and the island had no
mammals. Another animal on the island
that I find particularly interesting is a dinosaur like lizard called a
Tuatara. I have no idea how they got to
the island but they are pretty fun.
Birds and reptiles currently have a hard time breeding in the wild
because of the rat invasions brought by the Colonials. The Maori haven’t been in New Zealand nearly
as long as I would have guessed; online I find that they were Polynesian
settlers that arrived at about 1320 AD.
It didn’t take to long for the largest birds on the island to go
extinct, but the Europeans brought far more damage with their imported mammals
and invasive tree species. The most
recent invasive species is a Stoat that was naively brought in to control the
rabbit population (also invasive). It
didn’t work and the Stoat has become another big predator of the birds. Currently New Zealand has a controversial
policy of dropping poison over the entire islands targeting the mammal
(non-human) species to keep the populations as low as possible. I know it seems like a crazy policy, but it
seems like the best thing for all the bird’s sake.
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| Carrie on the Routeburn Trek |
After a couple of days on my own in Queenstown; the
kayaking/rafting crew showed up, my sister Carrie, Babcock, Carol, and Jerod
B. Our first mission was a trek, very
unusual for us boater types. It is
kind-a what you do when you go to New Zealand.
We choose a 3-night trek on the Routeburn, which is the second most popular
trek in New Zealand. Four of us brought
our own tents so that we could avoid the noisy huts that the New Zealanders and
Australians love; Jerod developed a trick of restacking the wood shed and
sleeping in it. We did have to spend one
night in a hut, but next time we now know we could have walked a little bit off
a side trail and set up a tent instead.
Make your reservations early if you want to hit this up next time you
are in New Zealand. The permit system
has an opening date and you really want to grab your reservations that day, but
like any reservation system you can also watch for cancellations.
Ok, so now that you have the garlic shucked you need to run
it through a mandolin. It is crucial to
wear cut proof gloves, as anyone who has owned a mandolin before could tell
you.
“Men on the road together have three choices. They separate, they kill one another, or they
work things out.” Salman Rushdie in his
new book Quichotte
Next came our main mission for New Zealand, run a multi-day
river, on our own power without guides. On
the way to the Clarence River we stayed in Christchurch, had the best ramen
noodles I have ever had in a refurbished A&W style hamburger shaped
restaurant, and saw some of the destruction and rebuilding efforts from the 2011
Christchurch earthquake. Only recently
had all of the bridges and infrastructure been fixed so that the shuttle for
the Clarence River wasn’t an epic multi day affair. We choose inflatable kayaks and a rented raft
for this mission. Overnight trips are what
we love in Oregon/ Washington/ Idaho/ etc and we wanted to try a similar
adventure in New Zealand. We choose a six-day
class three section of the Clarence River, which seems to be one of the longest
runs that you can do in New Zealand. It
starts out as a pretty small river with some boat dragging, and grows in size
as you go downstream. It was hard to
find the river information about the river that we wanted, but we dug enough to
find some good info. If you decide to
run this river, just contact me and I’ll hook you up with the info I know, including
the boat rental company were we rented the raft. That said we still had a lack of info, one
book called the run 136 km, another 170 km, and the biggest estimate of all was
212 km. I was sitting on a beach on day
2 scratching my head about how far we needed to go each day; it didn’t help
that I had forgot to download one of the 6 maps to my GPS map system on my
phone, we spent a whole day confused about that. Honestly I don’t have a lot to tell you about
the Clarence other than it was really fun. It reminded me of the Lower Owyhee river which
is one of my favorites. Similar to the
Owyhee the water has high concentrations of minerals and it isn’t recommended
that you drink the water even after filtering, but we were able to get water at
the very rustic Kiwi Huts and some side streams. Also similar to the Owyhee you pass through
some farmlands; one Kiwi farmer we saw had his own helicopter to go around and
check on the sheep, and we happened to see him in action. I haven’t seen that
in Oregon. We only saw one group the
entire trip, a guided trip, who just happened to launch the same day and time
as us.
Don't forget, it is New Zealand. They have rep for bugs. Photo by Carrie.
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| The Launch on the Clarence. Photo by Carrie. |
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| A fun little rapid on the Clarence. Photo by Carrie. |
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| Clarence River. Photo by Jerod |
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| Clarence River. Photo by Jerod. |
“I kept it (a blog) up for a while, making these cheerful,
chirpy postings to The Future is Noa!
but I felt like a total fraud. And then one day, a couple of months after I
got back, I happened to check my statistics, and I realized that the whole time
since I started my blog, only twelve people had ever visited it, for about a
minute each, and I hadn’t had a single hit in weeks, so that’s when I stopped. There’s nothing sadder than cyberspace when
you’re floating around out there, all alone, talking to yourself.” Ruth Ozeki A Tale for the Time Being
Most of the rapids on the Clarence are bouncy boulder filled
riffles into a headwall. It seemed like
almost the exact same rapid over and over.
The best whitewater is actually in the last 40 km; in the midst of the
best scenery. The uplift of the
Earthquake initially made a waterfall rapid about 8 km from the takeout that
was a portage for a number of years. The rocks in this area are all limestone
and the river has quickly eroded the river back down to runnable shape
again. The uplifted basically created
about 4 miles of our favorite rapids until we reached the bridge at the coastal
highway that marked our takeout. The
guided trip floated past us here and went out the last km to the ocean; which
made us jealous because we’ve always wanted to float a multi-day river into the
ocean; but we didn’t know about it ahead of time and our shuttle was meeting us
at the bridge.
From here we headed to a one-day guided sea kayaking
adventure in Kaikoura Bay. It was pretty
funny when the guide had us all get into our boats on dry land and practice
putting our spray skirts on and off. It
was a great day and we saw a bunch of albatross, fur seals jumping into the
water, and a couple of the little blue penguins swimming in the ocean. Awesome.
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| Babs putting his skirt on for the "first time." It's to long of a story for this blog but his bow babe was a treat. Photo by Carrie. |
“With all that I construct a portrait which is the image of all and no one.” Camus
On the drive to our next river adventure in Murchiston NZ,
on the Buller River we heard about the Christchurch Mosque shootings over the
radio and Facebook. It is numbing to
think that so many things like this happen in the US; it was hard for us Americans
to comprehend how sad the New Zealanders felt.
They really thought that such a thing could never happen to them. The atmosphere was dreary for the next week
or so, but Kiwis (New Zealanders) are good at pulling together.
It is time to turn your oven on to dehydrate mode between
130-150 degrees Farenheit. If you oven
doesn’t have a dehydrate mode you can turn it to the lowest temperature; and
consider turning it on then off every hour.
Flip and stir the garlic every couple of hours.
While the oven heats up; Murchiston was the original outpost
of South Island boating. As boating
tourists have become more advanced, some of the hub has moved to the West Coastal
town of Hokitika, home of the helicopter runs.
Many of the kayakers that visit the Buller River stay at the Riverside
Holiday Park and if you arrive on a weekend you should be able to find people
to kayak with and boats to rent. The
first day we ran a fun class two section of the Buller called Doc Creek Run and
boated back down to the Holiday Park. At
the takeout Carrie and Carol met a group of local boaters. They had all once been class five boaters but
just like us have calmed down. That same
day we shuttled together to the Middle Matakiki River Run. It is a very pretty class two plus run that
is a small step up from the Doc Creek run.
In true New Zealand style, the take out is over a farmer’s field set up
through a deal between the farmer and kayak school that pitches in for road
maintenance. Two of the boaters
continued past our take out and ran the lower Matakiki River, which has a class
four plus rapid created by the 1920’s earthquake in the region. It would have been difficult in the
inflatable kayaks so we ran shuttle.
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| Matakiki |
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| What to do now. Photo by Carrie |
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| Carol on the Maruia |
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| Carrie on the Maruia |
Our second day was the highlight. Carrie, Carol, and I ran the upper Maruia River. You might have heard of this river because the
lower gorge has a 30-foot waterfall that has long been famous with kayakers
including a classic video of Rush Sturges doing a front flip off the drop in a
Dagger kayak. It was fun to look at it
on our drive home after our run upstream of it.
The run we did was a classic class three, granite boulder run with
crystal clear water on a sunny day.
Again we had to take out in a farmer’s field and they were cool with it
when we asked while running the shuttle.
Amazing, that would never happen in the US. We left them a six-pack. This river has a long lead in and equally
long paddle out so it isn’t that popular with the local boaters. The three of us loved it and would run it
every other weekend if we lived close to it.
The run is in the other side of a mountain from the road and goes
through native Kiwi bush and trees. When
you are in New Zealand it is easy to spot native trees compared to European and
American invasive replants. The run
likely has never been logged. It had
about 15 class 3 minus rapids with one solid class 3 rapid which made the
perfect break for lunch. It should be
noted that we ran this at lower levels and the run would be much more difficult
at higher river levels. We felt like we
were back in Idaho on a granite run and we loved it.
After at least six hours of stirring occasionally and baking
you will need to check the garlic. You
are looking for it to snap in half easily.
While you keep stirring and checking the garlic, our next
adventure was a helicopter run on the west coast of the South Island called the
Landsborough. It is one of a few
classics overnighters in the area. For
a while we had talked about trying to do it ourselves with the inflatable
kayaks, but the logistics and knowledge of river levels seemed like a pretty
big road bump in the planning. When I
contacted a local guide company, the amount they quoted us didn’t sound too bad
and we decided to go for a guided trip.
We told them ahead of time that we were boaters and asked to stay an
extra day on the river, we got quite an adventure with Alex, Rodin, Baurny, and
Wika; all stellar fellas and able to party with the best of them. I know at least a couple of them are pretty
famous in the boating community. Two of
them even brought rifles to do a little hunting on the trip; all of the mammals
are invasive in New Zealand and thus the hunting regulations are pretty relaxed.
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| By the way, Carol and I are in this helicopter at this point. Photo by Carrie |
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| Carol in a helicopter. |
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| A helicopter selfie is always a bit expensive. |
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| Anyone recognize this guy. I know at least a couple of you do. Photo by Carrie. PS, such a great guy. |
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| Photo by Carrie. |
Solve the equation 3x+4=19. Wait is anyone even listening to my zoom lecture at this point?
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| Photo by Carrie. |
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| If you look close you can see Carrie, Babs, and Jerod coming in. |
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| It is hard to explain this drinking game. But Babs was good at it. |
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| Photo by Carrie. Wika. |
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| The current Portage. Photo by Carrie. |
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| Layover |
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| Jerod fixing an oar on a guided trip. |
Soon after we left the river there was a big flood on the
Landsborough that wiped out a lot of the bridges and land locked a number of
people. If it had been forecasted during
our trip we would have had to cancel. Did
I mention New Zealand has crazy weather with tons of little mini
microclimates? We had to leave for home
after the Landsbourogh but New Zealand was quite the adventure.
Back to the garlic, now you will need to turn the garlic
into a powder using a coffee grinder.
Since our house always buys ground coffee, ours never gets used for coffee;
but instead enjoys an occasional grind of some garlic or Ancho powder. The trick is to run the powder through a
stainless steel kitchen strainer after each grind session and then regrind the
parts that won’t fit through the strainer.
After repeating this process for awhile, sometimes I will return the
small bits that don’t fit through the strainer to the oven and other times I
just toss them into the compost bin.
“Just like a one-winged angel” I accidently made up this quote while
drinking an Aperol Spritz and listening to Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks. It makes me sad. I picture an angel on its
fall from heaven after a small misstep from a cloud without the ability to make
it back; because heaven lacked the foresight to utilize Universal Design and
build safety railing on the clouds.
Because I took winter term 2019 off, I had to work summer
term 2019 and couldn’t fit in any big adventures. But we did manage to run a section of the
Upper Owyhee River in the week that is between my spring term and summer
term. The Owyhee has long been one of my
favorite rivers because it sits in a very isolated corner of Oregon and
Idaho. This was our first time on the
upper stretches of the river and it won’t be our last. We choose to take our versatile inflatable kayaks
down the upper branches of the East Fork of the Owyhee River and ended our trip
at Three Forks; a hard shell would have worked just fine on this section. We began at Garat Crossing below a class four
plus gorge. Our flow was 840 cfs
dropping to 580 cfs measured at Crutchers Crossing. You will likely need to use one of the local
shuttle services to help you find this launch site because it is pretty
hidden. The shuttle driver didn’t think
my truck would make it down the steep road to the put-in and back up, which we
had expected, so we took 2 loads each down the 1000 foot decent into the canyon
with camping gear for 6 nights and boating gear. A four-wheeler might really help out here and
would be able to get down to the river or at least to the last little drop off.
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| The Launch. Photo by David Brigg |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
Our first campsite was at a place called The Thules. The river once went through a beavertail, but
has cut a path straight through leaving the beavertail dry. It was gorgeous but I can’t recommend this
camp. It was full of mosquitos and some ticks. It might be the case that we just had bad
timing.
The next day was a 20-mile day with amazing scenery down to
the confluence of Deep Creek and an amazing campsite. Some groups come into this location via Deep
Creek instead, which might be something to try out on some future trip. We lounged around for the afternoon preparing
for a long adventure the following day.
A mountain lion even showed itself for a brief minute up on the cliff
behind camp.
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| Owyhee Falls. Photo by David Brigg. |
The next day lead us through one rapid that was easier than
it looked called Boulder Jam and then down to the portage at Owyhee Falls, an
un-runnable rapid at these flows. First
of all let me tell you what I would do next time at the Owyhee Falls (a place I
have long wanted to visit). I would camp
on river left about 150 yards above the start of the rapid at an ok campsite
that will be there for you unless the water is pretty high. There is a trail from camp, that is a bit
hard to find but it winds out of camp and high up the hill before descending
back down to the river. It is the safest
portage path, but shortcuts exist downstream on the left that are steep and a
little sketch. In my ideal plan I would
walk my boat and gear to the bottom of the rapid before setting up camp that
night. The next morning I would break
camp and walk my camping gear down to the bottom. Opinions will vary a lot here, but there is
also a portage route on the right through the boulders; it didn’t look very
nice to me. It had a small eddy and the
entire walk looked like it was through these huge boulders and you still have to
run the bottom section of the rapid with a loaded boat after a long portage. So what we actually did do was use one of the
shortcuts on river left and took between one and three trips each during the
middle of the day in the sun. It was
exhausting. When it is all done, grab
the camp that is a little ways down on river right across from a spring. It is so awesome, and you earned it!!
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| You have no idea, I would do anything to be here now. I'm currently stuck in a 850 square foot house and feel lucky as shit to have a job and a house. Reach out to your friends and family if you find yourself in need; I think we all are willing to bend a few of our usual "helping a dirtbag-kayaker" rules in a positive way. To be clear, I'm not helping everyone of you who reads this blog out (I think the usual count on my stats is about 12); but I've already had some plans set in motion to help a few people, and am willing to put a few more plans in motion. Photo by David Brigg |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| Portage at Thread the Needle. Photo by David Brigg. |
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| Photo by David Brigg |
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| The hotspring; would have been awesome if it wasn't so damn cold out. |
Shortly downstream, the next day began with a much easier
portage on the left at Thread the Needle.
I could see how this gets runnable at some flows. We continued down some fun whitewater to
Clutcher’s crossing which is another access point. Past that we hit the confluence of the South
Fork and East Fork Owyhee. If you can
time it with your trip itinerary to stay here; it is amazing. We plan to run the South Fork into this
location the next time we give the upper Owyhee a go; just to give a different
stretch of the river a try. We didn’t
stay at this camp because we didn’t know the run well enough to be wasting too
much time. House Rock Rapids and Bald
Mountian Canyon (which also had a good campsite) were a lot of fun. We ended up staying just below Dukes Creek at
a small sand bar that was difficult to find but was a nice spot; after what
felt like a really long windy day. (SA
Dave lost his drone at this campsite; if it wasn’t so darn sad to see him sad,
it was pretty damn funny to watch the thing crash itself into a cliff). Be careful choosing your camp itinerary on the
Upper Owyhee. It just doesn’t get run
often enough for the boater traffic to clear good campsites and there are some
really long stretches with absolutely no useable camps. You can always find a spot in the sagebrush
but it will be you, tent, rocks, some cowshit, and sagebrush and you won’t
enjoy it.
An early launch from below Dukes Creek, brought us down to
Cabin rapid. SA Dave and I were able to
run everything except for the lead in; which was literally just a quick drag
over the rocks. Some of it was too difficult
for Niki and she walked sections of it while Dave walked back up and ran her
boat down. The rapid was deceptively
difficult and long. It is possible to
walk the whole thing on the left. You would have to take your time and watch
for Rattlesnakes and it wouldn’t be much fun, but it would be an easier portage
than Owyhee Falls. My plan for the
future is have the less capable boaters walk it and the others will just run it
a few times taking their IK’s and hard shells down. This was by far the hardest rapid we ran;
most of the other difficult stuff was likely portages at most flows. On the list of, what I would do next time,
the camp on the right directly below Cabin looks amazing. This was our only true error of the trip,
skipping that camp. Next time. We proceeded down to Cable. PLEASE scout the entrance to this
portage. It was easy but any error and
you are in some big trouble. A rope down
in the eddy isn’t a bad idea. At some
flows the rapid is runnable, but our flow there just wasn’t much of a
line. It is a boulder sieve so it would
likely get easier at low water or at high water. I think almost every big rapid on the Owyhee,
Jarbridge, and Bruneau was formed by a landside from the cliffs and looks
similar to this one. It took us a long
time to find a camp after that, so watch your timing. We finally found one just below Five Bar
Ranch at the confluence of the West Fork Owyhee. It was a hard camp to find, but it worked
just fine.
We had planned to stay one more night but the weather
changed our minds. Next time I do this
river I want to camp near the mouth of Antelope Creek and explore its long
history of Native American occupation in this drainage. Some very old documented artifacts come from
this side stream. The campsite won’t be
that great but it looked doable and a great opportunity to explore. The hot springs some miles below Antelope
Creek on the left is amazing (make sure to crawl up to the top) but it just
wasn’t quite warm enough to fight the bitter cold wind and chill that was
setting in; not to mention it doesn’t seem like it has much of a campsite. We got off a day early at Three Forks bummed
that we had missed a couple of good camps, but so stoked on the upper
Owyhee. I mean, just check out these
pictures. I love all the runs in this area.
Our next little mini adventure was Allison’s permit down the
Rogue River. We stayed one night at a
nice camp and then two nights at the Ross Family Lodge (Half Moon Bar
Lodge). Pretty sweet.
One final trip of the summer; Becky, SA Dave and I circumnavigated
Orcas Island up in the San Juans. We had
dolphins hanging with us everyday. It
was another great mini adventure. You
might notice I’m complaining about working last summer and yet I was able to
fit in three badass trips. Us teachers
have it so rough :-). (Sarcasm) No
really I hate this whole teaching online thing, but at least I have a job and I
totally feel for you boaters out there who don’t have anything at the moment,
because of these necessary shelter-in-place rules.
“I’ve always wanted to write a book; maybe explore the inner
workings of the boater community and their motivations. I have never make it very far with this idea,
but it is always fun to read some really good books traveling on these
adventures and tossing good quotes into the blog from the books I’m reading.”
Shane
After a recent night of too much food and too much whiskey,
I had a dream. In the dream, it was the
middle of a hot summer night where I was walking down a street in a small town. I spotted an indoor garage sale that included
a lot of whitewater equipment at great prices.
I loaded up on all sorts of paddles, boats, and other things that I was
hoping to buy. All the cheap prices
seemed to good to be true until I went to purchase the items. They told me the
bill came to $142.19. President Trump
had recently printed new currency. I had
a $10,000 bill that featured the President himself in the center fold, but my
purchases didn’t add up to that much and they didn’t have change for my large
bill. The $10,000 dollar bill was the
only currency that Trump had printed on paper.
The Federal Reserve had printed other currencies on recycled things such
as old bowling trophies, leather wallets, flip flops, and other odds and
ends. That also wasn’t a problem because
I had a huge backpack full of the newly stamped currency. I started by placing the old bowling trophy
on the table to figure out how much it was worth. In tiny print that took me awhile to read (because
I had forgot my newly prescribed reading glasses): it said $19.93. The problem was that all of the currency
wasn’t printed as nice multiples of one, two, five, or ten; it was all sorts of
random numbers. The old wallet was worth
$1.56 and the list went on. I was trying
to stack stuff on the table and mentally add until I reached an amount of close
to $142.19. The mental adding was the
real nightmare as I kept struggling to add in my sleep. I never resolved the dilemma before stirring
and waking.
After reading this and thinking about money, the editors of
the blog have figured out a crucial error in our funding model. It turns out these online recipes usually try
to advertise a key ingredient in the recipe attached to a known brand name such
as Kraft Mayonnaise. That is the most
common funding model for a food blog. We
made this garlic powder from scratch and we even used last year’s garlic cloves
to seed this year’s crop. There isn’t a
single source of advertising that is going to take us on. We have shifted the advertising model towards
the liquor brands shown in the background shots; but we have been told that
this doesn’t make much money. Liquor doesn’t need to advertise during a
Stay-at-home order. We hope our ideas
work to generate some much needed income for the editors, but for now our
favorite Editor Two is going to have to keep working at Boober, Editor One has
to keep living with his mom, and I need to continue to teach college math in
this weird virtual world. Someday this
blog will pay off, but it doesn’t look like it will be this year. In the meantime, if you live in the Portland
area, please consider placing an order with Boober to support my editor and let
me know how it goes, I’m curious what you think.
On that note, lets finish up this garlic powder.
Recipe for Garlic Powder
1. Plant the Garlic
2. Grow the Garlic
3. Harvest and Dry
the Garlic
4. Husk the Garlic
5. Turn the oven on
Dehydrate mode at about 130-150 degrees Fahrenheit
6. Run the Garlic
through a mandolin (The kitchen tool not the musical instrument)
7. Toss in oven
flipping and turning often until they break when snapped (6 hours or so)
8. Run through the
coffee grinder (Mine never gets used for coffee, just ancho powder, garlic
powder, substances that recently became legal, etc. you get the idea)
9. Run through a
stainless steel kitchen strainer
10. Toss in bits that
didn’t fit in the strainer back in the oven at 150 degrees Fahrenheit for an
hour
11. Repeat till you
have no garlic chunks are left
12. Store in
refrigerator and share with your friends.
IE. In the times of social distancing you should leave a bottle of
whiskey and packet of garlic powder on their porch, text them, and wave.
Actual Covid-19 update from Shane: This blog is very “Tongue in Cheek” and
“Stream of Consciousness” thinking. We
here at the blog are working hard to just create a temporary distraction from
your daily routine during a Shelter-in-place order. I really don’t care if you are politically
left of center like most of my students or far right of center (I realize that
some of you family members will consider my criticism of Trump to be a bit harsh
but it really was just a dream I had). I
love you all and I appreciate all of the sacrifices you are making. We all should be concerned about the rate of
spread of this disease and all of our efforts make a difference. I’m very concerned about you and your family
just as much as I’m concerned about elderly members of my family. If you want to support the people I/you love,
keep your distance so the first derivative of the logistic model has as small
of a global maximum as possible. Oops
that was kinda mathy, just do your part to flatten the curve.
Take Care. I’m so
glad I got to hardshell the Middle White Salmon two weekends in a row before
all the shelter in place orders came down; I dream about those quick runs a
little every day.
SYOTRACV
See You On The River After Corona Virus
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