Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
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If you were on 15th at mid-day yesterday, you might have caught a little live comedy. On the corner outside Lladro, an earnest young man stood by a folding table with a picture of Al Gore sporting a Pinocchio nose. The fresh-faced lad was from the Larouche campaign and hoping to find sympathetic ears - and maybe dollars - for his cause. The issue - straight from his mouth as I walked by - “Human beings are essentially good! Global warming is not our fault!”
Another neighbor apparently had engaged the young Larouche booster in conversation. I could only hear the end of what he was saying as he stomped away in the crosswalk towards the Hopvine. “Are you saying it’s the sun’s fault? You’re out of your fucking mind! It’s SCIENCE, MAN! SCIENCE!”
Yes, I am going to miss my neighborhood. More than I can say.
A couple of adminstrivia/linky notes:
- Home Turf is running a new carnival of cities. It’s a selection of bloggers writing about, well, um, cities. There’s some fun stuff in there.
- Timen has proposed a “Trusted Travelblog Network” over at In All My Stars. It’s an interesting idea, but I wonder what will make a blog “trusted.” Got an opinion? Go comment.
- Finally, a shout out to the English students of Graz who are reading Nerd’s Eye View as homework! Hello! I’m quite fond of Graz, in spite of the crazy city guides. Next time I’m there, let’s meet in person. And you are welcome to tag along for dinner on Jackson Street when you visit Seattle.
[tags]global warming, Capitol Hill[/tags]
Posted in Administrivia, Seattle | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 19th, 2007
Disclaimer: I met Mark Zoller at the Seattle Travel Show. When I told him I write for Snowshoe Magazine, he invited me up to spend some time in the area, to go rafting, snowshoeing with a local guide, and to stay at a regional B&B. I’ll have a story going out in the next issue of Snowshoe Magazine - here are a few things that won’t make the cut.
Chatting with the guides at Zoller’s
Zoller’s runs rafting trips year round. There’s a steep catwalk from the parking lot that goes right down to the river. Mark Zoller or one of his experienced and trustworthy guides will suit you up, give you a short orientation, and take you for the ride of your life on the river. It takes as long as it takes, depending on what the water is doing on the day you’re on it. Families with small children are welcome, as are boats full of “the ladies.”
Joetta, one of Zoller’s guides, is telling me about the river. There are a bunch of numbers – cubic feet per something or other, some one through five rating, the number of people in the boat, the number of people per year, the number of years their oldest customer had (90?)…
When you’re looking for a river guide, you want experience of course, first and foremost. After that, things get fuzzier. Do they have changing rooms or are you going to peel down in the parking lot? How new is the gear and how often does it get updated? What’s the transportation like? How long have they been in business and how long have they had their guides?
There are three guides unloading from the trip of the day. They’re red cheeked and excited, hopped up on a swell ride. The guests are shivering in their rented gear but they look excited too and smile big when I ask them if they had a good time. There’s a cute couple from Seattle (maybe a guy taking his girl for an adventure) and a local woman. They’re all a little damp around the edges but they look exhilarated, if a little tired.
Joetta tells me a story of a crying guest. It’s orientation, when Zoller’s tells the guests what to expect and there’s a woman at the back, not quite hysterical but certainly weepy. She thinks she can’t do it. She’s afraid. She doesn’t know how to paddle, doesn’t think she can handle it. Her husband isn’t exactly encouraging her. Joetta steps in. “Don’t worry,” she tells the overwrought guest. “Can you work a camera? You’ll sit at the back with me and take the pictures. It’s important work and someone has to do it.”
You can guess how this story ends, right? Though you may not take it quite this far. The guest was transformed. She loved the river, she participated, she paddled and cheered and had a fantastic time and got out of the water cheering “Again! Again!” And her fearfulness? Gone. Apparently next up for this guest? Skydiving.
Husum Highlands Morning
The early morning sky is blowing east and every now and then a piece of it gets stuck on Mount Hood, making it disappear for a while. The clouds are pink and yellow and purple, a cartoon dinosaur migration toward the sunrise. A bird that sounds like a squeaky gate hinge breaks the silence. Two horses, one red rust, the other the color of a slice of toast just burning around the edges, graze in the meadow.
Yesterday evening the toast colored one ran all the way across the field, moving fast and making me realize I’ve never seen an unsaddled horse run before save for in the movies. I was disappointed when she didn’t circle back but maybe she was too when she came up against the electric wire that marked her boundary. This morning, the horses move slowly, taking steps towards each other from opposite sides of the paddock.
The sky lifts, the horizon turning pale yellow and fading into the blue of a palace ceiling. Downstairs, I can hear the coffee grinder and then, oddly, opera. It sounds like morning. The sun breaks over the mountains and everything is lit with long golden light.
Crossroads
I’m at a junction called BZ Corner on the state highway. There’s a battered diner sign – it must have been an “EAT” once – on a tall post as though you could miss it. There’s a mercantile/mini mart across the street. Two big dogs sprawl in the gravelly parking lot. On the opposite corner there’s a log building with a chainsaw carved bear standing guard on the porch. A couple of Harleys are parked out front, and two big pick up trucks. I’m scribbling a note on a bit of scrap paper and the big black dog wanders across the street to put her head in my lap. This interferes with my note writing so I stand up and lean against the side of the car, using my road atlas for backing. A beat up van rolls in the lot where I’m parked. It’s one of those eight seater Dodges with the blue paneling on the side. The driver leans across to the passenger window and shouts to me, “Hey, do you want to sell your car?” I look behind me at the Tercel and start laughing. “I’ve been looking for one of those cars,” he says. “How much do you want for it?”
The Dodge smells of gasoline and the captain’s chair driver’s seat is shredded on one side. The guy behind the wheel has the same blue and battered attire as his transportation, but he looks friendly enough. We talk Tercel for a little bit. I toy with the idea of asking for 1000 cash, taking the Grayhound to Portland, and then, jumping on the train back to Seattle. My imagination does not get the better of me. Another guy wanders up to the van. “Hey,” he says to the driver, “I’m about to pay to get rid of some Dodge seats. Do you want first crack at them?”
Rainbow
When the first thing you see in the morning is a rainbow, it is hard not to expect a perfect day. The amazing thing is that I was not disappointed. The fact that I took the wrong road down, got stuck in a hole, and left the lights on so I could not start my car did not detract in any way.
About halfway in to our day, my host put his hand on my head. “Listen,” he said, “it would be a shame to deprive the future of all THIS.” He tucked a cedar cone in to the pocket of my jacket. “I’m planting a seed. You give that to your husband. You know, you can adopt. Have you considered adopting?” Typically, I’m cranky with people who get at me about not having kids. But in this case, I was genuinely touched. Bill had already declared me family and now he’d decided that the planet needed more me. “All this wonderful stuff!” he said. “There should be more of that in the world!”
Later, we’re done snowshoeing and we’re on the way back to the car. Bill has opened up the throttle on the snowmobile and we are flying. He shouts to me – “Fast enough for ya?! Yee haw!” I’m laughing out loud. I close my eyes to the wind and I am filled with the smell of snow.
Now
It’s been a few days since I’ve had a really good cup of coffee. I’m in Ground in the center of Hood River. They have free wifi and Ray Charles.
Posted in Playing Outside | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 16th, 2007
Yeah, Al Gore wants you to turn off your air-conditioning, go carbon neutral, use those awful fluorescent bulbs, drive a Prius, etc. etc. amen. Yeah. We get that, thanks, Al. We get that the whole global warming thing means maybe we should not burn through a whole lot of fuel to get across the planet or across town. We think polar bear cubs are cute and we totally dig snow sports. We get it.
But there’s something else to think about when it comes to giving up oil: the effect oil production has on societies at the source. National Geographic is running a multimedia presentation about the impact of oil companies on the lives of the inhabitants of the Niger Delta. Who’s reaping the benefits of the wells? Not the people of the Niger Delta. If Al Gore doesn’t make you go on an oil diet, you might consider doing it for the people of the Niger Delta. From the full story:
Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world’s largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled huts and rusty shacks. Groups of hungry, half-naked children and sullen, idle adults wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.
In my treehugging lefty world, this totally underscores my desire for an eBike. Who says green products won’t get you greenbacks? I’m ready to hand over some Benjamins for a sweet electric ride.
Via the Travel Photographer, my favorite new discovery on the web. Bookmark and learn, comrades, bookmark and learn.
[tags]oil, National Geographic, global warming[/tags]
Posted in Seattle | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
It’s been chaos around the Nerd’s Eye View HQ lately. I was down with the plague that everyone in Seattle seems to be contracting and oh, yeah, I bought a house. For a while there, it felt like I would never be off the phone again. Mortgage brokers, escrow, long calls to the foreign office to negotiate closing dates, driving back and forth between here and the new place, signing my name over and over and over again… There’s been little cooking and restless sleep and much stress. Things have slowed down again and finally, finally, I have time to cook. I was wanting a good home cooked meal even if I had to be the one to cook it. So. Risotto.
You think it’s a lot of bother to make risotto, but it’s not really. It’s more about babysitting the stuff then it is about fussy cooking. Yeah, it takes a while, but it’s not like you can’t do laundry at the same time. That’s what I did.
Start by sauteeing the onions in olive oil. Some folks use real butter; I’m for olive oil in almost everything except baking. When the onions just start to brown, add the arborio rice and toss that in the onions and olive oil until it’s good and coated. Then, start adding the liquid - some folks use stock, I just used water. I know that doesn’t give you as rich a risotto, but I didn’t have fish stock and I didn’t want to use chicken stock. I added some saffron, ground pepper, and a bit of sea salt. The trick is to add the stock in smallish amounts, maybe a cup at a time, and stir often. When the liquid is all absorbed, add more until the risotto is done. When the rice was cooked all the way through, I tossed in the shrimp and put the lid on. I chopped up some fresh spinach and by the time I was done with that, the shrimp were exactly the right color. I mixed in the spinach in and by the time it was all stirred evenly, it was done. See, no bother at all, really.
The shrimp, by the way, were American farmed white shrimp. These are okay sustainability wise and they tasted great. I stayed away from the Thailand farmed tiger prawns, a big no no on the seafood list.
I didn’t have any Parmesan, so for a little extra richness, I poured about a tablespoon of olive oil over the top once it was on the plate. Voila! A complete meal, easy and oh, my, you should have come for dinner when I invited you. I don’t mind if you eat and run and risotto isn’t so great for leftovers. Never mind. It’s what’s for lunch tomorrow.
And now, excuse me, I must go get my laundry from the dryer.
[tags]Fish Wednesday, risotto, seafood, cooking[/tags]
Posted in Fish Wednesday | 1 Comment »
