We've settled on the first 3 days of our route. We get part of the way to Dickinson, ND in that time. Ray figures any place within the first 3 days we can visit at a later time from here so we're just scooting by those places. That was the easy part of the planning.
But after that, the options are nearly overwhelming. There are so many roads, so many places to see, so many places to spend a few hours! Plan a trip like this and you realize what an enormous, beautiful country we have. You realize it in a different way than looking at the Weather Channel's map or watching as you jet over, arriving in Chicago a mere 3 or 4 hours after you depart SeaTac.
Every day we discover another place, another good motorcycle road, another spot we'd like to spend some time exploring.
We may never get to Illinois and back again at this rate. We'll be spending the rest of our lives on interesting roads. And that's not a such bad way to spend our time, is it?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Haiti
I'm feeling so distressed by what's happened to Haiti and so sad for the families there. They will never be the same. The pictures coming out of there are nearly incomprehensible in the extent of building damage and human suffering. It's so hard to look at those pictures and hear the news reports.
And as always, people ready to take advantage of the situation, men with machetes roaming the streets and looting. I pray that some sort of order is restored soon.
And some people here talking about how we shouldn't be the first responders, that we should not give aid and succor. To those people, I say, shame on you, you've lost touch with what it means to be human and have lost understanding of what it means to be American.
Please pray for the families of Haiti and give if you can.
And as always, people ready to take advantage of the situation, men with machetes roaming the streets and looting. I pray that some sort of order is restored soon.
And some people here talking about how we shouldn't be the first responders, that we should not give aid and succor. To those people, I say, shame on you, you've lost touch with what it means to be human and have lost understanding of what it means to be American.
Please pray for the families of Haiti and give if you can.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
A Woodpecker Sort of Day
This morning when I let Norm out for the first time, there was a Flicker pounding away at the telephone pole in the corner of the back yard. I don't know if he knows there's meat in there or if he just hopes there is. Whichever, he keeps at it for a long time once he starts.
But it made me think that some days I feel like a woodpecker, hammering away against a figurative unyelding surface in the hope of getting to the meat of the matter, or getting the job done once and for all. Laundry and dishes and dusting are rather woodpeckerish endeavors. No matter how much you pound away at the laundry or the dishes or the dust, there will always be more laundry and more dishes and more dust, sometimes even before you are done with the ones you're working on.
So, come to think of it, is one of my favorite ways to spend the day, hunting ancestors. Find one ancestor and you invariably find more ancestors and then you have to find more and more information. Hammering away at the old dusty records in courthouses or the shiny new ones on the internet, it's still very woodpeckerish.
Outside the Seattle Art Museum is a large sculpture called "The Hammering Man". He hammers all day, all night, all the time, whack, whack, whack, just like the woodpecker. People often feel sorry for him even as they appreciate the sculpture. He works whether or not he wants to, just like the thousands of workers across the city, hammer, hammer, hammer, get the job done.
Everybody has got things they just keep pounding away at, over and over again.
I think this is why people need vacations and long hot baths, good books, fireplaces and hot chocolate.
But it made me think that some days I feel like a woodpecker, hammering away against a figurative unyelding surface in the hope of getting to the meat of the matter, or getting the job done once and for all. Laundry and dishes and dusting are rather woodpeckerish endeavors. No matter how much you pound away at the laundry or the dishes or the dust, there will always be more laundry and more dishes and more dust, sometimes even before you are done with the ones you're working on.
So, come to think of it, is one of my favorite ways to spend the day, hunting ancestors. Find one ancestor and you invariably find more ancestors and then you have to find more and more information. Hammering away at the old dusty records in courthouses or the shiny new ones on the internet, it's still very woodpeckerish.
Outside the Seattle Art Museum is a large sculpture called "The Hammering Man". He hammers all day, all night, all the time, whack, whack, whack, just like the woodpecker. People often feel sorry for him even as they appreciate the sculpture. He works whether or not he wants to, just like the thousands of workers across the city, hammer, hammer, hammer, get the job done.
Everybody has got things they just keep pounding away at, over and over again.
I think this is why people need vacations and long hot baths, good books, fireplaces and hot chocolate.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Cheese, Glorious Cheese!
Lately, I've been thinking alot about cheese, thanks to The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project and the public library. And probably the Tillamook Cheese factory, which we have visited several times.
The Cheese Project got me interested in several recommended cheese books and the public library kindly supplied said books for my perusal.
There are so many different types of cheese! Who knew? Growing up in the midwest, cheese was either swiss, cheddar, cottage, ricotta or mozzarella. You could pretty much count on there being cottage cheese in our fridge, but the cheddar was mostly there at Christmas time, when Dad was gifted (blessed) with a largeish black-waxed white extra sharp cheddar from Canada. Heavenly stuff! Cream cheese was good for cheese cake or dried beef rolls, but not much else. I never saw a bagel until I was an adult. Dad was not much for "ethnic" food, unless it was brown beans and lingon berries. Swiss showed up once in a while, to put on sandwiches. We often had that pseudo-cheese that comes in a plastic envelope that you have to peel off. Ick on that stuff! Cheese of other types I do not remember being in our fridge, except possibly in salad dressing.
It's interesting how cheese is referenced in everyday life, as in "cheese it, it's the fuzz". Well, ok, not my life. But there's also "cut the cheese", "big cheese", "say cheese" and "that's so cheesey".
But anyway, a couple of the books I picked up at the liberry are guidebooks to artisan cheese makers. Once we planned out our summer route, I started checking for artisan cheese makers along the way.
We will be stopping at a cheesery in Wisconsin, hello, Cheese Heads! Then there's one in Iowa we may be able to get to, depending on the state of the road, and one near Missoula, Montana. And that looks like the extent of cheese for this trip. How nice it will be to have some hand-crafted cheese in the saddlebags for our snack breaks! I will have to remember to pack a cheese knife.
I could not find any artisan cheese makers in North Dakota, although I did find the North Dakota Cheesemakers Association, so one assumes there must be cheese makers out there somewhere. I wrote to the association and perhaps I will get an answer and find some tasty cheese in North Dakota after all. They have more cows than people there, so there must be cheese makers.
The new Puget Consumer Co-op in Edmonds has a nice cheese section and we picked up a couple of teensy blocks for sampling. One is Gjetost, a Norweigan cheese without which breakfast apparently would not happen in Norway. The other sample is Carr Valley Gouda. Carr Valley Farms is in Wisconsin. I've also got a bigger piece of paneer from Apel Farms. That one is an organic, raw milk cheese, made up in Lynden. Perhaps later tonight we'll sample the Gjetost and the Gouda. You could hardly find cheese more different than those two! They also had a large, large wheel of Queso Blanco from up around Bow, WA, but it was way too big for us to use up, as much as I love Queso Blanco.
We also bought some Nancy's cream cheese. It's more spreadable than Philly, and has only 35 mg of salt. Since it's naturally cultured and made with goat's milk, it has less fat and is more tart than Philly but pretty much the same mouthfeel. I quite like it.
I'm going to be trying all sorts of cheeses, but have not had much experience with different types, so, what's your favorite cheese?
The Cheese Project got me interested in several recommended cheese books and the public library kindly supplied said books for my perusal.
There are so many different types of cheese! Who knew? Growing up in the midwest, cheese was either swiss, cheddar, cottage, ricotta or mozzarella. You could pretty much count on there being cottage cheese in our fridge, but the cheddar was mostly there at Christmas time, when Dad was gifted (blessed) with a largeish black-waxed white extra sharp cheddar from Canada. Heavenly stuff! Cream cheese was good for cheese cake or dried beef rolls, but not much else. I never saw a bagel until I was an adult. Dad was not much for "ethnic" food, unless it was brown beans and lingon berries. Swiss showed up once in a while, to put on sandwiches. We often had that pseudo-cheese that comes in a plastic envelope that you have to peel off. Ick on that stuff! Cheese of other types I do not remember being in our fridge, except possibly in salad dressing.
It's interesting how cheese is referenced in everyday life, as in "cheese it, it's the fuzz". Well, ok, not my life. But there's also "cut the cheese", "big cheese", "say cheese" and "that's so cheesey".
But anyway, a couple of the books I picked up at the liberry are guidebooks to artisan cheese makers. Once we planned out our summer route, I started checking for artisan cheese makers along the way.
We will be stopping at a cheesery in Wisconsin, hello, Cheese Heads! Then there's one in Iowa we may be able to get to, depending on the state of the road, and one near Missoula, Montana. And that looks like the extent of cheese for this trip. How nice it will be to have some hand-crafted cheese in the saddlebags for our snack breaks! I will have to remember to pack a cheese knife.
I could not find any artisan cheese makers in North Dakota, although I did find the North Dakota Cheesemakers Association, so one assumes there must be cheese makers out there somewhere. I wrote to the association and perhaps I will get an answer and find some tasty cheese in North Dakota after all. They have more cows than people there, so there must be cheese makers.
The new Puget Consumer Co-op in Edmonds has a nice cheese section and we picked up a couple of teensy blocks for sampling. One is Gjetost, a Norweigan cheese without which breakfast apparently would not happen in Norway. The other sample is Carr Valley Gouda. Carr Valley Farms is in Wisconsin. I've also got a bigger piece of paneer from Apel Farms. That one is an organic, raw milk cheese, made up in Lynden. Perhaps later tonight we'll sample the Gjetost and the Gouda. You could hardly find cheese more different than those two! They also had a large, large wheel of Queso Blanco from up around Bow, WA, but it was way too big for us to use up, as much as I love Queso Blanco.
We also bought some Nancy's cream cheese. It's more spreadable than Philly, and has only 35 mg of salt. Since it's naturally cultured and made with goat's milk, it has less fat and is more tart than Philly but pretty much the same mouthfeel. I quite like it.
I'm going to be trying all sorts of cheeses, but have not had much experience with different types, so, what's your favorite cheese?
Monday, January 4, 2010
Whew! Holidays Are Over!
Well, today it's back to work as usual. Ray's off at SSA and I'm here doing stuff that I didn't do over the holidays. Tomorrow I go back to work at the Library, as its Holiday Closure is over. I was not up early enough to hear the morning traffic reports, but I bet that too was back to business as usual.
It was almost warm enough to ride Sunday. Almost.
For fun, we went to see Avatar. I can't say enough good things about this movie. Yes, it's a familiar plot, but the way it's presented is different. You can't even see all of it in one sitting, it's so gorgeous and so packed with things to look at. It's totally awesome and amazing, or whatever kids says these days to indicate extreme coolness and awesomeness and amazingness.
A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Between illness, holiday doings and writer's block it's been a long time between posts.
Ray and I are busy planning this summer's trip east. We're only getting as far as Northern Illinois, but we'll be getting there. And to all my relatives and in-laws who are now thinking "I'll believe that when I see it", prepare your eyeballs, because we ARE getting there. On our bikes. This year. And home again. On our bikes. I'll let you know how the route develops and where we'll be staying.
One thing we've gotten is UTags for both of us. These are USB drives embedded in a dog tag that holds all of one's medical information and contact info, insurance info, procedures you do not ever want done, etc. Everything a doctor who does not know you would need to safely treat you. They come with stickers to put on your helmet, jacket, bike to let the first responders know you've got a UTag. They are very popular and widely used in Europe, but just beginning to be used here. That's why the stickers will come in handy.
Another thing we're thinking of getting is a Spot device. This device can be set to give a near real-time map of where we are at any given point, so you could track us on a Google map. It also sends check-in messages and sends for help. Is there enough demand for our location for us to buy the tracking service?
It was almost warm enough to ride Sunday. Almost.
For fun, we went to see Avatar. I can't say enough good things about this movie. Yes, it's a familiar plot, but the way it's presented is different. You can't even see all of it in one sitting, it's so gorgeous and so packed with things to look at. It's totally awesome and amazing, or whatever kids says these days to indicate extreme coolness and awesomeness and amazingness.
A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Between illness, holiday doings and writer's block it's been a long time between posts.
Ray and I are busy planning this summer's trip east. We're only getting as far as Northern Illinois, but we'll be getting there. And to all my relatives and in-laws who are now thinking "I'll believe that when I see it", prepare your eyeballs, because we ARE getting there. On our bikes. This year. And home again. On our bikes. I'll let you know how the route develops and where we'll be staying.
One thing we've gotten is UTags for both of us. These are USB drives embedded in a dog tag that holds all of one's medical information and contact info, insurance info, procedures you do not ever want done, etc. Everything a doctor who does not know you would need to safely treat you. They come with stickers to put on your helmet, jacket, bike to let the first responders know you've got a UTag. They are very popular and widely used in Europe, but just beginning to be used here. That's why the stickers will come in handy.
Another thing we're thinking of getting is a Spot device. This device can be set to give a near real-time map of where we are at any given point, so you could track us on a Google map. It also sends check-in messages and sends for help. Is there enough demand for our location for us to buy the tracking service?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)