Spent a few hours in the plane, departing from Atlanta and arriving in Portland. This is Mt. Hood, just before we touched down.
We lost three time zones and about 30 degrees on this flight.
No one is complaining about this last part.
Wednesday
13
Jul 11
Dinner with friends
And now for your amusing miscommunication of the day: “Come over have dinner at Our Place.”
The thing you don’t hear in the conversation are the capital letters. Our Place is not “We’re making a casserole,” but rather, “There is a nice little restaurant nearby that we like to frequent and we would enjoy your company. The name of the establishment is Our Place.”
So we drive to Wetumpka, in the original Creek it meant Rumbling Waters because the river roared over waterfalls. Now it is damned. When the Creek were moved west, they named a town in Oklahoma Wetumka. Wetumka is even smaller than Wetumpka. I learned this on Wikipedia, which may be wrong, because we discussed this evening the very idea of falsifying information on Wikipedia. But let’s just go with it. Did you know there’s a full-sized replica of Olympia’s Temple of Hera? Did you know Wetumpka was once compared to Chicago and no one laughed?
Wetumpka has about 5,000 people in it today, but they’re still trying. They also lost out on being the state capital because a hotel in nearby Montgomery hired a fancy French chef. And in the middle of the 19th century that won votes.
Anyway. Our Place is a nice little joint. It gets four stars on Urban Spoon, five stars on Yahoo, four on Trip Advisor and three stars on Yelp.
I was all set to give the Yelpers grief over their average rating — why so low? — and just noticed that only one person has reviewed it. Don’t make a special trip, says Jesse the Doberman. Jesse’s profile lists Birmingham as home. If they drove down just for Our Place I see the point. For a nice quiet place, though, it is delightful.
Turns out it was a car shop back in the 1930s or so. After years of cars and, I’m guessing, little of anything else, someone bought it with the idea of making it a music-themed restaurant. This was, we were told, poorly done from the start and the Our Place people stepped in and reaped the benefits. They serve a quasi-New Orleans menu and all the plates were enjoyable. I had the Shrimp Dianne. Got a plate full of pasta and shrimp and veggies and cheese. You cannot go wrong with this formulation.
(If I’d known Our Place wasn’t our place, though, I would have worn something nicer than jeans. Sorry, guys.)
Ahh. I found some incorrect information on Wetumpka’s Wikipedia page. I know who to blame.
6
Jul 11
Another wall broken
We often have this conversation at night:
Me: Do you want to ride tomorrow?
The Yankee: Yes.
Me: How far do you want to go?
The Yankee: X miles.
Me: Where do you want to go.
We had this conversation last night, in fact. This morning she said “I want to go here and there, hill and dale and so on.”
She did not, but you don’t care about the street names. What you do care about is when she said ” … and then come back here to fuel up.”
Which, I’ve decided today, is the meanest thing she’s ever said.
See, I’d figured I’d do my 30 miles — because I am at a place where doing less than 15 is a joke, doing 20 barely seems an effort, but 30 is time well spent AND I can still function like a human being for the rest of the day. I’d do my 30 and then come home, rest, hydrate, shower, you know, that stuff. And then later this evening I could mow the lawn.
I am aided in this because, being from the north, the Deep South summer wipes her out. She decided earlier this week she can ride in humidity — it was odd hearing her admit that — but it is the sun that truly hurts. And, if you think about country roads, or even urban areas, rare is the spot where you can be in a lot of shade. July. Deep South. And so on.
So she starts out, and then I play catch up. I pass her. I get home and have a refreshing beverage and think “I’m done. She’ll get home and by then it will be serious July and no longer the early morning and that’ll be the day’s ride.”
But no.
She decides to go back out. And I’m stubborn, so I decide to go back out. She gets a head start. I catch her, and so on. She has a flat tire. I help with that. Turning right at the top of this hill — which I’ve climbed twice, because I had to go back for the tire — means going home. Turning left means we continue our pre-existing route. She turns left, figuring that, having done 45 miles, she’s pressing on.
There’s an expression we’ve learned in long duration exertion called bonking. It is defined as “a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles, which manifests itself by sudden fatigue and loss of energy.”
I think I had several bonks today.
But we rode 60 miles. SIXTY.
And finally we made it home. Now we’re not doing anything else for the rest of the day that requires coordinated muscle effort, because, really.
She made a delicious dinner. We had a late, large lunch. (Because we’d burned something like 4,000 calories pedaling around town.) And then we dove into Morgan Murphy’s Off the Eaten Path, which is a ringing endorsement for dives and out of the way places across the South (and, for some reason, Delaware and Maryland).
The Yankee’s mother gave us this book. We’ve been looking forward to trying most everything in it. Over the weekend we put sticky notes on each page marking a recipe we’d like to try. Basically we now have a book with sticky notes on most every page. That was a useful exercise.
Tonight we had chicken tortilla soup from Henry’s Puffy Tacos, in San Antonio, Texas. Delicious. Want the recipe?
29
Jun 11
Four stories for the price of one
Let us recall: I did 42 miles on the bike yesterday. That was, in a sense, giving up on my original plan. Recall I’d planned to do 50 miles. But, when I crossed the artery off which our subdivision thrives I noted a deep, emotional pleasure of seeing the road sign. Taking that as a sign, I turned and headed in.
Because saying no to the last 10 miles with a heat index of 96, to me, is giving up.
But the better for it, I felt. Discretion and all that. Saddle sores can’t be nearly as fun as the alliteration they make. So I was OK with it, especially after rubbing a curative elixir in my quads. All of that was yesterday, after which I visited the helpful bike store which is full of helpful lads doing thoughtful things trying to keep their laughter about your predicament to a minimum.
This pain in my hand, for instance. And what about this? And how do I? Why, yes, 42 miles, thank you. Why do you snicker?
So today The Yankee and I set out for more of this delightful fun, where the heat index was a mellow 90 degress — hey, even the relative humidity has a take a day off every now and again — and we covered 29 miles.
Well, I covered 29 miles. I took a slightly longer route, intent on racing her home. But then every part of me gave out in the last few miles. Which doesn’t mean anything bad, really. Not to worry. I just coasted more than I should. And wondered how I could simultaneously cramp in 103 percent of my body.
She beat me soundly.
Here’s the cheering section.
Note their casually dismissive approach to encouragement. The distance between camera and subject isn’t expressive enough, but the fence line keeps them back and their lack of amazement by my cycling further restricts them.
At first I thought that it was a denuded poplar tree in the background. When I finally cropped the picture I realized it was the power pole. Cursed power poles. Yesterday, on one long stretch of highway I found no shade. All of the blessed, dark coolness was on the left-hand side of the road. It was long and my field of vision was clear. This blisteringly hot condition was continuing on for some time. And then, I realized, it was the power poles. They were all on my side of the highway. Everything else had been clear cut.
And I uttered perhaps the most petulant thing I’ve said in my adult life.
Oh, like these people need power.
Clearly my shade was more important.
Where I tell you about our search for dinner: Have I mentioned we broke one of the toilets in our house? I did. How about the various evil spirit curses placed upon our property?
When we first moved in we broke the thermostat. That cost $50.
Then I broke the shower head trying to fix a drip. That led to a larger problem which required plumbers, a drywall saw and an acetylene torch. It should have cost us about $1400, the plumber said, since it was a weekend. Fortunately the house warrant and the new shower head stuff cost us around $100.
And then we woke up one weekend to find the frozen contents of our refrigerator hanging out in liquid form on the floor. That cost us $50 (thanks home warranty) plus whatever we paid for ice and dry ice to preserve our perishables.
(We’d been in the house for two months by then.)
Then, in October, the dishwasher broke. Fifty more bucks. (And our second in-house electrocution.)
Then it broke again in December. We had it repaired during the holidays. Yep, $50 more.
This list does not include the bird feeder or the cable/Internet problems.
It does now include March’s necessary garage door button replacement.
It should also be noted that another air conditioner man had to come out and replace a contact on our external unit. Seems you can stop a Trane. And I have to pay $55 dollars to get back on board. This was, apparently, not noted in the blog. But believe me, it happened. I have the canceled check to prove it.
The current minor plumbing issues.
At this point we’re keeping a running total of the devious spirits.
So, to quickly recap (because, really, this story is about dinner): I replaced the flapper in the basin of each toilet tank. In doing so I managed to make one of them leak. I emptied it again and dried the tank, hoping a sealant would be an easy and quick fix. Tonight we visited Lowe’s to get silicon. I run across a man who works there who suggests the fix is probably in a filter, and corrosion related. So he dissuades me from picking up a sealant, encouraging me to bring in the damaged parts so we can find a suitable replacement. “Oh and plumbing repairs are seldom easy.”
Not that that was anything new to hear.
So we leave Lowe’s and look for dinner. We rattle off the options, prattle off the things that don’t sound good and turn to a food app. Thai! There’s Thai in Opelika. We turn the car around and drive across town. We find the right place, where we see a sign that translates to mean “We are no longer Thai.”
We settle on Logans. Which is right across the street from Lowe’s. When the waiter comes The Yankee orders. He turns to me. I’ll have the Thai. This is hysterical to everyone. They’re holding a ceremony to honor this joke next week.
Where I tell you about my repair work: After dinner I decided to investigate the water filter on our refrigerator. This is the first unit I’ve ever had with the water and ice dispenser in the door. There must be, I rationalize, a filter somewhere. Probably it needs replacement.
I do a little study. I find the Whirlpool site that tells me precisely where the filter is. The site insists I find the model number so that it can tell me what filter to order.
I find the model number of the refrigerator. I enter it into the Whirlpool website, which does not recognize it. I enter it again. I carefully inspect my data entry. Still the Whirlpool database suggests this is a secret box of government documents, or perhaps a crate of uranium, anything but a series of letters and numbers that correspond to a refrigerator. I examine each number on the filter. I enter them all into the Whirlpool site. None are recognized.
I’ll just order a new one by eye. Because this is a good technique for this house.
I decide, after failing to resolve my refrigerator issue, to take apart the toilet tank. One needs the feeder hoses, washers and connectors so the hardworking folks at Lowe’s can remind me: lefty loosey, righty tighty.
I remember that to put the flapper into this tank that I had to remove the feeder tube that pumps the refill water in the right place. This wiggled the floater canister, which controls how much water the tank holds. This is the area in which the leak has suddenly appeared. I take the entire thing apart and put it back together. I torque it as if I need to crank down the landing gear so we can safely put down and we’re only getting one chance at this. I say a little prayer, pre-select an oath to mutter just in case, and fill the tank.
No leak!
This is the first thing I’ve fixed in this house that cost five bucks and stayed at that price.
But the brick which is in there, because water displacement saves the earth, started making noise. Seems the porous brick had dried out. The water seeping in and the air escaping sounds like a rainforest. After a few flushes the creatures in the brick were drowned and silenced.
I tinkered with the master bathroom’s toilet, too, because I did not like the flush rate. I adjusted the chain’s location on the handle, which improves the turning ratio (and now it can climb semi-steep hills). I realized, in glancing at the flapper package as I’m about to throw it away, that there is a part of that rubberized flapper I was supposed to cut away. I make the requisite snips.
Now that one is running again.
22
Jun 11
Ewws of corn
My roommate in college was from the central part of the state. They grow a lot of citrus and peaches and watermelon in his part of the world. He came from a prominent farming family in a rural-agricultural area. He told stories about how he’d go help in the fields at harvest time. He recalled a day when INS showed up to pick up all the migrant workers and take them away for deportation.
He said the workers would be back in the fields, hauling watermelons, before the INS agents got back to town.
I thought of that story, people eager to work hard, long, thankless jobs for low pay, while reading about what’s happening in Georgia:
After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.
It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
The entire AJC story is a good read. Closer to home, we’ll soon see something similar.
The law requires proof of legal residence on the job, at school and when obtaining state benefits.
It also allows police to arrest anyone on reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally, requires courts to void contracts involving undocumented immigrants and requires employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check applicants’ legal status.
[…]
Alabama’s new law could have unintended consequences and be costly to enforce, said Gary Palmer, president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative group that generally favors illegal immigration reform.
Some aspects such as the E-Verify requirement, are good, he said. But “it will be interesting to see” if native Alabamians will flock to lower-wage jobs now filled by immigrants, he said.
There are no easy answers.
I’ve read three stories on this today, though, and found 450+ comments between them. Some of them, surprisingly, have been worth reading.
So we’re making dinner tonight, where it has become my permanent job to remove the silk from fresh corn. We’d picked up a few ears from the farmers’ market last week and there was a corn earworm larvae in one of them. That didn’t go over well.
So we threw some of the corn out, as it had been damaged. Presumably the farmers we bought from had a bad streak of luck with moths or pesticides. Maybe they should do a lot of trap cropping.
Doesn’t really matter, The Yankee said, she wouldn’t buy corn from them anymore. Two ears did make it on the grill, and when we ate it with dinner she pronounced it the best corn she’d ever had. It was good stuff. Went well with the burgers, too.
But, still, I think she’ll buy from someone else at the farmers’ market tomorrow.
