Tag Archives: awesome

Crater Lake

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Location: Abbey’s Pizza, Bend, Oregon
Miles: 2763.6

The call of the road was less urgent this morning, and I got a good start on the day by going in to Central Weed for breakfast. I missed out by jumping on the first hotel I saw last night. The one I stayed in was nice enough, but in Central Weed there were a couple that advertised much better rates. More important, Central Weed even has a little downtown area with a couple of promising-looking bars. Alas, I will never have a chance to learn the charms that lie behind the door of Papa’s. It didn’t really look like my kind of breakfast place. I was scouting around for a good place for breakfast when someone in a moose costume directed me to a place called the Hungry Moose (or something like that). It looked OK so I went for it. If some poor bastard or bastardette is going to stand around in a moose costume they may as well get something for it. While I secured my belongings several passing cars honked at the moose. Not an annoying honk, just the social beep-beep hello-neighbor sort of honk. I imagine in a town that size everyone knows who’s in there.

After eating more than I should have at the all-you-can-eat buffet, I wedged myself into the Miata and pointed its nose up Highway 97. With Shasta on my right, shining white against an azure sky, a few skimpy clouds clinging to it’s peak, I started a slow climb up into the something-or-other Bluff Valley. The road was already shimmering with heat mirages. I wondered: How many times would I have to drive on that road before I stopped noticing that incredible volcano? Did the truckers I met coming the other way still see it? Did it still take their breath away?

To my right in the distance was another snow-capped peak poking up behind the nearer mountains. I guessed that it was Mt. Ranier, a long way away. That’s the Cascades in a nutshell, beautiful strings of mountains punctuated by awe-inducing cinder cones, improbably stark and jagged against the sky, rivaled only by each other.

crater lake One of the most impressive of these peaks would have been Mount Mazama. The jagged remains are impressive enough, but the top of the mountain is gone. In its place is a ring of peaks and a steep-walled crater. The mountain went from being one of the tallest peaks in the world to it’s current state in a single event.

Humans witnessed this transformation. We have seen cities destroyed in our lifetime. We have seen genocide. We have not seen a mountain cease to be. One of Mazama’s sisters, St. Helen, blew a side of her face off, but that’s simply nothing compared to this. Mazma ceased to be. Perhaps all the power of man combined could rival that, but I doubt it.

While it must have been shit-your-pants unpleasant to be around the day the mountain exploded, and there were people around then, it’s certainly a great place to be now. As I climbed the slope on the south side of the mountain the snow at the sides of the road got deeper and deeper. I was driving next to a deep gorge, and there were some tantalizing side roads that probably led to some nice views, but they were blocked by snow. Only the main road had been cleared.

At the entry gate where I paid my fee I was greeted by a very friendly ranger, who warned me in advance that most of the road around the rim was still closed. When does it usually open? I didn’t ask. No matter. I had been planning to go out the north gate, which was closed, but I’m nothing if not adaptable. I paid my ten bucks and up I went.

At the top it was crowded, possibly because so much of the park was still inaccessible by car. All the visitors were crammed into a small space. I spotted some hikers as well, and even considered going on a ramble myself, but I just wasn’t equipped for it. Hiking up there requires a lot of preparation, since the weather can go from beautiful to deadly very quickly.

I found a spot for the car, secured all my crap, and climbed the small snowy bank in front of me. Judging by the number of footprints in the snow even that part of the park had not been open long. I scrambled up the few feet to the top of the embankment and there it was. For a few minutes I forgot about the camera, stopped the voices in my head, and just looked.

Then I took pictures. You can look at those. Like Yosemite, Crater Lake really is what it’s cracked up to be.

Thanks!

Eggs Over Easy

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Note to visitors: I am passionate about my eggs. It’s funny how many people wind up here from searches in Google and Yahoo, looking for the Answer. Read on; the key to the perfect over-easy egg is only paragraphs away. This episode was written to entertain, but clearly there is a pent-up need in the world for advice on getting those eggs just right, and by gum I’m happy to give my opinion about anything. For that reason I have now written another episode: Eggs Over Easy – The Definitive Step-By-Step Guide. I would recommend you read here first, then go over to the step-by-step page. If you find this information helpful or entertaining, please leave a comment; I’d love to hear from you. Then you can invite me over for breakfast. Mmmmmm… breakfast.

I’m not a gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, nor does Iron Chef have to worry about being unseated by me. But I do like my eggs. Thus it is not an unusual morning when I venture out to find someone to cook some for me. Now that I no longer have a kitchen, this happens with even greater regularity. Alas, my fried chicken ova* are almost never cooked right. Oh, I eat them, and I still enjoy them, but there’s that little part of me that says, “doesn’t anyone know how to cook an egg anymore?”

I’m here to put things right. You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.

There are four generally recognized ways to fry an egg:
Sunny-Side Up: The egg is never flipped. The yolk is a bright yellow hemisphere sitting in the middle of the pristine white. The yolk is liquid, and some of the white around the yolk may have a jelly-like consistency.
Over Easy: The egg is flipped briefly. The yolk does not stand out as strikingly, but is still liquid. The white is no longer liquid.
Over Meduim: The white is cooked to a firmer texture, and the yolk is solid around the edges, and oozy in the middle.
Over Hard: The white is firm, the yolk is a lighter color and flakey.

Then there are those who intentionally break the yolk before the flip. We won’t talk about those people here.

Each degree of cooking is associated with a preferred texture for the white and for the yolk. Which brings me to my point. People who order their eggs over easy don’t want runny whites. If they wanted that, they would order sunny-side up. Runny yolk but solid white is why over easy was invented in the first place. It is by far the trickiest egg-frying style – it requires touch and artistry to cook one part of the egg without cooking the other. But it seems most places I go don’t even make the effort to try.

When in egg-cooking school, students must be reminded with great clarity and consistency: Don’t flip the eggs too soon. If one waits until the egg is ready to serve sunny-side, then flips it for just a few moments to sear the last of the white, it comes out perfect every time. Alas, impatient cooks do not wait for that perfect moment. They flip the egg prematurely and there’s no way that much white is going to get cooked post-flip without adversely affecting the yolk. The time to get most of the white firmed up is while the white is acting as an insulating layer between the pan and the yolk.

I have considered explaining to my waiter exactly how I want my eggs. I thought of saying “Sunny-Side Over” to convey my meaning, but I have never tried. Even if the waiter nodded and took notes, by the time it reached the cook I would probably end up with Sunny Side Rubber, so afraid would he be to flip the eggs too soon. That or it would just piss him off. No, we can but hope that future generations will take this to heart, and look with pride at the eggs sitting on the plate, seemingly in defiance of thermodynamics, the yolks jiggling, the whites not.

So mamas, tell your children, when you first hand them the spatula and the carton of eggs, as they stare wide-eyed at the pan in front of them, butter or bacon drippings faintly sizzling in the shimmering heat, that they must be patient. They must wait for the right moment to flip.

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* this used to say “fried chicken embryos”, but I got tired of people unfamiliar with the Coneheads explaining Greek to me.

2

Thanks!

Lunch

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Location: Rosa’s Roticeria, Santa Cruz
Miles: 734.1

Thanks for the suggestion, Lee and John!

Thanks!

La Dolce Vida

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Right now I am sitting in my back yard in a lounge chair, one dog in my lap, the other sitting in the sun nearby, on a cloudless sunny day in late October. The wireless network has a good signal out here, and I have been working on my word processor and exchanging emails all morning. The screen is a little dimmer than I would like, and the fridge is a long way away, but those are quibbles.

This is really, really nice.

Addendum 4/10/04:
To all you people who got here because of the inexplicably high position Google gives this rather mundane blog entry when one searches for “la dolce vida”, welcome! Try the main page, and see what’s going on with my homeless tour, or put in your $0.02 on one of my Get-Poor-Quick Schemes. Perhaps you have a crackpot idea of your own to share. What fun!

Thanks!