We're heading back out on the road again tomorrow morning! We were supposed to leave today, but we got delayed by my bike order by a day. Apparently the shippers in Denver were not ready for a half foot of snow at the end of April for some reason, and the shipment got delayed by a day. In any case, we're all packed up now, with a new bike rack and two shiny new (well, new to us anyways) bikes ready to roll. You can see a map of our epic route below. If we're not back in Kansas by Memorial Day, call search and rescue.
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4/26/2013
4/24/2013
Moldy Cheese and Brewing Without Failures
It's been a while since I've updated you all on my DIY food and beverage pursuits. Mostly because I haven't really done much. It's hard to make cheese out of the back of your car in the Everglades. Nonetheless, there is still news!
In other news, I discovered that I did not, in fact, overcarbonate all of the homebrews I brought out here. Many of you who have come out to visit have no doubt noticed the ridiculous carbonation of my homebrews. Now I just assumed that I had failed to properly calculate my priming sugar, or I hadn't allowed the yeast enough time to fully attenuate, or I had committed some other mistake and that my lack of brewing skills were no doubt at work. Regardless of this, I took a case of my brews with us on our road trip so we could save some money on liquor store purchases. As I discovered, the difference between 9000 feet elevation and 0 feet elevation at the seashore on the carbonation of a beer is pretty monumental. The beers that sometimes nearly exploded and spewed out foam upon opening at 9000'--they poured perfectly at sea level.
Also in brewing news, my Mom (thanks Mom!) sent me some old brewing books in the mail, which she, her sister, and mom had given my Grandpa for Father's Day in 1972. Never fear, this book was written in Britain. (As we all know, homebrewing was still illegal in the US until 1978 (thanks Jimmy!).) I'm hoping that it will live up to it's name, and allow me to brew beer "Without Failures." What I've read of it so far seems pretty advanced for it's day, considering it actually contains recipes with malt and hops--ingredients which were hard to impossible for a non-commercial brewery to get a hold of in 1972. I believe most home "beer" brewers of that day were making the equivalent of prison-brew: lots of sugar, some baker's yeast, and maybe some hops if you could convince some local brewery or farmer to give you some.
However, I don't know that I will necessarily be reproducing any of the recipes. Unless some of the ingredients specified have drastically changed in nature (which is actually pretty likely), then I have a feeling many of these brews might taste downright terrible. But hey, for 1972, they were probably about the best thing going. It just makes me more thankful than ever for Charlie Papazian.
First, I would like to all inform you of the untimely demise of my colby cheese wheel. Since I wasn't able to coddle it while we were gone for a month to the tropics (i.e., turn the wheel over every couple days to keep airflow over all parts of it), it decided that it wasn't getting enough attention from me and turned to it's second love: mold. However, the best part about hard cheese, is that since it is non-porous (unlike bread), the mold can't actually penetrate the cheese very far. So you can just cut the mold off and eat the rest. I actually managed to salvage about half of the block after some diligent whittling. I then gave it a little brine bath in case any of that mold had an idea to start regrowing. I can report that the cheese actually tastes rather delicious. It has the best texture of any of my cheeses to date as well.
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| How long has this been goin' on? |
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| Ah. Much better. |
In other news, I discovered that I did not, in fact, overcarbonate all of the homebrews I brought out here. Many of you who have come out to visit have no doubt noticed the ridiculous carbonation of my homebrews. Now I just assumed that I had failed to properly calculate my priming sugar, or I hadn't allowed the yeast enough time to fully attenuate, or I had committed some other mistake and that my lack of brewing skills were no doubt at work. Regardless of this, I took a case of my brews with us on our road trip so we could save some money on liquor store purchases. As I discovered, the difference between 9000 feet elevation and 0 feet elevation at the seashore on the carbonation of a beer is pretty monumental. The beers that sometimes nearly exploded and spewed out foam upon opening at 9000'--they poured perfectly at sea level.
Also in brewing news, my Mom (thanks Mom!) sent me some old brewing books in the mail, which she, her sister, and mom had given my Grandpa for Father's Day in 1972. Never fear, this book was written in Britain. (As we all know, homebrewing was still illegal in the US until 1978 (thanks Jimmy!).) I'm hoping that it will live up to it's name, and allow me to brew beer "Without Failures." What I've read of it so far seems pretty advanced for it's day, considering it actually contains recipes with malt and hops--ingredients which were hard to impossible for a non-commercial brewery to get a hold of in 1972. I believe most home "beer" brewers of that day were making the equivalent of prison-brew: lots of sugar, some baker's yeast, and maybe some hops if you could convince some local brewery or farmer to give you some.
However, I don't know that I will necessarily be reproducing any of the recipes. Unless some of the ingredients specified have drastically changed in nature (which is actually pretty likely), then I have a feeling many of these brews might taste downright terrible. But hey, for 1972, they were probably about the best thing going. It just makes me more thankful than ever for Charlie Papazian.
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| I wonder if WITHOUT FAILURES is a guaranteed or money back kind of a statement. |
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| Holy Black Patent, Batman! The most black patent malt I have ever put in a recipe was probably about 6 oz. for a 5 gallon batch. Pretty sure 2 lb. would just destroy your mouth with it's bitterness. Super Stout, it is. |
4/23/2013
Spring at 9000 Feet
Spring at 9000 feet: frost covered trees, snow, waking up to 15° F outside and 59° F temperature inside. Should have turned up the heat last night. Had to go with a morning fire today. Hopefully we won't be seeing this weather on our upcoming camping trip... Punxsutawney Phil, you have failed me.
4/20/2013
Right on Track
Now that we're finally back in front of a normal computer, we can actually start uploading all of our stuff from the last month! As much as people would have you believe that you can do everything on a smartphone--you can't. At least not without a lot of frustration and half-baked posts. I guess in 2 or 3 more years you might be able to do it all with a tablet or smartphone, but right now this 5 year old computer with Windows XP is easier to use than a brand new tablet. Anyway, now that my rant is done, on to the actual post.
We wanted to upload the better GPS tracks that we got on the trip. I tried to get lots of our hikes and boating excursions, but it is still kind of a pain to carry around the GPS tracker (former smartphone), especially when on the beach and in the water. But at least I got a few tracks down. So here they are. Just a tip, you can see the tracks a lot better if you click the link in yellow with the track name just above each map. It will take you to the Breadcrumbs website, which is easier to navigate around each track. Clicking the Satellite button on the map also gives you a much better idea of where we were, especially in Exuma.
We wanted to upload the better GPS tracks that we got on the trip. I tried to get lots of our hikes and boating excursions, but it is still kind of a pain to carry around the GPS tracker (former smartphone), especially when on the beach and in the water. But at least I got a few tracks down. So here they are. Just a tip, you can see the tracks a lot better if you click the link in yellow with the track name just above each map. It will take you to the Breadcrumbs website, which is easier to navigate around each track. Clicking the Satellite button on the map also gives you a much better idea of where we were, especially in Exuma.
Cruising the Cays
These are by far the coolest tracks, taken on the boat cruising around the harbor between Exuma and Stocking Island and to all the various beaches, bars, and reefs we stopped off at.Wandering South Beach
Just a couple of tracks of us walking around South Beach. Its a pretty great place to wander.Long Walks on the Beach
I wonder if those people who say they like "long walks on the beach" ever really went on one? Its a lot of damned work to walk in sand. Well, we did it anyway in Panama City Beach, and it was pretty awesome regardless.Never Ending Everglades
We only really got to travel around the Everglades for one day, but we walked most of the easily accessible trails that were off of the main road.4/17/2013
Everglades Excitement
Finally back in Kansas! We've got all of our laundry done and the car cleaned out and repacked, so now its time to try to sort through all these pictures and try to remember what we've been doing the last couple of weeks. The Everglades was our first stop off after Exuma as we were killing time before our cruise. (I have to preface this story with the fact t
hat there is a federal penitentiary a few miles from the entrance to the National Park. This detail will be important later on.) We arrived in the sweltering heat in the afternoon sun and picked a spot in the shade. It wasn't hard since the campground was nearly empty. We were to find out why shortly. Our first afternoon consisted mainly of repacking and repacking again, trying to manage the transition from hotel to camping to cruise ship. I'm actually pretty impressed that we fit all the crap in our car to facilitate all these different modes of travel.
We went to sleep covered in bug spray and sweaty. The next morning we woke up to 80° F and super humidity. Quite a shock from the cool and breezy Exuma. We did the whole park tour that day and were amazed to see dozens of alligators and hundreds of storks, cranes, songbirds, and vultures. We also cruised around most of the shorter nature trails that winds through most of the different kinds of landscapes.
The place is truly unique and worthy of the protections afforded it by the national parks designation. I've never experienced such a diverse mix of flora and fauna before. The area is an amazing mix of seemingly endless grasslands and wetlands dotted with hardwood hammocks, neighboring pine and subtropical forests. Grasslands transition into hardwood hammocks or wetlands over just a few feet due to just inches of elevation change. As a result, the diversity of animals is also amazing for an area in the US. I really never imagined there was a place like this in America. This country never ceases to amaze me with its natural wonders.
It was our second night that was the real exciting part of our trip, despite how exciting it was to see the gators. The campsite had pretty well cleared out, most likely due to the tornado and severe thunderstorm watches in effect. Since we had nowhere to clear out to, we didn't have much of a choice but to ride it out. So we went to sleep expecting some serious storms for the night. What we didn't expect to wake up to was a helicopter circling our campsite a hundred feet off the ground with its spotlight shining down on us.
Now, I have seen enough episodes of Cops to know what is going down when a chopper is circling with its spotlight on. So we made a half naked dash to the car so that we could beat a quick get away when the escaped convict from the penitentiary came running through our camp to hijack our car.
From our car, we watched in amazement as the helicopter circled three or four times, and then landed about 100 yards from our tent. We drove over to see if we could figure out what was going on, and a man came running at our car with a flashlight on us. Turns out, it wasn't a Federal Marshal, but instead an EMT with LifeFlight. Apparently one of the other couple of campers had called 911. We never found out what happened, but their campsite was eerily abandoned the next morning as we drove out.
We finally got to sleep by the time the storm of the century rolled through our camp. I would guess that it was some of the heaviest rainfall that I have camped through, and lasted for several hours. Most of the lightning was a mile or so away from our camp, but several strikes were within a few hundred yards. Our new REI tent handled it all like a champ though, and we only got slightly damp on the ends of our sleeping bags. We rolled all of our wet gear up the next morning to truck it off to our hotel for the night to dry.
I don't think the Residence Inn ever imagined someone would use their room to dry off tents and tarps, air out sleeping bags, and do laundry in their sink. It worked out fantastically though, and we didn't have to let any wet gear sit in our car in the south Florida sun for a week. Overall, everything worked out better than I could have imagined and was glad we got this little bonus trip waiting for our cruise.
