Cool Clear Water

The lyrics of that old cowboy song came to mind today as I finished paying the plumber who installed our new water heater. It was the second major expenditure involving water treatment for my household in the last two weeks. The first was even more costly, the installation of a water softener to remove the rocks and rust from our well water. The combined cost of the two treatment systems totaled about the same amount as did the entire plumbing system installed in our then-new house nearly 11 years ago. My, how times have changed.

                   

I don’t want to be seen as complaining about our water even though I am. I am fortunate to live in an area where the water table is only a few feet deep, 12 to be exact, according to the well driller who installed our well. Sadly, he didn’t stop drilling at that depth. He mumbled something about water quality and Health Department regulations and happily continued drilling for another three days until he had passed through two layers of clay and reached the deepest part of my wallet. I well remember that day when he proudly announced that my well was complete and folded up his drilling rig as I shook out the few remaining bills in my wallet.

 

I have since learned that deep wells like mine that pull water from the bedrock under our sandy soil are more likely to contain dissolved rocks and soluble iron than shallow wells. “Hard water,” the man who tested our water said before he showed me the actual test data. The chart showed he was wrong, it was actually listed as ‘extremely hard’. I soon came to learn that the difference between hard and extremely hard was several hundred dollars in treatment costs. As I contemplated the unexpected thrust into my budget, I looked longingly at my pond and swamp that contains only soft water, flowing in great quantities into my soil and into the river for the enjoyment of fish, muskrats, beaver, and, of course, those several million bugs. Why is it that the Health Dept. says the bugs get better water than me?

 

The Health Dept. had told me earlier that I was required to plug my old shallow well that had furnished water for my cottage before the new well. “Its for safety,” they said, as they handed over the list of regulations that forbade a shallow well and the required plugging of same. I learned the rest of the story sometime later when I attended a conference that included a presentation by a water quality expert. She explained that the regulation about plugging old wells stems from the important requirement that our local aquifers remain clean and free of pollutants. Of course, I thought. Then she told the rest of the story; over time, officals have learned that many homeowners use abandoned well holes as their private disposal site for any oils or chemicals they no longer want around their homes, thus potenially polluting underground water sources for miles around the offender. Yikes! No wonder we need regulations.

 

Now I have softened water and a smoothly functioning water heater that doesn’t go HURRRMPPP in the night, as it complains about build-up of lime on its walls and threatens to explode. Now I have cool, clear water that is gently warmed by our new heater that may work at least as long as the last one without going bump in the night.

 

Of course, not everything is rosy. The new softened water doesn’t taste as good as my old well water, nor do cooked foods seem the same. Even our morning coffee seems rather blasé compared to the old. Taking a shower is a more of a challenge as everything seems slippery. These differences are all temporary according to the softener salesman who said all these things will pass over time and we’ll end up liking water without rocks in it better than the old stuff. Besides, it seems to me it is the right of every God-fearing American to have a cocktail in the evening without ‘floaties’ swimming in the drink like we used to get from our well water ice cubes.

 

I hope he is right. He was a good salesman and a fine American. In fact, as he left our house with our check in hand  I heard him singing:

 

“Keep a-movin' Dan,
don't you listen to him Dan,
He's a devil not a man
and he spreads the burning sand with water,
Dan can you see that big, green tree
where the water's running free
and it's waiting there for you and me,
water, cool, clear, water”

A Public Service Blog

This blog is offered as a public service for men who are not skilled in the kitchen. You need to read this if you are one of those men who, like me, don’t know the difference between ‘sauté’ and ‘watch out, I think it’s gonna blow.” I believe I am qualified to offer this advice since I just survived three days of “batching it” with no one to cook and serve my meals EXCEPT ME. The cause of my deprivation was that the Mrs. spent three days away from home, provoking my enforced servitude in fending for myself. Fortunately, she had left a fridge full of leftovers and fixin’s for sandwiches so that the first two days went by in a flash and I was neither hungry nor desperate enough to actually cook something. By day three, the supply of left-overs had become dangerously diminished. At dinner-time, it was clear that if I was to survive one more day I would need to cook something.

I began my kitchen adventure in the only logical fashion for a man of my caliber in the kitchen: I poured myself a drink. Things went downhill from there. As the effects of the drink began to wear off, I donned an apron and began my search for something edible in our kitchen. After consulting the pantry unsuccessfully, I rummaged around in our freezer and, wonder of wonders, found dinner. As I gingerly fondled the bright orange package, a dim recollection of instructions passed thru my mind: “and there is a frozen dinner in the freezer that you can heat for your dinner” seemed to ring a bell. I greedily took out the package and looked at the backside of the gaily-decorated ‘Gourmet Blend’ of frozen food. It should have been a warning sign.

My experience had been that instructions on the back of a package are a warning of bad things to come. And now, here is the pivotal advice to men: Don’t believe what is written on the back of frozen food packages.

I’ll illustrate this with the continuation of my story. Unlike my normal practice, I decided to read the instructions on my gourmet chicken dinner package in their entirety, including the bold type at the end, READY TO EAT IN 11 MINUTES.

“Ah-ha, a gourmet chicken and rice dinner ready in eleven minutes. And it has vegetables in the rice with a gourmet sauce. What could be better.”

I was so pleased with my good fortune in finding the frozen dinner that I decided to have another glass of wine. Thus emboldened, I began to cook by following the instructions. The first step was easy enough, “Thaw contents in hot water. Do not microwave.”

I put hot water in a bowl and placed the individual frozen food packages containing the chicken, the rice and sauce into the hot water. The small and pliable package containing the chicken floated in the water but the big package of rice went “plop” into the bowl like a giant ice cube. The package containing the brown sauce was also hard enough to be mistaken for a frozen turd. Undeterred, I tossed it into the bowl of water and went on to step two, “Saute chicken from pouch in a preheated skillet with one tablespoon oil on med-high heat.”

Ever mindful of the written instructions and the “READY TO EAT IN ELEVEN MINUTES,” I decided to begin my saute (ing?). I cut open the chicken package and dumped the contents into the hot pan. Whoosh! The hot skillet with its big tablespoon of oil just beginning to sizzle didn’t seem to appreciate the sudden infusion of cold water that was included in the bag of chicken. As the chicken fell into the pan, the hot oil and boiling water came jumping out, providing a continuous mist of hot oil on the surface of the stove and the floor. Whoa, this wasn’t quite what I had bargained on. I almost spilled my wine as I rushed to lift the pan from the stove hoping to prevent my chicken from hopping out of the pan along with the popping oil. For my efforts, I was rewarded with an oil-coated shirtsleeve and little drops of oil floating in my wine.

After the pan cooled, I decided that someone had made a small error with the instructions. I turned the heat down until the violence of the popping oil subsided enough so that the oil only had enough energy to jump to the stove, but not to reach the floor or my shirtsleeve. Now, I reasoned, I’ll probably fail to have dinner READY IN ELEVEN MINUTES, but better to be safe in the matter of hot oil.

I considered step three, “add the rice and vegetables to the pan and cover.” I lifted the rice package from the water. Through the clear plastic I could see it was still a large lump of frozen rice with an occasional green bean sticking out like a stick in a snowball. “Ummmm. This requires more drastic action than floating in a bowl of water drawn from the tap. I filled the tea kettle and put it on to boil. In eleven minutes the tea kettle was shesssssshing with steam. I poured the boiling water on the frozen ball of rice and the brown turd forgetting for a moment the hazardous nature of molten plastic in one’s diet. There. The turd seemed to move in the plastic bag. All the boiling water was gone so I refilled the tea kettle and set it back on the stove to boil more water.

It occurred to me that my chicken had been simmering for more than 20 minutes what with the hot oil clean-up and tea kettle business so I decided to complete step two even though the rice was now a small snowball with bits of green and yellow chunks moving about freely in the bag. I dumped the whole mess in the pan, covered it with a lid that I had found earlier and concentrated on melting the turd.   

After another eleven minutes, the turd melted. With great ceremony, I cut the bag and added the brown mass to the skittle. The chicken had dried to a little white strings bobbing about in the overwhelming glob of white rice dotted with green beans, pale orange carrots and little yellow chunks that I later learned were supposed to be egg bits.

Step 4, “ cook on medium low for 5-7 minutes and stir.”  I stirred and then tasted. The rice was still frozen. The last line of the instructions had an ominous note, “Product must be cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F, determined by using a food thermometer.” I quickly decided that at this stage of my life I wasn’t going to stoop to the use of a ‘food thermometer’ when I had a particularly serviceable tongue. Besides, I didn’t know if we owned such a device nor where one might be located in our kitchen that is full of mysterious tools. I replaced the cover and turned up the heat, hoping to someday melt all the rice.

Some hours later I sat down to my very own rice and chicken dinner. It wasn’t too bad, and the preparation was OK, although I thought the cooking instructions needed work, especially the part about READY TO EAT IN ELEVEN MINUTES.

 

So men, here is the advice that should be posted somewhere in your man-cave: if you find yourself ‘batching it’ and eating becomes essential, I suggest going to the nearest fast-food restaurant and never, ever believe what is written on the backside of food packages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep the Home Fires Burning

 

I like burning wood. It seems there is nothing better than sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s evening, cocktail in hand, warm apple pie in the oven and a good book nearby. (You know I’m dreaming, right?) The reality is more about lugging in firewood, shoveling out ashes, cleaning the chimney, and grumbling when a stove full of firewood won’t ignite even after burning a weeks’ supply of kindling.

None of that is new to me since I’ve had two wood-burning stoves and one fireplace in the three homes that I have owned. My latest wood-burner is the best as it is most attractive, least polluting, and yields lots of heat at a reasonable cost for firewood. It was the idea of reducing heating costs that convinced me to make our current house design accomodate a centrally located, freestanding wood burner. I never considered that cutting, spitting, stacking and carrying firewood to the burner would be a dirty job and a lot of work. I only thought about the savings in expensive propane.

Propane, you may know, is the fuel of choice for those of us who live in areas that are remote from natural gas facilities or natural gas pipelines. Despite its relatively high cost, it offers the convenience of providing clean energy that can easily be piped to the basement, kitchen, or wherever a small pipe can be routed to a burner. Since using a fair share of the gas, I have learned more about why it is so expensive; it is because a greedy group of speculators determine propane price by regularly wagering on how much they can get away with charging for future supplies. That’s not the answer you’ll get if you ask an official in the industry, however. They blame propane price increases on the price of other fuels, assuming that you’ll believe energy users will readily switch from one fuel to another whenever the price becomes attractive. Ha – would that it were so easy!

Anyway, that brings me to this summer when I looked over my woodpile and determined that my supply of firewood would be inadequate for the expected cold.

“Time for another load,” I said as I dialed the local purveyor who augments his income from the Road Commission by delivering firewood in a huge truck that has someone else’s name on it.

“Sure,” he said, “although there has been a small increase in price caused by the rising cost of propane.”

I was unable to answer for a moment until I finally mumbled something about just bringing me my (%&--/+*ed) load of firewood.

So, here I am, in front of my load of firewood, faced with the task of cutting, splitting and then stacking 10 cords of oak before it dries out so thoroughly that splitting it becomes more of a nightmare than it already is. It would have been much easier to split if I had ordered the wood just before winter and allowed the below-freezing temperatures to freeze and expand the moisture in the wood making it much easier to split. But no, I had to wait until my wood supply was so low that more firewood was needed for THIS WINTER, making certain that hot weather splitting is required, a more daunting task.

I began working on my firewood a couple weeks ago. After the first time, I had a sore back, dirty clothes and sawdust in my boots that somehow ended up on my bathroom floor. After several days to recover, I took a second lick at the woodpile that seemed exactly the same size as before my first encounter with the dastardly load. The second work period lasted only about an hour before I conceded defeat and went inside. This time, having learned about the sawdust in the boots, I stood in front of the air compressor to blow off dust before going inside to shower. It helped. There was so little sawdust in the bathroom this time that I was able to hide most under the rug.

I am now on the fourth work session and the woodpile has seemed to grow in size instead of diminish. Since I have been spending all that time bent over a chain saw and lifting a splitting maul, I have had more time to think about important things. For one thing, I have calculated that burning firewood really does save lots of money if you are willing to work for somewhere around 17¢ per hour. I have also learned that it is impossible to avoid bringing sawdust into the house, that a sore back is inevitable, and that you really do get warm twice when using firewood. Ain’t it grand!

 

*By the way, Keep the Home Fires Burning, was a patriotic song written in Great Britain on the eve of World War I to encourage young men to join the war effort. I understand that most men responded to the ditty and enlisted for the war in order to avoid the work of getting their woodpiles cut and split for winter. 

The Race

People in the north woods where I live seem to do silly things more often than other folks. Our celebrated annual canoe race comes to mind since it just occurred and I am a big fan. Each year on the last weekend in July, a bunch of endurance athletes with weak minds gather in Grayling, Michigan at 9:00 PM and plop their canoes in the main branch of the Au Sable River for a nighttime race that lasts more than 15 hours for most competitors.

 

    ‘Plop’ is probably the wrong word. The first hint that our canoe racers have weak minds is demonstrated at the beginning of the race. At 900 PM, just as the sun is fading in the west, some fool shoots off a cannon and 150 paddlers pick up their canoes and begin running toward the river, a block or two distant. As the surging mass of paddlers with shouldered boats reach the river, pandemonium erupts when 75 canoes are thrown into a small stream and 150 racers, each determined to be first, try to climb into their slender crafts that are being carried forward on the current. Of course, some don’t make it on the first try and half a dozen boats will upset with the unlucky ones taking an early bath. It doesn’t faze them. They turn their boats upright, drain the water, and again try climbing in while those who were lucky enough to avoid the plunge take the lead in the beginning of the long race.

 

 Start of the 2013 Au Sable River Marathon

 

    The race is dubbed a marathon because it is so long. The paddlers squeeze themselves into their slender boats and begin paddling a route that takes them from Grayling, Michigan in the center of the state to Oscoda on the east coast where the river empties into Lake Huron. They say the race is 120 miles long, although no one knows for sure since there is no way to accurately measure the distance of a river that contains five large ponds and winds around scores of islands, not to mention the several hundred bends that the river takes on its generally easterly flow. The racers paddle 15 to 20 hours to reach the finish line with the fastest boats arriving around noon on Sunday morning. The race ends at 4:00 PM on Sunday when everyone is forced to stop wherever they happen to be on the race course when race officials pick up the sick and hurt who remain somewhere on the backwaters, dutifully paddling toward the finish line.

 

    Persistence, determination and a wanton disregard for pain are hallmarks for paddlers who compete and finish this race. (Most first-time racers are unable to finish). In my view, it takes an extraordinary mindset to spend a year of hard training, thousands of dollars for a racing canoe, (one that is so unstable that normal people refuse to ride in one), in order to spend a long, cold night in the dark paddling 60 stokes a minute. The paddlers in the winning boat receive the first place prize of $5,000 and the total of all prizes is $50,000 for the 150 racers making this race the richest canoe race in North America. But, the draw is not the money. The allure of this race, like others in Canada and the U.S. is the challenge of long distance paddling, a sport that began during the times when canoes were the principal means of transportation for Native Americans in the North Woods.

Carbon Fiber Racing Canoe with Headlight

 

      As the race proceeds, boats begin to space out along the course. The result is that many paddling teams spend most of the race alone, not seeing who is ahead nor who is behind. The solitude, darkness and required relentless pace take their toll on the racers but add mystique to the race for spectators. Spectators stand on a bridge in the dark with a spotlight focusing its garish beam on rippling river while thousands of dark-colored insects intersect the light’s beam. Suddenly, there is a flash of color as a dark canoe with two sweating bodies appears from the mist, each person paddling as if chased by wild Indians. They are gone in an instant and you wait for the next to appear in another flash so you can cheer them on and encourage their forbearance. It is an experience not soon forgotten.

     The kind of effort needed for this race requires shore support: paddlers eat and drink many times during the race, being handed food and drink by their ‘feeders’ who stand in knee deep water to hand supplies to them as they pass by. The best paddlers don’t stop paddling to eat or drink; they paddle with one hand while inhaling a sandwich and energy drink. Most drink gallons of liquid during the race and none stop to expel any. Losing a dozen pounds or more during the race is common and the first aid tent at the end of the race is always busy treating cases of dehydration and exhaustion.

Paddlers are Introduced During Pre-race Ceremony

 

The race is also hard on spectators. Marjorie and I arrive at the start several hours in advance to claim a seat on the riverbank. After the two-minute pandemonium of a start, the racers disappear around the first bend of the river. Spectators who wish to follow the race must now run to their vehicles and endure a traffic jam as they travel to the first of several bridges that cross the river. Since the race takes all night, spectators must travel from bridge to bridge for a fleeting glimpse of the boats as they pass under the concrete structure of a bridge and then disappear into the night. The boats don’t reappear in daylight until the following morning on the first of the five large ponds where the rising sun illuminates the sparkling perspiration on the paddler’s faces. They reach the first of five portages. Rules forbid any help from their support team; paddlers lift their boats from the water and force their cramped muscles to climb over the dam to the outflowing river, resetting the boats to begin paddling again. Those who can go no farther generally quit at one of the portages and recess to the waiting support team members.

 

     The race is a cruel event: exhilarating for the winners but exhausting for all and crushing for those who fail to complete the course in the required time. Yet the race goes on year after year. Being weak-minded helps participants forget the hardships of the race and so most racers sign up year after year for the competition. It is a hard event for the spectators as well with long periods of nighttime cold interrupted by short periods of excitement with depressingly brief glimpses of racers as they pass in the night - sort of like life, a bust for a some but a real treat for those of us simple-minded folk who forget the hard parts.

     

For more photos and video, see the web page http://www.ausablecanoemarathon.org/

 





 

 

A National Convention for Square Dancing?

 

We just spent a long weekend (Wednesday thru Sunday) on a trip to Oklahoma City for the 2013 National Square Dance Convention. The trip was an adventure: one flight three hours late, one flight missed and another cancelled provoked an unexpected overnight stay in Chicago. Arriving a day late, the adventure continued when we stepped off the airplane in Oklahoma City and sucked in 102 °F air. We put our Michigan sweaters away and bought another tube of deodorant.

Even after that adventuresome beginning, we found both Oklahoma City and the 2013 Convention a hoot. The Square Dance Convention was held in the city’s Cox Convention Center which is adjacent to Bricktown – an updated old warehouse district that had gone to ruin. The old warehouses have been converted into trendy nightspots with an array of eating and drinking establishments including the only quadricycle bar I’ve ever seen. The wheeled bar sat outside its parent tavern, apparently for those who got thirsty just thinking about leaving the downtown scene.

The quadricycle bar was a wheeled contraption with two opposing bars and the bartender in between. Patrons sat on bicycle saddles with their feet resting on pedals. After assuring that all had their drinks, the bartender suddenly announced, READY?... PEDAL. The drinkers began madly pedaling away while the bartender manned a steering wheel. The ungainly behemoth of a bar on wheels began slowing moving from the curb as the bartender steered it into a gap in oncoming traffic. It was a noisy undertaking, with the sounds of traffic muted by the hoots  and hollering from the woozy, wobbling drinkers. I was surprised at how long it took us to get to the dance from the tavern.

The dancing was a treat. Imagine an arena, a half dozen large halls and scores of smaller rooms full of gaily dressed dancers. No suits or ties here; boots and bolos, flashy shirts and skirts are the rule with only a few dressed in Sunday-go-to-meetin’ cowboy attire without something shiny. The rooms were awash in moving colors as the dancers constantly sashayed to mostly country music that escaped each room and mingled in the hallways.

Throughout the convention, dancing began each day at 10:00 AM and continued to midnight. The rooms were full of weaving, bobbing bodies as the women whirled and the men bucked to the beat, hats askew, shirtsleeves rolled up and perspiration flowing. Most of the rooms were devoted to square dancing although an impressive number of large rooms housed ballroom dancers, better known in the square dance world as round dancers. Their clothing reflected their dance style, from Latin to formal. One couple performing an elaborate waltz were formally dressed with the gent in tails and white gloves. A few rooms were devoted to contra dancing; that old formal dance where men and women line up to face each other recalling the practice of John Wayne in a cowboy movie dancing in a military uniform.

The arena housed the largest number of square dancers directed by the best callers and headed by a five piece band, The Ghost Riders. Dancing here was conducted in approximate five minute intervals; after each song the caller would retire and they would run in a new one to see if he could do any better. Some of the callers were really good singers. I especially liked the two or three who interrupted their singing with brief outbreaks of yodeling, a literal hoot. Among the most interesting callers were those Japanese who traveled from across the world to perform. An American country song sung with a Japanese accent by a slender Asian wearing a cowboy hat and jeans is something to behold. We enjoyed all the callers and live music and we spent some time watching the several hundred dancers surrounded by those of us watchers forced to the edge of the floor by exhaustion.

Even the chartered bus rides to and from the convention center were amusing. After three days the twice daily trip became so familiar that we concocted names for the bumps and dips in the road. By day three, the entire busload was in unison when flying over a bump. “Wheee,” we called out. We simple-minded folk know how to make a bus ride entertaining.

The dancing, singing, drinking and eating (did I mention bicycling) over three days did take a toll on some of us. I suspect there was a significant national upsurge in sales of Aleve and Pepto Bismal during the event. Although I taped my ankles each morning before the bus ride, I suspect it will be several days before I’m able to venture onto a dance floor again. Yahoooo!

Buzzards in Roscommon

 
At the very edge of our little village, on a slight rise, sits the village water tower. It overlooks a large field, the road, and then a grove of trees on the far side of the road. As befitting today’s technology, the top of the tower is adorned with any number of contrivances said to enable wireless communications. The top of the tower would look ugly and cluttered were it not for the regular visits of our town’s most striking avian guests, a venue of buzzards. [Venue – group of buzzards, as in a herd of cows]. The venue takes full advantage of the top of the tower as they rest on the assorted antenna and no doubt contribute their droppings to the array of electronic signals that are managed by the tower hardware. If you happen to receive an e-mail that seems full of it, my buzzards may be the reason.
 

    The buzzards are more properly known as Turkey Vultures – the most common vulture in North America but not the most beautiful bird you’ve ever seen if you come upon one as he feasts on rotting flesh. Even a close-up doesn’t improve his appearance as you can see,

although his red head (not shown in color here) may add a bit of drama for some bird lovers.

  

    But don’t judge the bird’s appearance up close, reserve judgment until you identify them on the wing. They are among the most beautiful of all birds as they soar overhead. Their graceful flight is almost effortless after they extend their wings and float on rising thermals. You can easily identify a turkey vulture by his graceful swirls in the air and his penchant for frequently tipping his wings in a seemingly drunken fashion to catch more air. Suddenly, sunlight catches his grey underside, turning it silver, and he becomes a flashing beauty, a majestic creature that can defy gravity.

 

 

     For me, the arrival of Turkey Vultures in spring heralds a pleasant escape from the rigors of winter. They appear to grace our countryside alongside the earliest arriving birds – about the same time as red-winged blackbirds and robins make their appearance, generally in mid-April. I’m always so pleased when they arrive I have a small celebration: one that centers on retrieving and then storing my assortment of snow shovels and moving the snowblower to the darkest, most distant corner of the barn in hopes that I won’t notice it for another six months. Of course, my celebration is nothing like that of Cleveland, Ohio where the entire town is invited to Hinckley Metroparks on March 15 to witness the arrival of the first vultures.

 

    The Hinckley Naturalist, a man by the name of Bob Hinkle, is the official buzzard spotter and he sounds the alarm when the first arrivals come to poop from their roosts on the edge of Hinckley Ridge. No one knows for sure why the vultures come to Hinckley, some old timers say they first arrived to feed on a dead Indian squaw who was left hanging on the ridge after being executed for witchcraft. Apparently she was tasty and so the birds kept coming back in hopes of finding more. That sounds fishy to me, although I did read somewhere that dead fish are the favorite foods for vultures.

 
     A typical adult turkey vulture is a big bird, averaging 30 inches in length, with a six-foot wingspread. But here is the kicker – an adult weighs in at only 2.2 pounds. 2.2 pounds! I did a quick calculation; even considering my superior brain mass, if I had the same physiology as a buzzard I should weigh no more than 17 pounds. Whoa! Back to the gym for me.
 
     We have about a dozen vultures that come yearly to the water tower. They leave our village every morning looking for food. They generally soar over open areas, watching for dead animals or other scavengers at work. I have seen them all around the county, several miles from the water tower. Unlike most other birds, in addition to eyesight, Turkey Vultures use their sense of smell to locate dead things. When they are in range of something dead, they fly low to the ground to pick up the scent of mercaptan, a gas produced by the beginnings of decay. As result of their superior ability in smelling, they can find dead animals below a forest canopy.
 
    But here is the best part; our buzzards return to the antennas on the top of water tower every evening to roost and talk over the day’s events. I like to think they are having cocktails before bedtime while they regale each other with stories about the big dead fish they found or the worst smelling skunk they managed to eat along the roadside. As the sun begins to set and shadows grow long, one by one, each of the big birds gently lifts himself from the tower with wings extended and circles a time or two to gain altitude showing off his beautiful underside. He then floats over the field, over the road and on toward the distant trees to disappear into the night without a single flap of his wings. A pretty good living, I think.

Wine Tasting

The Mrs. and I spent last weekend on Michigan’s Mission Peninsula. For those of you uncertain of northern Michigan geography trivia, the peninsula is the center (land) arm of a large W while the two wings of the W are the waters of Lake Michigan. A mile or so wide, this peninsula offers panoramic views of two unsalted blue oceans that can be seen simultaneously at some elevated spots. The region enjoys milder weather than most 45-degree latitude places in the world and has long been known as the center of Michigan’s cherry-growing region.

                The reason for our visit was a chance to mooch off friends who happen to own a lovely home situated on the northern tip of the peninsula. The specific occasion was the region’s annual Blossom Day (more about this later). The Blossom Day, we learned later, is on Saturday while on Sunday, local clerics head up an event known as The Blessing of the Blossoms.

                Blossom Day is a big deal that requires months of planning and coordination by a number of businesses on the peninsula. This year they hit it just right. On Saturday, the blossoms reached their peak and we were awed by the thousands (maybe millions) of cherry trees in full bloom as they sparkled in full sun on a day of perfect weather. The sea of pinkish-white cherry blossoms shimmered against a backdrop of blue while adjacent apple blossoms offered a slight concession to chlorophyll as their adjacent green leaves had just begun to form. It was a treat to drink in the view.

                Drinking is the second treat of Blossom Days. We learned that cherry-growing on the peninsula has a growing competitor; growing of grapes in the many vineyards has also become big business. Our activity on the weekend included wine tasting at several of the vineyards as they all celebrate Blossom Day. (I wanted to tell how many wine tastings I gulped down, but I lost track after the first seven or eight.)

All the wine was wonderful and I learned several things about winemaking from the head vintners who poured for us as some of the establishments. For example, did you know that the best wines are aged in white oak casks made from oak trees grown in France? Apparently, oak trees in the US are partial to whiskey [whiskey makers use US white oak] while exclusive wineries favor French forests. Further, wine barrels are toasted before use while whiskey barrels are charred and both are used only two or three times before they become bar stools in darkened pubs.

The most important thing I learned is that, contrary to my former belief, good wine doesn’t taste like grape pop. Rather, fine wines can have flavors like “a hint of pears and apples followed by a crisp finish with notes of bananas.” I never tasted the bananas. Perhaps it is because I have drunk too much dandelion wine that tastes like dandelions and rhubarb wine that tastes like rhubarb. Or maybe it is because the Mrs. ages her wine in used glass bottles instead of French casks, I don’t know. But, I did learn one thing; I will plan on more wine tasting even without waiting for Blossom Days.