Root for the home team
This past Winter Break, like its cousins before it, was yet another rousing success. Some day, when I am old and miserly and have a desk job in some big city, my only joy in life the habitual throwing of wreaths at carolers unwise enough to happen upon my doorstep, I will likely be haunted one night by the Ghost of Winter Break Past, who will reform me by reminding me of the poignant joys of childhood and young-adulthood in the absolute magnificence of Bellingham. Bellingham, in short, is a great town, and it's really too bad that I don't get to spend more time there.
One of the main reasons that Bellingham is so excellent is the fact that, every time I'm home for any length of time, I get from one to five calls from friends wishing to do something a little out of left field. Which doesn't mean all that much, since for me left field extends essentially from the front doorstep outwards, inclusive of all possible events therein, but some are out to the warning track at least. A few years ago, for example, Peter called me up wanting to know if I was free for the evening and wanted to go kayaking. I said sure, and I'd be over at such and such a time. When I got there, the plan was fleshed out in a bit more detail: we would be kayaking out to an island in Chuckanut Bay, so named because it is a body of water enclosed by a roughly arch-shaped mass of land that encroaches into the gap on both sides, and building ourselves a pile of flammables, which we would subsequently set to burning and roast some good old raw meat over like the manly men that we were.
Needless to say, we were hampered in this pursuit by a few minor details. First, some idiot (me) decided that I would be a good pick for the back of the two-man kayak, which, as you know, is responsible for steering the vessel around tricky obstacles like the shore. This delayed our arrival on the island by a number of minutes, which span was quickly eclipsed by the delay caused by, yes, the flint flying from our lighter (the only a-firing apparatus we had had the forethought to bring along) and onto the shell-sandy beach, from which the hope of recovery was nil. Ultimately, we gave up trying to build a fire from the dampened kindling through application of our Boy Scout knowledge and headed homeward, utilizing a significantly more direct route, where we fired the meat up in a very manly oven and told all of our travels.
This year, on the other hand, Peter had planned for s-u-c-c-e-s-s (that's the way you spell success! Evergreen, anyone? Anyone? Okay, never mind.) I got the call - "Hey Rob, we're going to try for another Manliness Outing. Coming?". Oh yes. This time we were heading out in the bleak mid-Winter, so the plan was to traipsepass down to a fire-pit located on the shores of the same Chuckanut Bay, a secluded spot nestled up against a cliff and requiring a spot of downhill hiking through someone or other's no doubt private property, causing some little speculation amongst the troops as to how Peter had stumbled across the place, but I suppose that he has his completely legal methods that wouldn't come under censure of any form if Mrs. Day happened to peruse this blog, so just move along there.
This was all divulged, of course, when we convened at the Day household, where, after receiving our marching orders, we displayed our divers wares and preparations for the journey, like a troupe of Oregon Trail parties hobnobbing at Chimney Rock. I had been told to bring "something to eat", so I had with me a bag stuffed with rosettes that "didn't taste quite right", according to my mother their creator, who had given me permission to dispose of them however I saw fit. Others had their own useful tidbits: some potatoes with garlic, a few onions, not a few slabs of the requisite raw meat just dripping with Pure Manliness, a couple guitars, a wagon tongue, and, by request of some of the less Puritanical members of the expedition, tiny cigars and a honking gallon-or-so flagon of what I'm told was very good winter ale. Thusly burdened, we set off into the darkness.
When we arrived at the head of the downward trail, we broke into two groups, the drivers of our two vehicles parking the cars down the road a ways with the intent to catch up with the four of us passengers as we wended our way to the coast.
Soon after embarking on said wending, we came across our first minor hitch. It seemed that, of our three flashlights, two were with the drivers and one was left to guide the hikers along their way. This was all right so far as it went, though it did result in slightly inhibited progress as we stumbled along. I myself was in the back of the pack, more feeling than seeing my way through a particularly narrow bit of pathing, when I heard before me a thump, followed by a "yeah, I'm okay" from Miles, who had been helped to his feet.
Soon thereafter, however, it became clear that something was amiss. There was a funny scent in the air, and Miles requested that the light be shined in his direction, because he "felt something funny." The light turned, revealing a downpour of precipitate ale raining down from the crushed flagon hidden carefully beforehand in the nether regions of Miles' pack by some well-meaning prankster.
Now, here is an interesting social experiment: take a group of sensible, mature, reasonable young men, present them with a backpack from which is emitting a steady shower of very good winter ale, and see how they react. If they immediately empty their water bottles, retrieve some cups, open the pack, and begin to scoop out all the beer they can reasonably save, regardless of contamination from such minor elements as a dirty jacket or assorted camping-type tools, while making reassuring comments like "It's all right -- I'll just strain out the glass shards with my teeth," then they are a pretty good approximation of my circle.
After all the salvaging we thought productive, we had recovered approximately a liter and a half of the stuff, and had come up with a number of very plausible explanations for Miles and David to give to their parents when asked why their respective jeans and jacket/backpack smelled like they had been drowning their sorrows together via a seedy downtown pub.
The rest of the night went comparatively smoothly, with opportunities for much manliness all around, enhanced by the fact that we had no plates upon which to rest our roasted raw meat or flatware therewith to skewer and raise into ourselves. The moral of the story: you really don't know how excellent beef can be until you have overcooked it illegally over a fire on someone else's property, added it with potatoes and roasted onions to a cup with a sordid history in ale-recovery, doused the whole in hickory barbecue sauce, and eaten it in highly unsanitary handfuls of pure joy.
It's enough to make one wish that the Ghost of Winter Break Yet To Come had a little more material to work with.
Music news:
Over break, I was limited to CDs in my physical possession (aww...), and further, to music that my mom would not find terribly inclement. Being thusly restricted to legitimately good music, I re-realized what an absolutely excellent band Waterdeep is. Seriously - amazing stuff. My current favorite album of theirs is "To Chase Away The Birds", but all albums are good. The cheapest Waterdeep album around, "Everyone's Beautiful", is available from ChristianBook.com's surplus bin for $0.99.
If you'd prefer your music free, there is a SUPERIOR album up for free download from Earthsuit, makers of the excellent album "Kaleidoscope Superior", who disappeared from the world shortly thereafter but have recently resurfaced with a different lineup under the thin guise of MuteMath. Anyway, this album is a fan club release of which around a thousand prints were made initially and which has now been made available for legal public download. It is very good, though a bit gritty in parts. In short, highly recommended.
Penultimately, there are some great tracks up for free grabs from Denison Witmer, who shares last names with Greg, so you should check him out (Denison. His music. Check it out.)
Finally, Miles Mattix, of Beer Flagon Crushing fame, now has a Purevolume page. Here's hoping he keeps on writing, recording, and posting.
One of the main reasons that Bellingham is so excellent is the fact that, every time I'm home for any length of time, I get from one to five calls from friends wishing to do something a little out of left field. Which doesn't mean all that much, since for me left field extends essentially from the front doorstep outwards, inclusive of all possible events therein, but some are out to the warning track at least. A few years ago, for example, Peter called me up wanting to know if I was free for the evening and wanted to go kayaking. I said sure, and I'd be over at such and such a time. When I got there, the plan was fleshed out in a bit more detail: we would be kayaking out to an island in Chuckanut Bay, so named because it is a body of water enclosed by a roughly arch-shaped mass of land that encroaches into the gap on both sides, and building ourselves a pile of flammables, which we would subsequently set to burning and roast some good old raw meat over like the manly men that we were.
Needless to say, we were hampered in this pursuit by a few minor details. First, some idiot (me) decided that I would be a good pick for the back of the two-man kayak, which, as you know, is responsible for steering the vessel around tricky obstacles like the shore. This delayed our arrival on the island by a number of minutes, which span was quickly eclipsed by the delay caused by, yes, the flint flying from our lighter (the only a-firing apparatus we had had the forethought to bring along) and onto the shell-sandy beach, from which the hope of recovery was nil. Ultimately, we gave up trying to build a fire from the dampened kindling through application of our Boy Scout knowledge and headed homeward, utilizing a significantly more direct route, where we fired the meat up in a very manly oven and told all of our travels.
This year, on the other hand, Peter had planned for s-u-c-c-e-s-s (that's the way you spell success! Evergreen, anyone? Anyone? Okay, never mind.) I got the call - "Hey Rob, we're going to try for another Manliness Outing. Coming?". Oh yes. This time we were heading out in the bleak mid-Winter, so the plan was to traipsepass down to a fire-pit located on the shores of the same Chuckanut Bay, a secluded spot nestled up against a cliff and requiring a spot of downhill hiking through someone or other's no doubt private property, causing some little speculation amongst the troops as to how Peter had stumbled across the place, but I suppose that he has his completely legal methods that wouldn't come under censure of any form if Mrs. Day happened to peruse this blog, so just move along there.
This was all divulged, of course, when we convened at the Day household, where, after receiving our marching orders, we displayed our divers wares and preparations for the journey, like a troupe of Oregon Trail parties hobnobbing at Chimney Rock. I had been told to bring "something to eat", so I had with me a bag stuffed with rosettes that "didn't taste quite right", according to my mother their creator, who had given me permission to dispose of them however I saw fit. Others had their own useful tidbits: some potatoes with garlic, a few onions, not a few slabs of the requisite raw meat just dripping with Pure Manliness, a couple guitars, a wagon tongue, and, by request of some of the less Puritanical members of the expedition, tiny cigars and a honking gallon-or-so flagon of what I'm told was very good winter ale. Thusly burdened, we set off into the darkness.
When we arrived at the head of the downward trail, we broke into two groups, the drivers of our two vehicles parking the cars down the road a ways with the intent to catch up with the four of us passengers as we wended our way to the coast.
Soon after embarking on said wending, we came across our first minor hitch. It seemed that, of our three flashlights, two were with the drivers and one was left to guide the hikers along their way. This was all right so far as it went, though it did result in slightly inhibited progress as we stumbled along. I myself was in the back of the pack, more feeling than seeing my way through a particularly narrow bit of pathing, when I heard before me a thump, followed by a "yeah, I'm okay" from Miles, who had been helped to his feet.
Soon thereafter, however, it became clear that something was amiss. There was a funny scent in the air, and Miles requested that the light be shined in his direction, because he "felt something funny." The light turned, revealing a downpour of precipitate ale raining down from the crushed flagon hidden carefully beforehand in the nether regions of Miles' pack by some well-meaning prankster.
Now, here is an interesting social experiment: take a group of sensible, mature, reasonable young men, present them with a backpack from which is emitting a steady shower of very good winter ale, and see how they react. If they immediately empty their water bottles, retrieve some cups, open the pack, and begin to scoop out all the beer they can reasonably save, regardless of contamination from such minor elements as a dirty jacket or assorted camping-type tools, while making reassuring comments like "It's all right -- I'll just strain out the glass shards with my teeth," then they are a pretty good approximation of my circle.
After all the salvaging we thought productive, we had recovered approximately a liter and a half of the stuff, and had come up with a number of very plausible explanations for Miles and David to give to their parents when asked why their respective jeans and jacket/backpack smelled like they had been drowning their sorrows together via a seedy downtown pub.
The rest of the night went comparatively smoothly, with opportunities for much manliness all around, enhanced by the fact that we had no plates upon which to rest our roasted raw meat or flatware therewith to skewer and raise into ourselves. The moral of the story: you really don't know how excellent beef can be until you have overcooked it illegally over a fire on someone else's property, added it with potatoes and roasted onions to a cup with a sordid history in ale-recovery, doused the whole in hickory barbecue sauce, and eaten it in highly unsanitary handfuls of pure joy.
It's enough to make one wish that the Ghost of Winter Break Yet To Come had a little more material to work with.
Music news:
Over break, I was limited to CDs in my physical possession (aww...), and further, to music that my mom would not find terribly inclement. Being thusly restricted to legitimately good music, I re-realized what an absolutely excellent band Waterdeep is. Seriously - amazing stuff. My current favorite album of theirs is "To Chase Away The Birds", but all albums are good. The cheapest Waterdeep album around, "Everyone's Beautiful", is available from ChristianBook.com's surplus bin for $0.99.
If you'd prefer your music free, there is a SUPERIOR album up for free download from Earthsuit, makers of the excellent album "Kaleidoscope Superior", who disappeared from the world shortly thereafter but have recently resurfaced with a different lineup under the thin guise of MuteMath. Anyway, this album is a fan club release of which around a thousand prints were made initially and which has now been made available for legal public download. It is very good, though a bit gritty in parts. In short, highly recommended.
Penultimately, there are some great tracks up for free grabs from Denison Witmer, who shares last names with Greg, so you should check him out (Denison. His music. Check it out.)
Finally, Miles Mattix, of Beer Flagon Crushing fame, now has a Purevolume page. Here's hoping he keeps on writing, recording, and posting.
