View from the Exerda

Fall Foliage 1500 Miles from Home: Aspens in Aspen (With a Tangent on HDR imagery)

2011-10-12T19:23:00.000-04:00

There are certain places which every photographer must visit in his or her lifetime, and certainly Colorado's Maroon Bells at sunrise is high atop that list--even more so during fall foliage season. Indeed, there those who make the high alpine lake shore near Aspen an annual pilgrimage, to the point that the Maroon Bells are characterized by some as the most photographed scene in North America.

The Maroon Bells about 15 minutes before dawn

After a long several weeks at work with nary a moment for any interesting photography (working with the government come the end of the fiscal year always makes for busy times!), I needed a break. The red rock country of the Colorado Plateau did have its siren call in my ear, and I might have headed out to revisit my favorite place on Earth, Bryce Canyon. Yet with October here and its palette of fall colors that come but once a year, I decided to see something I had not before and booked a flight to Aspen, hoping to catch the aspens at their peak of brilliant yellow even as the Front Range of the Rockies picked up the beginnings of their wintry white cloaks.

Fall comes earlier to the high mountains of Colorado than it does to the Piedmont and coastal plane of Virginia where the majority of the trees are still largely green--according to my trusty copy of Laurent Martres' Photographing the Southwest, the peak of fall color typically arrives in the last week of September to the first few days of October--but I couldn't get away from work any earlier than the Columbus Day holiday weekend. Fall colors are notoriously fickle, too, depending on factors from the amount of summer rainfall and temperatures leading up to the fall to wind and rain once the leaves turn.

Despite predictions of a later-than-usual peak for the area, I saw plenty of completely bare patches standing along the slopes as I flew over the Front Range from Denver--alongside many still-green stands of aspens, indicating a combination of less-than-optimal summer conditions and winds which had stripped bare many of the trees which had already changed colors (I'd seen the wind forecast a day before my trip--which didn't leave me very happy). No matter: there's always something to photograph in Colorado!

I started my day in Aspen with a drive up to nearby Marble, a tiny community with only one paved road (and that recently-enough done that Tabitha, my GPS, kept trying to steer me off onto alternate routes). A lot of the names of Colorado's towns reflect the state's mining history--Telluride, Agate, Leadville, Gypsum, to name a few--and Marble follows that tradition well as it is named for its marble quarry, from which material used in D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial came. At the far end of town, CR3 turns into a dirt road with a warning sign that there is no winter maintenance and that only 4x4 vehicles are permitted beyond that point: good thing I rented one (and no, please don't tell the rental company, who I know forbids offroading). This is the beginning of the road to the Crystal Mill, one of Colorado's many treasures and a perfect late afternoon photo shoot location.

Lizard Lake, approximately halfway between Marble and the Crystal Mill

Martres describes the 5.5 mile trip from Marble to the Crystal Mill as a rough but "non-technical" drive--but then, he's comparing it to some of the really challenging routes in the desert southwest. Although I have some experience with offroading--having driven Jeep trails in the Anza-Borrego Desert among other routes--and have owned a SUV for years, I have to say that the average Joe won't want to tackle the drive to Crystal Mill and should hire a driver and vehicle in Marble. Most of CR3 beyond Marble is incredibly rocky and demands a high-clearance vehicle with large, tough tires and deep wheel wells, and the vast majority of the route is a single lane which often includes a steep drop-off to the Crystal River far below. I put my Chevy Tahoe into first gear and full-time four wheel drive and still felt the 45-minute drive worthy of the white knuckles I sure had. There are stretches where it's tough to see far ahead as you top over a rise, and you dare not come to a full stop for fear of sliding on the loose rocks that continually make the ride a jouncing rollercoaster experience. You will meet other vehicles, and chances are one or the other of you may even need to back up to find a place wide enough for the other to get by.

The Crystal Mill is worth the drive (or ride, if you're not up to wrangling your own SUV there). Dating to 1892, the structure stands on a promontory overlooking the Crystal River and is surrounded by aspens which at their fall color peak are gorgeous to behold. I've seen a few beautiful old mills in the Appalachians, to be sure, but those don't have quite the dramatic background of snow-capped Rockies as does the Crystal Mill. The mill actually was a power station which provided compressed air for silver mining activities in the surrounding area.

My only complaint was that I managed to get only thirty seconds or so of sun on the mill; the skies had gone to a solid, dreary white during the drive up from Aspen and offered only the occasional gap of blue through the dense cloud cover. That made my work as a photographer significantly more challenging; nothing makes an image more lackluster than the low contrast of grey, boring skies. So I set up for a HDR (high dynamic range) shot, taking several bracketed exposures which I intended later to combine in Photoshop into one image which rendered the full detail of the scene and which would allow me to expose for all the rich color of the mill itself while still getting some density to the sky.

Techie side note: HDR can work well for images with significant difference between the bright (or highlight) and dark (or shadow) areas; camera sensors only capture a few "stops" (with each stop representing twice the brightness or darkness of the adjacent one) of light from highlight to shadow--typically anywhere from 5 to 10 stops--whereas the human eye sees a range of up to 15 stops. Couple that with the fact that our eyes and brains constantly adjust to whatever we're focused on in a very dynamic process which effectively allows us to take in an even broader range of light and dark in a way a single, static image cannot, and you see the problem which HDR is designed to address.

Above, I took three separate exposures, each one full stop in difference than the next. Given I'd set my exposure compensation to underexpose the shot by a third of a stop (to try to avoid losing the highlights on the water or in the skies), that gave me photos at -1 1/3, -1/3, and +2/3 exposure across a range of two full stops (and thus expand my camera's dynamic range by an extra two stops as well). I won't bore you with the details of how I processed the HDR image itself as there are many more in-depth explanations available via Google.

See the skies I had to work with? Clouds are good, but images need open patches of sky, too!

The drive back out was just as rough as the drive in had been, with the sole benefit of not meeting any oncoming traffic. I stayed in Glenwood Springs, a community right off of Interstate 70 and about an hour to an hour and a half's drive northwest of Aspen proper--where I could get a hotel room for under $100 a night instead of paying through the nose with Aspen's high-end boutique rates. Still being one eastern time made an early bedtime more effective (a good thing as the drive to the Maroon Bells plus needing to be there well before dawn meant a very early morning).

Even though CO82 has a HOV lane (M-F starting at 6:00am) as you near Aspen, traffic was pretty light on my drive down to the White River National Forest and the Maroon Bells. I figured even with the fall foliage a bit past its peak, a holiday weekend in autumn would find the place packed for the sunrise, yet as I pulled into the Maroon Lake parking lot at approximately 5:50am, there was only one other vehicle present. Yes, it was bitterly cold: I'd used the Aspen forecast in determining clothes to bring, not thinking that the Maroon Bells were 2000 feet higher up in elevation than the town, and even layered, 18 degrees is darn chilly! (Side note: arm warmers, designed for cyclists, are a great invention.)

Sunrise may not have been until around 7:15am--and it was completely dark when I arrived--but the skies began lightening not long after 6:00am, so I headed out into the elements and up to the lake shore to set up my tripod and await the magical experience of a Maroon Bells dawn. (See the photo leading off this blog entry for the scenery I contemplated, my fingers and toes freezing, for about an hour before the sun's first rays struck the peaks.)

On a perfect morning, there will be a few clouds in the sky and absolutely no wind--the slightest breeze will set ripples across the lake and spoil that stunning reflection. I must say, the morning of October 10 was very nearly perfect! This really helped make up for the fact that the aspens nearest the lake shore in the shot's foreground had completely shed their leaves.

A graduated neutral density filter will work wonders here, as the first rays of the sun on the Maroon Bells (particularly with any snowfall on the peaks) will create significantly more contrast across the scene than any camera sensor or film can capture. I went with a 3-stop filter (meaning the lightest areas of the filter let through around eight times as much light as the darkest), and even stacked a second 2-stop graduated filter in front of it for a few shots. As with the pre-dawn shots I took and the Crystal Mill, bracketed exposures with an HDR image in mind aren't a bad idea, either. Do note that the first golden rays will strike the peaks about 10 minutes after "scheduled" sunrise (according to the time in my GPS' almanac).

After the best moments of sunrise, it's at least an hour and a half to two hours before the sun will have crept high enough over the peaks behind and to the photographer's left to evenly illuminate the trees surrounding the lake. I spent about half that time in my car, warming back up from the bitter cold (and cursing having only brought thin cycling gloves) while I transferred photos to my laptop, then set out along the the Crater Lake trail, which climbs above the far shore of Maroon Lake.

The trail to Crater Lake offers some great views of aspen thickets, showing off the skeletal, white trunks, and at the right time of year their brilliant yellow fall foliage. It's not a particularly rough or difficult trail, and at under two miles one-way from the parking area isn't an all-day affair, either. Nonetheless, even though I knew I wasn't in the same shape I had been last fall when Beth and I tackled the brutal Fairyland Canyon hike at Bryce (alongside about 20 miles of trails in and about Zion), I had to stop and catch my breath repeatedly on the ascent. I kept giving myself a hard time--after all, I'd done Delicate Arch earlier this year on a solid sheet of ice--until I consulted the altimeter on my hand-held GPS (Tabbycita, she's named, for her big sister in my car): the hike rises over 1000 feet in the first mile to mile and a quarter, and a large portion of the hike is over 10,000 feet above sea level! My blood is simply too thin for that sort of exertion that early in the morning.

There is a fantastic view well worth the hike not quite a mile into the route, looking back down at Maroon Lake from one of the few clearings in the aspens. If you ever attempt this trail and feel like turning back, make sure to force yourself onward until you do make that viewpoint.

Looking down on Maroon Lake

Stop and spend a few minutes catching your breath, because from there the terrain crossed several shaded switchbacks which anytime outside the middle of summer are likely to be packed with a layer of ice. Crampons would be a good idea in the backpack of a hiker following the Boy Scout motto, and I honestly felt the going more difficult and slick than Delicate Arch had been back in January.

Crater Lake

Crater Lake itself is a so-so sight in my opinion given the rigors of the hike to reach it, but it does offer a much closer look at the Maroon Bells than the classic shots down along the shores of Maroon Lake. Would-be mountaineers are advised by signs not to attempt climbing the "deadly Bells" without proper preparation and experience, citing dozens of deaths by even otherwise-experienced climbers annually.

The good thing about the hike back down--besides the fact that it's downhill almost the entire way!--is that you can encourage (or have a chuckle at) all the mid-morning hikers huffing and puffing their way up the path who stop to ask you if it's "much farther" or worth the hike.

By the time I got back to the shores of Maroon Lake at nearly noon, the sun had indeed illuminated the entire basin around the lake. Unfortunately, between several mallards and a bit of a breeze spoiling any reflections, the pre-dawn clouds having moved on and left behind totally-blue skies, and several dozen tourists posing for quick shots against the majestic backdrop, there wasn't any real chance of capturing a good image, so I set off to Aspen in search of a bite to eat.

Aspen can be very crowded, particularly during ski season as well as the peak of summer and fall foliage, but I found it surprisingly laid-back for a holiday and even found free-for-the-day parking near the city's pedestrian core. Almost all of the restaurants along the core do seem to be dinner-only establishments, but I found a real gem in the Red Onion, which purports to be the town's oldest restaurant and bar and which dates like the Crystal Mill to 1892 and the area's silver boom. I enjoyed a pint of local pale ale and one of the best seared ahi tuna salads I've eaten, with the tuna cooked absolutely perfectly (raw inside with a thin layer seared but not blackened) and just the right amount of lemon vinaigrette (most restaurants go way overboard with dressing!).

As I know Beth would never willingly ride out the route to the Crystal Mill and not sure I'd have such an appropriate 4x4 rental the next time in the area anyway, I decided I'd better tackle the punishing drive again while the skies were sunny and take a mulligan on the prior day's overcast grey blanket, rather than spending any time in the many quaint shops of downtown Aspen (with signs proclaiming such encouraging notes as: "Be prepared to spend money!").

The drive out to the Crystal Mill was no less punishing than it had been the prior day--at the end of it, I actually had to crank the Tahoe's full-sized spare back up as it had worked itself nearly loose from beneath the car during the trip--but I did get some fantastic color and light on the mill as my reward. I also met a young artist hard at work capturing the scene in a painting--certainly the scene is one well-suited to artistic inspiration. Even with the superior light of my repeat visit, I actually liked the HDR image I made the day before better, though.

I had planned to hit the Maroon Bells for a second morning before flying home on Tuesday, putting to work what I'd learned on my first day there, but when I headed out of the Hampton Inn in Glenwood Springs at a quarter to five, it was raining, and the forecast for the Aspen area was hardly any different. As I drove down CO82, I did watch the skies closely for any sign of the clouds breaking up--remember, some clouds are a good thing in photographs--but with a repeat of Sunday afternoon's gloomy skies and cloud cover which would stop the pink alpenglow and sunrise's magic cold, I decided to put my frequent flier status on United to work and catch earlier flights home.

Will I make the Maroon Bells an annual pilgrimage as do so many other nature photographers? Well, it was indeed spectacular and something I'd see again, though there are so many other destinations and sights calling... Well, next time Beth needs to come along, so perhaps in a year or two, I'll find the shores of Maroon Lake in my travels again.

Keeping the Old Forester Going: DIY Belt Replacement

2011-09-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year, I started doing a lot of the maintenance on my car myself--more out of a sense of, "if you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself," than necessarily to save a few dollars, though the latter is nice, too, given the typical mechanic charges more than double what I make per hour. One of the first tasks I tackled was flushing the power steering system, which solved a multitude of problems--but eight months later the steering started acting up again, this time with an audible squeak I hoped was only the pump drive belt and not the pump itself going bad.

Drive belt cover removed to show the power steering
& alternator belt (left) and air conditioner belt (right)

I've got nearly 90,000 miles on my 2004 Forester XT, and though I've been pretty good with the upkeep, it's nonetheless eight years old. The steering system had really started to squeak when I first started the car, and the steering wheel had started vibrating again along with the car idling a bit rough at times like it had before I flushed the fluid (don't get me started on how Jiffy Lube had put the wrong fluid in--yeah, I know Dexron III is labeled as transmission fluid and not steering fluid, but that's what Subaru designed the car to take and that's what should be used!). Replacing the pump would set me back around $150-$400 in parts, depending on whether I went with the OEM or an aftermarket pump, so I figured I'd first try replacing the belt and flushing the fluid again.

I don't believe drive belts are supposed to look quite like this...

The existing drive belt definitely needed to be replaced: as you can see in the photo above, it had split along the length of the belt into three sections, and was starting to fray along one of the strands as well. I'm actually a bit surprised my battery held a charge, given the same belt drives the alternator and obviously wasn't working very well, as it was slipping and squeaking a good bit. The fact the belt is hidden away beneath a cover is no reason I shouldn't have caught this sooner (nor an excuse Jiffy Lube shouldn't have noticed it during one of their services).

Getting the right replacement belt was harder than the replacement itself. My understanding from much consultation with the Internet tubes is that the generic aftermarket belts from auto parts stores don't quite fit right compared to the OEM ones, and unlike most parts debates across Subaru forums, almost everyone agrees on that point. I drive right past a Subaru dealership on the way to work, so figured I'd stop in and that their service department would have something like that in stock, but alas, they "were at the warehouse," already closed for the day--and come Monday, the same tech greeted me with the same line he'd given me a few days before: "Oh, I've got some bad news on those belts... they're at the warehouse." Yep, closed for the day again, too.

The delay pushed back the repair until after I got back from a trip to Vegas with my sister (that's a long story involving a skinny ginger git from Harry Potter and worthy of its own blog post). Facing a commute to the office with a seriously-deteriorated belt, I decided to tackle the job before going into work.

Under the hood with the belt cover still in place

For the 2004 Forester XT, the accessory drive belts are located beneath a plastic safety cover (pictured above, foreground). This comes off with the removal of two bolts--have a ratchet with metric sizes on hand, and you'll have no problems getting it off and out of the way.

Bolts which need to be loosened to remove the power steering & alternator drive belt (red circles)

Even split and as worn as my belt was, it had plenty of tension and wasn't about to slip right off. I could have cut it--the existing belt wasn't exactly in great shape anyway--but given the new belt installation requires getting things loosened up, there's no avoiding releasing the belt tension. There are three bolts for the power steering and alternator drive belt (which are mirrored for the air conditioner compressor drive belt); I've circled them in red in the photo above. The two leftmost bolts are called out in the service manual and serve to tension the belts--to adjust, first loosen the bottom bolt a few turns, as it locks the entire assembly in place, then turn the top bolt to move the alternator up or down and thus increase or decrease the belt tension accordingly.

Before you get too far and wonder why the belt doesn't seem to be getting any looser, here's something my service manual neglected to include: notice the third bolt (center right, above)? You have to loosen it as well so that the alternator can pivot as you adjust the long bolt on the left; a half turn or two is all it should take. I had to really lower the alternator to be able to get the old belt out and the new one in, running that long bolt nearly all the way out.

While you've got the power steering and alternator belt out of the way, you should go ahead and replace the air conditioner belt, too, as belts tend to show similar wear, and you can't get to the a/c belt without first removing the power steering one. The tensioner is similar to the one for the power steering and is located just to the left of the air conditioner compressor (the thing with the big pulley on the right of the image above).

Once the new belts are in place, just reverse the process you used to loosen the components and relieve the belt tension in the first place. The belts should be tightened until they displace about a quarter of an inch under firm pressure, something you can measure by putting a straightedge between the pulleys and then pushing the belt down with one finger while measuring the distance it moves down with a small ruler (easier said than done). Don't forget to tighten the bolt which allowed the alternator and compressor to pivot down.

I did the change-out in about 10 minutes before going to work one morning, so it should be easy for anyone to accomplish. No special tools are required--just a socket wrench--and the parts aren't particularly expensive (both belts together set me back around $25 from a local Subaru dealership). Replacing the belts eliminated my car's squeak, smoothed out the steering system, and should be good for another 90,000 miles or so.

Birthday Browsing in Barcelona

2011-06-06T21:20:00.101-04:00

Normally, my birthdays are spent at home, with a cake fresh out of the oven and perhaps some steaks hot off the grill, but this year--turning 29 for the 8th time--I got to enjoy the annual celebration whilst abroad.

Beth and I had had a couple of days to get our bearings in Barcelona, with Beth dusting off her Spanish and me trying to absorb some of the local Catalan. We'd walked La Rambla, enjoyed each afternoon and evening sitting out on a patio or courtyard somewhere with a glass of cava, a mug of cervesa, and a fair bit of vina blanca. We'd learned the shortcut to the Metro from our hotel and could navigate the mass transit system like locals (well, almost). But like so much else of our trip, I'd decided just to play my birthday by ear, with only a rough idea as to what I wanted to do.

After a nice continental breakfast at the hotel, we set out for a bit of shopping. Beth wanted to track down some Mothers' Day gifts, and I'd seen a photo of a hat shop in one of the many travel guides we consulted prior to the trip which gave me an idea of how to answer Beth's question: "What do you want for your birthday?" Yes, Sombrereria Obach is something of a tourist staple, but it's also quaint enough that I just had to stop in and see what new headwear I could find. I ended up with a floppy cotton hat which I can roll up and stick in my pocket and which is a bit smaller than the fedora I often travel in. Prices at the shop reflected its location just off the big tourist drag (at €55, it's one of the more expensive hats I own), but hey, it was my birthday after all!

Beth shows off her scarf from Barcelona

After a bit more shopping with stops at a scarf shop--where I exchanged the gift favor and got Beth the fashion accessory that seems a necessity amongst Barcelona natives, namely, a frilly scarf--we hopped a train to nearby Montserrat... a topic for a later blog; all I'll say for now is that Mussolini would be proud of the punctuality of the Spanish train system.

Thanks to Barcelona's latitude--somewhere between NYC and Boston despite having a much more Mediterranean climate--even in early May sunset didn't come until 8:30pm or later, leaving us plenty of time to head out on the town for a birthday dinner after getting back from Montserrat. (Side note: On the train ride back, we shared seats for part of the trip with a woman traveling with her cat in her lap; I cannot believe how calm and laid-back the kitty was on public transportation!) Beth had been after me to pick a good place to eat, and I spent most the train ride flipping back and forth through the Barcelona city guides we had on hand to try to narrow down our selection.

Let me stop for a moment and point out that Barcelona is considered one of the world's top gastronomic destinations, with the broader metropolitan region claiming what is rated by many critics to be the planet's number-one eatery (ahead of Keller's "French Laundry" and "Per Se" in the US and several Paris restaurants) in El Bulli. Unfortunately, with Chef Ferran Adrià deciding to close this July, reservations are completely unavailable at El Bulli--but fear not; there are still plenty of fantastic places to grab a bite in Cataluyna.

I ended up picking a little hole-in-the-wall called "Bar Seco" on the hillside of the El Poble Sec neighborhood leading up Montjuïc based on a description in one of our travel guides--as I wanted something not too loud, not too crowded, not requiring reservations (as it was already after 6:00pm!), and which offered a genuine, local experience. It's not too far from the nearest Metro (Paral-Lel on the L2 and L3 lines), though I will say the neighborhood was certainly more residential than some of the more urban environs we'd spent the past couple of days getting to know.

Bar Seco, street view

Bar Seco became one of the highlights of our trip! The self-described alimentació (which Google helpfully translates as meaning "feeding" in Catalan) is indeed something of a hole-in-the-wall, with a small set of bar seating supplemented by perhaps four tables for two and in-season about the same amount of terrace tables outside. The proprietors are proponents of the "slow food" movement, which is a sort of antithesis of our American notion of McDonald's-style fast food joints: slow food emphasizes local ingredients and flavors. Bar Seco does that throughout their menu and their (non-dry) bar selections.

For a change from all the Cava and other vina we'd enjoyed on our trip so far, Beth and I opted for local cervezas (beer), with the unappetizingly-named "Glops"--an unfiltered dark ale--as our favorite winning out over a Montserrat brewski. We went with the recommendation of our server on our choice of tapas, with some absolutely fantastic patatas bravas (I apologize for not recalling the local distinction of same--other than that they were the best we had the entire trip) and vegetarian-friendly sandwich fare for Beth (a bocadillo made with local cheese and fruit, along with the best veggie-burger I've ever eaten).

Though not a full dinner spread, we nonetheless filled our bellies. For the first year in many, I didn't have a cake fresh from a box (some traditions win out over the fully made-from-scratch cooking that generally goes on at Chateau Papillon), and given our scheduled early morning departure to Andalucía, we didn't try to catch a spot of gelato on our way back to the hotel. Nonetheless, it had been quite a good birthday indeed.

Weekend DIY at Chateau Papillon: Toilet Replacement

2011-06-04T13:35:00.000-04:00

Channel-lock pliers. Bolt cutters. Hacksaw. Brake cleaner. WD-40. 9/16 box end wrench. Chisel. Screwdriver. Socket wrench. Hammer. Putty knife. These are some of the tools needed to remove the old toilet in my bathroom at Chateau Papillon, thanks to the heavily-rusted flange bolts holding it to the floor. After all that, I wonder if a sledgehammer might not have done the job of all of them together and with more satisfying fun to boot.

Replacing a toilet isn't really that hard of a job--I've tackled far more challenging DIY projects at Chateau Papillon in the past. Still, like so many home improvement jobs, it ended up taking a lot longer than I'd expected; I had figured on about an hour total to remove the old toilet and install the new one, and it took closer to three.

Why the new toilet? It was an "impulse buy" at Costco, I have to admit. Beth and I had gone specifically to check out a laundry sink--something I spied at a Costco in Richmond last summer but which until now our local one had never had in stock--and right next to the sink were several high-efficiency, dual-flush toilets for under $90. That's a pretty good buy; I'd looked at similar units at Lowe's and Home Depot before, typically for upwards of $150 with several brand-name models over $280. Couple with that the fact we'd just gotten back from Spain, where like so much of Europe the toilets are similar to the one in the store, and we were sold.

Not to mention that my bathroom's old toilet was wearing out--I'd had to replace several parts on it over the past couple of years. Nor that it was a water-hog, slurping down around 5 gallons per flush. I don't think it dated back to the original home construction (mid-'60s), but the toilet wasn't much newer than that, either.

First, the old toilet (pictured above) had to come out. Turn off the water, flush, pour a bucket of hot water through to empty the bowl, and remove. You'd think that wasn't going to be a very difficult task, but you'd be wrong. Two flange bolts hold the toilet to the floor, and the problem with older toilets is that the nuts on those bolts are typically rusted solidly in place. Worse, the flange bolts heads simply fit into a slot on the flange beneath the toilet, so there's very little leverage to be had: the entire bolts will just spin in place. Enter the list of tools and materials leading off this post...

I tried penetrating oil, WD40, and even brake cleaner (which consists mostly of very light, very volatile hydrocarbon solvents), and though I did thus manage to dislodge quite a bit of rust, that was it. I had the most success gripping the tops of the bolts with some really big channel-lock pilers and using a box-end wrench to twist the nut in the opposite direction--though this really crushed the threads on the ends of the bolts. Unfortunately, one bolt was so rusted that the end simply snapped off when torqued--and of course it wasn't the end between the toilet and the floor that broke.

Next came a chisel; I figured if the bolts were that fragile, I might be able to snap them off beneath the nuts. This meant some rather awkward hammering, as I didn't want to slip and shatter the toilet itself into a million tiny fragments of porcelain. That didn't get me very far, and next up was a hacksaw. The problem there was that my toilet was crammed back into a nook, giving me all of a couple of inches of space and a completely useless angle to use the saw. I gave up on the saw, but perseverance paid off in the end when I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters onto one of the two. This gave me enough leverage to twist the entire toilet free without further work on the second bolt, as I was able to rotate the toilet around the flange enough that the bolt head aligned with the slot used to originally install it (sort of like the wide part of an old-fashioned keyhole).

A wax gasket serves to seal the bottom of the toilet to the floor flange and sewer pipe, preventing leaks. The old gasket has to go so that the new one will seal properly. I discovered in removing the sticky, gunky old mess that whoever had installed the current toilet hadn't taken out the original gasket--there were two, nested sets of rubber seals and wax gaskets! (You can see one of those in the photo to the left.) A putty knife, several pairs of gloves, and some rags took care of that phase of prep, all the while with a rag stuffed into the pipe to prevent icky sewer gas from filling the room while I worked.

Notice, too, that the old toilet tank had leaned right against the wall and collected a nice bit of moisture, as well as some mildew where the original wallboard had apparently never been painted at all. Taking care of that required a scrub brush, some bleach, and a couple of hours of drying time followed by several coats of paint--thankfully, we still had part of a gallon of the "Miami Mist" color on hand.

Everything finally prepped meant it was time at last to install the new toilet. New flange bolts into the flange: check. New rubber seal and wax gasket: check. Remove the rag in the sewer pipe: check. With Beth's help, I got the new toilet in place, gave it a little twist (to seat the wax gasket properly), and secured it to the floor. Note that I absolutely slathered the new flange bolts with WD-40, as I expect I'll need to move the toilet at least once when I get around to a total bathroom remodel in a couple of years and retile the floor and walls. Hook up the water, fill, and flush: nice. No leaks.

The dual-flush on the new toilet uses only 1 gallon of water for the "light" flush (and though it may be a bit grotesque of me to say so, I do typically follow the Southern California dicta of letting yellow mellow to save water, too) and 1.6 for the "heavy" flush. While some high-efficiency models are prone to clogs and otherwise problematic, this one seems to work like a charm so far. (We'll see if the dual-flush mechanism on top of the tank confuses anyone the next time we have guests over...)

The old toilet, thoroughly cleaned, ended up on the cub for Habitat for Humanity to pick up, bound for a new home no doubt. A little disappointing, I must say, not to take drag it out into the woods for a consultation with a shotgun, but, like the new toilet upgrade, a more environmentally-friendly choice.

Getting Our Bearings in Barcelona

2011-05-12T21:48:00.321-04:00

At one end of La Rambla, Christopher Columbus gestures the explorer's vague but determined "thataway." At the other stands the Plaça Catalunya. In between: an opera house, art museums, street vendors, living statues, and tourists, tourists, tourists finding their way through the Catalan capital city's most famous walk.

Our flight arrived shortly before noon, giving us plenty of time to head over to our hotel, get settled and cleaned up, then hit the city for our first immersion in Spanish culture (or, I should say, Catalan culture; Barcelona may be a part of Spain, but it is first and foremost a part of Cataluyna--with a separate Romance language that reads to the uninitiated like some cross between le français and Español, or Castillian). Though we were staying out in the Forum neighborhood--a mishmash of modernisme architecture, contemporary corporate-consumer-antichic, convention center, and overdeveloped beachfront--Barcelona's public transportation is excellent and got us to the city center in short order via a 5 minute walk and 20 minute Metro ride. And though Barcelona is deservedly described as an eminently walkable city, the 3-day Metro passes we picked up for around €12 were well-worthwhile investments. (One other thing of note: Barcelona's Metro is similar to the London Underground more than to the Washington, D.C., Metro from our home in that transfer stations are apparently two separate stations connected by a few flights of stairs and a kilometer or so of tunnel. I'm much more used to walking 100 meters and taking an escalator to switch lines--I'm glad we took a cab from the airport instead of trying to take rail and bus!)

In the Plaça Catalunya, but not the more humble Font de Canaletes

We began our promenade down La Rambla from the Plaça Catalunya, though somehow we missed the most of the plaza itself--apparently taking the Metro exit closest to the street instead of the square. I suppose over 10 hours of flying and nearly 14 of total travel is a lame if honest excuse for that oversight. That was too bad as we missed the Font de Canaletes, the fountain whose waters guarantee he who drinks them will return to Barcelona. For what it's worth, I don't think it takes a mystical sip from an antique fountain to ensure that we'll one day visit the city again--Barcelona is certainly one of my favorite cities from even our brief stay.

The street itself is named for the Arabic word for "intermittent stream" or "riverbed" (n.b. I'm relying on my guide books and Wikipedia here--Arabic is unfortunately not a language I know enough even to curse in) after the drainage paths around the old city walls of the Barri Gòtic.

Predatoralienstatueguy

Even on a mid-week afternoon a bit ahead of the real tourist season, La Rambla is busy! Fortunately, the street is limited to pedestrian traffic--I can't imagine if a la Bangkok the narrow thoroughfare had cars, motorcycles driven by the terminally insane, tuk-tuks, and the occasional lorry or two trying to plow their way through the crowd. The press of people alone is more than enough for the agoraphobic ambulator.

Several of our guidebooks mentioned the "living statues" performing along La Rambla as a point of distinction--now, perhaps I'm just culturally ignorant here, but I've certainly come across these folks elsewhere in the past, from the French Quarter in New Orleans to Chicago's Grant Park to an appearance in the countryside village of the British buddy-movie-satire Hot Fuzz. Said simian statuary does appreciate a coin tossed into the hat much as any public performance artists--but do watch your pockets (as you'll be far from the only blithe tourist stopping to gawk, snap a photo, and fish out some spare change). We had no problems with pickpockets and felt pretty safe in Barcelona as a whole, but I'd be remiss not to pass along a gentle public service reminder about not ending up as "that tourist" who has to call up American Express for a new set of traveler's cheques (does anyone use those anymore?) and the embassy for a new passport...

To be honest, we didn't stop for many of the more traditional tourist sights along La Rambla; several were undergoing renovations (the most familiar architectural element in Europe does seem to be scaffolding, followed closely by construction cranes), and the crowds were just stupendous along much of the route. Nonetheless, there's something for almost anyone to see, from several impressive churches (at home in any self-respecting city from old Europe) to a large outdoor market to the Gran Teatre Liceu to homes and businesses cast in Mediterranean colors with their balconies overlooking the street and its passengers (see the photo leading off this post).

Streetscape near the portside end of La Rambla

One thing I must point out: like so many once-darling streets and squares in cities across the world, La Rambla has lost a bit of its charm in recent years with the gradual incursion of high-end retail chains, coupled with the profusion of cheap, made-in-China souvenir stands--what I'm looking for in a city are quaint local shops and restaurants set alongside plazas slightly off the beaten path (of which there are plenty in Barcelona, mind you--more on that in a subsequent blog post).

The Plaça Rieal

Snacks in the hotel lounge at lunchtime weren't quite enough to keep us going as the afternoon wore on, but neither of us really wanted to grab a bite at the sort of trite, tourist-filled eateries directly along the course of La Rambla. From our last trip to Europe and visits to Frankfurt and northern Italy, we had our hearts set on spending several afternoons out on the patios of a smaller cafe or the like. We took in a few side streets, straying into nearby neighborhoods like El Raval and the Barri Gòtic but saving a more in-depth exploration of them for a later day of the trip.

Finally, dwindling blood sugar reserves drove us into the first likely restaurant we came to, a place named "Trobador" (which location, I honestly don't recall--they've got three or four in Barcelona, with at least two along the route we walked). There we settled in for a quite tasty late lunch; I had a crispy whole-fish and Beth a pasta, along with a nice bottle of wine. The waiter told us he'd worked in Georgetown at a hotel restaurant for a couple of years and was well-familiar with our hometown of Fairfax, VA, and directed us to a nice wine shop in Barcelona where we could pick up what we'd enjoyed with our meal or anything else which caught our fancy.

Refueled, late afternoon found us at the opposite end of La Rambla, at the Monument a Colom. Christopher Columbus, the explorer famous to every American schoolchild, made Barcelona his port of call upon return from his discovery of the New World, reporting back to his financial sponsors Ferdinand and Isabella--and the city erected the monument for the the 1888 Expo to commemorate his historic achievement. (As a side note, our trip also included the spot where Columbus made one of his bids to the Spanish crown, proverbially falling to his knees within the Alhambra's walls as he wore down the royal reluctance to coughing up cash for his expedition.)

Much like New York's Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, the Space Needle in Seattle, Paris' Eiffel Tower, and any number of other tall, vaguely-phallic monuments, tourists can pay a few dollars (or Euros, as the case is here) to ascend to the top of the edifice for a panoramic view out over the city. There's a tiny elevator--with room for the operator and perhaps two to four visitors depending on their girth (I'd err on the lower side for the typical American on holiday...)--which runs to the top, opening out onto an observation platform nearly 200 feet above the street level. Barcelona on a good day nonetheless presents a fairly hazy view.

The Port Vell, or Old Port

There's plenty more to do at the base of La Rambla, between the Port Vell (Old Port) area, a large if boring mall (the Maremàgnum, complete with tourist-standby IMAX theater and aquarium), a sprawling and fantastic Maritime Museum, and the nearby neighborhood and beach of La Barceloneta. Honestly, we'd planned to visit the Museu Maritim, upon the ringing endorsement of a coworker and my general enjoyment of such things (a highlight of the trip to London a few years back was the Cutty Sark)... but we simply ran out of time. Well, even without a sip from the Font de Canaletes, I have little doubt we'll pay a return visit some day, particularly given the fact after the trip Beth identified Barcelona as one of her favorite cities to have experienced.

But for us, with the setting sun, we headed back to our hotel for a well-needed night's sleep with our first taste of Barcelona sated, our tummies full of delights, our wallets somewhat lighter, and a better idea of what we planned to tackle over the next few days.

Notes for the Frequent Traveler, Part 1: Lounge Hopping for Our Spain Trip

2011-05-11T22:05:00.284-04:00

The frequent traveler lives by airline lounges and what amenities each offers: showers after a long international flight, perhaps? Free snacks and booze? Which has the best views of the comings and goings out on the tarmac? Where is the best place to check e-mail, unwind, or catch a couple of hours of shut-eye before the next flight? Is there even a reason to trek over to the lounge instead of just sitting at the gate? No doubt the infrequent air traveler won't find much of interest in this blog post, but for those of us who love to travel, these are weighty matters indeed!

Beth and I put these issues to the test during our recent trip to Spain, which involved flights from our nation's capital; Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; Málaga, Spain; and Brussels, Belgium. So how did the lounges stack up?

IAD: Lufthansa Senator Lounge

Pros:

Decent selection of hot foods
Free beer (Shock Top and Beck's) and other alcohol
Showers available downstairs in the Business Lounge
Light, airy, and modern design

Cons:

Located in B Concourse
No free wifi (other than airport's)
Alcohol isn't self-service and attendants are sometimes hard to find

First off, we paid a visit to the Lufthansa Senator Lounge at Dulles (IAD) on our day of departure, despite the fact we were flying United across the pond. A somewhat little-known yet open secret is that the IAD Lufthansa Lounge is a Star Alliance Gold lounge, meaning that any traveler who holds gold status with a Star Alliance member airline can visit it in connection with a Star Alliance flight (for a real shocker: domestic flights, too; I've had no problems visiting when flying United to St. Louis or Seattle, for example)--not just those flying Lufthansa. The lounge is over in the B Concourse, but it's almost right across from the train station, making it an easy trip from check-in at the main terminal.

Beth enjoys a Beck's in the IAD LH Senator Lounge

The Lufthansa Senator lounge is a welcome alternative to the United Red Carpet Clubs as it is generally far less crowded (excepting the times around the morning ANA flight to Tokyo or the later Germany flights) and offers food--and no, the RCC's selection of cheese cubes, crackers, and celery sticks does not count as food. It's also much brighter, cleaner, and more more modern. Really, the only downsides are the hours--it opens around 8:30am (the RCC opens at 6:00), the Germans uncharacteristically take a siesta around lunchtime, and the lounge closes earlier than the RCC--and the trek over to your United flight in the A, C, or D Concourse, which means leaving the lounge at least 45 minutes prior to scheduled boarding. The wifi isn't free, either, and although IAD offers airport-wide free wifi now, the signal quality inside the lounge was so poor I found it nearly worthless.

Just be sure to allow yourself plenty of time to catch the train loop back to the main terminal, A, then the train to C or shuttle to D (or to walk to the shuttle station at A or the far end of B): I'd leave the lounge no later than 45 minutes before your flight boards, earlier if flying internationally (as you'll have to do a document check at your gate).

There are showers downstairs in the Business Lounge--which Star Alliance Gold passengers should be allowed to access regardless of their class of travel, as the Senator Lounge is technically the more "prestigious" of the two. I've never had the chance to try them out, though, since Washington is my home airport and there's really no need for me to shower given I could have at home.

Unfortunately, due to ABC laws in Virginia, the Lufthansa lounge isn't self-serve when it comes to bier, wein, schnapps and the like--which may come as a surprise to the seasoned international traveler used to pouring their own. Attendants can be hard to find; I've noticed they will occasionally open the mirror behind the bar and glance out quickly, so you can either catch their eyes then or go over and knock at the kitchen door.

Finally, over the past couple of years, the Senator Lounge's food selection has fallen off a bit in quality, and it can be more crowded than it used to be. Still, it's leagues ahead of the Red Carpet Clubs, as you'll soon see.

IAD: United Red Carpet Club

Locations: Near gates C7, C17, and D8
Pros:

Three locations
Free house wines, beers, and bottom-shelf liquors
Free wifi via T-Mobile

Cons:

Dingy and outdated
Very crowded
Food options almost non-existent

Beth and I left the Lufthansa Senator Lounge about an hour before our flight, and the train (B to Main Terminal to A to C) followed by the long walk from the station (you see, C/D Concourse is "temporary," and has been for 20+ years--and the train station is where the MWAA eventually plans the real C/D concourse to go) took us a good 15 minutes. That still gave us time to visit the United Red Carpet Club closest to our flight: the C7 location.

Anyone who's visited the IAD Red Carpet Clubs knows why the lounges play second fiddle to the LH Senator Lounge. They're all poorly-lit (located at tarmac level, e.g. in the basement) and are typically too hot and are ridiculously crowded--the past few trips to Europe, I haven't been able to find a seat anywhere in the lounge! Nor do they offer any real food: mornings mean bananas and toast (maybe), with the rest of the day offering cheese cubes straight off a 1970s party tray coupled with crackers and celery and carrot slices. At least the Red Carpet Club went to free booze about a year ago (dispensing with the often-argued "chit" system where international travelers were supposed to receive two drink coupons)... but the gratis selection is limited to a couple of cheap beers on tap, house wines, and bottom-shelf liquors. Still, the house wines are usually okay.

The lounge does offer free wifi--members automatically get it, and Star Alliance Gold or international first or business passengers can request a one-time T-Mobile voucher card--and it typically works far better than the free wifi in the airport (though when the lounge is busy, performance predictably drops). You can also talk to flight agents (Beth and I did our EU-bound document check at the club, for example, instead of waiting at the counter at the gate).

FRA: Lufthansa Business Lounge

Pros:

Good selection of free bier, wein, and other beverages of choice
Decent food items, including an omelet station (mornings only?)
Light, airy, and modern design

Cons:

Typically very crowded
Long waits for showers
No free wifi
Hot!

In Frankfurt, the Star Alliance traveler has plenty of options, as the airport is a hub for Lufthansa. As we were connecting onward to a Schengen-zone destination (Barcelona), that meant first going through passport control (immigration) and then clearing security again, but we still had plenty of time even with as confusing a layout as FRA can be. We ended up at the Lufthansa Business Lounge near gate A26, as we were departing via A29 for Barcelona.

Beth with an espresso in Frankfurt

The Lufthansa "lounge dragons" (a play on the fact that they, like most airline lounge attendants around the world, stand guard like dragons before a moat and often have less-than-sunny demeanors if you're trying to sneak by them) have the admittance process down to a science, using a barcode scanner on your boarding pass. The downside is that you thus need an onward Star Alliance flight (switching to another alliance or terminating at FRA means no lounge for you). If you're flying business--as Beth was--or first class, the lounge scanner sends you right in. I, as a Star Alliance Gold member flying onward in economy class, had to also present my Star Alliance Gold membership card (United 1K or Continental Platinum for me) before the computers would allow Fraulein Lounge Dragon to let me pass.

The Schengen-zone Lufthansa Business Lounge, like many of the Frankfurt lounges, can be very crowded--feeling almost like a domestic Red Carpet Club in the US. We did manage to find an open table, though, near the buffet area, and settled in for some much-needed espresso, juice, pastries, and, in my case (despite it being around 8:30am) a big, delicious witbier. One other comment: like apparently so many European airports, Frankfurt (including its lounges) seems to be kept at sauna temperatures by management.

BCN: Star Alliance Lounge

Pros:

Spacious and not too crowded
Okay selection of free alcohol

Cons:

Poor food selection (particularly for an international lounge)
No free wifi
No arrivals facility

In Barcelona, there are two sets of lounges available in Terminal 1's Schengen area, where hub carrier Spanair operates: the Sala VIP Lounge, and right across from it, the shared Star Alliance Lounge. (Spanair doesn't have its own flagship lounge for some reason.)

There was a lot of talk a couple of years ago when the new terminal (T1) opened--when Star Alliance passengers shared the Sala VIP Lounge--that the new Star lounge would be absolutely posh, with such things as Playstation 3s, massage tables, and a golf simulator. Apparently, some contractor pocketed all the funds for those things (I'm joking, I hope), because they're either not well-marked or simply aren't there. The lounge is pretty spacious, anyway--though granted we were there at 6:00am prior to our flight down to Málaga, so the time of day could have something to do with it. Food selection wasn't great--certainly not on par with what I expect of international lounges--but the pastries and a café were fine to start the day since we left our hotel earlier than they had breakfast available.

I understand there's free wired Internet access, but the wifi is pay-only. We only had a few minutes in the lounge, anyway (with a 6:50am flight out!), so I didn't really worry that much about it. A little food in our tummies and some caffeine to start the day is all we needed, and we avoided paying the ridiculous €2+ for vending machines at the airport.

AGP: Sala VIP Lounge

Pros:

Not crowded

Cons:

Spanair is too cheap to treat it as a Star Alliance lounge

We started to stop by the Sala VIP Lounge in Málaga on our way back to Barcelona, but it was a dark omen when there was no Star Alliance signage outside the lounge.

I presented my United 1K card and boarding pass and asked the agent at the counter if they honored Star Alliance status, and she explained that Spanair wasn't willing to pay the airport and lounge for passengers to use it. She did say that they'd let me in (as a Star Gold flying Spanair), but that as it wasn't a Star Alliance lounge, I couldn't have a guest. Beth was willing to see me on inside, but I demurred and thus we both bypassed said lounge.

BRU: Brussels Airlines Business Lounge

Beth enjoys some Trappist-brewed
Leffe in Brussels

Beth and I finished up our trip with a connection in Brussels, Belgium, and we completed our lounge tour with a stop at the Brussels Airlines Business Lounge after shopping several chocolate vendors in duty-free.

Pros:

Two varieties of Leffe (a Belgian abbey beer)
Temperature actually somewhat comfortable

Cons:

Food options leave a bit to be desired
Espresso a bit weak--particularly by Euro standards!
No in-lounge bathrooms!

Belgium is known for both its chocolatiers and its brewers, and I certainly didn't let the morning hour dissuade me from sampling the Leffe ales (I had both a brown and a blonde to start my day--how's that?!) the lounge had on hand. Granted, InBev/Anheuser-Busch produces said beers and does so in quantity (InBev is headquartered in Belgium), which would typically preclude any kind of quality, but we're definitely not talking Bud Light, either! These "abbey beers" are very similar to some of the Trappist ales I've tasted and made for a good morning indeed.

I do have to say the espresso machine let me down a bit; the stuff it put out would be strong by coffee standards in the US, but we're talking Europe here. Judging by those more stringent specifications, the stuff was little more than muddy water. Food was only so-so, a bit above the Spanair lounge but still little more than a few croissants and a dish of snack mix (well, the lounge dragon's counter did have a bowl of gummi bears, too). Beth accidentally poured me a grapefruit juice, and I found that as an adult I found the stuff palatable--last time I tried it I was probably 10 and had triple the tastebuds I do today.

The biggest downside was that the lounge lacked its own bathrooms--or if any were in evidence, I couldn't find them. There were some shared facilities in the hall outside the lounge, shared apparently across the Star Alliance and OneWorld lounges--but which made the average US shopping mall bathroom look like something from a penthouse suite at the Four Seasons. I'm used to even the domestic Red Carpet Clubs having bathrooms a notch over the rest of the airport, if not full shower facilities to boot.

Still, the beer alone made the stop worth it.

Updated Chateau Papillon Bird List

2011-05-01T16:03:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year: Spring migration, and time to keep an eye and ear to the skies for any new birds for the Chateau Papillon list. Although we haven't added any "life birds" via the yard in a while (not since the Red-breasted Nuthatch last September), April and May have nonetheless contributed three new birds to the yard list.

In addition to two more warblers (a nicely-colored male Palm Warbler a few days back and a Northern Parula I identified by ear this morning), a long-time expected species finally put in an appearance with a mixed blackbird flock in early April: the Red-winged Blackbird. Though the latter is perhaps North America's most abundant bird and the Palm Warbler one of the most common wood-warblers, they're still welcome additions to the list. I also heard a Great-crested Flycatcher several times today, despite never being able to get my binoculars fixed on him.

Male Eastern Towhee on the fence at Chateau Papillon

All of our work naturalizing the yard and making it as bird-friendly as possible is paying off, and I only expect us to see more new species ahead--we're only at three warblers so far, and we ought to be able to chalk up a dozen or more in time.

Spring has brought the early arrival of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds as well, forcing us to dig out the nectar feeder a couple of weeks before we usually would, along with several "old friends" passing through, including a large flock of Purple Finches, several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and a Northern Catbird. The springtime evening breeze carries the calls of the Barred Owl from the woods behind us, and of course our friend the Pileated Woodpecker pays frequent visits for our suet.

Sally asking for a meal worm handout

And, of course, Harry and Sally--our resident Eastern Bluebirds--are hard at work on a clutch of four eggs.

We stand now at 59 confirmed species in the yard; maybe we can make 60 before the end of springtime:

Blackbird, Red-winged
Bluebird, Eastern

Bunting, Indigo

Cardinal, Northern

Catbird, Grey

Chickadee, Carolina

Cowbird, Brown

Creeper, Brown

Crow, American

Crow, Fish

Cuckoo, Yellow-billed

Dove, Mourning

Finch, House

Finch, Purple

Flicker, Northern

Flycatcher, Great Crested

Goldfinch, American

Goose, Canada

Grackle, Common

Grosbeak, Rose-breasted

Hawk, Cooper's

Hawk, Red-shouldered

Hawk, Red-tailed

Heron, Great Blue

Hummingbird, Ruby-throated

Jay, Blue

Junco, Dark-eyed

Kingbird, Eastern

Mallard

Mockingbird, Northern

Nuthatch, Red-breasted

Nuthatch, White-breasted

Owl, Barred

Parula, Northern

Phoebe, Eastern

Robin, American

Siskin, Pine

Sparrow, Chipping

Sparrow, Fox

Sparrow, House

Sparrow, Song

Sparrow, White-crowned

Sparrow, White-throated

Starling, European

Swallow, Tree

Thrasher, Brown

Thrush, Wood

Titmouse, Tufted

Towhee, Eastern

Vulture, Turkey

Warbler, Palm

Warbler, Yellow-rumped

Waxwing, Cedar

Woodpecker, Downy

Woodpecker, Hairy

Woodpecker, Pileated

Woodpecker, Red-bellied

Wren, Carolina

Wren, House

A Question of Light: Mesa Arch at Sunrise (Or, Sometimes It Pays to Be Late to Work)

2011-02-22T19:57:00.000-05:00

It's often said that the majority of nature photographers are late to work--and the intent of that statement is not that we're out taking pictures and then heading into our "day jobs." No, the best light comes during the so-called "golden hours" surrounding sunrise and sunset, and that means getting up, dressed, grabbing a bite to eat (and more importantly, a mug of coffee), trekking into the field, and getting gear set up for those fleeting moments, all at times that honest folks are still sawing logs and making drool puddles on their pillows and too-often in temperatures which drive sane folks to hike the covers up over their heads instead of hiking out into the countryside.

The iconic monuments of the desert southwest are no exception to this rule (indeed, many stand as exemplars of the golden-hour), and my destination on this late-winter morning, Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park, stands near the top of the mandatory dawn locales. Sunrise turns the bottom of the arch completely and brilliantly orange-red with reflected light from the red rocks below. Fortunately for the morning-challenged (a demographic into which I solidly fall), Mesa Arch involves neither a particularly long drive nor hike. It's perhaps 30-40 minutes from Moab and at most a 10 minute hike from the road, mostly across level ground, too. A flashlight is helpful, but pre-dawn illumination should be good enough if you watch your step but still keep up a good pace--I had no problems at all.

Turret Arch through the North Window -- Arches National Park

Visiting red rock country, I didn't have a concrete plan for my first morning on the ground after a drive along the Colorado River and sunset at the Fisher Towers. I had considered visiting the Windows district in Arches National Park for sunrise for the classic shot of Turret Arch through the North Window--which I'd photographed last spring with Beth but came away with a photo I wasn't entirely pleased with due to the late-breaking sun and the shadows across the bottom of Turret Arch. That, too, is a fairly close drive from Moab and not a tough hike (though positioning for the traditional composition does require climbing about 40-50 feet up some steep slickrock formations, as well as crossing an area which may eventually be made off-limits to protect the cryptobiotic soil). But I'd skipped Canyonlands on my previous trips to Utah, and Mesa Arch would be something new.

Even being fairly near the town of Moab and my body having the advantage of still being on eastern time for such a short trip, I still faced quite the oh-dark-thirty morning. Why do I torture myself with such an early dawn--leaving my room's warm confines well before the hotel has populated its complimentary breakfast bar with stale Danishes and coffee overheated to the point of providing its own charcoal filtration? That golden hour: yes, sunlight is in no short supply in the high desert country... but here's the rub: most of that sunshine (particularly during the mid-day hours surrounding high noon) comes in at a poor angle, its harsh rays falling from directly overhead burning away contrast. More importantly, the softer, more diffuse "golden hour" light reflects off the landscape's reds and oranges to create fantastic, glowing illumination which makes for far superior photography. High noon is best spent inside an air-conditioned cafe, sipping a cool beverage, reviewing the morning's photographs, and planning for the late afternoon's shots.

Mesa Arch at "Sunrise" -- Too bad the sun didn't put in an appearance!

I was a bit surprised to find several cars in the parking area when I pulled in well before sunrise, at about 6:30am. For the most part, I'd nearly had the Moab area to myself in the off-season, and I hadn't encountered another vehicle on the drive out to Canyonlands. Either some folks had actually camped out in the park (not likely given the overnight temperatures!), or had gotten up really early for Mesa Arch. At the end of my short hike, I found about a half dozen photographers set up already, apparently part of a group expedition.

Now, as a photographer, I not only respect others' shots but the use of parks by anyone else out enjoying nature, be they hikers, birdwatchers, climbers, or joggers. I unfortunately discovered that respect isn't a universal value, though, given how a couple of the members of the group really monopolized the viewpoint of Mesa Arch. Typically, there's room for all; for example, when photographing the Towers of the Virgin at Zion National Park last fall, I found myself in the middle of a photography seminar perhaps fifteen strong, but was able to take a spot that yielded some quite nice photography without disrupting anyone else. Here, one lady in particular kept moving closer to the arch as dawn approached, using a wide angle and interposing herself into my composition (along with those of a couple of other photographers from her own group who'd set up to the left as I had). Worse, she just camped out in the photo; she could have filled a fairly large memory card with images in the time she spent blocking the shot for the rest of us. I dunno, but my photographer's ethic says I don't spoil the enjoyment others may be getting out of nature just to make my own shot work.

The grey, cloud-cloaked dawn left me with the last laugh, so to speak. The large group checked their watches a few times, grumbled about sunrise having come and gone with no glimpse of the sun itself, and eventually gave up and left. A late-arriving couple, one foreign hiker, and I were all who remained, lingering in the hope against hope that perhaps the sun would at last show.

Finally, the sun did indeed peek above the low clouds, still low enough to the horizon to render that wonderful, reflected light up from the canyon walls below onto Mesa Arch. I can only imagine what a proper sunrise would have done--what a fantastic spectacle that must be, and surely a requirement for a later trip back to Canyonlands--but unlike the early birds who left, defeated, I did get a glimpse of what Mesa Arch is supposed to look like in the right light.

Silicone Intercooler Pipes for the Forester

2011-02-06T19:30:00.001-05:00

In trying to track down a minor fuel leak under my hood, I noticed what appeared to be a very timeworn hose--and though large parts of said hose were hidden away from sight, its purpose was clear: the hose led from turbocharger to intercooler, and I can't imagine having that hose fail while driving would lead to good times. So after a bit of research, I ordered not the cheaply-built OEM plastic pipe but a snazzy silicone set which would stand up to the temperatures of a turbocharged engine better and look good at the same time. Replacing the turbo hoses would involve my first real bit of mechanical disassembly under the hood and give me some good practice for future maintenance.

The intercooler with its fancy new silicone Y-pipe installed

Between the appropriate Haynes repair manual and Peaty's excellent instructions over at the SubaruForester.org forums, the process wasn't too difficult and something any amateur mechanic could tackle--the hardest part was working the old hoses loose and getting the intercooler out without bending any of the delicate metal radiator vanes (you can see some bent vanes in the photo above--not due to my handiwork, I can assure you).

The original intercooler pipes--cheap plastic covered with foam wrapping

I made sure to clean the fittings well--they had a little bit of cooked blow-by oil on them from the turbocharger, but not as much as I'd feared. Still, there was enough oil that it makes me wonder if I might need to replace the turbocharger itself in the next couple of years; I'll definitely give it a good once-over when I have the intake manifold apart when the weather gets a bit nicer. I did after all have the engine throw an AVCS-related code a couple of years ago, most likely due to an oil filter screen dropping down into the AVCS body--and in the process, the turbo could have starved for oil a bit and taken on a bit of excess wear.

While I had the intercooler off, I also gave the engine a treatment of Sea Foam straight in through the throttle body, given it hadn't had an upper cleaning for at least 20,000 miles (if ever--I asked for one at my 60k service, but am not sure the mechanic actually performed it or not). On the 2004 Forester XT, there just isn't a vacuum line which feeds all four cylinders equally, so applying the cleaner straight into the throttle body is a necessity and cleans the throttle butterfly, too. Surprisingly, the Sea Foam didn't yield quite as much smoke as I'd expected--some folks describe the effect as a spy-gadget smokescreen as atomized carbon deposits make their way out the exhaust--maybe the mechanic had actually done an engine upper cleaning after all.

I went with the Samco intercooler hose set for the 2006-and-newer Subaru Impreza WRX (part TCS332). Samco doesn't make a Forester XT-specific hose set, but two of the three pipes in the WRX one are directly compatible with the 2004 FXT: the Y-pipe (the replacement of which had started this whole exercise) and the short coupler between the intercooler outlet and the throttle body. The third hose, the blowoff valve recirculator hose, won't work in the 2004 Forester XT due to being the completely wrong shape, but my original BOV recirc hose looks fine.

Putting the intercooler back on wasn't too hard--the hoses were significantly easier to reattach than they had been to remove. After a bit of idling in the driveway to make sure nothing was leaking, I took the car out for a spin.

The completed installation

I do need to work on the vanes on the intercooler a bit; bugs and even some small pebbles (!) sucked in through the hood air scoop have left their marks on the delicate metal. It's a painstaking task with a safety pin, though, and something I don't want to do when it's near-freezing outside.

Next up: maintenance on some of the oil supply lines to inspect (and in two cases completely remove) poorly-designed filter screens from inside the banjo bolt union screws. One of these already caused a "check engine" code on my car a couple of years ago--thankfully without doing apparent damage to the oil control valves--while another can critically starve the turbo of the oil it needs to spin at 100,000+ RPM. I've still got plans to take apart the intake manifold and fix the cold-weather leaky fuel line problem affecting so many Subarus, but that's a task for warmer weather and a long weekend. After that, I may install the OEM turbo boost gauge to see just what sort of output I'm getting from my stock turbocharger.

Escaping Winter ... With Winter? Red Rocks Revisited and a January Trip to the Colorado Plateau

2011-02-05T13:28:00.056-05:00

Winter in the Washington, D.C., area can be a bit dreary--come mid-January, I'm typically ready to hit the road and escape the chill for a few days (all the while dreaming of a snowbird home on the Gulf coast). So it may come as something of a surprise that my first trip of 2011 took me not to a tropical destination but instead to the high desert country of the Colorado Plateau.

Of all the places I've traveled, the red rock deserts of southern Utah and western Colorado left me the most breathless (and not due to the altitude, mind you). Beth and I visited southern Utah for the first time last spring with a short weekend holiday to Goblin Valley and a visit to Arches National Park, then returned in the fall to take in two of the other "great circle" national parks in Bryce Canyon and Zion. As beautiful as the parks were, I wanted to see them again with some snow on the ground in the midst of winter. Too, all of these magnificent parks have come a long way since the days of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and can be quite crowded in the peak spring and fall seasons, but winter can be a magnificent, near-solitary experience.

As Beth wasn't able to come along, I didn't want to tackle the longer trip to Bryce Canyon (necessitating a drive up from Vegas for United flies like me--though SkyWest has now resumed one daily flight from LAX to St. George, Utah, which would make it a much nicer trip). So I decided on a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado, and a fairly short drive down to the Moab, Utah, area, to take in Arches in winter, along with visits to Canyonlands National Park and finally a stop at the Colorado National Monument.

My trip down from Grand Junction to Moab gave me the chance to take Scenic Byway 128, a wonderful stretch of highway that runs along the Colorado River. (When Beth and I visited Arches last spring, we took the more-modern US 191 down from Interstate 70, as we were coming from the west after our trip to Goblin Valley.) My flight timing and the drive's duration meant I'd have only one real stop for the evening's "golden hour" of sunset light, and I'd chosen the Fisher Towers for my first real photographic opportunity of the trip.

In his Photographing the Southwest, Laurent Martres calls the Fisher Towers the "reddest rocks you'll find at sunset." Although I personally think Red Canyon near Bryce takes that honor, I have to say that he's not far off the mark with respect to the Fisher Towers, either.

There's a spot Laurent describes where you can climb down from one of the many pull-outs along SB 128 to the Colorado River and capture the Fisher Towers, La Sal Mountains, and the Colorado River all in one shot. It took me several different stops and a bit of walking around before I found the exact spot he described. I'll let the curious buy Mr. Matrtres book (which is fantastic, along with his subsequent volumes covering Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona), but it is as he described quite a steep, slick hike down through the brush and out to a rock perched in the river itself.

Winter is definitely a good time to photograph the Fisher Towers with the added interest of snow white dusted across the intense reds that draw the human eye like no other color can--but timing is still tricky. The best time would be early winter, after a bit of snow but before the Colorado has iced over (as in my photo above, an icy river doesn't yield the kind of stunning reflection you can capture in slightly warmer weather). You need to take this shot an hour or more before sunset, as the river itself will quickly fall completely into shadows well before the Fisher Towers are at their prime red glow. A vertical crop on a decent medium telephoto would work quite well when the river offers up a reflection--note I used a horizontal and cropped out most of the river here given there's only so much interest to be had in the river's ice.

Another benefit of wintertime for the photographer is that the work day is shorter; during our spring trip, Beth and I were up before 5:00 am and into the field before 6:30, and though we could have spent the hours of harsh mid-day light catching a cat-nap in the car, catching both dawn and dusk meant putting in a 12-14 hour "day." During the winter, sunrise comes as late as 7:30 and sunset as early as 5:00--and the angle of the sun is steeper, extending the "golden hour" and helping give even the middle of the day some okay photographic conditions.

Day one under my belt, I checked into my hotel for the night, ready to tackle the photographer's workday of o'dark-thirty the following morning after a stop at Zax, a Moab restaurant specializing in pizza and with a nice selection of local brews on tap, Mormon tastes in alcohol and teetotaling notwithstanding. Beth and I stopped there last spring and barely squeezed in ahead of a tour bus--in the midst of winter, I had the place nearly to myself.

As for the weather? Despite all the snow in my photographs, it was actually significantly warmer 4000-feet up on the Colorado Plateau than in D.C. during my trip, with daytime highs near 40 (about 20 degrees higher than back home). Guess I did escape winter for a few short hours after all.

Weathering Another Winter (Or: Wishing for Sunshine and Finally Buying a Generator)

2011-01-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

Last year, we had an awful winter in the D.C. area, with not only one massive "Snowmageddon" but a second "Snowpocalypse" dumping over two feet of snow apiece on us. Somehow, we made it through both without losing power, though during the second storm, Beth and I seriously considered a generator as tens of thousands of people in the area suffered outages. Though this year we've managed to avoid snowfall totals like those, what we've ended up with has been bad enough: heavy, wet snow and ice which has struck hard at our new plants and those still recovering from last winter.

This most recent storm had been projected to be a heavy bout of rain up until about two or three days out, when the computer models all began to converge upon a significant snow event. Even then, many remained doubtful we'd be hit hard (a sentiment which carried over into the actual storm even as it slammed areas to the immediate west). Local schools made the right call and cancelled the day before, when we'd only had a dusting of precipitation. Unfortunately, the Office of Personnel Management for the feds decided only to dismiss two hours early--putting tens of thousands of federal employees and contractors on the roads right as the storm arrived.

As I left the office, it was raining, but by the time I got out of the parking garage, the precipitation had changed over to sleet. When I got to Fairfax Circle--about halfway home along my commute--we'd already gotten over an inch of snow. The sheer energy of the storm created thunder and lightning--an eerie, almost frightening event known as "thundersnow" which though fairly rare I've now experienced three times in the past year. Visibility fell to a couple dozen feet, and even jam-packed with an early rush hour's traffic, the roads quickly accumulated several inches of snow. The last mile or so of my commute was a nightmare, thanks to the elements and drivers who had no business being on the roads: folks with no headlights on (!); people who drove in the middle of the road even with oncoming traffic; cars like the Mitsubishi Eclipse I saw spinning out trying to make it up a fairly gentle hill or even the SUVs whose owners seemed to think 4WD gave them license to drive like fools; and, worst of all, those bad drivers who made things worse by abandoning their cars in the middle of the highway. During the hour and a half it took me to go seven miles--and in that I was lucky; some folks had 10-13 hour commutes in what has come to be known as "carmageddon"--we got over three inches of snow. Finally home for the evening, I settled in with Beth and the Pupsters.

Our oriole feeder after a January ice storm

Sure, it's pretty for a few hours, but when the weather is bringing down trees all around the neighborhood, it's not fun anymore. Nor is it fun to see the gardens over which you've toiled long spring and summer hours over demolished by the elements: last year, we lost an American holly in the front yard when the snow snapped it in half (we've since resurrected the stump, which put out new growth over the year), and our inkberries and several other plants sustained heavy damage and many broken branches. "Here we go again," I thought as snow came down at up to two inches an hour.

Even venturing out into the snow three times during the storm, Beth and I were hard-pressed to protect our plants. We gently brushed and knocked the dense, thick snow from limbs and foliage and hoped for the best. The new American holly out front, along with an English holly that made it through last winter intact, both had been weighed down so badly they risked snapping their trunks in half, and our scraggly, barely-recovered inkberries had been splayed to the ground. Our red-twig dogwoods--species well-adapted to snow, being native well into Canada--for the first time had broken limbs, too. Evergreens of any sort had been crushed by the snow. Worst, every one of our river birches were bent completely to the ground, sustaining several snapped branches.

"Ms. Kooki, perhaps you're unaware it's snowing and that we want to play outside?"

Despite all the plant damage and several times when our power flickered off for a second or two, it seemed like we'd make it through the evening without losing our electricity. The snow finally let up around 10:30pm, having dumped a layer of sleet topped by about eight inches of snow on us. As I mentioned earlier, we'd considered a generator last winter but managed not to need one, and then missed out on the sales-tax holiday on them in May (for hurricane preparedness). We were not to be so lucky this time around.

Shortly before midnight, the power went out and stayed out. We discovered the next morning that a huge tree had come down near the entrance of our neighborhood, blocking the road and snapping several lines--not to mention a half dozen more minor breaks just in our immediate area. Given the extent of the damage, we'd likely be without power for days--Dominion's Web site (which doesn't work with Chrome, making it impossible to report an outage from my phone) estimated they'd have it back up the next night, but I knew from experience they were being incredibly optimistic. The house had held heat fairly well thanks to all the energy improvements we'd made--after a night of 20-degree temperatures, we were only down to 63 degrees inside from 69 the evening before--but it was only going to get colder.

So Beth and I headed to Costco before they opened on Thursday and lined up outside the entrance along with a dozen or so others--about half of us with flatbed carts and clearly intent upon the same thing: generators. Within five minutes of the doors opening, Costco had sold out! Several customers helped each other load the heavy boxes onto each others' carts, and after picking up a few other necessities, we headed home with our new generator and six gallons of gas to fuel it.

We had to shovel a path and dig out an area where we could run the generator, then assembly took some time out in the cold, snowy yard: I had to put together the generator's frame and wheels, fill its oil reservoir and attach exhaust components, connect the battery, and drive and wire ground stake. By the time I had everything set up, I had to go into the office, as the OPM had not closed the federal government despite the weather and widespread power outages, and the facility I work at was open.

Dominion's estimated time to get our power back up came and went as expected. I unfortunately let Beth talk me out of wiring up the furnace blower motor to the generator, instead using it to power just our fridge, a lamp, and an electric space heater we set up in the living room. We spent the evening playing cards and listening to music on my iPod, then bundled up for a chilly night ahead: a day and a half into the blackout and temperatures inside had fallen to 54 degrees. Multiple blankets, thermal underclothes, and even a true three dog night as all the Pupsters piled onto the futon with us... but it was not a comfortable night, as I had to get up several times to tend to the generator outside.

During the "break in" period for a new engine, you have to change the oil after about five hours of use--and check the oil level repeatedly. And of course, you have to top off the gas so that it doesn't run dry. Each of these operations requires disconnecting the appliances et al being powered, shutting off the generator, then powering it back up and reconnecting things afterwards. I also was hesitant to run the generator basically non-stop for more than seven or eight hours, particularly given how it was brand new.

Friday morning meant another day at the office, a shower by flaslight first, and on the way out of the neighborhood I saw that Dominion had yet to even attempt to move the giant tree which the storm had brought down. Worse, one of our neighbor's trees had dropped a limb onto our power lines, though it hadn't actually snapped them.

I left the office early, came home, and decided enough was enough with the upstairs temperatures down to 50 degrees and the basement pipes likely in danger of freezing up. I finally had time to re-wire the furnace blower to run off of the generator. Though I didn't feel like investing in a $280 transfer switch at Home Depot, I did completely disconnect the furnace from the power mains so I could just plug the furnace into the generator and not worry about overloading the generator or damaging the home's wiring. Some people do that--plugging a generator into an outlet with a double-ended cord may be convenient, but that's a mistake and a fire hazard.

You know, gas heat works really well when you have electricity to blow the hot air around--within hours, the house was back to livable conditions. (This of course ensured Dominion would have the power back on within another five hours or so, about two and a half days of blackout.) After we got back from dinner with some friends, Dominion had finally come and cut away the branches on our lines, too.

I can only hope we're done with winter--Punxsutawney Phil be damned. But we're ready for the next bout of winter if it comes, shiny new generator and all.

The Magical Effects of a Power Steering Flush (DIY for $7 or Less)

2011-01-28T22:09:00.161-05:00

My car is getting old, and an older car means more maintenance. Worse, it's a turbocharged import, meaning work on it isn't cheap--my last major scheduled maintenance cost over $2000. So the fact my car had started having a few issues and my desire to put another 82,000 miles on it before even considering a newer model has driven me (no pun intended) to teach myself some basic and not-so-basic maintenance. The first success: flushing the power steering system--a task easier than changing the oil yet which had a big payoff!

Winter weather is rough on cars, and I'd been prepared to dismiss the slightly-jerky steering on my way to work each morning as a side-effect of the chilly temperatures. My car had also started idling a bit roughly, but hey, it was after all seven years and 82,000 miles old. Oh, and that vibration in the steering wheel around 45 mph? Probably tire wear or alignment, right? And the shops I took the car to checked all the fluids, didn't they?

Yet when working on a completely separate issue (more on that later), I noticed the power steering fluid was a yellow-orange color, when everything I'd read had stated the Forester's fluid should be red. Hmmm...

Jiffy Lube wanted $100+ to tackle the flush-and-fill on the power steering system. I can only imagine what a dealership would have charged! (The average price seems to run around $100, from what I can tell, with a range between $80 and $150.) Enter a trip to my service manual and the Googles.

Confusingly enough (though stated so in the owner's manual and on the power steering fluid tank), the 2004 Subaru Forester XT's power steering system takes Dexron III automatic transmission fluid--not power steering fluid! I'd been considering flushing the system myself for a couple of weeks when I finally stopped at an auto parts store on the way home from work one day and picked up a couple of quarts of the stuff at a total cost of under $7. Obviously, it pays to use what the manual actually calls for and not just look at the shelves and labels!

Though the full flush procedure involves a somewhat-tedious process (not one I expect the big-brand service centers actually complete, mind you--there's no way they do so along with everything else in a 20-minute service), there's a simple trick that does the job almost as well and with a fraction of the effort. Here's what you do:

Drive the car a bit to warm things up, then park on a reasonably level surface and shut off the engine.
Siphon out the existing power steering fluid straight from the reservoir (you could drain it by removing a hose, too). I used an all-purpose siphon hose, but a lot of DIY'ers claim a turkey baster from the dollar store works well, too.
Fill the power steering reservoir to the appropriate level (should be marked on the reservoir) with new lubricant.
Start the car, then turn the steering wheel all the way to the right and then all the way to the left several times. This will help circulate the new fluid and remove air from the system.
Stop the car, and repeat steps 2-4 several more times.

The first time I flushed the system out, the fluid was a dark orange. It wasn't gunky or burnt, but it certainly wasn't right, either. After one flushing, the fluid still came out orange, even though what I'd poured in was deep red. I repeated twice more, with each change of fluid coming out more and more red. Overall, I didn't even use a full quart of fluid in this process. You may need to repeat the process weekly if your power steering system is really dirty--after a week, though, my fluid is still nice and red.

No, it's not a true, full flush of the power steering system, but I can guarantee the typical big-brand service center doesn't do that, either, in the 20 minutes of "while you wait" work, either. It got the job done for me, though.

What's amazing is that this simple bit of work, accounting for perhaps 10 minutes of this car maintenance novice's time, has had a huge impact on my car! Gone is the jerkiness in the steering in the morning. Better yet, gone is the rough idling: I suppose the fluid was dirty enough it was causing the power steering pump to strain a bit. (Now, whether or not that means I have to change the whole pump out sometime in the not-distant future is an open question; if my fluid was bad enough to cause that much strain on the pump, might it not have done damage to it, too?)

I didn't even use the second bottle of Dexron III yet, so my real cost was $3.50. That's a savings of at least $96.50 over what I'd have paid someone else to do it, and the process required no tools (well, the siphon, though I could have gotten by with a $1 turkey baster) and 10 minutes or less of my time. And it had a noticeable effect on my car's everyday driving--nice!

After such a simple fix as my improvised power steering fluid flush, I feel empowered over my car, no longer in thrall to the mechanic's shop for anything short of a total engine overhaul. Yes, I know my accomplishment was nearly effortless (an oil change would be more work, actually), but baby steps, baby steps!

Next up is a barely-more-challenging task: I'm replacing the stock intercooler hoses on my car with some fancy silicone ones from Samco. No, I'm not out to make my car over into some modded race machine; I simply noticed the stock hose was a bit scruffy and ragged looking when under the hood. Wouldn't do to have the hose that delivers hot air from the turbo to the intercooler to split... and why pay over $100 for the cheap plastic and rubber OEM hoses when a similar outlay gets something much more temperature-resistant and with improved airflow (read: more horsepower)? More on this next weekend when I should have the parts on hand. (Way) further down the road will be disassembly of the intake manifold, as I need to pull it to get at the source of a minor fuel leak (again noticeable only on freezing-cold mornings like the power steering issue was), which most likely lies in the lines supplying the injectors or in the injector O-rings given everything else I've checked.

Obvious disclaimers: I can't be responsible for any damage you do to your car or yourself or others if you work on your own car. I simply want to share the simple process which worked for me! Be safe, and do your homework before attempting any maintenance on your vehicle.

Birding Kaeng Kracharn National Park: A Day Trip with Tony "Eagle Eye" & Co.

2010-12-04T20:32:00.257-05:00

Although the primary purpose of my trip to the erstwhile Kingdom of Siam was for dental work, I couldn't let such a long trip to such a wonderful birding location go without an excursion to add a few birds to my life list. So I booked a day trip to Kaeng Krachan National Park with expert local bird guide Tony "Eagle Eye."

Kaeng Krachan is Thailand's largest national park, encompassing around 45 square kilometers near the border with Burma (aka Myanmar), and is about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Bangkok; it's home to over 300 species of birds, almost all of them potential "life birds" to me (meaning I'd be seeing them for the first time in my life).

As every birder knows, the day often starts before dawn, and facing a long drive from Bangkok meant an even earlier one: Tony picked me up at the hotel at 4:00am local time, and together with his wife and his brother as a driver, we set off for our day trip. We made a stop for coffee and some breakfast along the way at a 7-11 (yes, they have 7-11s in Thailand), and the sun was just starting to come up as we neared Kaeng Krachan.

The mountainous forests at that hour are alive with sounds that I as a birder from the United States (with a smidgen of birding in the Caribbean and Europe under my belt) to be totally novel, like something out of a movie. On familiar turf, I rely on birding "by ear" fairly heavily, helping me know which birds are hanging out in the trees and brush... but in Thailand, I was on completely unknown ground. (I did, later in the day, recognize what had to be a woodpecker's short, high chip--that was nearly the only familiar bird sound of the trip!) Noisier than the birds were the many gibbons, which made an unearthly racket.

A Dusky Langur

Speaking of the various primates we saw--including, I think, the noisy Black-handed Gibbons--were some Dusky Langurs, one of which I caught on film as it perched right above our car.

From the very start of our morning birding, Tony was an incredible professional. He'd have his spotting scope out and set up before I even had begun to guess at where the birds in the dense forest canopy were. Now, I know I'm a middling-good birder at best and have frequently found myself awed by the birding skills of friends like expert Florida birder Adam Kent (and his wife Gina), but I have to say that Tony really, really impressed me with his birding. We'd be driving along the dirt roads through the park, and he'd signal a stop and almost immediately have a new bird in sight, no matter how thick or dense the forest above us--and he knew them all by ear and name. I'd studied my copy of Birds of Thailand before the trip to at least familiarize myself with the sorts of things I'd see, but I would have been all day flipping pages without Tony.

As all of the birds would be new to me, I didn't have a list of particulars I just had to see (though to be fair, I kind of did want to see a Flameback, as the similarly-sized and appearing Pileated Woodpecker is one of my personal favorites back home). So, pretty much from the outset of the trip, I was chalking new life birds on my list--as I explained to Tony, even the most common of birds would be exciting to me for this first time birding in southeast Asia. Indeed, I recall my first visit to California, when I saw a Western Scrub Jay for the first time and was just mesmerized by a bird which is as common there as the Blue Jay is back here in the eastern US.

An Emerald Dove

In most parts of the United States, we typically see only two or three dove species with any ease, and the most common, the Mourning Dove and the imported Rock Dove (aka the ubiquitous park bench pigeon) are indeed so ordinary so as to be not worth a second glance. I've indeed never been much interested in doves, outside the one time a Mourning Dove tried to nest in the tree outside our window in Vienna. Yet in Thailand, the dozens of dove species struck me as beautiful and unique.

Mountain Imperial Pigeon

A White-browed Scimitar Babbler (I think!)

The dense forest coupled with the grey skies of the day made photography a bit of a challenge, necessitating high ISOs (I ended up putting my Canon 50D in "auto ISO" mode, where it could range up to a noise-plagued ISO 1600 if needed) and quick reflexes. I do have to say that my Canon 300mm f4L coupled with 1.4x teleconverter--my normal "poor man's" birding setup as I've never had the spare change to pick up a 500mm or 600mm lens (any generous patrons out there?!)--wasn't quite up to the challenges of autofocusing in such conditions. If I could have spared the extra 120mm of focal length, removing the 1.4x teleconverter would have probably helped a lot, as it noticeably slows autofocus on non-1-series Canon bodies. Actually, I think digiscoping might have been the way to go, given what a great job Tony did getting the scope onto the birds. But, I got a lot of "record" shots and a few real keepers, too--I was pretty happy overall with my day of bird photography.

A Bulbul--I think it's a Flavescent Bulbul

After a great morning of birding which included spotting a pair of Great Hornbills--massive birds which can weigh up to 9 pounds and which are best described to the non-birder as looking a bit like a Toucan--and some impressive Greater Racket-tailed Drongos among the many other species we saw, we stopped for lunch near a stream. Tony provided lunch and had brought along a nice selection of fresh fruit, including apples, oranges (which in Thailand are green-skinned), grapes, and some persimmons from China. We had packets of steamed rice to combine with chicken, egg, or a vegetable mix Tony warned was quite spicy when I reached for some (and it was--but I adore spicy food and had in fact had some super-spicy kaeng khiao wan or green curry for lunch the day before).

Butterflies at a Mineral "Lick"

Appropriate for someone coming from Chateau Papillon, nearby was a spectacular sight: dozens of butterflies gathered at the edge of the water, apparently collecting minerals from the red clay soil (that red clay was too-familiar as well for someone living on the piedmont-side of the fall line in Virginia).

We birded in the lower elevations alongside the streams and rivers throughout the afternoon, and as Tony had promised earlier in the day, we indeed did get to see some Greater Flamebacks--a group of five of them, all told! Although I didn't get a photo of these beautiful woodpeckers (they were so deep in the foliage it was a challenge making them out at all), getting to see them was in and of itself a wonderful treat. (The photos in the linked Wikipedia article above really do not do them justice.)

Red-bearded Bee Eater

One of the noisier birds of the day was the beautiful Red-bearded Bee Eater. I can't describe its sounds, other than to say that much like the Carolina Wren, the bird's volume is far greater than its body size would suggest.

Tony patiently pointed out the locations of several species I had a hard time spotting in the forest, using a green laser pointer to help steer me in the right direction.

Tony "Eagle Eye" (Thanaphat Kinglek) and his wife

In contrast to the morning, the afternoon was fairly quiet--though as I said above, we did see several great birds in the afternoon, including another hornbill, this time an Oriental Pied Hornbill. Though my photo wasn't the best I could have taken, it was again a great spotting for a Thailand birding newbie like me.

Oriental Pied Hornbill

On our way back to Bangkok, we stopped along the Bight of Bangkok to look for the rare and critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper, which winters in southeast Asia. Just as the sun was about to set, Tony found one amongst the flocks of plovers and other shorebirds and called me over excitedly to his scope. Though it was too far off for me to attempt to get even a "record" photo of, I still got to see a fantastic species; there are less than 2500 of them left in the world. The sandpiper's spoon bill is unmistakable.

Plovers along the Bight of Bangkok

After that magnificent spotting, we climbed back into the car for the drive home, stopping for dinner at the ubiquitous 7-11, with some hot dogs and some sort of sweet-filled fried pasty for dessert. It was a long day of birding, starting at 4:00am and wrapping up around 8:00pm, but a worthwhile trip. Overall, I added several dozen new species to my "life list," including in addition to those I've pictured and mentioned: the Vernal Hanging Parrot, the Asian Fairy Bluebird, several flycatchers (Tickell's, Verditer, Ferruginous, and Hill Blue, I believe), the Sultan Tit, and the Little Spider-hunter which buzzed me while I was looking for a different bird entirely. (And many others!)

Sunset over the Bight of Bangkok

It was a great birding expedition, and I cannot stress enough what a great guide Tony "Eagle-Eye" was. I do hope I can talk Beth into making the long trip to Thailand in the future, and that we can both spend a couple of days birding under Tony's expert eyes. I'd love to be able to bring our friend and fellow birder Adam Kent along, too, and share the experience with him and put Adam's birding acumen to the test.

One Night in Bangkok, One Afternoon at ... the Dentist?

2010-12-03T19:32:00.122-05:00

No, I didn't take singing lessons from Murray Head, but my first night in Bangkok is behind me now, albeit a day late due to the vagaries of modern air travel. The primary purpose of my trip is a visit to the dentist.

That's right, the dentist. Back in 2006, I had the shock of a $7500+ dental bill for a few onlays; fast-forward to this year, and my current dentist (different guy, obviously!) gave me the bad news that those platinum-priced onlays were failing and needed to be replaced with crowns. After a $1800 dentist bill for just two crowns at that dentist (and mind you, that's after my insurance paid $900), I wasn't quite ready to fork out another $3600 for four new crowns! Factor in that I'd used up my dental insurance for the year already, and we're talking a $4500 expense.

Rewind to 2006 for a moment, when after hearing of the ridiculous cost of those onlays, several friends suggested my money would have been better spent on a trip to Thailand--one of the world's premier "medical tourism" destinations thanks to the quality of their medical system plus the exchange rate between the baht and dollar--where I could have paid for the same work, a flight, and a week at a five-star beach resort to recuperate and still have had several thousand dollars left over. I kind of laughed at the idea then, but the frequent traveler in me coupled with sticker shock over necessary dental work had me seriously thinking about going to the kingdom of Siam.

As for the costs of a trip, hotels in Thailand are cheap by US standards. Bought at the advance-purchase rate, a night at a five-star resort hotel like the Millennium Hilton is around $100 (and I've paid nearly double that for a Hampton Inn stateside this year). Dining can be had for $10 or less per meal for some tasty cuisine. And airfare isn't ridiculous; I paid a bit over $1000 for my ticket, but that was to get an upgradeable fare which would let me fly in business class instead of economy. So add up airfare, hotel, meals, and the dentist, and it's still less than what I'd be paying stateside.

Needless to say, weighing the cost of those crowns in the US vs. a trip abroad came down on the side of travel.

After doing much research on clinics, I settled on Thantakit, who despite having a somewhat cheesy Web site (though you should see a few of their competitors--definitely seems like the Thai medical industry hires Web developers who studied site design circa 1995), came highly recommended by both personal experiences of frequent travelers I know as well as with good online reviews. They are a bit pricier than several of the ubiquitous dental clinics in Thailand--on par with the top-line hospitals in Bangkok--but even at that and a worsened exchange rate with the baht, cost less than half what my out-of-pocket would have been even if I hadn't used up my dental insurance for the year.

Thantakit sent a shuttle van to pick me up at the hotel, and after a 40 minute ride--traffic being atrocious in Bangkok--I arrived at their very classy, clean offices. Now, no ding on my current US-based dentist, but I'm so used to dental facilities which look like they were build in 1970 that this was quite a pleasant change.

On to the consultation and initial appointment itself: the dentist spoke very good English and took a quick look at my teeth, took several photos, and then sent me over for x-rays. The x-ray equipment was the same state-of-the-art computerized system I'd used at the $7500-onlay clinic in Washington, D.C., though to save on my final bill, the dentist only took bitewings and not a full panoramic set. The clinic took them digitally, instead of on film (this is a nice plus), and rather than having to bite down on an awkward film cartridge holder, one of the technicians positioned the sensor and held it in place during the x-ray--the only strange bit of the procedure, as she's taking a bit much radiation to her hands in the process.

Back to the exam to go over with the x-rays with the dentist. Now, I'd expected a pressure-sell technique where the dentist would try to get me to go in for pricier options or for more services than I needed; I've had that happen in the US before, and was certain I'd experience it at a clinic whose primary business is dental tourism. But I was honestly and pleasantly surprised to have the dentist argue for a more conservative, less-expensive treatment plan. The remaining two one-surface inlays didn't need crowns, he explained, pointing out on the photos and the x-ray that most of their problem was in their surfaces having worn badly. They simply weren't large enough fillings or in teeth used heavily in chewing to require a crown.

Chalk one up to the good guys. Here I was willing to fork out a lot more money, and the dentist talked me out of it.

He also explained that for a molar and pre-molar crown, a noble metal covered with ceramic crown was a better option than all-ceramic for strength, and that though all-ceramic looked better, for teeth that far back in the mouth, he didn't see the need. Yes, I agreed entirely.

On to the treatment. The dentist went over everything ahead of time which he would be doing (that's more than any dentist I've gone to in the US has done), and explained if I was ever uncomfortable, to raise my hand (as opposed to the instruction to "tell us"--yes, that's what I hear in the US all the time from dentists: "tell us" when you've got a mouthful of dental probes, drills, retractors, and the associated paraphernalia off some sadist's confession-extraction kit in use).

"I'll give you the injection to numb the tooth now," he explained, and there wasn't even a pinch from it. This may be a strange observation, but in the US, Novocaine injections frequently hurt quite a bit (the exception being the $7500-onlay dentist, who used an automated metering system to deliver the anesthetic--though the added cost was not worth it in his case). I don't mean the needle itself so much, although that "pinch" the dentist warns of does often hurt. No, I mean the anesthetic itself, which can send quite a burst of pain down the nearest nerves during the injection. But this didn't hurt at all; I can only chalk it up to the dentist having a really careful hand and taking his time with the injection (it took a good minute to fully deliver the Novocaine).

Then came that most dreaded of dental implements, the drill. Beth has described our current American dentist as being "quite fond of his drill," and indeed, I've spent a long afternoon or two in the chair wondering when the heck he'd be finished. But another pleasant surprise awaited me: the drilling itself took a bit less than an hour for the two crowns plus some work on my inlays, and a filling for a cavity between two of my teeth. It wasn't painful. I can't ever describe dental excavation as pleasant, but it certainly wasn't an awful experience, either.

Finally, after taking some molds (downgrading to the noble metal + ceramic crowns necessitated molds vs. the photo-aided CAD/CAM milling I'd had for the past several dental procedures), the dentist put in place a temporary crown--explaining up front and apologizing that the process would smell like hot plastic for a few minutes--and sent me on my way, to come back in a few days and get the final crowns installed.

I'm due back to get those crowns in a couple of days--time needed for the lab to fabricate them to spec--and will report back once I've completed my dental tourism experience. But so far, I have to say: this was the best dentist I've ever gone to. Wish I could justify going to Thailand every six months for basic dental care instead of only the big-ticket stuff!

Stranded in Seattle: A Brief Travel Interlude (And Why Trip Insurance Is Only Useful When You Didn't Buy It)

2010-12-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

My trip had begun uneventfully enough with a pleasant breakfast flight to Seattle (trading, in the process, the dreary, wet late fall of east coast Washington for the dreary, wet late fall of west coast Washington), a trip to the Seattle Red Carpet Club, and then a glass of champagne onboard my connecting flight to Tokyo-Narita airport.

That's when things went south, and not, unfortunately, with me onboard and in the air. "You may have noticed the plane is fairly warm," the flight attendant announced. (Actually, after opening my air vent, it had seemed fine for once.) "We're having some problems with our air conditioning, and we're going to have to have everyone leave the plane while we try to fix it."

Uh-oh.

On the way to the Red Carpet Club, I was already on the phone with first United--getting "protected" onto the next day's flights and investigating alternative routings (none available, unfortunately, other than an awful, knee-breaking economy-class booking through Vancouver and Taipei) and trying to clean up the mess made of my hotel reservations. E-mails off to several folks in Thailand to give them heads-up that I might be delayed.

Monitoring UnitedCargo.com (a far more reliable indicator of flight status than the normal airline web site), I saw flight 875 pick up a 30 minute delay, then 45... then saw it marked "DECISION," meaning that they'd set a time at which the airline would decided whether or not to fly the plane at all. Ugh.

While I was on the phone with the United 1K international reservations desk (thank goodness for 1K--no wait on hold, and the agents I spoke with were able to give Anglo names like "Jason" without having to mute the phone and snicker, struggling to maintain a poker face from a cubicle in Bangalore) trying to nail down my flight options, I saw the flight go from "decision" to "departs 3:30pm"--only two hours late, but potentially tough on my connection in Tokyo, which was scheduled right at two hours.

Back at the gate, the airline announced they were just waiting for the crew to board, and we'd be on our way. (Argh!) The crew finally showed up--why they hadn't just disappeared to the lounge or employee ready room, I'm not sure--but then we got more bad news: the plane's auxiliary power unit (APU) was busted. Among other things, the APU provides power for onboard systems should one of the plane's main engines fail. Although Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, was just up the street a bit, we had to instead fly to San Francisco, where United has a maintenance base and where we'd switch planes for one with a functional APU. (For those wondering, it's safe to fly non-ETOPS routes without an APU--hence the plan to fly to SFO--it's just when you get out over the ocean and more than 60 minutes from any airstrip that you need the insurance.)

But--

But the plane had been loaded with enough fuel to get us to Tokyo, which would put us way overweight for landing in San Francisco. Obviously, United didn't want to circle SFO and burn or dump fuel, wasting nearly 80,000 pounds of black gold. Worse, after some checking, apparently Seattle didn't have the necessary tanker pumps to offload fuel safely on the ground, so after a few more minutes, the flight cancelled. (I'd already seen on UnitedCargo.com that the flight had gone to a scheduled departure time of 10:30am by then--meaning the next morning. Sigh.) Off to the Red Carpet Club to pick up hotel and meal vouchers for the night, and to debate whether or not to have the airline simply send me home, declare a "trip in vain," and refund me the cost of the ticket.

The SeaTac Marriott is a decent enough hotel, though I had to pay for internet access--too bad United didn't put me up at the Hilton, where I've got mid-tier status. Speaking of Hilton, I had to make a new hotel reservation at the Bangkok Hilton, as thanks to the lost day, my plans to fly down to Phuket and stay at the Hilton there, do some birding in the mangrove forests and jungle and along the coast in the land where The Man With the Golden Gun was filmed were now toast. Not getting to bird in Phuket was disappointing, but the whole point of my trip was dental work (making many of the expenses partially or wholly tax deductible to boot)--fortunately, I was able to reschedule my dental visits before leaving Seattle.

This is where trip insurance would have come in handy. My non-refundable hotel fares could have been reimbursed, as could my Thai Air flight to Phuket which I'd now undoubtably miss (neither all that pricey, but still frustrating to be out). Of course, had I spent the $100 or so in insurance, you can bet nothing would have gone wrong on my trip in the least...

I'd have liked to have spent the afternoon and evening exploring Seattle itself--a city I've been to previously only in the form of its main airport. However, the importance of tying up loose ends for my trip (and dealing with a 9-hour time difference in the process) outweighed my sightseeing needs, and the weather in Seattle coupled with the fact I left my jacket at home not expecting to need it (Thailand is sunny and 80-90 degrees this time of year) kept me holed up at the Marriott.

Finally, the next morning, everything was ready to go, with two UA 875 flights now scheduled to operate from SEA-NRT. Ours would go out first, at 10:30am, with the regularly-scheduled flight to follow at 1:30pm. The only loose end remaining was my flight to Bangkok, for which I'd lost my confirmed business class seat due to the rescheduled flights and was now waitlisted (with the check-in agent very discouraging about my chances: "It's completely full.") I won't bore you with the intricate inner mechanisms of how upgrades work on United, other than to say that between my top-tier status (1K) and the fact my rebooked flight to Bangkok was artificially showing now as being "full fare" (instead of discount) economy, I should stand a decent chance of being at the top of the list, should a business seat open up. Well, that's to find out in Tokyo, 10 1/2 hours away once we're airborne.

Onward to the land of Siam...

Culture Shock Is...

2010-12-02T12:20:00.010-05:00

Culture shock is:

Getting off a plane after 22 hours of being up in the air (and 22 more in airline delays), arriving midnight local time, and having to look at a paper to see what day it is when my watch, my body, and the local time announced by the pilot all give different answers.

Realizing that the looking at the local papers to find the date doesn't help, because you don't read the language.

Getting off a plane in a country where you not only don't speak a word of the language, but don't speak a word of the entire language family. At least in Europe, some knowledge of a Romance language goes a long way.

But if Anna Leonowens could do it, I suppose I can, too. (Yes, that is a hint as to where I've traveled.)

More of this travel adventure to come...

2010-11-26T20:30:00.056-05:00

Chateau Papillon has an "English basement," opening out onto the backyard with one of those ubiquitous sliding glass doors. Or perhaps I should more correctly say had one of those sliding patio doors; one thing that had nagged us since moving in back in 2008 was the door's poor operation, and the fact that even fully open, it was just an inch too narrow to easily get the bird cages out or to bring things like appliances in.

The solution, obviously, was a nice French door, which we could swing out on both sides. So, when Lowe's ran a 15% off special order doors sale earlier this fall, we went in and picked out a fairly basic Energy Star-rated model sized to replace that leaky, finicky old sliding door.

Installing the new door was actually very easy; the hardest part was getting the old one out. I'd done such a job caulking the old door last year that the metal flashing around it was quite loathe to come loose, and I managed to destroy my caulk remover in the process (as well as the metal flashing--but we'd no real thought of salvaging it). With advice from uncle E.C. and his contractor's expertise coupled with physical labor from my dad and sister Brooke, we got the new door in place with the only snag being some 1/4" cedar planks I had to remove around the opening. Fortunately, the sill was pretty level, and the sides fairly plumb, requiring very little shimming and adjustment--for proper alignment is absolutely critical when installing any door, much less a French door where anything out of square will result in poor operation and often a gap between the two doors instead of a weather-tight seal.

I got the new door insulated (with low-expansion spray-foam) and caulked, as well as locksets installed and keyed to our existing house keys--a nifty feature, that. There's still work to do; the inside needs some case molding, and the outside a fascia board along the top as well as possibly some casing along the outside edges. Too, the strike plate for the main lock needs to be aligned better, and the handedness of the lock swapped (as the levers appear "upside-down" as installed). But so far, so good!

The old door will be going to Habitat for Humanity, assuming they want it, as we got it out without any significant damage. Now, if we'd only managed to get the door ordered before the submission deadline for the second round of Virginia energy efficiency rebates, we'd have saved about $100 more on the cost of the door. Nevertheless, we made good use of our energy rebates, between replacing our furnace and a/c unit, buying a high-efficiency washing machine, and getting a home energy audit (the fruits of which, in all the caulking and other insulation work I've done, are seen in each month's energy bills).

A Meal for Thanks

2010-11-25T21:58:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday cooking season for me, and much like Christmas, means an entire day spent in the kitchen--but with rewards well worth it when all the loads of dishes have been done and the leftovers stowed away in the fridge. And Thanksgiving truly makes for a meal of thanks when shared with family.

This year's menu included several new dishes along with traditional favorites; without further ado, here's what we served at Chateau Papillon for Thanksgiving 2010:

Home-baked garlic, herb, and cheese bread--the first dish I prepared, as I fired up the oven at 8:30am to warm and proof the dough, with the loaves going in around noon. Other than needing to measure the ingredients by weight, this is an easy bread for any kitchen, and one which can be tinkered with to no end (for example, I change the herbs, add cheese, and replace some of the flour with whole wheat flour)

Fresh green beans, blanched and served in olive oil and salt. This was the quickest dish to prepare; just snap the ends off the beans, dump in boiling water for 5 minutes, strain, and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt (kosher salt's big flakes work best).

Sweet potato casserole. This was one of my "experimental" dishes for the year, despite the traditional theme: in addition to the mashed sweet potatoes, I added a banana, a half pound of cream cheese, a beaten egg, brown sugar, a bit of flour, and seasoned with vanilla, curry powder, garam masala, cinnamon, freshly-ground nutmeg, and allspice... all topped with some marshmallows. I have to say that it came out fantastically well--the banana and the curry really worked.

Stuffing: the only mostly-store-bought course, as I used a blend of dried cornmeal croutons and cranberry stuffing mix, with the added flavor of a splash of chicken broth and Irish whiskey. (Everything is better with a little Irish whiskey.)

Baked apples: layers of butter alternated with Granny Smith apple slices, each topped with cinnamon, allspice, Chinese five spice powder, and a dash of cayenne pepper--and with ample brown sugar to keep it sweet, and just a splash of Meyer lemon juice to keep the apples from browning.

Skin-on mashed garlic and goat cheese red potatoes. Nothing else to be said, really--just good eats.

Brined roasted turkey. I only get real, homemade oven-roasted turkey twice a year, and look forward to Thanksgiving for the eleven long months after Christmas. This year, I brined in a mixture of apple cider, kosher salt, brown sugar, candied ginger, black mustard seed, cloves, allspice berries, and peppercorns, then stuffed the turkey with apples, onion, cinnamon, along with some rosemary and sage straight from the garden and a bit of thyme from the supermarket--and a few springs of our curry plant.

The turkey drippings went straight into the saucier my mother-in-law P.A.T. gave me earlier this year, stirred into a butter-and-flour roux with a bit of salt, pepper, thyme, and a splash of Irish whiskey (remember what I said about Irish whiskey a minute ago?). This was hands-down the best gravy I've ever made. Let me share a secret to gravy making: start with a roux--melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter and whisk in 2 tablespoons of flour, then cook the resulting paste briefly. The darker the roux, the more the flavor... but the less the thickening power, so for something with a lot of flavor to begin with like turkey gravy, cook only until the butter develops a nutty aroma. Then, gradually whisk in the turkey drippings, season, and keep whisking until thickened--you'll let it come to a boil and cook on for a few minutes, then cool. No canned gravy at Chateau Papillon, and no broth needed with such fantastic turkey drippings.

Chubb Mom made a course of her grandmother's rolls--yes, we already had bread, but rolls are a tradition, and I insisted.

For our resident fish-eating-vegetarian, I baked some Chilean Sea Bass--a course we've had three times in the past week (!!) but nonetheless an absolutely fantastic dish, and one of the simpler ones to make. Put the fish, skin-side down, into a baking dish, top with mango sea salt and a few pats of butter, and roast at 390 degrees for 35 minutes or so until nice and golden on top. Voila!

Finally, for dessert, I took advantage of Costco having both Meyer lemons and Cara-cara blood oranges. In one of the more involved dishes of the day, I baked a homemade graham cracker crust: I used a package of stale, broken grahams, tossed in the blender with some vanilla sugar and an unhealthy bit of butter--then pressed into the pie pan and baked for 10 minutes or so. Ten or twelve lemons juiced and zested went into the custard base, along with a half dozen eggs, a lot of vanilla sugar, cornstarch, and some butter for richness... all then put over the bain marie until thickened sufficiently to go into the crust and bake until set. After it cooled, I topped with homemade whipped cream (heavy cream, vanilla sugar, and Grand Mariner liquor) and blood orange segments. The orange wedges made a big difference and added a light, juicy texture to each otherwise-heavy bite. In the end, the pie tasted a bit like a good key lime pie, taking advantage of the Meyer lemon's cross between lemons and tangerines.

My mom put together no-bake pumpkin turtle pie as well at my dad's request, using a store-bought (blasphemous!) graham cracker crust, canned pumpkin, Cool Whip (I offered to fold in my real whipped cream--to no avail), vanilla pudding, caramel sauce, and pecans. I did, however, manage to slip in some extra seasoning, including Irish whiskey (!), allspice, and Chinese five spice powder. I couldn't find the mace, or that would have gone in, too.

Overall, I used the better part of six sticks of butter and did five (soon to be six) loads of dishes as I cleaned up as I prepped and cooked throughout the day. But it was worth it--Thanksgiving does come only once a year, after all.

Millennia on Display: The Splendor of Bryce Canyon

2010-10-20T20:16:00.054-04:00

This past Spring, Beth and I made a too-brief visit to southern Utah, where we spent less than 72 hours exploring Goblin Valley and Arches National Park. That one visit was all it took, though, to inextricably hook me on the red rock desert landscapes of the region, and I couldn't wait until we had a chance to return and see more of this spectacularly beautiful part of the world. Even the unforgettable experiences of seeing Delicate Arch at sunset and hiking through the hoodoos of Goblin Valley under stormy skies had not prepared me, though, for the sheer majesty and deep, soul-moving beauty that is Bryce Canyon.

We arrived a bit after sunset after a day at Zion National Park (the drive up taking longer than expected due to construction delays), and though I'd hoped to beat the setting sun there, even the sight of the shaded amphitheater full of hoodoos was enough to bring a lump to my throat. There simply are not words to properly express what I felt upon that first glimpse of Bryce Canyon; it was a uniquely moving, almost spiritual experience that took my breath away.

Sunset Point along Bryce Canyon's Rim

Viewed from above, the canyon drops off sharply from its edges, a vertical distance of over 1,000 feet--yet so much of the canyon is not open space, but rather is filled with towering rock formations: fins and hoodoos, arrayed in a splendor of pink, orange, red, and white stone.

Millions of years of history are on display in the high desert country of southern Utah—beautiful eons recorded in the layers of sandstone revealed by the erosive hands of Father Time in the regions mesas, canyon walls, buttes, and hoodoos. Freeze and thaw: with each cycle, water penetrates more deeply into the rock. Rain and runoff. Dust and sand caught in the whisperings of the wind. Uplift from vast geological forces below, pushing and folding the land. Father Time and Mother Nature shape a long, inexorable course across the landscape.

Beth stands near the edge of Bryce Canyon

Atop Bryce Canyon, rainfall and snow drains off into the Great Basin, never to see the shores of the Pacific. Step a few short feet out over the thin air—and take a rather longer descent to the bottom of the canyon’s fairyland, and precipitation runoff joins the Colorado River watershed, passes through the Grand Canyon and (absent the interference of man) eventually reaches the Gulf of California. Today, of course, the Colorado’s waters are stretched thin by thirsty California and irrigation of cropland in an area whose sole agricultural fault lies in its lack of precipitation--but regardless, the rim of the canyon marks a drainage divide, and runoff from precipitation along the rim actually has little contribution to the rock formations seen.

Instead, the Claron formation--rock up to 55 million years old--coupled with the Paunsaugunt Fault, where the western side has fallen relative to the east by around 2,000 feet--are responsible. Differential erosion stripped away the white member of the Claron formation, exposing the pink below to more rapid erosive forces. Where siltier sedimentary stone would have weathered into low badlands, the higher limestone and conglomerated content of Bryce's Claron formation protect (relatively) some of the rock, yielding the towering fins and hoodoos filling the amphitheater. Likewise, smooth fractures in the stone (characteristic of the Claron formation) further define the channels of erosion's forces.

About 4 miles into the Fairyland Canyon hike

There's no better way to observe the full breadth of geological forces at work in forming Bryce Canyon than to descend down into its amphitheater--you'll certainly appreciate old Ebeneezer Bryce's declaration of it being "a hell of a place to lose a cow"--and that's just what Beth and I did on a grueling 8+ mile hike from Fairyland Point. But that's a tale for another blog post; for now, simply enjoy the splendor of what I've found to be the single most beautiful and spectacular of our national parks, and ponder the millions of years of history on display there.

Transforming Chateau Papillon's Landscape: Building a Wildlife Sanctuary & How You Can, Too!

2010-09-22T11:46:00.003-04:00

Videographers Alison Fast and Chandler Griffin

Not too long ago, I blogged about some of the steps Beth and I have taken to make over our yard at Chateau Papillon into a more natural landscape and a habitat attractive to all sorts of native wildlife (and intend to expound upon those topics, later, too). We signed up for the Audubon at Home program and made our yard wildlife-friendly--and now, we're playing host to the National Audubon Society and volunteering our yard to appear in a video they're producing about how everyone can work to help birds year-round from their own homes. Even if you're not a first-responder scrubbing clean the oiled birds of the Gulf after an environmental disaster like we recently witnessed, you can indeed still play a very important part in providing healthy habitat for migratory birds.

So when the call came out yesterday from the local Northern Virginia Audubon chapter's environmental education coordinator requesting help in putting together a video about the Gulf response, I jumped right on board; even though Beth and I typically are too busy to volunteer much of our time, this was simply too good of an opportunity to pass up, helping get out the message that everyone can play a role.

I remember how, shortly after the magnitude of the BP Macando well disaster became known, I rushed over to my computer and started pricing flights to New Orleans and to the Gulf panhandle of Florida. I wanted to be there, instead of sitting helpless here at home. Just thinking about the tragedy and its effects upon wildlife got me both angry and teared-up at the same time. I had to do something!

But when I spoke to a friend in Florida--Adam Kent, current President of the Florida Ornithological Society--Adam gently suggested that most volunteers, though meaning the best, would have to be constantly supervised and guided to make sure they didn't do more harm than good (stepping on a threatened tern's nest, for example). Instead, Adam said, we should be doing things at home like putting up nests specifically for species around our home, like Eastern Phoebes (platforms sheltered high up near the eaves would be best, he said), and helping the silly Carolina Wrens who'd chosen to nest in our mailbox (we put in a second mailbox and labeled the two so the postman wouldn't drop mail in on top of the eggs).

Indeed, the contributions we can make from home and in our own backyards are actually more important than being on the front lines of response to an environmental disaster--more of us can participate, and over a larger area and much longer span of time. Keep in mind, too, that what we do in our back yards has a much larger effect when summed across the country as a whole, and a more lasting one: we can change the environment for the better throughout our lives, not just on a single weekend or two of volunteering in the Gulf.

And the backyard contributions need not be something which consumes all of one's time or resources, either. Though Beth and I certainly spend a huge amount of our own time and energy in our "outdoor living room," even small gestures can make a difference. For example:

Out in the yard with the family or pets? Spend a few minutes looking for and removing invasive plant species, which crowd out natives and often don't provide as good of food or shelter for wildlife. Beth and I have almost gotten our Japanese stilt grass under control simply by pulling up a few handfuls at a time whenever we're in the yard.
Put out a feeder or two, and keep it stocked with black oil sunflower seeds--you'll pay a bit more for black oil sunflower, but it's generally a better seed and in our experience attracts less non-native "pest" birds (like House Sparrows and European Starlings). Over time, you'll find yourself adding additional feeders to attract a variety of birds; we have thistle for finches, a sugar water feeder for hummingbirds, suet cake feeders for woodpeckers (including one designed specifically for larger species like the Pileated), and a flat tray feeder the Mourning Doves and Blue Jays love.
Plant and encourage native species suited for your terrain and conditions. They'll do well, and you'll be amazed at how much less fertilizer and pesticide is needed to keep them healthy. Native plants attract a wide variety of native insects and serve as food and habitat for all sorts of wildlife.
Add a water feature; it can be as small as a bird bath. Our little pond has been a great habitat for native frog species (who found it on their own--build it, and they will come) as well as an attraction for our many backyard birds.
Collect water from the gutters in rain barrels and use it in the yard instead of the hose.
Create a "brush pile" somewhere in your yard instead of bundling up all those twigs and sticks for pickup at the curb. Wrens and several other species of birds will thank you.
Encourage neighbors to keep cats indoors!
Many areas have free mulch available--make use of it. We've used our locally-available mulch to help build up a layer of rich soil around the yard and to reclaim some of our lawn into new, more natural habitats: meadow in the sunnier spots, filled with bird-, bee-, and butterfly-friendly native wildflowers; forest floor in the shadier areas.

There are countless more things you, too, can do; the list above covers only a few of the steps we've undertaken over the past two years in our back yard. The Audubon Society of Northern Virginia offers several resources with more information for those living in the Washington, D.C., area, and the National Audubon Society's Audubon at Home site offers tips and a starting point for citizens nationwide.

Anyway--on the video shoot itself: the videographers arrived, along with National Auduon Society Gulf response communications coordinator Finley Hewes, around 7:30am, having flown up from New Orleans the night before. They'd been working hard on the bulk of the video, from the beaches of the Gulf shores to trips out onto the water to see first-hand the front-line response to the oil disaster, and would be finishing up with the footage of what people can do in their own back yards. We took a lot of footage, showing us walking around the yard, pointing out the native plants and their benefits to wildlife, and then spent time on an interview. I'm sure most of the footage will end up on the cutting room floor (after all, we're just the closing anecdote to the video), but I'm still looking forward to seeing the finished product and will post a link to it as soon as the National Audubon Society folks put it up online.

I think we really conveyed the message that there are indeed things that we as individuals can do every day to help out; I'll post another blog entry later spelling out in detail some of what we shared and how those tips can help you, too, take care of the birds and other wildlife around you, no matter where you are.

Weekend Scones & More Cuisine de Chateau Papillon

2010-09-19T21:15:00.079-04:00

Poppyseed Cake with Caramel Orange-Apricot Rum Glaze: YUM!

As long-time readers of this blog know, we have a tradition at Chateau Papillon for "weekend scones": breakfast or brunch at least once a week involving home-cooked treats to be enjoyed with a leisurely mug of coffee or espresso. The sweets need not actually be scones (though cherry-vanilla scones are amongst my favorites); anything from donuts to tea cakes to bagels count, so long as they're homemade.

Our busy schedules had precluded much more than convenience cooking (pasta and sauce, for example) and take-out the past several days, but this weekend I made sure to take the time to put together a new "scone": a poppyseed cake served with a caramel orange-apricot rum glaze.

The cake recipe followed loosely one from my favorite baker's cookbook, Bo Friberg's Professional Pastry Chef. The basic, very rich batter consisted of egg yolks (5), sugar (a lot), butter (2 sticks), sour cream, cake flour, leaveners (both baking soda and powder), and poppy seeds (nearly an entire jar, and at that half what the recipe called for!). Add to that, via folding-in, a meringue base of beaten egg whites (6), vanilla, and more sugar. We often lack some of the more esoteric pans Friberg calls for (e.g. a Gugelhupf) and make do with an old but tried & true tube pan--which is actually what this recipe called for. Friberg's recipe did claim you could also make muffins from the batter; I suppose he's right, though thanks to the creaming method of "assembly," the finished consistency is somewhere between a traditional cake and a muffin--more moist and dense than what I expect when it comes to muffins.

For finishing, Friberg called for a basic orange glaze, which I used as a suggestion in name only and improvised significantly: one cup of orange juice, a cup of sugar, a cup of apricot preserves, and a generous helping (say, 1/2 cup) of dark rum, boiled and reduced in the saucier my mother-in-law sent as a "no particular occasion" gift a few weeks ago to about a cup of caramelized goodness.

I still prefer Friberg's walnut cream cake, but the poppyseed was a nice change of pace, and certainly did not go to waste uneaten at Chateau Papillon!

The weather was so nice over the weekend that we not only had our breakfast out on the patio, but our dinner as well. With the earlier-every-day sunset, I didn't get a good photo of the fruits of our Sunday supper efforts, unfortunately, so my description will have to do. For the main, I roasted some fresh wild-caught sockeye salmon with a bit of olive oil, sea salt, and dried dill--simpler and easier than even the grill-smoked salmon we typically enjoy over the summer. I combined the leftover sour cream from the morning's cake batter with some potatoes, goat cheese, and garlic to create one side; the other was an interesting squash we came across at the grocery store, sliced in half and baked with a sprinkle of salt and some olive oil. We'd never had "buttercup squash"--butternut, yes, but this looked more like a larger acorn squash than anything else--and I have to say that it was exceptionally well-named: the baked vegetable tasted like it had been richly buttered through-and-through, despite having only a touch of olive oil and not even a hint of dairy applied.

Transforming Chateau Papillon's Landscape: Building a Wildlife Sanctuary (Part One)

2010-09-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

Here at Chateau Papillon, we've been hard at work on the outdoors as much (if not more so) than the indoors. When we first moved in, the lot was something of a blank slate, outside of the wonderful mature trees surrounding the yard. We waited through the frustrations of a short sale largely due to the yard's potential, as it backed up to Fairfax Villa Park and offered the certainty of attracting a large variety of birds and other wildlife. Since moving in, we've planted dozens of native trees and shrubs, have reclaimed large sections of drab lawn into more naturalized habitat, and have chalked up a list of 54 different bird species to-date. So when the Northern Virginia Audubon Society announced the "Audubon at Home" wildlife sanctuary certification program, we thought to ourselves, "We're already 95% of the way there!"

Our Habitat Certification Sign!

The Audubon at Home Wildlife Sanctuary program encourages everyone--from schools, businesses, and churches to individual homeowners--to treat their property like a wildlife habitat, by taking steps to naturalize, bring in more native plant species, and provide food, shelter, and nesting habitat to our most important and needy species of native wildlife. The program stresses environmentally-friendly landscape management practices, from reducing and managing runoff to cutting back on pesticide and fertilizer usage, all of which are important but often-overlooked adjutants to caring for native flora and fauna.

We recently completed our certification, and looking back, have come a long way at Chateau Papillon in the just-shy-of two years we've spent here. Though I could fill up several posts with just the "before & after" shots, a few do bear inclusion for comparison's sake today:

Backyard, in June, 2008 (before)

When we first found the listing for Chateau Papillon, the back yard was one of the biggest draws, but as you can see above, not a whole lot was going on beside the shade from the mature trees along the periphery. We didn't do that much work outside immediately after buying and moving in over Thanksgiving in late 2008; we had too much to do inside even if the weather had been more amenable outdoors. After a visit to Merrifield Garden Center in the early spring of 2009, we came away with a lot of ideas in our head for what to do to transform our yard and make it "ours," along with five dogwoods and a river birch to plant.

Back yard, September 2010 (after)

That first winter was fairly mild, as was the start of springtime, but we already knew one of our first challenges was going to be runoff management: after a series of March rains, we had a swamp and a river running through it in no time flat. Just about any rainstorm left similar signs of its passing upon the yard.

Ile du Papillon? Spring showers make for puddles and rivers in the back yard.

We have tackled that problem in stages. The first phase is visible, in fact, in the photo above: mulching the yard and replacing grass which simply doesn't get enough sun and which doesn't thrive atop our yard's densely-packed clay. We undertook several courses of sheet mulching, recycling many of our moving boxes into a layer of weed-choking cardboard atop which we spread several inches of leaf mould and then shredded hardwood mulch obtained free-of-charge from Fairfax County's recycling center. (In fact, we've to-date trucked in more than 40 cubic yards of free mulching material--worth a few thousand dollars if bought by the bag from the neighborhood Home Depot.) Over time, the sheet mulch breaks down, forming a layer of rich, well-drained soil atop the hard-packed clay.

We created mulched zones originally as "natural areas" in the shadiest parts of our yard, recreating a more natural "forest floor" beneath the mature trees. Just the mulch alone has significantly improved our runoff management; now only the most intense of monsoons produces any "rivering" in the yard, and we've extended the mulched areas significantly across the back yard and into a large section of the front as well. Where before a solid rain meant a muddy morass that persisted for days, we now have rich soil and mulch cover which can be walked upon within minutes of a storm's passing.

Beth and Chance Plant a Dogwood

Next, though sometimes our choices haven't been perfect, we've planted stuff. Lots of stuff. Starting with those five dogwoods and a river birch, we have gradually begun to define a mid-story of smaller trees and shrubs beneath the towering mature trees edging the yard. Those first trees have been joined by many more--four more river birches, an American redbud, a pussy willow, two hawthorns, two cypresses, and numerous self-seeded tulip poplars and a mulberry. Native shrubs by the truckload have joined the party: common ninebark (one of our favorites); more than a half-dozen red osier dogwood shrubs (beautiful red stems in the winter); American and inkberry hollies galore (and one English holly hybrid for contrast); Virginia juniper; native hemlocks; several different native Viburnums; several blueberries and a blackberry; two sweetshrubs; and several more exotic junipers.

That doesn't count all the bulbs, wildflowers, ferns, and perennials we've added, which include meadow-loving tickseed (coreopsis), purple coneflowers, Black-eyed Susan, wood aster, cardinalflower, columbine, violets, foamflower, and much more. Outside the hostas (requisites for a shade-covered yard!) and several of the bulbs, pretty much everything is a native species, too.

Most yards really shouldn't be oceans of neatly-cut grass, anyway; grass requires a lot of fertilizer and pesticide application--bad for many reasons, including runoff--and isn't all that great from a biodiversity standpoint, either. In fact, wide swathes of green lawns weren't in fashion in the United States until post-World Wars, when troops brought back the idea from Europe. Habitats like meadow (filled with wildflowers and native tall grasses), wetland, and forest edges are much better homes to wildlife and better for our environment.

More to come: the Audubon Habitat at Home program is not just about the new plantings, but about control of invasive species, too.

Richard Nixon: Portrait of a Socialist

2010-09-12T20:13:00.001-04:00

Ranting that our country is hurtling toward "socialism" is the current bugaboo of the political right--and, indeed, given socialism by definition lies on the left side of the political spectrum, one can understand their opposition to such philosophies by their very nature. Yet for all the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by Tea Party demagogues over our imminent collapse into some quasi-Marxist state, I have to ask: is the agenda of the current administration and Congress actually all that "socialist," or has the political right merely moved itself so far to the extreme end of the scale so that everything else looks to be to the left of Stalin by comparison?

Photo from National Archives via Wikimedia Commons

Without delving into each specific issue in detail, I offer this observation: one Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States and a stalwart of the Republican party, pursued and implemented policies across his administration which are far more to the left, and steered the country on a path certainly more "socialist," than President Obama, Senator Reid, or Representative Pelosi (the unholy trinity in the eyes of the right) have ever dreamt of. Even bathing in the blood of the puppies they've sacrificed to achieve their demonic goals, those three latter-day Stalinists pale in comparison to the achievements of Tricky Dick--who last I saw had an (R) in parenthesis after his name, not a (D). Nor are these policies cherry-picked; they represent some of the biggest and most lasting achievements of President Nixon's time in office and cover broad swathes of policy from the economy to the environment to foreign policy.

Take, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, which to modern conservatives is an anathema to the free market principles they advocate and an agency that exists solely to obstruct the consumer-minded engines of productivity that are this nation's corporations. The current GOP senatorial nominee from Nevada has called for the EPA's outright eradication on numerous occasions, and the words of the recently-erstwhile GOP nominee for Vice President sum up the conservative zeitgeist, labeling it the "Economic Prevention Agency."

A quick consultation of the history books (references few seem to keep on hand these days) will reveal exactly who proposed and signed into law the EPA, and it wasn't some liberal, starry-eyed socialist like FDR or Lyndon Johnson.

Let's not stop with the EPA, the Clean Air Act, or the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. Nixon didn't just steer us toward socialism by becoming a friend to the environment. No, he embraced such leftist notions as workplace safety and the welfare of the nation's employees with the creation of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And--the horrors!--he pushed his socialist, anti-business agenda to protect babies and small children with the creation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with its regulations over swimming pools and cribs and corporate-profit-damning product recalls.

The list of "socialist" agencies and regulations crafted and implemented under Nixon's watch is a healthy one, unless you're one of the demagogues lathering up crowds against "the gubermint" and its efforts to seize your tax dollars and turn them into handouts. Taking the US dollar off the gold standard, long a complaint of conservatives? Check. Imposing a national speed limit (n.b. something I can't forgive, myself)? Check. Increased spending on Medicare, Social Security, and food and welfare programs? Check.

Since taking office, President Obama has caught much grief over even the suggestion that mega-bank executive salaries might be excessive, and that those banks who received taxpayer bailouts ought not spend our public moneys on throwing yet another party in Vegas or Bermuda. Yet Nixon exercised authority and implemented national price and wage control boards, freezing pay raises and dictating product prices across the country. Obama is a socialist, say the neoconservative punditry and body politic, for even hinting that rewarding utter failure with lottery-payout-sized bonuses seems askew. Yet Nixon exercised control nationwide over salaries and prices, which quite arguably stands as one of the most socialist (and authoritarian) measures ever taken by the US government with regards to the conduct of private business.

And let's not forget "Obamacare," the castrated-by-compromise effort to help ensure every US citizen have access to adequate health care and current favorite invective of the right. Nearly forty years ago, President Nixon called for national health care, a plan which would have mandated employer-provided insurance as well as a federal plan anyone could pay into and join. (Ironically, Ted Kennedy was one of the leading opponents of Nixon's health care reform plan.) Nixon failed to achieve his vision of universal, national health care, indeed, but one wonders what those Republicans shouting "socialist!" and "keep the government out of my health care!" today would have thought of an obviously more ambitious (and yes, socialist) plan coming from one of their own.

Lastly, rhetoric from the right today constantly demonizes President Obama for even entertaining the merest daydream of using diplomacy rather than the sword that is the US military might to deal with our nation's enemies.

Yet who is remembered for being the only President who could go to China, and whose efforts resulted in a real detente with not only with China, but to a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union as well (who feared a potential Sino-American alliance might arise out of such diplomacy)?

Yes, that socialist, Richard Nixon. And don't forget, Tea Partiers, that Nixon cut defense spending significantly (from over 9% of GDP to under 6%) and got us finally out of that quagmire in Vietnam.

You'd think from the current rhetoric from the right that Nixon was a panty-waisted pinko whose sole goal was to transfer corporate wealth to our commisar enemies. Yet in his day, he was a Republican opposed vehemently by liberals at every step of the way. It's simply a sad statement of how far to the right the Tea Party, neoconservatives, and even mainstream Republicans today have moved from where their party once stood.

Chateau Papillon Bird #54: Red-breasted Nuthatch

2010-09-10T18:44:00.002-04:00

It's fall migration season, and that means the chance to see all sorts of birds winging their way southward. Beth added bird #54 to Chateau Papillon's list this afternoon with the sighting of a Red-breasted Nuthatch who had stopped to visit our feeders.

I got an e-mail from Beth asking where the Sibley's guides were, followed by an excited, insistent note that she'd found a new bird for the yard. When I got home from work, I grabbed my camera and came out to sit and birdwatch with the hope of seeing what would be a life-bird for me: I've listed the smaller, similarly-marked Pygmy Nuthatch before from a west-coast trip--and of course the much-more-common White-breasted Nuthatch--but a Red-breasted would be a new bird for me.

The early evening provided some great birding, with appearances by a Pileated Woodpecker, several Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, an Eastern Phoebe, and all sorts of the "usual suspects" of the backyard scene. And yes, I did get get to see the Red-breasted Nuthatch several times, and even snapped a couple of decent photos despite the dwindling light. The evening was not without casualty, though; while I sat and waited, some feathered friend far above decided to make a deposit upon my shoulder.

Hiking in Chugach and the Return Home (Part Four of my Alaska Adventure)

2010-07-27T22:13:00.062-04:00

My all-too-brief visit to Alaska wrapped up with stops to hike several sections of Chugach State Park, after I spent my first day there with a drive down the Seward Highway and a visit to Exit Glacier, and began my second day birding after the return to Anchorage. Alaska is a hiker's heaven, with trails ranging from easy strolls to multi-day treks across the vast wilderness, and though I didn't have the time (or equipment) to engage in the latter, I still wanted to get in a bit of hiking before heading back to Chateau Papillon. Armed with Best Easy Day Hikes Anchorage, I headed into the wilds!

Chugach State Park encompasses nearly a half million acres--making it the third-largest state park in the United States and the largest in Alaska. (I've been to the second-largest, California's Anza-Borrego Desert, too, which is a fantastic destination in its own right.) The park wraps around the Anchorage area along the Chugach Mountains to the east and offers access to dozens of trails from 28 trailheads.

My first stop was in the park's northern section, where I opted for an easy hike to Thunder Bird Falls. Located about 15-20 miles northeast of Anchorage along the Glen Alps Highway, the two-mile hike to Thunder Bird Falls travels through some beautiful birch woods hugging a steep gorge above Thunder Bird Creek. In addition to the hike to the falls themselves, another trail descends to the creek far below.

Again I ran into a group of tourists smoking--and again I have to ask: when out amidst all this pristine nature, why must you light up? (Not to mention that smoking in the woods is incredibly reckless and has started more than one forest fire.) I really don't have anything against smokers--and have several in the family, in fact--but at the same time, I don't choose to smoke, so I shouldn't be forced to inhale your smoke, either, particularly when I'm out trying to enjoy nature. Sorry, I'll step off my soapbox now.

I had originally planned to take a more extensive hike upon Bird Ridge overlooking the Turnagain Arm, but that uber-steep hike requires 4-6 hours and covers a grueling 3400-foot change in altitude over just over two miles. By contrast, the healthy hike to the "T.V. tower" on the mountainside behind the home I grew up in ascends only 750 feet or so over a course of two miles, and the sweat-inducing climb to Delicate Arch in Utah gains just under 700 feet in a mile and a half. All in all, my calves think I made the right decision.

After Thunder Bird Falls, I drove back down toward Anchorage proper to pay a visit to an even easier hike in Chugach's "Hillside" trail system; namely, the Anchorage Overlook trail located just below the popular Flattop Peak. The drive up to the Glen Alps trailhead climbs steeply over the Anchorage basin into the foothills of the Chugach Mountains; along the way, I spotted my first bear of the trip. A young black bear just waltzed out into the street. I didn't stop for a photo, though; even a bear so small I thought it at first a large dog seemed something to drive on by without attracting its attention.

A brief hike and some panoramic photos (which I've yet to assemble), and then it was time to head to the airport for the long flights home. A red-eye from San Francisco always seems like a good idea until you're on it, particularly when you get a glass of red wine spilled in your lap midway through the flight. At least United gave me a $200 certificate for future travel for that experience; my trip ended up in the black thanks to that bit of discomfort.

One thing I discovered on this trip which I never would have suspected beforehand: I'm a desert boy at heart. Don't get me wrong; Alaska was a fantastic place to visit and a trip I surely do want to repeat on a longer scale, with Beth along so we can share the experience. It's filled with some of the most scenic and pristine natural beauty I've ever witnessed. And I don't mean I would want to live in the desert, either; I like forests and mountains a bit too much for that, and a beach house would be awfully nice. In terms of sheer majesty, in some sense which speaks directly to my heart, though, deserts have a special essence which transcends simple natural beauty.

Sunset over the Turnagain Arm and Searching for Birds (Part Three of My Alaska Trip)

2010-07-26T20:48:00.275-04:00

Daylight that began before a 3:30 am sunrise and a drive down the Seward Highway after breakfast still shined down brightly as I wrapped up a visit to Exit Glacier in the early evening made, making for a long but full day. The sun proper came out during my stop for lunch, driving away the pesky, thick clouds which had covered the Kenai Peninsula since my arrival in Alaska, and this gave me the chance to revisit several spots on the drive back up to Anchorage.

I had even marked a couple of spots on my GPS on the drive down, hoping for just the break in the clouds that I got: the water lily-covered pond above, for example, overlooked by a short boardwalk, as well as the reflecting lake I featured in the lead-off of Part One.

Turnagain Arm and Kenai Mountains

Though there was something magical about the way the snow-covered mountains threaded through and blended together with the low-lying cloud cover, direct sun made for a nice contrast and yielded some photos I'm really pleased with. Photographers should definitely use the many pull-outs along the Seward Highway; don't be shy about stopping! Nearly every spot I parked I shared with others who had paused in their drives, too, to enjoy the fantastic scenery.

You'd think with such a short schedule--less than 72 hours on the ground all said and done--I'd have planned out every single moment of my trip, but aside from having a working set of several broad possibilities and suggestions (such as driving to Seward and visiting Exit Glacier), I didn't go into the trip with a set agenda. This gave me a bit of added flexibility to detour as desired, and with the sun out, I decided to pay another glacier a visit with a drive out to Portage Glacier.

Portage Lake and Glacier (glacier, middle-right; n.b. tiny iceberg, fall right)

Portage Lake and Glacier are a short drive off the Seward Highway about 40 miles south of Anchorage. Though quite scenic in and of itself, the lake is depressing, too, because in the not-too-distant past, the edge of Portage Glacier extended all the way into the lake (which was itself created by glacial activity), and calved icebergs and slush spread across the entire surface of the waters. Yes, I know my visit was in the height of the summer, but it's still disappointing to see but one tiny iceberg--just visible to the far right of the lake's horizon in the photo above--and to overhear other visitors musing about the past state of the glacier in their own lives. The edge of the glacier itself is obstructed from view from the visitor's center today due to its degree of retreat.

Incidentally, the town of Portage no longer exists; the 1964 Good Friday earthquake (the second-strongest in recorded history at the time!) and the resulting tsunami leveled the community entirely. Though the Seward Highway and Alaska Railroad were rebuilt, Portage was not.

My last few stops on the drive back were to capture a few near-sunset photos. Alaska doesn't typically offer the sort of brilliantly-hued sunsets you'll find in the desert or the tropics, but nonetheless I found something in them worth remembering.

You'd think that at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night that Anchorage would be a pretty dead place, but not so! I guess the midnight sun keeps people up, as things were pretty busy at a time I would expect folks to be turning in as preparation for the start of the upcoming work week. I hadn't thought I'd find much in the way of food that late on a weekend, so I hit a drive-through, but as I pulled in to my hotel's parking lot, I noticed a seafood restaurant next door still packed with customers and almost tossed the bag of Mickey D's--only the knowledge of the short night ahead kept me to my meal of burger & fries.

Despite my recent focus on landscape photography, my true calling is still capturing digital feathers, and though I had added at least a couple of "life list" spottings (Varied Thrush and Harlequin Duck) as a birder during the trip, poor light and tides had left me with very few professional-quality bird photos--and I'd yet fairly high hopes of sighting what otherwise should be some easily-achieved lifers in the loon species which should have been still on their breeding grounds throughout Alaska. One location my Birder's Guide to Alaska called out specifically for easy July loon spottings was Goose Lake, a small park on the University of Alaska - Anchorage campus.

Fairy Woods at Goose Lake

Unfortunately, the early morning found Goose Lake devoid of even its eponymous bird, but despite my disappointment at the lack of avian species, I did hike around the heavily-used bike & jogging path a bit--and found this beautiful little vignette fit for a fairy court a few feet back into the woods.

I'd visited many of the best birding spots in the Anchorage vicinity, from Potter Marsh to Westchester Lagoon with ultimately mixed results. No absolute-keeper bird photos during the trip so far, and a couple of birds I'd been sure I would see remained unfound as well. That's the unfortunate downside to such a brief trip: birds move around, and if the weather and tides aren't quite right, they might be rather hard to find. Still, I added a half-dozen life list birds all told, including the aforementioned Harlequin Duck and Varied Thrush alongside Boreal Chickadee, one of the Ptarmigan species, Red-necked Grebe, and a couple of different gulls.

Still, I had planned a bit more hiking, this time in a couple of areas of Chugach State Park, the half-million acre preserve girding the eastern edge of the Anchorage area. My hikes to Thunderbird Falls and to the Glen Alps overlook over 2,000 feet above the Cook Inlet will wrap up my brief Alaskan getaway, next...

The Incredible Shrinking Glacier: First-Hand Witness to the Effects of Global Warming (Part Two of My Brief Alaska Getaway)

2010-07-25T12:46:00.050-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I took advantage of savvy airfare watching to make a brief escape from the heat wave gripping northern Virginia with a trip to Alaska. In Part One of my adventure, I left Anchorage and its near-midnight sun behind for a drive down the incredibly-scenic Seward Highway, where a spot of lunch magically dispersed the dense clouds which had cloaked the Kenai Peninsula since my arrival. Next stop: Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, to witness first-hand one of the many evidences of global warming.

Exit Glacier Terminus (center)

Exit Glacier is a short drive north from Seward and is the only part of Kenai Fjords accessible by car. It's also quite nearly a "drive-up" glacier, with an observation point along the access road (pictured, above) and another only a brief half mile hike (handicap accessible, too) from the parking and visitor's center, with the edge of the glacier itself only a half mile beyond that. Unlike many national park areas and most Alaska state parks, Kenai Fjords National Park is free-of-charge to visitors. Both self-led and ranger-guided walks are available; the latter offer the benefit of a knowledgeable narrator; I followed behind one such group (until I could get to a wide enough area of the trail to pass by) and learned a good deal about the specific flora of the area and the roles they play in the ever-changing landscape along the glacier's terminus.

This marked my first trip to Alaska and to its glaciers, so I don't have a personal point of comparison, but others who have been there before expressed shock and dismay when they saw my July, 2010, photos of Exit Glacier. Signs along the trail and at the glacier's terminus (such as this chart through 1996) clearly show the glacier's retreat, some of which is certainly natural--Exit Glacier has been receding for two centuries, after all. Yet there's a noticeable and marked difference even in the past decade, as Beth's godmother Joy pointed out when looking over my photos and as I can tell looking back at photos others have taken in the recent past. It's hard to imagine that at one point in fairly recent history the glacier not only extended across the plain visible to the bottom of the photo above, but that it reached well down the road toward Seward--yet simple, stark numbers mark the years and tell the sad tale of the glacier's retreat from those signposted spots.

Glacial Outwash Plain

Despite the title of this blog post, I'm not going to spend it entirely proselytizing about global warming; the evidence and science speak quite well for themselves. But I will say that seeing a concrete example like the retreat of Exit Glacier up close and in person should chisel a crack or two in even the stoniest denier's hearts.

The hike from the parking lot forks in a couple of places but is well-signed. I suggest the hanging a left (follow the signs for "Glacier View"), as this path follows the streams feeding the Resurrection River and overlooks the glacial outwash plain, offering some great scenery. The waters of the Resurrection are a chalky grey, laden with "rock flour" which the glacier has scoured away with its eons of passage across the land. From just beyond the Glacier View, you can descend down to the water and outwash plain itself. As the flow over the outwash plain changes significantly even over the course of a year where the waters and deposits of silt meander and shift, it may not be possible to cross all the way to the "toe of the glacier"--lacking waders or at least some good waterproof boots, I couldn't during my visit. If you do hike to the toe, be wary of overhanging ice and keep in mind that it is melting and breaking away in sometimes-ponderous chunks!

Stop and take some photos before you head back for the main trail; with a tripod (you did bring one, right?) you could even put together a nice panoramic view encompassing the breadth of the river-feeding streams and several peaks of the Kenai Mountains as backdrops--and depending on the time of day and season, even put together a 360-degree view encompassing the toe of the glacier, too.

One strong suggestion bordering on a plea: if you're a smoker, please don't light up on the trail! It completely ruins the point of being out in all this untouched splendor to pollute the air around you and litter the ground with your ashes and butts. Can't you wait until you get back to your car? There's nothing worse than taking in a deep breath of all that clear arctic air and inhaling a lungful of secondhand smoke. Hey: enjoy nature and smoke later, please!

Once you're ready, there are at least a couple of upstream trailheads well-marked by signs which you can use to rejoin the hike to the edge of the glacier itself--and for those with a bit more time, a longer trail which runs to the Harding Ice Field from which Exit Glacier springs. The trail passes through deciduous forest on its way back up from the outwash plain, and during summertime many different wildflowers will be in bloom, from the low, ground-hugging cousin of our flowering dogwoods (Bunchberry, C. canadensis) to brilliant purple Fireweed. I can only imagine the colors in the brief Alaskan autumn.

It's neither a long nor a difficult hike up from the stream bed and toe of the glacier: after less than half a mile and a bit of a climb, the trail emerges into the open again atop rock striated by the past progress of the glacier over it, a reminder of time on a geological scale where the force of ice-carried stone grinds down and marks deeply the very earth beneath it.

From the Edge of the Glacier viewing point, ropes block off direct access to the glacier itself for safety reasons, and given it's slushy consistency and the pressures of constant melt this close to its terminus, it's easy to understand why. Take the Harding Ice Field day-hike if you want to walk upon the glacier itself.

Kettle Pond and Glacial Striations

Exit Glacier during the summer influx isn't the best place to seek out solitude; chances are the parking lot will be quite full and the trails and best observation points similarly shared by fellow hikers and nature enthusiasts. But, personally, I didn't find the company (aside from a few smokers) all that burdensome. I did stop to wonder for a moment what it would be like to be alone with the glacier, time, and the elements, listening to the dripping of meltwater and imagining the almost-imperceptible movement of those tons upon tons of ice across the ground, scouring and grinding down stone itself, irresistibly plucking up and carrying along rocks sized from mere sand to pebbles all the way through magnificent boulders in size. And in thinking of that not-silence, I'm glad of the presence of my fellow humans, lest somehow the land itself swallow up such an insignificant speck as one person standing before those titanic forces in the balance.

As I wrap up this part of my trip, I do have to return for a moment to the title and theme of this post. Exit Glacier has been receding for at least 200 years, so obviously some to much of its loss is due to natural climate change--though global warming is indeed the ultimate cause regardless of whether that warming is natural or anthropogenic. While we have little control over the natural factors influencing climate, we can curb our own civilization's contributions. Our reckless production of greenhouse gases not only undeniably is accelerating the changes which are by and large melting glaciers and ice caps worldwide, but also quickly depleting our only readily-accessible and inexpensive energy sources and the base components of so much of the products we use every day. Even if we as humankind are completely blameless in Exit Glacier's recession, we should be able to look at its example and see what lies ahead if we don't make some difficult and costly choices now.

Next up: the sunny drive back to Anchorage and a morning hiking in Chugach.

Escaping the Summer Heat with a Visit to the 49th State (Part One: Traveling the Seward Highway)

2010-07-24T16:45:00.017-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I took a brief mini-vacation to Alaska, escaping the heat wave which gripped the Washington, D.C., area with my first trip farther west than the northern California coast. I love traveling to new places--heck, I love traveling, period--and a visit to the 49th state was the perfect getaway. Though Beth couldn't come, Alaska is one of her favorite places, and I had to swear not to visit places like the Homer Spit or Denali, which she wants to show me personally, before she'd sign off on the trip.

Lake Along the Seward Highway

Anchorage isn't the cheapest place to fly to, and it's a popular summer destination (to be fair, not so many folks are interested in seeing if they can channel Jack London in the depths of subarctic winter), so planning is an important aspect. Most major airlines serve Anchorage, and of course Alaska Air offers flights to many cities beyond the state's largest, but prices seem fairly consistent across carriers and in the $400-$500 range for typical dates. Me, I'd been considering a visit ever since United resumed flights to Anchorage in 2009, and a summer fare sale coupled with the last portion of a big-ticket voucher from United I'd received last fall (long story--let's just say that complimenting the great service on a much-delayed flight got me nearly $1000 in apologies) made the trip affordable, with the final price just under $100. (We'll debate the environmental costs of such short-duration, long-distance travel in another post.)

My connecting flight in from Denver landed around 10:30pm local time--about an hour before sunset. That's right: even three weeks past the Summer Solstice and a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, there's no night to speak of, just a gloaming-time greyness that sets in around midnight and lasts for a couple of hours until the sun rises over the horizon again.

Thank goodness for Ambien.

Actually, despite being five timezones behind the east coast, the trip didn't leave me jetlagged at all, unlike the six-zone shift eastward when visiting Michael and Sam in Italy. The twenty two-plus hours of usable daylight probably had something to do with that: I managed to get by on five hours or less of sleep each night without feeling tired in the least and had to make myself go to bed. I'm not quite sure how the almost-infinite daylight (or, for that matter, the converse in the depths of winter) plays on one's sanity over an extended period of time, though.

July in Alaska can see a lot of storms, and the morning found no reprieve from the dense blanket of clouds which had hidden so much of the terrain from view on the flight in. (Beth had wanted to know as soon as I landed what I thought of the sights during approach: not much, I had to reply, given all I saw was white cottony fluff until the last five minutes of the descent.) However, a simple man like myself has no sway over the weather.

On such a short visit, there were only so many things I could see, so I took Beth's godmother Joy's advice to head down to Seward first thing. The Seward Highway leading south from Anchorage has plenty of turnouts to stop and simply enjoy the sights, and indeed, the Kenai Peninsula offers some absolutely spectacular vistas worthy of pausing to admire. (If you don't rent a car, the Alaska Railroad does make the trip along much the same route, too--see the photo below where the tracks are visible right against the edge of the Turnagain Arm.) Between my own frequent right-turn signals (and a few u-eys) coupled with the incredibly heavy RV traffic on the Seward Highway, I made the two-hour trip into something more like four.

The Turnagain Arm and the Alaska Railroad

Let me just pause for a moment to ask: is it some macho thing for RV drivers to crawl along at 25-under the limit until you get to a passing zone, and then suddenly floor it to 10-15 over? Can't you just let the normal-speed traffic around you when the opportunity arises? For once, I wished for more highway cops, so that they could enforce the frequent "Illegal to Delay 5 or More Vehicles -- Use Turnouts" signs these mobile camper drivers flaunted with every passing mile of traffic backed up behind them. (Even with my frequent stops to enjoy the scenery, this was a problem; it's not fun crawling along with nothing to see but the land whales of a Winnebago in front and a Coachman boxing one in from behind.) At least during summertime, the RV seems to be the state animal of Alaska!

The drive from Anchorage to Seward isn't a particularly long one (127 miles, if memory serves), but it is unquantifiable in terms of scenery. First, there are the Kenai Mountains, which even into July and in temperatures in the mid-70s hold snow which so unlike, say, the Sierra Nevadas doesn't seem perched upon unachievably-distant heights. Couple those incredible, icing-draped mountains with water: the Turnagain Arm, a branch of the Cook Inlet and a fjord separating the Anchorage area from the Kenai Peninsula proper; you've got the first few ingredients for some first-class sights to see. Do be prepared to stop anywhere to take a closer look--and keep an eye out for the many stands of skeletal trees, haunting evidence of the 1964 earthquake. The magnitude 9.2 quake (the second-strongest in recorded history) destroyed the town of Portage and did massive damage to the entire Kenai Peninsula: the land around the Turnagain Arm dropped permanently about eight feet, which inundated the soil with saltwater and thus killed the trees which today stand in spectral reminder of that day.

The Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet

The tides in the Turnagain Arm are some of the highest in the world, with a rise of about thirty feet. I'm guessing I hit the area during high tide (notice the slender beaches in the photo above, for example), which for the birder in me wasn't good news. No, though July is still breeding season for many migratory birds which travel to the far north--everything from terns and sandpipers through ducks and geese--high tides meant no exposed mudflat bistros for feasting migrant avians. I think that was my only real disappointment of the trip--though I have to point out that along the Seward Highway I spotted a dozen or more bald eagles perched much as red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks do along the highways of so much of the continental United States.

Seward is a pretty small town, with a population barely larger than where I grew up in southern West Virginia--though with the cruise ships and the peak of summer travel season upon it, the year-round ice-free harbor swells like some Caribbean port of call to well above its "normal" population of just under three thousand inhabitants. I'd considered booking a short cruise of my own to Kenai Fjords National Park, with quite-affordable meal-inclusive offerings to be had for $50-$80, but I didn't want to commit several hours of my limited time to a single attraction--this is an excursion I'm saving for a follow-up trip with Beth sometime.

Past the harbor and and south through town, I came upon a dirt road turnoff toward the Lowell Point State Recreation Site. This two-mile long road hugs the shore of Resurrection Bay, emerging in the small community of Lowell Point--which seems to be populated by all manner of rental cabins straight out of some 80s horror/slasher flick. (To be fair, I expect the average camper isn't planning to spend much time in these ramshackle affairs and instead will be out upon the water, hiking the mountains, and so forth.) Several stretches of the road are marked as being under avalanche risk and that stopping is verboten, but in the summer several people had parked and tossed fishing poles out into the bay along the route, and I joined them at one to snag a bird-list catch of my own in a Harlequin Duck drake and his harem of five females.

Beach at Lowell Point State Recreation Site

Most of the state park facilities in Alaska are day-use fee areas, but the fees themselves aren't bad as far as such things go ($5), and a payment made at any facility is good all day across the state parks. Although it's an "honor system" in that visitors deposit the payment at an unmanned kiosk, rangers do collect the payments and presumably cross-check the mirror hangtags in parked vehicles fairly frequently: I saw several tickets written up, so be forewarned. Lowell Point State Recreation Site is posted that you must pay within 30 minutes of arrival, so technically you could park, use the facilities, stretch you legs, and be gone before payment is due (which is exactly what I did)--but remember that the payment is good throughout the state park system for the rest of the day, too.

At Lowell Point, the beach is a coarse black sand, telling of its volcanic origins (no, not some remnant of an oil spill!). Alaska is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, and so much of the geology is dominated by volcanism, from igneous rocks like basalt to metamorphics like shale, which I suspect make up the predominating species of stone found in the black sands. Between erosion by the sea and deposition from glacial outflow, you've got the makings of that dark but not dirty shoreline.

There are a few decent hikes at Lowell Point, but I had to give in to my hunger and drove back into Seward proper, where I stopped at the first likely-looking seafood joint: the Crab Pot, where I picked the local specialty of ginger, garlic, and soy-glazed halibut and a cup of chowder. The menu warned the flavors would be intense, and it didn't exaggerate. I do have to say the fish was quite good, although perhaps the ginger could have been toned down just a tad to let the fish really speak for itself. The food was affordable and local, and the restaurant itself just enough of a dive to make it worthwhile and not ridiculously touristy (though I do understand that evenings can be rather crowded by the RV and cruise line crowd).

Even better than filling up my body's tank, though, was that by the time I'd finished lunch, the sun had managed to boil away a nice chunk of the cloud cover. What a difference a half an hour made!

After stopping waterside to snap a few photos and ponder where the heck all the birds had gotten off to, I set off for Exit Glacier, the only land-accessible part of Kenai Fjords National Park. Well, I had to backtrack a bit first, having lost the hotshoe level for my camera and despairing a bit at finding another this far out into the boonies. Fortunately, I found it pretty much where I expected: back at Lowell Point's facilities, where I'd knocked it off my camera whilst trying to get all my photo gear straight. Whew!

Next up: my visit to the incredible shrinking glacier to see first-hand yet another of the signs of global warming in person...

Reveling in Nature's Spectacle: Firefly Storm at Chateau Papillon

2010-06-29T23:20:00.098-04:00

I saw one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever witnessed tonight, compliments of Mother Nature: a firefly "storm" which unfolded in the fading hours of the evening in the woods at Chateau Papillon. Thousands of lightning bugs lit up the trees in a rapid-fire display of bioluminescence, blinking on and off several times a second like camera strobes in the stands of a fantastical stadium.

I've always marveled at the beauty which is out there simply for the viewing to those who care to take the time to look, and I've certainly seen my fair share of Mother Nature's artwork (often shaped and refined by Father Time). I have to put the firefly storm up there with the most poignant of those images.

These weren't the “normal” fireflies I caught as a child, either; those blink slowly, showing a greenish-yellow flash off every few seconds and with a duration for each lasting a lengthy half second or so. We've had that sort of firefly in the yard since late May. No, tonight's performance consisted of staccato, rapid-fire flashes, durations less than a tenth of a second but much more frequent (to the point individuals seemed to flash two or three times a second, perhaps). And where the lightning bugs I'm most familiar with put on their show no higher than waist level, these filled the trees to their tops.

Our neighbors had their lights off, which really helped (they usually have a large lantern serving as a streetlight in their front yard), although the skies were still a far cry from solid black--more a 50% grey between clouds and the light pollution that’s been part of my life outside the occasional trip to the spaces of the desert west or the isolated Appalachian forest. The evening, too, was unusually serene; even the frogs habituating our pond and the damp woods kept mostly to themselves to admire the light show in silence.

However, this was not a sight easily captured or preserved. The low intensity of the fireflies' glow necessitated long exposure and high ISO (light sensitivity) on my camera; however, the short durations of the individual flashes even then barely registered, and the high ISO coupled with long exposure times did introduce a lot of noise into the photographs--which incidentally is evident as a lot of small dots, much like the fireflies themselves! Additionally, the longer-flashing, "traditional" fireflies I grew up with registered best (visible in several cases above as streaks of light as they moved across the image while alight), when I wanted to capture the rapid-fire, photo-strobe effect I'd never seen before. I also tried to film the display, but my video camera just couldn't render the scene at all due to the extremely low light.

To deal with what I could photograph, I cleaned up the image by taking a second long exposure with the lens cap in place; this resulted in a photo with the worst of the noise still present against an otherwise-black background; blending that layer in "difference" mode in Photoshop over the original image cancelled out a large amount of the worst noise.

Not having a video or really much of a photo to share really don't disappoint me that much, though; in fact, it reinforces the true beauty of Nature as I witnessed it, something transient and elusive, resisting the grasp of technology and the possessive hand of mankind. You truly had to be there to see it, and I for one feel the better for having done just that.

Celebrating Five Years with Five Courses: Anniversary Dinner at Chateau Papillon

2010-06-21T23:56:00.109-04:00

The Summer Solstice brought an important anniversary to Chateau Papillon: five years of marriage to my sweet Kookikins, Beth. We've enjoyed some great anniversary dinners in the past, at restaurants like 2941 (our favorite) and Hook (a sustainable-seafood place in Georgetown where I had barracuda), but this year, we decided to eat in with a five-course home-cooked meal in honor of our five years of marriage.

We pulled out a dozen or so cookbooks in planning dinner, though I can honestly say no recipe outside the bread--a walnut-onion loaf from my much-used copy of The Professional Pastry Chef--was "by the book"; instead, I used the dishes we perused as inspiration to design several very different courses which would nonetheless work fairly well together. After checking off the ingredients we had on hand, it was off to Costco and Whole Foods to collect the rest.

To start, I prepared an Emerald Soup of watercress, spinach, onion, and pear, which I served at room temperature in wine stems. The watercress really balanced the pear, resulting in a smooth, savory blend. Soups can be all-day affairs in their preparation, or fairly quick courses; this one was the latter, requiring simply chopping the ingredients, sweating the onion, boiling in some stock, and cooking until everything was soft--finished with the immersion blender. I'd meant to serve smaller portions of the soup as an amuse-buchee, but it was too tasty for that--and the wine glasses I used larger than I thought, too. As I'd cooked so many different soups for Beth when we first dated that she suggested I start a soup restaurant one day, this course was a necessity with dinner tonight!

For an appetizer course, I sautéed shrimp and served them chilled with grill-roasted fresh corn and red peppers, dusted with coconut and lime juice. Avocado tossed in a garlic oil and coconut vinegar dressing made for a fresh take on insalate tricolore, which featured three basils from our garden. As our own tomatoes aren't quite ripe just yet (give them a month or so more), these were vine-ripened chunks from Costco, along with the Bufala Mozzarella cheese from Italy by way of our favorite warehouse store.

The main course I adapted from a recipe in Fast Fish. The original called for black cod; I opted for Chilean Sea Bass (yes, yes; I'm evil--but I did go with MSC-certified fish which is supposedly sustainably-caught). With a title including vanilla, walnut, and butter, you can't go wrong! To prepare, I skinned and de-boned the sea bass fillet (incidentally, this was the boniest cut of fish I've ever gotten from Whole Foods--boo to the fishmonger on that, and boo to me for being too distracted to check it more closely while at the store), then rubbed it with a paste I mixed up from pure vanilla extract and the seeds scraped from a vanilla bean. A few grinds of pepper and a dash of salt, and into the oven the fish went for about 15 minutes, surrounded by a generous helping of butter. The toasted chopped walnuts went on once the fish was cooked, and I ladled on a bit more melted butter for tasty goodness.

Sides included a sweet potato gnocchi served with a garlic-sage butter reduction (using sage from the garden) and an ouzo dish with fresh mint (yes, from the garden), basil, red onion, feta, and grape tomato halves. Going with all of this was fresh baked bread, which I'd started and let rise twice during the rest of dinner prep. I have to say that aside from the fish, the fresh bread--a walnut-onion loaf--was the biggest hit of the night. Next time I make that particular bread, I do think I'll go with a bit more onion (I already had exceeded the recipe's called-for quantity by 25%) for an even more intense flavor. The bread came out a bit like pain de campagne, thick and dense and oh so hearty.

Dessert made use of the dozen nectarines I picked up from Costco last week; after parboiling and skinning them a few days ago, I reserved the nectarine pieces in the fridge, then today pureed them with a bit of lime juice. This mixture went into a standard cream and egg custard mix, albeit one I made with vanilla sugar for the extra flavor (we've never a shortage of used vanilla bean husks with which to infuse a bit of sugar around Chateau Papillon). I actually started this dish earlier than anything else on the menu, given that after cooking the custard had to chill first in an ice bath for a couple of hours and then in the ice cream maker before finishing up in the freezer proper. Getting the custard properly chilled before putting it into the ice cream maker is a critical step; ideally, the fridge or even freezer assists with that intermediate step, but an ice bath (ice cubes + kosher salt) works nearly as well in a fraction of the time. Unfortunately, the ice cream machine is on its last legs and froze up (or, disregarding the prior pun, burned up) during the process--maybe it's time for a unit with an integrated refrigerator instead of the pre-frozen churning tubs? Anyway, to accompany the nectarine ice cream, I roasted a pineapple on the grill alongside some peach poaching sauce left over (and frozen) from my birthday dinner--mmm!

When Beth and I were first dating, I prepared several dinners which included printed menus, a tradition I returned to in preparing our dinner. Having a printed menu took a lot of extra work, but it helped me keep straight the dishes--without it, I'd have left something out at least twice during the five hours I spent in the kitchen!--and made for a really nice touch accompanying the meal.

If it hadn't been pushing 11:00pm when we finished up in the kitchen, I'd have spent a bit more time choosing the wines, with a separate wine per course. As it was, I went with a Washington State white for the amuse-bouchee and appetizer courses in the 2008 Chateau St. Michelle Chardonnay, followed by a real treat in the 2005 Penfolds RWT Shiraz. Australia's Barossa Valley is really Beth's and my favorite wine region in the world, and the RWT is one of the best out of Penfolds, second only to their Grange. A splurge ($68) to be sure even purchased at Costco, but not only was this a special occasion, but that $68 would have hardly bought better than a grocery store red at many restaurants (for example, I saw a $20 retail Thorn-Clarke Shiraz at 2941 being sold for $60/half bottle--a 600% markup over retail and probably well over 1000% over the restaurant's wholesale cost!).

Overall, despite spending all evening in the kitchen--we had to defer opening our anniversary gifts!--this made for a fantastic dinner experience at Chateau Papillon. Unfortunately, I've created a monster: Beth said we should frame the menu "every year" for comparison, implying that I'll be on the hook for topping the meals of the past each anniversary! I think I managed to convince her that we can still eat out on the solstice sometimes; in fact, I wouldn't mind trekking over to the UK and going all Druidic one anniversary with a visit to Stonehenge. There is, after all, an Indian restaurant in nearby Salisbury which to this date is one of the best values and best meals I've eaten...

Finishing Touches for Lac du Papillon: Native Ferns for the Shady Woods

2010-06-13T18:27:00.042-04:00

This weekend was a sauna, but that didn’t stop the yard work at Chateau Papillon. We finally put most of the finishing touches on Lac du Papillon, our back yard pond project, with the addition of one of the most important elements: the plants.

Most water garden books start with the assumption your pond will be in the sun; indeed, the majority of those plants so archetypically associated with ponds—cattails, water lilies, and many reedy grasses—either require or perform best in full sun. Sun is not something we have in abundance at Chateau Papillon, though; our own yard is bordered by several established shade trees, and the back corner abuts Fairfax Villa Park and its undisturbed, towering trees. Being near the lowest point of the surrounding terrain, the back yard does, however, have moisture in quantities rivaling its shade.

Enter then the unassuming fern: these woodland inhabitants are a natural fit for the shores of Lac du Papillon, with several native species (natives are big at Chateau Papillon) well-adapted to damp, acidic woodland soils and shade ranging from dappled to eclipse-esque in density. Ferns also have that primitive, prehistorical aspect to them (as well they should, being one of the more common plants found as fossil form and a large part of the coal and oil we bring up from below the earth), which can instantly transform a space into some primeval jungle setting.

During last year’s abortive pond construction, we brought home a lone Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) from the garden center, then promptly got sidetracked by the unsolvable leak in our hastily-placed pond liner and our many other garden tasks. Autumn brought its own hectic schedule, and our ostrich fern languished in a pot near the pond’s edge until winter, when not one but two blizzards of over two feet in depth each left it buried and, we worried, done in.

Springtime is associated with the archetypal memes of resurrection, rebirth, and new life for good reason, though, and the passing away of winter found our little fern survivor thriving beneath its overturned pot.

Once we finished the pond itself—and acting on the advice of the Northern Virginia Audubon Society—we paid a visit to our favorite local garden metropolis, Merrified Garden Center, in search of more ferns to bring to the back yard. We picked out several new species to plant:

Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis), (pictured, right) with its uniquely broad fronds, is my favorite of the new additions. Apparently, some consider it a weed, but I wouldn't mind this fern spreading across the newly-naturalized back corner of our yard.

The sole evergreen of the lot, Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), is one I hope does quite well, as maintaining a bit of off-season greenery in what is otherwise a rather drab section of the yard is a plus in my book. Supposedly it is very adaptable and easy to cultivate, which make it a good plant for the shady, often-damp-but-sometimes-dry soil of our pond corner.

We do need to add a few more evergreens into the mix; research through the Virginia Department of Agriculture and several native plant guides for the region list several possibilities, including Dryopteris intermedia (the intermediate wood fern) and Dryopteris marginalis (the marginal shield fern). Given several similarly-named ferns are considered exotic invasives in Virginia, we do have to be careful to identify any we bring home by their scientific names!

Another of my favorite ferns is the "Lady in Red" (Athyrium filix-femina), a deciduous native with striking red stems. Like our other ferns, the Lady in Red is considered an easy-to-grow specimen which tolerates a wide range of light and moisture levels, which should work well where we planted it. During the summer months, it should get a couple of hours a day of part-sun, and the ground will be soggy after rains but tending toward the drier side in between storms.

Our Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) is another red-stemmed variety, but it's not quite as lush as the Lady in Red--though I believe one of its selling features are its spore-forming fertile fronts, which give the plant its common name and persist well into the winter as red-brown stalks.

All of these ferns are supposed to spread fairly well, even aggressively in a few cases, so we're hoping the few well-spaced specimens we planted this weekend eventually take over and carpet much of our back yard corner, draping around Lac du Papillon and making it lush where it had before been a junk space.

We didn't just add ferns around Lac du Papillon, mind you, though ferns certainly are the lion's share of our plantings by sheer number. We also planted a couple of very nice looking False Solomon's Seals, a native wildflower which we already have a few specimens of growing naturally in our yard. And we added a native Snakeroot as well as several Cardinal flowers and two more foamflowers. Shrub-wise, we added a native Arrowwood Viburnum, native Oakleaf Hydrangea, two beautiful Eastern Hemlocks, and an Eastern Redcedar (Virginia Juniper). All of these plants, to some degree or another, will do fairly well in the woodsy, damp-at-times, forest-edge conditions of our back corner (the juniper being the most dry-loving of the bunch and thus mounded up in a higher planting than the rest). Already, we've notions of adding more viburnums and hydrangeas, and perhaps some native yews if we can find one which the pupsters don't want to chew on (they're toxic). Not to mention another Eastern Redbud... the list goes on and on! Gardening is something which is going to be an ongoing pastime here at Chateau Papillon.

Mushroom & Cheese-filled Pesto Ravioli with Garlic Herb Bread at Chateau Papillon

2010-05-30T21:06:00.000-04:00

Travel so often inspires me to cook, and the recent visit to Italy had yet to see expression in my cuisine due to a busy schedule--until this evening, that is, with a homemade meal of pasta and bread. Today's cuisine de Chateau Papillon: Homemade pesto ravioli filled with mushrooms & cheese, with garlic-herb bread and, appropriately, Chateau Le Paws wine.

I started with a basic semolina pasta dough, made with eggs, bread flour, semolina, oil, and water, flavored with a bit of the last batch of last year's homemade pesto (which froze very well--now it's time to plant more basil in the Aerogarden!). The dough had sat in the fridge for a couple of days, after providing some linguine the other night. Lacking a pasta press, I rolled it out into thin sheets and gummed the edges with an egg wash--but I'm getting ahead of myself. For the filling, I sautéed some finely-minced onions and mushrooms (or funghi, as the Italians would say) and then used the residual heat to melt in a blend of bufala Mozzarella and soft goat cheese, along with a tablespoon or two more of the homemade pesto. This mixture went into the ravioli dough and then a pot of boiling water. I served it with extra virgin olive oil, grated Parmesan, and some fresh basil out of the garden--the simple sauce let the flavors stand on their own.

The bread came from one of my most-used cookbooks, Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef, and thus required as all professional baking recipes do measurement of ingredients by weight. 30 grams of finely-minced garlic (about 5-6 cloves), several tablespoons of dried basil and oregano, egg, flour, a lot of salt... and several hours of rising. Beth thought I bought the bread--apparently I don't bake fresh bread often enough!--and when I explained that no, I had in fact baked the three loaves of bread, she wondered how I'd gotten the "professional" slits on the tops of the loaves (just a sharp knife before the second rising).

Chateau Le Paws was the wine for the evening, one of our favorites and though not Italian (it's from California, if I recall correctly), it's very good and works with just about anything.

Baby Bluebirds Growing Up & First Daylily of the Season

2010-05-29T19:10:00.027-04:00

Our resident Eastern Bluebirds have been very busy raising their clutch of four babies, and have done a great job--though they've kept us busy, too, refilling the mealworm feeder up to four times a day! Checking in on them this morning, it looks like the babies are almost ready to fledge; they're nearly full-grown (or, at least as full-grown as nestlings get) and feathered, with the eldest and largest of the brood showing a fair amount of blue on his feather shafts.

This is a great success story. Last year, we had a pair of bluebirds nest, with their first clutch hatching only one egg; their second clutch hatched five babies, but a cat got the parents before the babies were grown enough to survive on their own. (We saved two of the babies, hand-feeding and stabilizing them long enough to get them to a wildlife rehabilitator who nursed them to full health, then transitioned them to a wildlife facility in Winchester, VA, where they rejoined the wild.) So it was really a great joy to see bluebirds again visiting our yard early this winter; perhaps the male was Harry, the offspring of our first clutch last year?

The only worrisome happenings have been the several hawk sightings in our yard the past couple of days, including one who buzzed the roof and which Chance chased across the yard. I hope we don't have an opportunistic Cooper's or Sharp-shinned pulling up to the counter for a meal of fledgeling bluebirds!

Today also saw the season's first daylily blooms, from the oddballs which seeded themselves right up against the side of the house. Our other patches of daylilies are in various stages of bloom prep, with one bunch putting up the blossom stems and the larger one still thinking about it. (All but the seedings along the side of the house were gifts from generous gardening friends.)

The past few days have also seen the first hummingbirds of the season, scouting out the sugar water feeder and the salvia Beth planted for them.

Paying Michael & Sam a Return Visit: On an Errand to Find Chance a Pink Bed, Part One

2010-05-28T20:39:00.075-04:00

As packed as our March trip to Europe was--with visits to Frankfurt, Venice, Soave, Padua, Verona, and Vicenza--its brevity left so much unseen and undone even in the confines of northern Italy. What to do, then, but to go back? Watching air fares, I soon found an itinerary on sale, and under the extracted promise to return with the pink Italian leather dog bed for Chance I'd nixed on our original trip (we'd nowhere to put it!), I boarded a flight for another whirlwind tour of northern Italy.

I won't dwell upon the flight itself--I decided (with mixed results) not to use one of my remaining upgrades to business class since I planned to sleep through the flight--and after a rainy, overcast connection time spent in the lounge at Munich's airport, I was on the ground in Verona, where Sam met me at the train station. We dropped my bags with a left-luggage counter and headed out for an evening on the town.

After a bit of shopping--we visited Caffee Cubino where Beth had admired the cups and china for sale in the window, where I picked up a set of hand-painted espresso cups and saucers for the great price of 10 euros each--Sam suggested a walk to the Castelvecchio, which we hadn't seen on our prior visit. This small but impressive fortress was, if I understand correctly, built by the Romans as a deterrent against the Venetians and other aggressive neighbors and had changed hands many times over the centuries. The late-afternoon sun really lit up the bridge over the Adige River quite well; the "magical hour" of photography came through and delivered.

Sam spotted the composition above; I'd stopped to photograph a pigeon sticking its head out of one of the little arrow slits in the fortress wall, and Sam remarked what a great photo it was going to make--referring to the shadows I only then noticed!

Michael is at the tail-end of his current job in Italy, and of course that has meant lots of little details which have popped up. The evening I arrived, Michael had planned to come and join Sam and me in Verona for dinner at their favorite pizza place, but he got stuck at the office late--then had the doubly-bad luck of a flat tire on his way to pick us up! We ended up heading back to Vicenza, and as Michael had to work on Friday, too, we opted to eat in and enjoyed some great pasta at Sam's capable hands.

Friday morning, Sam and I set out to accomplish the one requirement of my entire trip: to pick up the pink Italian leather dog bed for Chance which Beth had spied out on our first trip. And to be sure, the prospective costs of shipping for said bed plus the German coffee I picked up amounted to a decent chunk of my airfare (having sent Beth's friend Ursula a small thank-you gift, we're unfortunately all-too-familiar with transatlantic shipping costs!)--and instead of clicking on a web site to make an order, I got to go and visit Michael & Sam to boot.

The pupsters also got some fruit-flavored dog treats, and Neptune received a packet of "grasbits"--catnip and grass-flavored kitty treats. Sam and I hiked around Vicenza a bit, hoping to hook up with Michael as soon as he got done at the office, but alas, Michael got stuck at work again, so Sam and I caught the train for Venice on our own--after a stop for a cold glass of German beer.

Traveling Home: Great Trip, But It's Going to Be Good to Be Back, Too!

2010-05-24T04:14:00.000-04:00

It was a great few days visiting Michael and Sam again before the two return to the states in a few weeks, but now I'm headed home, and it's going to be great to see Beth and the Pupsters and the other pets again. As I write this, I'm sitting in the Lufthansa Business lounge in Frankfurt-am-Main airport, cursing the Germans who seem to feel the proper temperature for an airport is somewhere around 30 Centigrade (86 degrees for most of my constant readers), and the humidity best likened to a sauna's. Seems a bit weird, in that traveler's sort of way, for it to be mid-morning to me and only 4:00am back home.

Lots of good food and drink the past five days, and lots of good times with my great and gracious hosts in Michael and Sam. Now, if I could only get some friends & family to move to the next few places I want to visit so I can have a hotel-free experience complete with seasoned tour guides, I'd be set. Anyone want to volunteer?

I've got tons of photos, of course (above and beyond Verona's Castelvecchio, pictured above), which I'll work on processing as soon as I can and will post in bits and pieces--but priorities are as follows:

Watch the series finale of LOST. (And avoid spoilers!) Yep, that is the absolute #1 priority for me--and let me reiterate to the majority who have already seen it: NO SPOILERS.
Watch the series finale of 24, airing tonight. I know 24 has really gone downhill, but I've got to at least see how it turns out.
Rehearse my presentation for work; it's going to be tough to get back into the office mindset so quickly, but I've got a briefing and demo to several muckety-mucks which I had just barely finished up before going out of town--which now needs polishing and practice, practice, practice, before I get to brief the real audience on Thursday (and several people higher up my food chain on Wednesday).
Process and post photos.
Put together a real blog about the trip--and finish the blog from the March trip to see Michael and Sam, for that matter.

I'll sign off with the photo above of the view from the Castello Superiore in Marostica. Ciao!

Adding Another Bird to the Chateau Papillon List: Tree Swallows

2010-05-16T19:42:00.000-04:00

Although we've had several repeat visitors to the yard this year, including several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks last weekend and a pair of Brown Thrashers who've been picking through the mulch this weekend, as yet I hadn't been able to add another new bird to the Chateau Papillon list (not since a Great Blue Heron overflew us a few months back, anyway). This evening, though, we got bird #55, with three Tree Swallows paying the cul-de-sac a visit.

The pond renovations are nearly complete, too, which I'm hoping will prove attractive to neotropics passing overhead with its many-layered depths and rock shelves--and once we add a few goldfish, I'm sure we'll see some herons coming to dine as well.

Catching Up the Travelogue: March's European Vacation, Part Two

2010-04-29T21:47:00.113-04:00

When last I left you, constant reader, Beth and I had just arrived in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on the first leg of our brief but incredibly packed vacation to Europe. We met Beth's college friend, Ursula, at her flat in downtown Frankfurt, and sat down for a fantastic lunch / early supper and some great German hospitality.

Ursula catered us lunch with some fantastic dark, dense German bread; several cheeses (yes, European cheese is better than anything in America); fresh, hand-squeezed blood orange juice; and some incredibly tasty German coffee. Then, we set out for a walk along the Main at sunset.

The Dom Sankt Bartholomäus, or Frankfurt Cathedral, looms over all of the riverfront in Frankfurt. Although it was damaged severely during World War II (and burned down in the 19th century), the Gothic icon has been rebuilt and today is as imposing and impressive as other.

We were in Frankfurt a few weeks before springtime would really come into bloom, but nonetheless during the walk we took through the park along the banks of the Main we could see what a sight it would be during the summer, with tropicals (which somehow survive the harsh German winters) more at home in Irvine, California, than continental Europe, and rows and rows of coppiced trees ready to sprout new green growth for summer evening walks.

Though the sun wasn't at a great angle, we also could see Frankfurt's skyline; as the financial capital of continental Europe, Frankfurt is one of the few cities with much to see in terms of skyscrapers. Even London, the hub of everything across the pond, lacks the sorts of buildings those of us who've traveled at all to New York, Chicago, LA, and the other metropolises of the United States are used to.

On a more somber and disturbing note, Ursula did point out a somewhat industrial section of the river which apparently once housed a train depot from which Jews were sent off to concentration camps. I know Germans aren't fond of speaking of the atrocities of World War II and their preeminent role in the same; the section was being remade into a park and, if I recall correctly, several bank buildings.

(No, the photo taken of the light rail beneath a footbridge with Frankfurt Cathedral in the background is not said hellish depot; its simply an image Beth fell in love with and suggested I photograph. The ersatz train depot was not photogenic, as you might imagine.)

After a lengthy walk through the park--including several common European bird sightings which were nonetheless new life species for both Beth and I, such as the Egyptian Goose, Greylag Goose, Chaffinch, and the ubiquitous Great Tits--we stopped in from the late-winter chill at a cafe with what Ursula described as some of the best hot chocolate in Frankfurt. Beth opted for a spicy apple wine, though, of all things; I'm not sure she enjoyed the local specialty (and certainly not like I did the hot chocolate!).

The cafe was very close to the caricature museum; I was jetlagged enough I missed much of Urusula's description of the place, other than the moose-in-trenchcoat statue Beth posed with:

We headed back to Ursula's flat at dusk, where Ursula's longtime male companion Thomas prepared for us a fantastic European feast. I didn't realize until that point that Beth and I are very European in our dinner habits, dining late in the evening most nights; Thomas served dinner around 9:00pm, apparently a normal time of day for supper in Germany. As a gourmand and everyday chef, I know what goes into meal prep, and I simply can't imagine how Thomas prepared the feast (baked and pan-fried fish, boiled potatoes, salads, and a delicious cabbage dish) and managed to entertain the downstairs neighbors' two toddlers in such a short period of time.

Wine flowed all night, from prosecco while Thomas cooked and we chatted with their French and Czech (I think, on the latter--they understood English but spoke very little) friends who'd been invited to dinner, to Italian and French reds... and finally a Grappa-like moonshine distilled by the Czech friend's father.

We slept in despite plans to get up and walk down to the Main in the morning light; after the redeye flight, long drive up from Munich, the stroll down to the river and cafe, and then our well-past-midnight supper party, I can't blame us. Ursula and Thomas prepared us a fantastic breakfast, similar to the snacks Ursula had had for our arrival but with the addition of some hardboiled eggs which flummoxed Beth in their presentation in little egg cups.

We did have a snag in our plans to travel onward to meet up with Michael and Sam in Italy, though: I noticed the fine print of the rental car contract said that driving a Mercedes into Italy was verboten, and though we had a hatchback, economy-style car, it was still a Mercedes. After much back-and-forth with Hertz with Ursula serving as our translator (and chief negotiator), we discovered the problem wasn't the Mercedes so much as the fact we didn't have snow tires on the car: driving through Austria on the way to Italy required snow tires. After much discussion, Hertz agreed to swap out our car at Frankfurt Airport, saving us the trip back to Munich's airport (yes, it was Hertz's fault; we'd told them we were going to be in Germany, Austria, and Italy). Still, this detour cost us several hours, and it was late afternoon when we finally left Germany laden down with lunches prepared by Ursula, a bag of fine Eilles coffee, and some chocolates in our new Citroen for the eight hour drive to northern Italy.

As usual, the Nolleys were behind schedule: I'd already told Michael, when he asked if he should make dinner reservations for our arrival, "Come on, you know the Nolleys... best not to plan on a specific time." But so far, our trip was off to a fantastic start nonetheless. Would we make it through the Brenner Pass, or would the snow we had seen falling in Munich be a sign of rocky weather ahead?

Catching Up the Travelogue: March's European Vacation, Part One

2010-04-27T23:13:00.038-04:00

Back in mid-March, Beth and I took our first real vacation since our engagement trip way back in December of 2003 (that's right: we hadn't even taken a honeymoon after getting married in 2005!). We made a lightning visit to friends in Germany and family in Italy, packing the brief week with visits to Munich, Frankfurt, Venice, Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and Soave, along with a drive through the Austrian and Bavarian Alps.

The trip began at Dulles International Airport, my home away from home. I was happy to finally have an opportunity to drag Beth over to the Lufthansa lounge over in Concourse B; even though we were flying United, as a Star Alliance Gold flyer (thanks to my 100,000 miles a year on United and my 1K status), we can use any Star Alliance Gold lounge--and the Lufthansa lounge at Dulles is 100,000x better than the United Red Carpet Club. Whereas the latter has a few apples, some prepackaged cheese, individual-serving crackers, and a cash bar, the Lufthansa lounge has a nice selection of hot soup, salads, pasta, hors d'oeuvres, and even cheesecake for dessert. Plus free beer--good free beer, including a nice Belgian white ale Beth and I enjoyed during our late lunchtime visit. We did trek back over to Concourse C for our flight and stopped by one of the Red Carpet Clubs, where I accepted the correct number of bar "drink chits" (2 required for anything above the level of Bud Light) from the front desk--this is something frequent flyers grouse about to no end, mind you--and headed down into the dark, crowded, noisy, and hot lounge, where Beth and I couldn't even find two seats. What a contrast!

As another benefit to making 1K last year on United--I flew several "mileage run" trips with no purpose other than to get the necessary miles!--I'd used my "systemwide upgrades" to book us into business class instead of economy. The flight attendants all wondered over Beth's "Asian Vegetarian" meal selection (you have to pre-book anything out of the ordinary), which wasn't bad at all and consisted of several different Indian dishes.

The flight crew couldn't get the business class lights to go out overnight (!!), but an Ambien and I slept until breakfast anyway--and found an "apology" $250 certificate on my seat when I woke up for the trouble. After breakfast, on approach into Munich's airport, I heard the dreaded news on Channel 9 (United's air traffic control broadcasts onboard): "Attention all stations: due to braking coefficient, Munchen Airport is closed." Yep, snow on the ground had shut down the airport. And sure enough, once we finally landed, it was indeed snowing in Munich.

Now, we had quite an itinerary planned out for our short six days on the ground: we would drive up to Frankfurt-am-Main to visit Beth's college friend Urusula, then drive down to Italy to spend the rest of the trip with my cousin Michael and his wife, Sam. And, time permitting, a stop or two in the Bavarian Alps on our drive back to Munich for the flight home. (Erika and Brooke will probably commiserate over the pace we endured on this trip: my sisters were "victims" of my vacation planning and draconian cracking of the schedule whip on the visit to London we all took in 2002, in which we managed ever single tourist attraction in London plus a trip to Stonehenge and on to Bath.)

The drive up the Autobahn was largely a pleasure, due not to the speeds per se but the fact that people simply knew how to drive! The roads were largely four lanes--I'd always imagined the Autobahn some 8-12 lane freeway--and drivers used the left lane only to pass and always gave way to faster drivers. Still, a few construction zones were limited to 2 meter lanes (that's more narrow than a lot of American cars, and white-knuckle driving at 110 km/hr), and after a short redeye flight I was struggling to keep my eyes open toward the end of the nearly-four-hour drive to Frankfurt.

We arrived in Frankfurt in the early afternoon... but that's Part Two of our travelogue (and one loaded with photos, I promise!).

Yes, Utah, the Desert Is Hot!

2010-04-27T19:01:00.021-04:00

Another thing about the desert: it is hot. I've been in the Anza-Borrego Desert when the mercury hit just shy of 100--that was hot. I've been in Palm Springs when it was 110 in the shade (and still over 100 at ten p.m. that night)--that was hot. But what surprised me most was hiking in the red rock desert of Utah's Arches National Park with temperatures not even hitting 68 degrees, a temperature indoors which would call for a sweater and send many scrambling to turn up the thermostat a notch or two. That, too, was hot, in a visceral, carry 2-liters-of-water way, where everything bakes away and you seriously question your sanity as to why you're wearing jeans (and thinking that at least they'll protect against sunburn on those lily-white legs underneath).

Indeed, hiking up the 600+ feet of vertical gain over the short mile or so to Delicate Arch under the full sun, with shade an absent friend who has deserted me, I felt like I was in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or perhaps The Gunslinger, crawling across the desert moments away from expiration by dehydration. I don't know how Beth managed to keep her jacket on; she claimed it prevented her arms from sunburning, but I think I'd have traded the heat for a bit of sunburn.

The Amazing Spectacle of the Valley of the Goblins: Our Holiday to Utah, Part 1

2010-04-25T22:26:00.001-04:00

Beth and I took a weekend holiday to the red rock country of southeastern Utah this past weekend and filled our senses with some amazing scenery, not the least of which was the Valley of the Goblins and its amazing collection of hoodoos, or pinnacles eroded out of the Entrada Sandstone of the San Rafael Swell. There stands one of the eeriest, most interesting sights I've witnessed, a realm populated by goblins and trolls and gargantuan gnomes everything else one's imagination can conjure and a testament to the true beauty and wonder of Nature.

The photos I'd seen and the articles I'd read about Goblin Valley State Park simply do not do the place justice at all; I can only hope that the photos I took and will share might inspire you, constant reader, to plan a trip there to experience the Valley of the Goblins in person. Our own holiday was only a day and a half in length all said and done, taken not in the American tradition of a week-long vacation but a simple weekend which we packed solid with activities, the first of which was a trip to Goblin Valley State Park.

Walking down into the basin itself, the true scale of the "amphitheater" and its goblin inhabitants quickly becomes evident. Mushroom-shaped hoodoo rocks typically stand 10-15 feet high, with many reaching 30-40 feet or more above the sandstone floor. And that's where the imagination really takes over: faces emerge, shifting and morphing out of the red sandstone with the change in perspective of only a few feet of hiking. Huddled, gnarled figures stand silent sentinel duty, while a goblin king sits atop a throne carved by natural erosion from the escarpments along the edge of the basin. It's not hard to imagine Goombas come to life from the classic video game Super Mario Bros, or David Bowie's army of twisted muppet trolls in Labyrinth.

Let me step back a moment for context. Our trip began early Friday morning with a 6:00 am flight to Denver, then a connection to Grand Junction, near the Utah border and about a two and a half hour drive from Goblin Valley. The weather forecast for Friday didn't look good, with rain and cloudy skies forecast--and in Denver, after a long wait in the bowels of the regional jet extension to the B concourse (why do all such terminals look like demilitarized Greyhound depots?), we watched with dismay as rain driven sideways by the wind turned to sleet and then snow. A check of the detailed, hour-by-hour forecast on Weather.com for the area showed cloudy skies and a high chance of rain pretty much all day, and I almost opted to skip Goblin Valley altogether and just drive to Moab and Arches National Park--but I really wanted to see the goblins. The optimist in me wanted to believe the dense clouds would cut back on the high contrast of an overhead sun in the early afternoon, that the storm skies would open enough to render a few dramatic shots.

As you might be able to tell from the lead-in photo on this entry, my optimism did indeed pay off. And even had the skies not yielded such fantastic photographic opportunities, I'd have been grateful simply to have seen the Valley of the Goblins itself. I've always loved Nature in all her guises--but this is something beyond description. (And though Goblin Valley isn't itself presently at risk, after having seen it and the overall landscapes in this arid, silent, and beautiful land, reading about Utah's governor trying to exercise eminent domain to claim lands held in the public trust by Uncle Sam--to turn over for commercial mining exploitation--simply wrenches the heart.)

Okay, let me step back a bit more. What originally kindled my desire to visit the red rock country of Utah was the fantastic documentary film Winged Migration and its scenes shot in Monument Valley (a well-known locale to western film fans). I mentioned this to family friend Joy Colbert during a visit to her house late last fall--along with the first nebulous plans for Beth and I to visit Michael and Sam in Italy--and Joy mentioned Goblin Valley. She and Beth's mom P.A.T. had visited Colorado and Utah just a couple years ago, before their Ireland vacation, and Joy shared several photos from their trip, including the off-the-beaten-path state park. After a bit of reading, I was hooked, and then it was simply a matter of finding a weekend when Beth wasn't booked solid with petsitting and finding affordable flights (risking too much of a tangent, I ended up redeeming miles for Beth's ticket and using a $300-off voucher to pay for most of mine).

I'm actually a bit surprised to have talked Beth so quickly and readily into the holiday, but Goblin Valley turned out to be her favorite part of the entire trip. Yes, I'll say it again: the grotesque caricatures in sandstone, spun by one's imagination and the processes of Nature at work over timespans which make our lives pale in comparison, are really an incomparable sight. Still, Beth's trip into the valley wasn't without perils, as this medieval plague-physician mask goblin showed.

And to think this was but the first part of our trip! I'll write more later on the time we spent in Arches National Park, the 12 miles or more I hiked over unforgiving high desert slickrock fins, and the pre-dawn rising and moonlight hike back out all to see the fabled sights of Delicate Arch, Double-O Arch, Landscape Arch, Balanced Rock, Turret Arch, and more. (I'll leave out for now the flaming muscle car tearing down the streets of Moab--in the midst of a classic car show and apparent drag race bonanza--the proposal and its acceptance in the spectacle of Delicate Arch at sunset, and many more stories from our brief 42 hour holiday in the west, tales for another day.)

Until then, I leave you with another fabulous vista, photographed as we drove out of the Valley of the Goblins to retrace our way to Interstate 70 and onward to Moab and the lands of canyons and arches.

Weekend Scones Report: Breakfast In... the Laundry Room?

2010-04-18T11:42:00.000-04:00

At Chateau Papillon, we have a tradition we call "weekend scones," where at least one of the two mornings I bake up something special for breakfast. It doesn't have to be scones proper: in the past, I've made donuts, muffins, cookies, cakes, tarts, and all sorts of other tall-glass-of-milk-worthy confections. This weekend's dish: Walnut Cream Cake. This weekend's cafe locale: the laundry room.

Yes, that's right: we had our breakfast in the laundry room this morning. We finally replaced my old washing machine--on which I'd replaced the drive coupler three times over the years and into which I put a new clutch a couple of years ago--thanks in large part to Uncle Sam, the so-called "stimulus act," and its energy efficiency rebate funds. No more clanking-transmission on the old machine, and to boot, we have an Energy Star model which uses less water and electricity and gets our clothes cleaner than the old one.

Though the new washer was delivered on Friday afternoon, we didn't have the laundry room quite ready for it yet: we still had tile prep work (floor leveling, mostly) to complete under the old washer and the dryer, and of course tile to lay in that same area. We'd been putting off those last few bits of work as we turned our attention to the outside at Chateau Papillon and got our early spring gardening chores in, but with a new washer to install, it was time to get moving on the tile.

We had a marathon tile laying session Friday night, wrapping up around 11:00pm and emptying out around three more cartons of tile--we've still got around 15 more to go to finish the hallway and parts of the storage area in our "water closet." Late Saturday afternoon, we grouted the entire area done to-date, then sat back to let things dry so we could replace the appliances this morning.

After maneuvering the washer into place, getting all the connections set up, and the washer leveled, we tossed in a load of dirty clothes to try it out and make sure everything was properly in place. That's why we had breakfast in the laundry room, mind you; we may be kooky, but not so much so a morning in front of a new washer is "entertainment."

Chance pronounced the new washer properly leveled as he tested it out for vibration on its inaugural load. We still have my old dryer, which though 12 years old really hasn't seen that much use (none, in fact, from 2004 through late 2009); I didn't see a good reason to replace it yet, particularly since there aren't any energy rebates offered on dryers at present.

We've still got a little bit of rebate funds available; between the furnace last fall, an energy audit, and the 20% rebate we'll get back on the new washer (on top of the sale price + 10% additional off at Home Depot), we should have around $200 to put toward either a new water heater (ours is 15 years old and rather cranky) or else an Energy Star-rated French door to replace our sliding patio door.

Recapping Some Recent Cuisine de Chateau Papillon

2010-04-05T06:15:00.002-04:00

My mother in law P.A.T. always claims that being in the kitchen energizes me creatively. It certainly pays not to argue with one's mother in law--particularly when she's right. I enjoy building upon culinary inspirations from many sources, be they travel (like the Mozzarella di Bufala bruscetta I baked after our trip to Italy); cookbooks (sometimes I even follow the recipe); or even lack of a dinner "plan," when I rifle through the pantry and fridge and build a whimsical dish from whatever I have on hand.

This past weekend, the fantastic weather had Beth and me eating out on the patio each morning, enjoying the sounds of springtime. Thus, I spent a pretty fair amount of time in the kitchen and put together a couple of dishes I'd like to share. First, for Sunday, I baked a vanilla-orange buttermilk pound cake; I wanted to make a breakfast/brunch item which would take advantage of fresh fruit, could be enjoyed with coffee, and was something different than the scones and pancakes I so often cook on the weekends.

After flipping through my baking staple cookbook, The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg, and scanning several fairly exotic quick bread, muffin, and cake recipes, I decided on pound cake--but Bo's recipes are typically scaled for the restaurant kitchen, so rather than dig out my calculator and multiply all the metric ingredients (real chefs bake from measurements by mass, not volume) by 40% to account for the smaller pans, I consulted another of my favorites, Alton Brown's baking text, I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking. Then it was time to tinker.

Most people will say you can't mess with recipes for baking, but I'm here to say that so long as you know what you're doing, you most certainly can (Beth, though, might still refer to it a "tampering" with the recipe instead of my preferred "tweaking" or "tinkering"). I wanted a denser, finer texture than Alton's pound cake, so I swapped half the all-purpose flour out for cake flour; the lower protein content of the cake flour would result in less gluten linking in the finished product. (Incidentally, I note Alton's online buttermilk pound cake recipe on Food Network's site uses cake flour and an extra egg, among other differences from the one in his cookbook.)

I also used dehydrated buttermilk instead of fresh--we never use all of a container of fresh buttermilk before it goes bad, so we now keep plenty of powder on hand and just reconstitute it as needed. And, of course, the flavoring: two vanilla beans, their insides scraped and added to the batter, along with about 4 tablespoons of fresh orange peel I'd grated myself as a byproduct of the hand-squeezed OJ we've enjoyed of late, and finally about 2 tablespoons of Grand Marnier, the definitive orange-flavored cognac every cook should have on hand. As for that orange peel: just use a Microplane grater and skim off the outermost rind; use it fresh, or spread it in a thin layer and allow to dry, and store in an airtight bottle. (The greenie in me must also note that the leftover rinds, chopped finely, go into our compost pile afterwards. No wasting here!)

After baking in a bundt pan, I served the cake with some homemade whipped cream (with a quart of heavy cream going for $2 or so at Costco, no reason ever to use canned stuff!), sweetened with a bit of vanilla sugar. (One more "waste not, want not" note: the vanilla pods I scraped out go right into a cannister of plain old sugar, where they infuse it with fantastic vanilla flavor for coffees and baking!) Fresh strawberries finished the cake off--and a cup of espresso.

On Saturday morning, we'd already had some leftover cookies which I'd baked earlier in the week, so for late breakfast I wanted something a bit more savory. I had several mushrooms getting near the end of their culinary lives in the fridge, just begging to be used, so I sautéed them and incorporated the fungi into a couple of omelets.

There's something of a skill involved in cooking up an omelet verses something simpler, like scrambled eggs, particularly when nonstick cookware is verboten (due to the potentially-deadly fumes when overheated; we have several birds at Chateau Papillon, you may recall). The key is in getting the pan properly lubricated--I used a mix of canola-based cooking spray and fresh butter--and at the right temperature. I scrambled a couple of eggs up with a pinch of salt; a fork does wonders for scrambling an egg with much less mess than a whisk, I might add. When the pan's at the ideal temperature, the eggs will "set" on the bottom very quickly when poured into the pan, so during those first few moments, it's critically important to keep the pan moving. If done properly, the eggs will set up on their bottom but not stick (remember, move the pan around, shaking it in a slightly circular motion)--and then it's time to quickly add any fixings before the omelet cooks through!

I had the mushrooms ready, along with a few grinds of black pepper and some crumbles of goat cheese; these went in, and then with the assistance of a spatula, I flipped the omelet over in half and let it cook a few seconds more--then off onto the plate. Voila! Mine also included some prosciutto, something off-limits to pescetarian Beth; had we a bit of smoked salmon, she'd have gotten that.

Papillons on Parade: Pupsters Picnic in the Tidal Basin in DC

2010-04-04T23:39:00.000-04:00

Beth and I don't make it into DC every year for the cherry blossoms, but the fantastic weather made this year a must-see, so I packed a picnic supper and loaded Didi, Chance, and Mr. Parker into the car and met Beth in Vienna after her late-afternoon petsitting appointment for the drive into the District.

In the early 20th century, the mayor of Tokyo gifted the United States with flowering cherry trees as a gesture of the then-growing friendship between Japan and the United States; the trees were planted all along the Tidal Basin near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where late every March they provide a fantastic show of natural beauty. Tracking the cherry blossoms ("sakura" in Japanese) as they bloom from the south to north through Japan is a national pastime there, and the National Cherry Blossom Festival each year in D.C. is likewise a huge tourist draw.

Indeed, fighting the crowds can be something of a nightmare, but going on Easter Sunday in the late afternoon seemed a decent bet to dodge some of the tourists (not to mention that the much-warmer-than-usual weather had the blossoms peak several days early--the leaves were beginning to show through on several of the earlier-blooming "indicator" trees already).

We've been in to see the cherry blossoms times when we needed a coats, gloves, and hats, and times when the wind has ripped across the Potomac like a frozen knife, so a clear early evening in the low 70s was really about as perfect as weather as I've ever seen this time of year here, and the dogs were thrilled to get out for an expedition (Didi started celebrating and leaping around as soon as she saw me filling up their water bottle at home).

Beth took Chance and Mr. Parker, while I had Didi and my camera gear (and our supper on my back). It was something of a hike from where we parked (East Potomac Park) back to the Tidal Basin proper, but with landmarks always in sight, navigating was pretty easy: the Jefferson Memorial straight ahead, and the Washington Monument just across the basin.

We ran into another Papillon owner and had a chat for a while; I managed to keep Didi under control (and less barky than usual) for most of the walk, even when she passed a big hound dog--though there was no stopping her barking at the poodle, a dog for which Didi shares her Daddi's disdain. What was really amazing was the number of tourists who wanted to stop and even asked us to pose with the Papillon! I think we tried to get them all three to sit together in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare and all look at the camera ... well, at least six or seven times that I recall. One Indian gentleman prodded his teenaged daughters to go pose with the dogs, despite the fact the girls were clearly terrified of dogs (hopefully they learned not all dogs are bad, and that even those who bark, are likely lacking in the bite department).

I managed nonetheless to get several great photos, inspiring me to want to make a return trip later (sans pupsters) to simply walk the National Mall at the right times of day to get some great shots. I have to think of a good time to do so: May, perhaps? When kids aren't yet on vacation, the weather not yet boiling hot. But even whilst managing one Papillon and providing moral support for two others, I still managed several nice shots of the Jefferson Memorial.

We stopped in the middle of a field to have our picnic lunch, but unfortunately a couple of joggers cutting through (the pupsters hate joggers), then a small child running toward them, had all three of them yipping and yapping away. We did get to enjoy some curried deviled eggs I'd made this morning--can't have Easter without hard-boiled eggs, can you?--as well as a ciabatta-bread sandwich with homemade pesto sauce and cheese, a few grapes, and for me, a nibble of prosciutto. Before we could have our dessert, though, the doggies were out of control, and it was time to bag things up and head for home.

On the way back, several more groups asked for pictures with the doggies. At one point, Chance got away from Beth and chased a cyclist a heart-stopping 20 feet or so right alongside the busy street--fortunately, he was recovered with no harm, But Chancois! Mr. Poo! Must you scare your mommy like that?

Lucky for Chance (and Beth's cardiovascular system), Chance didn't really think of going into traffic--just after the cyclist who was riding illegally on the sidewalk. It did curtail my opportunities to get shots of the fantastic twilight reflection on the Tidal Basin, all in the pink of the trees and the red-indigo of the deepening sky at sunset, unfortunately, but that's for another time.

Well, it was a fun day and one which reminded me that it's not all just sprawling suburbs and endourbs piled with high-rise condo towers and offices with their on-premises trendy shopping options. And its not just the natively-gardened corner of the neighborhood we're building one step at a time to flow into the nearby nature preserve. No, there's history, and a beauty in what humans have done which isn't strictly nature, too.

Planting, Framing, Painting, Framing (A Different Kind), Wiring, Writing (Or: Where Has My Weekend Gone?)

2010-04-03T20:14:00.008-04:00

It's been a busy weekend for me at Chateau Papillon (and busy for Beth, period; she's putting in 12-hour-plus days petsitting due to spring break for Fairfax County). First, the plantings, with all this fantastic weather: two River Birches to join the one we planted in our side yard last year; add to that two Red-twig Dogwood shrubs, a juniper (non-native, unfortunately, but c'est la vie), and three bags of various bulbs. Oh, and I replanted a tree sapling which had seeded itself along the fence line. Still to go: the Ninebark, two Blueberry bushes, three Rhodies, two foamflowers, and two Inkberries. And about 6 sacks of miscellaneous bulbs. And the little saplings from the Arbor Day Foundation (10x) whenever they come in.

The framing? I needed mats cut for two 12 x 18" prints, so I picked up a Logan 450 Mat Cutter at AC Moore with a 50% off coupon (making it cheaper than Amazon by about $40, but it can be found more cheaply online than that). I framed the two photos (one of Fort De Soto Beach at sunset, one of a park in Vicenza, Italy), then moved on to more complicated matting and framed a creepy kitty postcard from Venice (said feline is dressed as a plague "doctor"), doing the 4 x 5.75" postcard in a huge 12 x 16" frame with a black mat.

Painting... well, not as much as I might have wanted so far, but I got out the power paint stirrer for my drill and cracked open a can of the chocolate we used in our hallway... two coats later, and the new thermostat looks like it was always meant to be there--despite all the screw holes I filled and sanded down where the new unit hangs vertically. Add some general touch-up in the hall as well... I'll say the paint, over a year old now, is on its last legs; within 10 minutes after mixing, it had already begin to separate back out. That leaves the library wall near the lights witch, as well as the library closet (which is still fuchsia, believe it or not). And touch-up here and there throughout the rest of the house. Not to mention the Neptune Suite and painting the exterior block walls, but those latter tasks will have to wait.

Framing again... I'm slowly working on framing in the new wall and doorway which will separate the laundry & storage room from the rest of the basement--once complete, guests staying in the Neptune suite need no longer see our Zombie Preparedness Racks of food bought in bulk and the like, or our grubby laundry sink and the sundry junk (X-mas decorations?) piled around that room.

Wiring... goes with that latter framing. Two new outlets (one GFCI), a new light fixture, two light switches, and rewiring two fixtures we put in a few weeks ago to get them all on the same breaker. Still to come: crawling in the attic again before it gets ungodly hot and draws in all the buzzy-bees and creepy-crawlies who have come to life with the coming of Spring. I've got a ceiling fan and the Library's second fixture to install before weather compromises my ability to work in the attic.

Writing... well, I keep having inspiration to go and put some pen to paper and tackle something really creative--maybe the Torso Man story, or maybe something a little less gruesome. Instead, I'm pooped and am writing in my blog.

I've left out photos, something quite important, as the Bird Watchers' Digest contributor submissions are due Monday, so I've got tomorrow to get my set together and posted online for BWD with the hopes of having them take (and pay me for) one of this month's. And I've got to check into the due dates for Virginia Wildlife's contest, and Wild Bird's (which I won last year with my White Ibis--can't enter the amateur category there anymore; sigh). Not to mention more trip photos to process, bird photos taken around the yard (no time yet for a trip to our favorite birding park, Huntley Meadows; sigh).

And cooking... oh, yes, how can I forget that? I think I'll have to devote another blog to that alone.

It's been a busy start to the weekend, anyway.

Utah's Governor: Screw the National Parks and Let's Mine Coal and Oil!

2010-03-29T19:30:00.000-04:00

I came across a disturbing bit of news in today's Washington Post: the governor of Utah is claiming eminent domain over areas of fantastic scenic beauty currently owned by the federal government--for the purposes of mining those areas for their natural resources. That's right, as a measure of our slash-and-burn, rape-the-land need for ever-more resources (and not to mention the "drill baby drill" screed popularized by a certain "expert" in domestic energy policy), Gov. Herbert signed a pair of laws which would take land the federal government had protected and presumably open the lands to mine away the coal, oil, and natural gas contained therein.

In particular, Utah's governor wants to take portions of the Grand Staircase of the Escalante National Monument, protected by Bill Clinton in 1996, as well as parts of national parks and designated wild areas and turn them over to development and mineral exploitation (77 oil and gas leases scrapped last year by the Interior Department). Given the environment-destroying antics typically involved--like mountaintop removal coal mining in WV--it's a fair bet that these scenic lands would be permanently disfigured for the short-term gain of a bit of coal and oil.

There are, of course, legitimate concerns on Utah's part. The federal government holds nearly 60% of the state's land by area. Some of the lands absorbed into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had been designated, through their development, to raise money to pay for Utah's public school systems. But the feds compensated Utah for the latter loss, giving them mineral rights on other lands plus a chunk of cash for the schools, too.

Utah's is claiming the feds "should have sold the land by now," which to me completely misses the point of federal ownership of land for public use and trust. The US is holding those lands to protect them and preserve them for future generations; selling them to Utah or to private concerns without an irrevocable protective clause in place (e.g. the lands must remain undeveloped and unexploited in perpetuity) would amount to the US government failing to uphold its duty.

My biggest worry is that no one will really care. It's like the mountaintop removal mining going on in West Virginia and other coal states, which is an absolutely atrocious destruction of the one enduring resource the Mountain State possesses: its natural beauty--not to mention the lasting damage done to the environment by such an abhorrent practice. In low-population areas, particularly those with struggling economies, it's very difficult to attract national interest, and too often the local populace simply takes for granted what they risk losing, all in the myopic pursuit of yet another strip mall and the gas needed to drive there.

And then, "it's just a desert." And it's remote. Through the 20th century, we as a nation lost some of our most scenic natural wonders because they were "useless" lands; for example, many unique rock formations and gorges were flooded beneath the reservoirs of the dambuilding mania of the Bureau of Reclamation (Flaming Gorge in Utah being one well-known case, itself a "sacrifice" in a lengthy battle by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups--and one they later came to regret, alongside the loss of Glen Canyon to Lake Powell). Not enough people have seen the beauty of the area to care, and, heck, heck, a fair chunk of people probably wouldn't care even if they'd seen first-hand the wonders of the West; so long as they can get cheap gas and electricity and have a convenience store within a few blocks (to which they'd drive, mind you, never walk), who cares about "nature," they say.

And that's the real tragedy here.

(p.s. I'm hoping to go out to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, as well as Goblin Valley and some of the other fantastic natural wonders of that part of Utah at the end of April, with Beth... if the trip happens, I'll be SURE to post photos so you can see exactly why I'm so concerned by this news.)

The Locavore's Dilemma

2010-03-27T12:20:00.003-04:00

Back in grammar school, you probably learned the terms herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore, but I'm betting your teacher never said anything about "locavores." Quite simply, a locavore eats food grown as close to home as possible. Still, there's a bit of a dilemma for the gourmet cook, for though locally-grown food offers a lot of opportunities and flavors, sometimes that imported cheese or out-of-season produce is a necessity for the menu. And the ingredients for locavore cuisine are typically more expensive, too.

Beth and I try to practice local food buying when possible. More and more grocery stores are identifying locally-grown foods, with some, like the Whole Foods chain, often identifying the distance from the store to the farm or producer. And, of course, there are farmers' markets and local co-ops--not to mention the ultimate in local food production: growing the food in your own back yard, using local materials and natural practices (no trucked-in $4-a-bag mulch or fertilizer: use free local compost, for example).

Locavore culture is what the "organic" food craze should have really been about, even before the corporate megafarms got into the "organic" gig and drove the term into meaningless vapidity.

Locally-produced foods have the obvious benefit of reduced carbon footprint: they don't require the carbon investment of extensive transportation, first of all, and additionally were and likely were produced with less mechanized processes and with less petrochemical-intensive pesticides & fertilizers. Beyond the carbon advantages, though, locally grown/raised food has several other benefits:

Supports local farms and businesses, which often (but not always, depending on where you live) tend to be smaller, individually- and cooperatively-owned, vs. the mega-agribusinesses that produce so much of our food.
More flavor: because they don't have to be shipped long distances or stored for long periods, the varieties of produce grown locally tend to be much more flavorful. Consider a typical heirloom tomato from the farmer's market compared to a megamart beefsteak tomato: one is almost good enough to eat as a meal on its own, the other a bland pap bred to survive picking by machine, rough handling, and shipping across the country or continent.
More varieties: megamarts and big agribusinesses want to sell a lot of a very few sorts of produce and to offer the same products everywhere. Local growers plant and harvest what works for the local conditions and often have a much broader selection which never darkens the shelves of the neighborhood megamart.
More natural: if buying foods which grow or occur naturally in the area (and in-season), that is--something which is more likely with locally-produced foods.

All those benefits aside, though, as I said earlier and as the title of this piece suggests, being a locavore isn't always the easiest or best option. Locally-produced foods are typically available only in-season, and though formulating a seasonal diet (vs. simply taking advantage of seasonal foods) is laudable in and of itself, it's also quite a challenge--more of one than I have time to tackle despite my culinary creativity.

Some foods simply aren't available locally regardless of the season; Virginia isn't exactly brimming with citrus growers, for example. And there are regional specialties not available (or not with the same defining characteristics) except from their native production areas; think of the French appellation d'origine controlee, or "AOC," and similar systems. Even absent the regulatory strictures legally linking a particular food to one region, imitations from elsewhere often lack the distinctive something which one can't simply replicate locally (consider, for a moment, the French notion of terroir, which is at its heart the fact that the land from which a particular grape, tea, or coffee grows in imparts a specific, characteristic quality to that foodstuff). So though one can likely find a local substitute for Parmesan cheese, Champagne, or proscuitto di parma, it simply won't be the same.

I do, however, have to say as a cook I do enjoy the challenge of recreating regional specialties with locally-available ingredients, and I love the inspiration of regional cuisine even if not working with the specific ingredients. But then again, though a local chevre soft goat cheese is something I've used quite successfully in bruschetta in the past, it simply doesn't compare to an imported bufala Mozzarella from Italy at that culinary task, either. So the occasional taste of non-local food shouldn't be considered in inexcusable sin for the environmentally conscious, should it?

Finally, there's the financial cost aspect. Locally-grown food can be cheaper, but in my experience, rarely is, and in some cases, can be significantly more expensive for the consumer than the fruits of a carbon-dependent, far-flung transportation grid. We bought a huge container of seedless red grapes at Costco last weekend, imported from Chile... for $7. Domestic grapes at the grocery store ran more than that for less than half the quantity, and were of inferior in quality (and local grapes aren't available right now, either; even the domestic ones have been trucked from California). And heresy of heresies: the Tuscan blood oranges we picked up for $9 at Costco are far superior in taste and convenience than the Florida oranges we bought at the grocery store. But some local food is comparable in price; farmers' market produce typically beats megamart prices, at least around here; meat from a local farm or slaughterhouse--if bought in bulk--is much cheaper than at the supermarket; and that gallon of local milk we got at Whole Foods was within a quarter of what the stuff trucked in from out of state and sold at the grocery store cost.

I guess, then, it's good that we're at least aware of the financial costs (overt and hidden) as well as the environmental trade-offs involved in buying and eating non-local foods. That we're even cognizant of the issues of locavore cuisine and the unsustainable life our civilization is pursuing full-speed-ahead and damn-the-torpedoes is a step up the green ladder from the vast majority of consumers.

But it's still a dilemma nonetheless, and not one I'm willing as yet to solve wholeheartedly and completely on the local side.

Cooking Up Some More Tastes of Italy

2010-03-26T22:52:00.031-04:00

When we visited Michael and Sam in Italy, we had some really great meals, and as someone who spends a fair amount of time in front of the range myself, I found good inspiration from the cuisine we enjoyed abroad. Last weekend, I put together some homemade pasta; today while out grocery shopping, I came across some "Bufala" Mozzarella, and decided to bake up some bruschetta. (It's amazing, really, what you can find at Costco.)

I started with some halved flatbread rolls--normally, I'd make my own crusts, but I was on a constrained schedule. The bread went into the broiler for a few moments, followed by a rub-down with a half a clove of garlic when out and just toasty. Then, a thin layer of tomato sauce (maybe 1-2 tablespoons each), topped with some sautéed onion and mushrooms (or "funghi" in Italiano).

A layer of fresh Mozzarella topped the bruschetta, followed by some of the Bufala Mozzarella, which has a creamier, "fluffier" consistency. I added some prosciutto di parma (thank you, Costco) to mine, and finished each with a few grinds of pepper before putting them under the broiler again.

I also prepared a bit of breakfast ahead of time, juicing several oranges by hand to be chilling overnight in the fridge. Costco has had some fantastic Sicilian Tarocco oranges--yes, we're not being very good localvores right now, I know--which are very sweet and often have the distinctive "blood orange" flesh that gives some extra color to our morning glass of OJ:

And, of course, we had espresso. It wouldn't be an Italian meal without some Joe.

Brewing Up a More Authenitic Cuppa

2010-03-23T20:48:00.042-04:00

Beth and I are both coffee-heads, so we definitely appreciated the fine coffee on our trip to Italy--and, by comparison, realized just what a poor job of producing espresso our combination coffeemaker did. Thus, atop our list of priorities once back stateside was tracking down a good espresso maker, one which would yield proper "crema" on each and every cup. (That light foam atop my cup in the photo to the left isn't milk or added cream; it's the crema of the coffee itself.)

A bit of online research really helped unmuddle the waters; we needed something more than a basic steam-driven espresso maker (like the one built into our drip coffee machine) because the steam-driven units simply don't generate enough pressure to produce truly good espresso--and certainly no "crema" on top. High-end, fully-automated units would certainly fit the bill, but we weren't about to spend $1000+ on an espresso machine, either.

So we settled on the Jura-Capresso 121.01 Ultima, which several sites reviewed as being nearly perfect within its price range. A pump provides 18 bars of pressure (most models in the sub-$500 range only manage 15 bars), yielding nice crema each time, and the machine manages tamping the grinds for you. Surprising was that no one seemed to stock the machine locally; I checked Bed Bath & Beyond (they do sell it online), Macy's, Williams Sonoma, Sur la Table, and several department stores fruitlessly before giving in and ordering it from Amazon as I should have originally.

The machine came in yesterday afternoon, and though I don't typically go for caffiene in the evening, I had to try it out by making a couple of cups of espresso for Beth and myself to celebrate. Excellent results, I must say--though I've yet to put the frother/steamer to the test for a milk drink. (This weekend, perhaps.) At any rate, we're now well-equipped for good coffee, between the French press Michael & Sam gave us a few years ago and the new espresso machine... plus our not-so-bad drip coffee maker for the big pot of Joe when family comes to town.

Cooking Up Homemade Pasta

2010-03-21T22:05:00.000-04:00

After some fantastic pasta eating in Italy, I decided it was time to put my six-plus-year-old pasta plates for my stand mixer to work and craft up a homemade batch of noodles.

The absolutely most fantastic dish I had during our brief Italian vacation was a "gnoccietti" in garlic cream sauce with mushrooms and pancetta. Readers may be familiar with gnocci, the small potato dumplings cooked like pasta; gnocietti are small gnocci, though they may be made from wheat flour instead of potato. I decided to emulate at least the gnocietti--if not the sauce, at least not this evening with a weekend of hard labor at the garden and laying tile in the basement behind me--and whipped up a batch of basic pasta dough, which I flavored with some of my homemade pesto:

1 cup bread flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup ground semolina
3 eggs
3 tbsp basil pesto
pinch of kosher salt
water, as needed

I beat the eggs and added them to the flour and salt, mixed, and then added in the pesto and a couple of tablespoons of water to bring the dough together, then it was time for the Kitchen Aid to take to kneading the dough and putting the gluten in the flour to work. After about 7-10 minutes of kneading, the dough went into the fridge while I prepped the boiling water and got my pasta extruder set up.

I tried a few of my pasta plates out, making some serviceable linguine before switching over to the fine meat grinding plate to create 1/4" solid tubes of dough, which I cut into 1" long pieces as they came out of the extruder. After a bit of boiling, I drained and plated the gnocietti.

The sauce came out of a jar, though I did juice it up a bit with a decidedly non-Italian touch: a splash of Irish whiskey to bring out the tomato flavor. Service included some grated Romano cheese, and a nice Petit Syrah (I've still enough congestion from my cold I didn't want to crack open an Italian wine, yet), accompanied by some rosemary sea salt bread.

Spending a Spring Weekend in the Gardens

2010-03-20T19:55:00.040-04:00

At Chateau Papillon, we took full advantage of the fantastic weather this first weekend of Spring to get to serious work in our gardens. Mother Nature, too, has been busy in and around our yard, bringing the first real signs of the season, from the birds singing each morning and dusk (including a pair of Eastern Bluebirds we hope choose one of our nesting boxes) to the early flowers and new growth on the trees and shrubs.

One of the more stunning images of the nascent season is the bark on our River Birch (Betula nigra), which for the first few decades of the tree's life flake away like paper each year to reveal the new growth beneath. That River Birch, despite being bent over to the ground by the weight of three snowfalls, has done very well and currently stands at least 15 feet tall. It was only 7 feet or so last March when Beth and I planted it. We plan to add a couple more birches to create something of a curved wall of the trees, but as yet, haven't come across specimens we like yet in browsing the garden centers.

Another sign of the coming of the vernal equinox is mulch. Last year, we filled several Rubbermaid containers we'd unpacked of clothes with load after load of free mulch from the Fairfax County recycling center, tallying at least 15 cubic yards combined across shredded leaf meal (which by this year has broken down into nice, rich, black soil) and more traditional hardwood mulch--stuff for which people pay $4 a bag down at Home Depot, all free. This year, I got a hitch put on my Forester and rented a U-Haul trailer to make the loads a bit easier to manage.

Pictured is the first load of hardwood mulch, 2.5 cubic yards when all was said and done. We picked up a couple of loads of wood mulch, using it to refresh our front planting beds and to begin on the same out back. To that, we added another load of leaf meal, which we're putting to the task of an expanded "natural area" (read: grass-free) out back.

Late last Fall, in planting the front bed, Beth "mass planted" with spring bulbs along the border of the natural area we crafted, something which paid dividends in the crocus field which has sprung up despite having been buried beneath several feet of snow in February just as they began to emerge.

Next up at Chateau Papillon: springtime planting. We picked up a trailerload of flora at the garden centers on Saturday, including an American Redbud tree we'd talked about since last year--and which I'm not quite sure how we'll move to the back yard (it weighs at least 350 pounds by my estimation). For curbside appeal, we picked up a weeping Pussy Willow--currently covered in flowering, fuzzy catkins--and a couple more native Red-twig Dogwoods. For the back yard, we found three Rhododendrons, two red-flowering and one pink. And a Ninebark, which I'm not sure exactly where we'll place just yet. Finally, we picked up two more Inkberry Hollies for the front bed, to fill in the gaps from snow damage. (Still to come are a couple of American Hollies, with one to replace the specimen we lost out front.)

We picked up two bags of Holly fertilizer (also for dogwoods and blueberries), a bag of "bio-tone" (mycorrihizial fungi to help with rooting), six bags of composted "Merrifield Mix" for planting, and nine bags of composted manure for sheet mulching to expand our natural areas.

It's times like these I wonder why I have a gym membership. Between the lack of time and the intense workouts I get from loading & unloading, carrying, digging, mixing, and the countless other garden chores, I sometimes think I singlehandedly keep generic ibuprofen manufacturers in business. But Spring is here!

Five Things I Miss About Europe

2010-03-18T07:43:00.051-04:00

Beth and I are back from our too-brief European vacation, a trip which took us to Germany, through Austria, and into northern Italy, and already I have a hankering for what we left behind.

The Autobahn. Yes, the fabled "no speed limit" highways of Germany (and their fast-but-limited cousins in Austria and the Autostrade in Italy). It wasn't so much that the Autobahn's speeds--and curvy sections, construction zones, and busy metropolitan stretches did actually have speed limits, typically between 50 and 70 mph--but the fact that everyone knew how to drive. For a frustrated American driver, what a breath of fresh air to see cars yield to overtaking vehicles, to use the left lane for passing, not cruising, and to refrain from typical passive-aggressive road rage machismo.
Coffee. Real, honest-to-god, Italian coffee. Beth and I are both coffee junkies and to a lesser degree connoisseurs (we've done the slurp-from-a-spoon coffee tastings), yet we rarely drink espresso in and of itself at home. After a week of some of the best espresso and espresso drinks we've ever tasted, I'm off shopping for a quality machine that goes beyond the typical steam-driven "espresso" machine built into our coffee maker.
Wine. Yes, we've our share of fantastic wine in America, and Beth and I are downright European in our wine-with-every-dinner habit, but we visited Amarone country. (A bit of tangential wine trivia: in the novel Silence of the Lambs, it's a big Amarone Dr. Lecter enjoys with some fava beans and his victim's liver, not the Chianti from the film--the screenwriters felt no one in the US would know what an Amarone was.)
History. We've got our share in the United States, but to be fair, as a nation our past stretches hardly more than a handful of centuries. Europe may not have been the cradle of civilization, but Western civilization does go back millennia in Europe. Ancient buildings, buildings reconstructed after World War II in their original style, Roman ruins... well, we were quite inspired by some of the colors and architecture and techniques and brought back many great ideas for our "wine bistro" we're going to build at Chateau Papillon.
Friends. Last but not at all least, we miss the great friends we left behind, and who played such great hosts to us during our trip. Ursula, we'll have to make a trip just to Frankfurt sometime. Michael & Sam, it's too bad you'll be heading back from Italy so soon yourselves! I'm tempted to give you two a hand bringing some of your stuff back... by flying over with a couple of empty suitcases. Yes, I think I could stand to do that, indeed.

Winter's Toll, Part 2: Assessing the Gardens

2010-03-05T18:00:00.021-05:00

Yes, I've been a bit laggardly in fulfilling my promise to post photos of the damage "Snowpocalyse 2.0" did to our gardens. Better late than never, though, don't they say? At any rate, now that the majority of the snow has finally melted away--a month later!--we're getting a better idea as to how the poor plants fared.

First, the large American Holly we planted last fall in our front bed didn't make it. I think it was already in pretty dire straits after enduring the December blizzard and an ice storm, the thaw from those (super-saturating the soil), and then a long cold snap which likely damaged the roots. But Snowpocalypse 2.0 without a doubt drove the nail into the holly's coffin, snapping the main trunk completely in two. (The photo above is from about 2 weeks after the blizzard--before that, the holly was just a lump in the snow.)

The inkberry hollies in the same bed came out reasonably well, all things considered. I did have to trim away about a third of the branches from each due to breakage--there will be some bare spots for a couple of years, anyway--but they seem to have survived. The "Shamrock" inkberry--with the most full foliage of the three inkberries--came out the worst. And the little male pollinator holly seems fine as well, despite being crushed beneath the snow for nearly three weeks before we were able to carefully dig it free.

Our English Holly came out the best of all of them, actually. In the photo above, the majority of its foliage is still buried (you're seeing about the top 8-10 inches); it's completely free of the snow now, though, and is in fine shape, with no broken limbs. Every other holly had several branches snapped by the weight of all that snow.

We did leave them buried for as long as we dared; snow acts as an insulator to a degree, keeping the plant's roots from freezing, but as the snow melted away, it began to get very dense, icy, and heavy, threatening more damage to the plants, so we carefully dug things free.

The Arborvitae which came with Chateau Papillon (originally in a raised, cookie-cutter bed we've subsequently blended into a large natural area) looked pretty bad after the snow began to melt; like the American Holly, it was just a lump in the snow for over a week. Since I took the photo above, it's actually mostly regained its posture, although it's still a bit fan-shaped where before it was fairly columnar in habit.

In the back yard, one of the Japanese Hollies is in poor shape, having been flattened out concentrically and sustaining several broken limbs, and several of the little evergreen shrubs might not have made it--the foliage is a bit brown for this time of year for a healthy dwarf Arborvitae and our native Juniper. It's too early to tell about the flowering dogwoods, although I will say their cousins the red-twig dogwoods look to be fine (not surprising, given several species of red-twig are found in Siberian and Canadian tundra--ours are US natives, but the kinship is clear).

Amazingly, some of the spring bulbs which had begun to peek through in late January seem to still be alive despite being buried for a month (some STILL are under snow!). We'll see how the blueberries, wildflowers, and a few deciduous shrubs turn out, and the Azaleas we relocated in the fall.

All said and done, the toll of winter on our gardens has been rather disheartening this year, but I think with a bit of TLC many of the plants are going to make it.