3:15:15Every once in a while - okay, about four times a week - I'll catch a glimpse of the clock and declare, "Hey, it's the coolest time of the day!" For me, that happens to be 12:17. Other folks like 11:11, or 12:34. Some people might not even have a coolest time of the day. I know it sounds weird, but it's true.
On Thursday, the first night of the last camping trip of summer vacation (sigh), while poking amongst the rocks along the Clackamas River, I found an abandoned watch. I have no use for a broken watch (I have little use for a functioning watch, actually), so I let Wrig know about the availability of treasure. She picked it up, checked it out, and announced that it worked. Turns out she was right, so we spent the rest of the weekend administering state mandated homeschooling tests about reading watches. In the middle of one hike, she said the time was 3:15. As we looked at the watch together, the second hand swept past. She was delighted to see all three hands lined up. 3:15:15. Certainly not the coolest time of day, but pretty cool nonetheless.
1:15Before Friday, the longest conversation I'd ever had with a naked man probably clocked in at around 90 seconds while changing out of my swimsuit at Mt. Scott. Well, as they like to say in Olympic parlance, I smashed that record this weekend. On Friday at Bagby Hot Springs, we easily spent an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes (both can be and are accurate, according to Christie) sharing a hot tub with a very friendly, very unclothed man from Damascus.
For those who don't know (translation: our parents), Bagby is a natural hot spring. Some friendly folks working for a nonprofit built two bath houses with a variety of public and private bathing options, all clothing optional. I'd heard about Bagby before but we'd never gone because a) I thought it was too far, which it wasn't; b) I thought it was expensive, but it turned out to be free; and c) it's (ew!) clothing optional, which turned out to be only mildly ew.
The place is really amazing. The lodges are all built from rough cut wood, worn smooth over time. The group tub looks exactly like you'd expect a hot tub to look, but the individual tubs are made from hollowed out trees, like old canoes. They (yes, the ubiquitous they) have engineered a nifty system that uses gravity, flumes, wooden wedges, and cork stoppers to keep the hot water flowing to 10 different tubs.
The water comes in at a toasty 136 degrees, so you have to add plenty of cool water. Wrig overheated much more quickly than the three adults in the tub, so she regularly hopped out of the tub and dumped a bucket of 50 degree river water over her head. She loved it and we stayed warm. Everybody wins!
S'morevolution
A few years back, my buddy and chef extraordinaire Jeff went all Cooks Illustrated and experimented with variations on the s'more. He tried adding peanut butter, I recall, and maybe pretzel sticks or a few other things. In the end, his verdict was in favor of the traditional s'more. However, he didn't blog about it, and if hasn't been blogged about it hasn't actually happened, so I will be using Re:Wrigley to update our faithful readership about great leaps in s'morevolution.
Our most faithful readers will recall that, last summer, Wrigley thought it might be tasty to cram a square of chocolate into the marshmallow and roast them together, thereby saving time and increasing gooeyness. While this technique requires no small amount of skill, the results were quite excellent.
So what could be next?
Recently, Wrigley was introduced to the candy called Hot Tamales. She's not a big fan of spicy food so I didn't think she'd like them, but the power of the High Fructose Corn Syrup cannot be questioned. She thought they were yummy (her eyes pretty much lit up when she tried her first one) and thought they might be even yummier if she crammed one of them into a marshmallow and roasted it. I thought the results of that experiment were pretty meh, but Wrig was a big fan.
And next?
On Friday at lunch, I was cramming some potato chips into my sandwich and I said to myself, "Hey, Self, you love sweet and salty, don't you? Why not put some potato chips on your s'more tonight?" There's only one possible response to such a question: why not? Unfortunately, the chips we brought this trip turned out to be pretty bland, so the verdict is still out on the potato chip s'more.
And what's next?
Coming this October to a campfire near me, sweet and spicy and salty join together as one when I try a s'more with a salt and pepper potato chip. Commence salivating now!
