Cloudy Day, Sunny Tomorrow: Pre-Trip Activities to Brighten the Mood
It's dark and absolutely pouring outside. It's not exactly a surprise, because it happens every year before Christmas, at least here on Vancouver Island. It's not a surprise, but it's still a shock to our little systems. We have been frolicking outside on our bikes, picking apples, raking leaves, pruning trees, hunting birds by the Cowichan Estuary, and now - bleaggh.
This of course is why we and scads of other Canadians look for a place to fly off to. The technical term for us is "Snowbirds". And so we are scheduled to fly, but as I write this, takeoff for Yucatan is still about three weeks away.
Some people will use a time like this to read books. And yes, there are lots of good ones even on our own shelves, that we have read and long ago forgotten. I pulled one out: Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory. It's set of short stories with a Montreal theme, from 1972. But I have the spiffy new 2nd edition: 1983. My actual copy was stolen from our daughter Laurie. I know this because it has a 1995 inscription from the current owner of the (St Viateur) Bagel Factory, Joe Morena.
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Books are fine, but we find lately that to read them you have to squint at the print, that looks awfully small these days. That's where Youtube comes in, at least for me. Youtube has videos on every conceivable subject, and it has that devilish algorithm. Once it finds an area you seem to be interested in, it will lead you down a rabbit hole with more and more content on that same subject.
The first thing it picked up on, here in the rain, is that we have been buying "seed cylinders" with compressed and stuck together food for the birds. At almost $20 each, this was starting to pinch, though we did so enjoy watching the woodpeckers, chickadees, and others working to free the seeds. That's when the algorithm threw us some how-to's on making your own cylinders. Pretty soon we were saving bacon drippings, and buying gelatin, pectin, organic peanut butter and pure lard, while bugging the butcher for beef tallow. We started to mass produce the darn things, probably spending as much as before Youtube decided to help out.
We got the seed cylinder thing under control, just as I casually checked out some pizza recipes. The algorithm jumped on this, and took me first to Naples, where I surveyed about ten of the most famous Neapolitan style pizza restaurants. I conservatively chose the four I would most like to visit, and announced them to Dodie. Google's little orange man had put me on the street in front of each one, and I knew just how to reach them. I even "spent an hour" inside Starita pizzeria, watching them make dozens and dozens of glorious pies.
But Dodie announced that she did not fancy Neapolitan pizza (not enough cheese), casting shade on my proposal for cycling Italy soon.
The algorithm took this setback in stride, and soon I was learning about New York style, Chicago style, Detroit style, and California adaptations of these east coast traditions. But of course, even I will not cycle any longer to these American spots. And Dodie said she likes pizza best the way I make it.
The algorithm is unstoppable, and it suggested ways I could improve my own style. I watched reviews of portable ovens, gas, wood, and electric, learned about hydration percentages and cool fermentation, and pondered flour protein percentages and grind fineness.
Today I dragged Dodie out to "Canadian Tire" in the really pouring rain (but not by bike!), and came back with this:
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Now, the brand of pizza flour was a puzzler for me and learned it is milled in Saskatoon! One of my favorite people on our bike/barge tour is from there! 👏
4 weeks ago
Maybe soon I will actually try this gear out. But meanwhile, it turns out that our local farm market is offering 20 pound boxes of what it calls "horse apples". Quite not like it sounds, the boxes are filled with apples that have only the slightest imperfections. People do buy this for their horses, but I find it great for feeding to my pet, Dodie. She of course can not eat all that many, so even though I already did this lots with our own apples, I am processing the "horse apples" into frozen pies.
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3 weeks ago
No doubt some other activities will come up, as we wait for our time to fly south. We might even go crazy, and read another book! But this brief review gives the idea of what we are up to.
Flash: Nature got an idea of how to amuse us as we wait for Day 1 of the tour. It began with several further days of quite heavy rain. This caused serious flooding on the mainland and here in nearby Cowichan Bay. Saturated soil causes trees to come down, and our power went out for half a day. So we had fun firing up a generator, and running wires to our all essential router, which of course re-enabled Youtube - so important!
But the rain (probably) had another effect. It took down a branch (or spur, really) of the moderately sized cedar tree that grows by the house. This crashed onto the roof of the covered patio where we have our BBQ. This roof was built by - us! - and is darn strong. It survived the crash. This gave me a chance to try out my new Chinese chainsaw and to generally figure out how to get the tree off the roof. The saw worked great, but was rather heavy for cutting over your head. "Cutting over your head?!", Steve, you really must be looking for a way to avoid this next trip!
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3 weeks ago
Twenty or thirty years ago, this same tree had a shot at our two girls, whose bedroom was in the second story, just behind where you see the fallen tree piece in the photo above. We don't remember if their window was broken at that time, but they were ok. Now, counting rings (below), it looks like this piece grew since the tree took its last shot (about 30 years). So maybe we are ok now for another 30 years. We would hate to cut down this lovely cedar, just for its occasional indiscretions!
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The weather has become rather harsher in the couple of weeks before our flight time. Out here by the Pacific it is seldom as bad, or certainly not as snowy as in the rest of Canada. But just as I write this bit, the day before Christmas, we look at the weather map to see how we might fare if we were to venture out birding. Hmm, Environment Canada is giving us 43 minutes before the arrival of rain and snow. The map sure does look ominous - we live near Saanich. Could we escape out that gap to the east? Naw, not in 43 minutes. OK, it's another log in the woodstove, and let's put on "The last Unicorn"!
Oh by the way, we can see that AI is somehow playing a role for us in this pre-Christmas season. So it's fitting that it also created the title for this page. It had lots of ideas, too. A runner up was “Drizzle to Dazzle: Activities Before The Escape to Sunshine”, and another was “Raindrops Before Runway: Fun Ways to Wait for the Sun”. What do you think?
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