My wife takes eggs to work (a Welsh pub) once in a while and the cooks make egg sandwiches for everyone there. The pub was buying eggs from me for a while when they ran low they would call my wife to see if she could bring some in.That's the first time I've ever heard of an eatery with a BYOE (bring your own eggs) deal!
When I go for sushi, I bring my own bottle of tamari rather than use the soy sauce they have. Regular soy sauce is very high in sodium and is made from fermenting whole soy beans and wheat - usually 50:50. Tamari is gluten free made from only whole soy beans. The brand I use, san-,j is verified GMO free and certified organic. It's brewed in Virginia under license and recipe from an old Japanese company.
Since I was eating a lot of sushi, I started making my own and discovered tamari since I was worried about too much sodium.
Can you send it back to be calibrated so you'll have a backup if the one you bought fails?
It's 26 F here now but spring is about to rear it's beautiful head. It's supposed to hit 70 tomorrow. Long range forecast looks like 6 more nights below freezing in the next 2 weeks. Springtime in St. L., up and down. I may try to get the automatic water system up and running with fingers crossed I don't freeze and break something. I am SOOO tired of carrying water. It eats up a lot of my day. Last year the system was only down for January and February. This year it will be drained for 4 months.
I'm already planting chicken pasture but I ran out of seed. I'm ordering some bulk seed from Hummert seed. They have a store nearby. In the past I've used various combinations of radish, turnip, beet, Austrian peas, alfalfa, clover, buckwheat and oats. This year I'm mixing in some chickory, chufa, millet and maybe some sorghum to let go to seed.
Hummert carries a better turnip than the purple top my feed store carries. It's called seven top. Much smaller tuber and twice the greenery.
When a cow picks you out as an enemy, they're your enemy for life.
If I'm able to get a side or whole steer of the organic grass fed from the place up the street, the price will be comparable to conventional beef in the store. $3.97/lb. hanging weight but the butchering fee adds to that. You can have it cut and packaged virtually any way you want. https://www.wagonrides.com/grass-fed-angus-beef
Old Town canoes can be made of many different materials. Mine is royalex. It's relatively lightweight. For a 16' canoe, I can easily load it alone. It's a whitewater expedition boat and can hold 1000 pounds of cargo. Having no keel and a deep rocker it's not made for big flat water so for most of the trip it was much more work than boats made for that. As soon as you pull your paddle out of the water it just starts turning in circles. It can turn on a dime in whitewater but has great stability and dryness so when a line of barges came up the river, it plowed right through the waves of 3 foot rollers coming off the tug and the wing dams. The first line of waves were fairly easy but then they'd go bank to bank and eventually came from all sides. Flat water boats had to head to shore and hide for the 15 minutes it took the river to calm down. I have to say, I was freaking out the first time a barge came up at night with the boat loaded to the gills. When I came out of it without a drop of water in the boat, I got a lot braver.
By design, the race is scheduled each year for the full moon.
The year before I raced, a couple got run over by a barge at night in a mixed tandem kayak. They used hands and feet to crawl to the side of the barge on the bottom of the hull underwater. They came out the sides safely but their kayak disintegrated.
Just a little scary.
Most people, even some experienced distance paddlers didn't seem to get that it's a marathon, not a sprint. The most insane example was one kid who drank 6 red bulls just before the race. He had to be rescued when he collapsed in his boat after 3 or 4 miles. There were 3 team boats, one had 4 paddlers and 2 had 6 paddlers in these sleek speed boats. One team was from Belize, most were in their early 20s, they had matching uniforms of form fitting body suits, they were all buff with bulging muscles. They were an imposing sight. Team Texas was somewhat older but made up of single and tandem paddlers that had each won distance races. They were neck and neck almost 200 miles down river when team Belize started falling apart. One guy started throwing up uncontrollably and the team captain decided to drop him off on an island to be rescued later. Another guy cramped up and couldn't paddle, They left him at the next checkpoint. 2 others abandoned ship cause they were mad about leaving the guy on the island. So only 2 of the imposingly buff team Belize finished. Limping in well behind team Texas.
A buddy of mine from where I worked in KC had raced his kayak in the previous year's 340. He was a body builder and a fitness nut. (not a bad thing). He was so excited about racing the next year he bought a $3,000 racing kayak and worked out relentlessly. He was also excited I was paddling too. He made it about 20 hours and bailed. I almost talked him into continuing but he wanted to win solo kayak so badly and he knew he couldn't. I figured if I just finished the race I'd be thrilled. There were people dropping out at every checkpoint. Daytime was in the high 90s and without the current, the headwind would have blown you upstream in spite of paddling.
The river was in flood stage. Wing dikes were mostly underwater creating hazards and buoys were pulled under water and would suddenly pop up which could flip a boat. Some of the takeouts at checkpoints were hazardous. They even had to change 2 of them to other sites. The last night I got a bug in my eye about 15 miles upstream of an abandoned checkpoint site, the Washington Missouri boatramp. I decided to try to take out there and find a bathroom with lights so I could get the bug out. The river has a big bend there and is quite fast. With only one eye in the dark I misjudged the ramp and swept right past. It may have been best. The ramp was steep and I might have swamped before I could get out. I was so bummed I was going to have to go another 20 miles with one good eye and pain in the other. Eventually it worked it's way out.
I had plenty of water. I usually cramp a lot when I'm dehydrated so I took 28 gallons with me and drank all day and night. At the last checkpoint, I had enough water left that I gave a gallon to a guy that was out.
Other than hallucinating and just not being able to think clearly, blisters were an issue. I had 3 types of gloves 2 were paddling gloves, one of which were half finger gloves. The best glove was thin 'mechanics' brand glove. I had blisters on top of blisters on top of blisters. Every few hours, I had to invent a new way to hold the paddle.
The guy that won the men's singles kayak category in record time lost every one of his fingernails during the race from the water and the finger pressure.
The hallucinations were from 2 things, fatigue and ammonia on the brain - which comes from not being able to defecate enough. I tried at each checkpoint but with the stress, it wasn't happening. Hallucinating wasn't bad during the day but at dusk and all night the last 2 nights it was bad. Every tree looked like a different cartoon character. It was the trees' outline against the skyline that did it. Very strange to see 80 foot tall Donald ducks, pooh bears and everything else you can imagine, in a row all the way down the river.
Just at dusk the last night, I was approaching what I now know was a power plant on the river's edge. It was all lit up and looked like it was hovering above the river and it seemed like I never got any closer. I became convinced it was a space ship, or some government conspiracy. I was counting bridges to keep track of where I was. There are mile markers on trees along the river but it is so wide that they're usually too far away to read, especially at night. The map no longer made any sense. Since the river was in flood, many new channels could direct you to the wrong part of the river. That's the reason I got lost the second night. I hit shallow water and had to paddle 2 miles back up stream to get back to the main channel. I remembered seeing the Missouri river floods along side the highway near St. Louis a couple weeks before the race. Some channels were miles from the main channel.
The last night, no longer trusting the map, I thought I got off on another stray channel since the river didn't seem deep or wide enough and, in my state of mind, I started thinking I somehow made it to another river in a different part of the state.
Then there was a new bridge I didn't expect. That convinced me I was lost since there were two bridges close together and I only expected one. As I approached the bridge I had just passed a mile marker that I thought would provide the evidence I needed that I was still where I should have been. The river seemed to be flowing very slowly so I thought I could paddle back to the mile marker. As soon as I headed back up stream, it seemed like I hit a surge of water which I couldn't paddle against. It felt like the water was constantly ebbing and surging. I went past the first bridge and to the left of the next, there was a huge blocky building that looked like it was something like a cement plant. The strange river flow made me envision the blocky building and bridge approaching was actually a dam. Now, government conspiracy came back to mind. I panicked at the thought of being sucked into the turbines. I turned and frantically paddled upstream till I couldn't gain any more ground and paddled into the woods (flood stage) to hold onto a tree. I waited there a while trying to figure out how long it would be before I was rescued. To be legal, every racer had to have running lights on their boats at night. While hiding in the woods, 2 kayaks went by with no running lights. When I called out to them they said something real strange I don't remember and they said to follow them but the fact it didn't make sense and they didn't have lights, that convinced me of the government conspiracy and they wanted me to die. I probably sat there what seemed like a couple hours. After a days long race, the boats are really scattered out. Another kayak finally came by with a running light. I called out to him and he yelled back "Missouri River 340". That encouraged me to leave the woods and get back in the main channel. If you haven't been on the water near civilization, let me just say, things look completely different at river level than they do at road level. As it turned out, the second bridge I thought was a dam, was the Interstate 70 bridge at St. Charles, the terminus of the race. The blocky building I thought was a cement plant or part of the dam complex, turned out to be the Ameristar Casino. Not one casino light is visible from river level.
The whole time I was freaking out, I was less than a quarter mile from the end of the race.
The 2 kayakers that didn't have running lights were hiding from the other kayaker they had met at the last checkpoint.
Ever since that night, when I drive over the I-70 Missouri river bridge, I look one way and see the bridge where I was freaking out, look the other way and see the takeout point. I still can't believe how much time I wasted within a mile of the end of the race.
If I ever do it again, I'll do things a lot differently that will help my time considerably. I had things in the boat I didn't need. I had a tent, a stove and way more food and other gear than I needed. I'd probably also attach a keel to the back of the boat or use a faster canoe.
During the race I ate a lot of fruit. I also had some roast beef and some bell peppers that I would rip the top off of, pull the seeds out and slam some beef into the pepper and eat it. Quick and simple, caveman style. I didn't eat any of the stuff I planned to cook. I've been on a lot of multi day canoe trips but never a race, never one this long and never a river so big.
For my first long race, I thought it would be better to have more stuff than I needed than less.
Involuntarily, I've done harder things in my life, but it was easily the hardest thing I've ever done that I volunteered for.
I've never had a lot of upper body muscle but by the end of the race I really had some guns. It's amazing the muscle one can build in a little over 3 days.
Great story. Sounds like he's planning a girlfriend in his future.
Not the same thing but I used to take my daughter on dates when she was little. I remember once when she was about 5 taking her to see a live performance of Little Mermaid. She had a frilly dress and I gave her a corsage.
Her new pictures after her trek across the island to Long Beach. She said it was stunning.Turns out her bungalow is pricey for the region. $30 per night and easily her most expensive accommodation so far. There's 3 beds so if she shared, it would only be $10 per person.
But she thinks the view is worth it.
Looks like they'll be thrilled to get some more clear ground.Wisher, it's beginning to feel like spring here, too.
I can't say it's 70, but it's probably half that. And it feels phenomenal.
The driveway ice is finally melting. The goats are shedding.
It's warm enough to sit outside with my snuggly lap chickens and enjoy the moment.
The turtle has been found, shoveled and opened. I'm not sure what the Fire Department has as the capacity, but I think we're over the limit.
I'm going to get some seeds started this weekend!
I'm all about exploring exotic and cheap.
For inexpensive islands close by there's Isla Mujeres off the coast of the Yucatan near Cancun in Mexico.
http://dxing.at-communication.com/en/xf3-iz2lsc_isla-mujeres_mexico/
The bay islands of Honduras. Utila is smaller and less traveled than Roatan
http://bellabayroatan.com/news/2007/12/31/7-up-and-coming-destinations/
Dominican Republic is one of the less pricey destinations in the Caribbean.
In Cozumel, you can get a B&B in town and rent a motorbike and visit all the beaches around the island. We've stayed with this French/Mexican couple.
http://tamarindobedandbreakfast.com/en/
Not islands but the southern end of the Yucatan is not overly expensive. I like Tankah bay. You can rent a small house less than a hotel.
VRBO and Homeaway are places to start.
On the Pacific coast there's Sayulita, a short drive north of Puerta Vallarta and much cheaper.
This site will let you search homes you can rent from owners by # of bedrooms.
http://www.sayulitalife.com/0-1-bedroom-sayulita-rentals
It's a fairly sleepy town with surfing.
What is the water snake toy for and how does one use it?Did they at least provide the replacement for you to do? When using the Brinsea Thermometer you mentioned to get one of those water snake toys. I have not seen them for awhile. I actually forgot they once existed. Where can you find these? Sorry for all of the questions.
It can be very frustrating trying to be a good dad so far from my family.
My wife snapped a pic of Enzo chatting with me on Skype on Sunday morning.
I just love my son so much.
Now if I could just get that judge to do his job and sign the adoption decree.
So true. When my kids were little we never had a baby sitter. When I had to switch shifts, my wife would get another job on a different shift so one of us could always be home with them. Once they started school, I had to work evenings for years and I never saw them except in the morning and weekends. That was brutal. When I lost my job and had to travel for work, I now realize, no matter how much money I made - it wasn't worth being away from them.
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