Fried Egg Sandwiches

Hey Brian,

I just wanted to let you know that a bunch of us cycling guys were at your drum circle awhile ago.  The gathering made me think of you.  It was a gorgeous afternoon; the golden heat from the sun reminded me that summer was here and the trees at City Park were in their full glory, bursting with shifting shades of green.  Lake Ontario frothed in the wind and the white streaks across the grey expanse made the lake look like a blustery desert.  It's been awhile since I've seen the lake so deep with swirling greys.  It looked like it was alive.

Alive.  Huh.  Nature has a way of speaking, doesn't it?

Many of the usual suspects were there from the cycling community.  There was Andy, and Tim.  Colin, Sheila and John.  Marky Mark and Fast Freddie asked about you.  Same as my bro.  We all talked about your accident during the next Tuesday Night World Championships.  We were going at 50 k's an hour and setting up for the last sprint, mind you, but we were talking about you nevertheless.  I think Ray said that he was worried about your condition before he put the hammer down on that last straight-away on Deer Ridge.  Something like that.

The cycling community.  The usual suspects.  It's a funny group of guys.  I've known the lot of them for the better part of a decade and a half and there's been many good times.  It's an odd relationship we have with each other, this cycling cadre.  I've trained and raced with them, spent hours and hours together, in sweat, sometimes tears, in the heat, in freezing cold.  I've yelled at them, celebrated with them, crashed with them, gossiped with them, raced with them, lost with them.  All of this while going at speeds that would get most people pulled over in a city car.

Just awhile ago, a bunch of us went up to a cottage to celebrate this relationship and the crazy sport that melded these bonds.  I think you would've liked it.  There was The Blackness, Andy, Marky Mark, and Fast Freddie.  Billy P. was there of course and we shared some good cycling stories over a few drinks.  He was the guy who showed me how to ride a hundred k's through Desert Lake back in 1992.  Back then, he gave me a fig, told me it was like a natural Powerbar for when I was tired, and promptly dropped me while attacking up the big hill after the lake.  Like I said, it's an odd relationship.

We rode something like 140k's that day at Fast Freddy's cottage.  We started off with a fried egg sandwich in each of our pockets.  The recipe is a Billy P. secret that I remembered from awhile ago.  Fry the egg in a pan until the yolk is tough.  Stick it in some toasted bread (always use rye) and toss the concoction into your jersey pocket.  Ketchup is optional.  Powerbars be damned: this was the secret to avoiding the Bonk.  Thanks Bill.

The hills seemed never to end and I think Andy had to wait at the top of every rise despite our incessant complaining.  Expectedly, The Blackness attacked after Andy attacked and that was when I started seeing double.  Of course, none of us brought enough water to drink and I started that salty frothing behind the knees with sixty to go.  You remember the way I sweat, don't you?  Yeah, nothing's really changed.  Along the way, we flew past granite rocks and towering pine trees.  The lakes shone like rich jewels in the wilderness.  Some of the climbs stood like asphalt walls but some of the down hills made me feel like the champion of the world.  We laughed when we ran into the Gears and Grinds team truck.  The owner of the Orange Beast even let a bunch of sweaty guys in spandex take a picture of it.

The last 30 k's seemed to take a few days to finish but the surreal silence that is cycling made it seem like a quiet, rolling dream.   I think that is what I love the most about this sport: the silent friendships I've discovered while on the road.  I once described it as 'synchronicity' to my buddy Danno who now lives out East: interactions without words.  Nothing is usually said during those toughest hours, but the guys whom I've chosen to ride with all these years know how to get to the end goal without uttering a single word.  It's this collective knowledge of the unwritten rules between each other that makes this relationships so unique.  It comes from the countless unspoken words held together by a mutual understanding, all of it forged under physically trying circumstances.

Anyways, I don't think anyone one of us actually found the 'Farm' that was suppose to mark that last 16 k's that day but we got back in time for a gluttony of beers, steaks, and leg cramps.   It was a good ride.  And it was made better with the usual company.  The usual suspects.

I wish you were there, Bryan.  Maybe next year, when you get better.  I know that Andy will wait at the top of every hill.  And The Blackness will give us a thirty-second lead before he attacks.  And Marky Mark will shield you from the wind with his locomotive thighs.  And Billy P. will tell you a good cycling story.  And Fast Freddie will remember where the hell the 'Farm' really is.

All that, and I promise to make you a fried egg sandwich for the road.

Get well soon,

Kman

    

    

Grade Four Marbles

Yeah, I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick these days.  Maybe it's seeing the Dman morphing into a little boy this last few months (just when did he start asking us 'Hey...what are you GUYS up to today?), or it's me getting dropped by twenty-something whipper-schnappers on the third hour of a four hour ride (you don't count, Andy...), but I've found my thoughts returning to events buried in my childhood from many moons ago.

Events like playing marbles in grade four.

Any of you remember that?

You and you're buddies digging a small hole with the heel of your shoe in the dirt, and then the next day at the ring of the recess bell, making a mad mad dash to the dimple in the earth, racing to cheat death and be the first one to throw your foot into the hole and cry out the now-infamous-phrase:

"Called it!  Stamped it!  Black magic, NOOOOOOO erasing!"

Remember that?

And if you were fortunate enough to 'call it', then you'd feel like the king of the world (or at least king-of-the-recess) because you'd have the power to dictate the terms of the game.  Terms like how it was played out:

The object of the game was to make a bet on the marbles at hand and be the first one to get 

the last marble into the pot (hole).  You'd bet yours and your opponent would bet theirs.  Whomever got their first marble into the pot could continue controlling the other marbles in the field.  If you missed, it was the other person's turn.  Whomever shot the last marble into the pot got keep the entire collection.  It was kinda like a ten-year old's version of high stakes pool. Except the stakes were much higher.

As the rule-setter, you'd have the luxury of making up the rules of the game.  A 'klunker' was a modified kick shot with your foot (less accurate...for you AND your opponent) and a 'shot' was a throw from your hand (a more accurate move for you...AND your opponent).

Anyways, who knew that high stakes gambling was at play in elementary schools back in the early 1980's?  If you were the play-maker and smart enough to shout out "Called it, stamped it, black magic, NOOOOOOO erasing" (aka, the rules you were about to call were, well, stamped in stone and guaranteed by black magic and anyone wanting to change the rules were forever cursed with defying the marble-gods), then you'd size up your competition and make up the rules.  'Two klunkers and one shot' were the usual rules, but if you thought that your grade-four buddy there had weak hands, you'd probably call 'three shots'.  Alternatively, if you observed that he had club feet or lousy coordination of the lower extremities, you'd call 'three klunkers, NOOOO shots'.  You know, what's wrong with taking advantage of someone's physical shortcomings in grade four?  It's all about gaining the upper hand with slight underhandedness...and what's wrong with that? Isn't that what grown-up politicians do for a living all the time????

Anywhooo......there was an additional twist to the shifty, pre-adolescent gaming during each recess.  Not only would you make a bet our HOW the next fifteen minutes would unfold, you'd also make a bet on WHAT was involved in the bet.  The 'what', of course, was the type of marbles you were willing to place on the table.  Seeing the Dman playing with Wendy's childhood marble stash the other day made me think of the hierarchy of marble-dom that existed in my world in grade four. In increasing level of value, they were:

1.  Junkers.  These were small sized clear marbles with a flourish of coloured ribbons inside.  Not valuable and a dime a dozen.  Hardly worth keeping.  Kinda like GM stocks or a bottle of Yellowtail.

2.  Beauties.  Small-sized, but solid colours.  Sometimes the colours would twist and turn onto themselves, flowing from a light sky-blue to a deep indigo.  Two junkers were worth a 'beauty'.  Nicer, but not much better.  Think of Nortel stocks or a Sawmill Creek chard and you get the idea.

3.  Crystals.  Nice.  Sparkly.  With colour.  Hold them in the sunlight and they would flash silver and gold.  Equal to three junkers or two beauties.  In the adult world, I'd trade you a bottle of Fuzion for a crystal but not much more.

4.  Mixtures:  Here's where the complexities started.  I don't really remember the exact order, but there were 'junker-beauties', 'junker-crystals', 'beauty-crystals', and 'junker-beauties'.  Sheesh. Who knew grade-four was made of such intricate gradients?

5.  Boulders.  Ahhhhhh.  This is where the serious betting began.  Boulders were oversized version of the above-mentioned marbles.  You'd have junker-boulders, beauty-boulders, crystal-boulders, goose-eggs, and an infinite combination  of all the different boulder classifications...all with different values in the mind of a grade-four student.  The tops, I recall, was the big-ass stainless steel ball bearings.  In reality, I'm sure some bloke just stole a bearing from his dad's tractor, but in my mind, that magnificent and highly-prized marble was a....STEEL BOULDER!  Man, to have the privilege, and the (pun very much intended) marbles to put that specimen on the betting table was a rare event...and something that would draw a crowd during recess.  It was akin to a hot-shot high-roller swinging into some fancy-pants Vegas joint and plopping himself at the poker table before throwing down the keys to his Bugatti in front of the gasping masses.  Yeah, it was grade four, man.  Things were different back then.

"HEY, everyone!  Jason's playing a STEEL BOULDER against Ka-Hung's fifty junkers!  That's just crazy!".

A ring of my fellow grade-fours crowded around our pot, and Jason and I solemnly squared off, him calling the shots (he stamped it, remember, AND there was no erasing).  I was never good with my feet and so, of course, Jason called 'four klunkers, NOOOOOO shot' from fifty feet away.

Ah shuks.  I lost all of my junkers, all fifty, and I remember my opponent taking all the glory at recess, gathering up all my marbles and putting them in his tin case as he was carried back into the classroom line-up on the shoulders of his peers.  Damn.  That hurt, man.  That really hurt.

But like I said, playing marbles in grade four was about a game of mental (if not moral) complexities and I never saw the recess bell as the end of a match.  Jason, who sat in front of me in Ms. Sharp's class that afternoon, heard all my deliberate yet insistent verbal drools over his sizable win.  I remember intentionally fawning over his new stash, goading him into opening that tin box in his desk, him gazing at them during math lessons even though it was forbidden to do so in class.  "Wow, that's some win, man.  I wish I had those marbles!  You're the BEST marble player EVER!  Let's see them!".

Inevitably, poor ol' Jason pulled a Gollum and he ended up chasing his bouncing marbles all over the classroom floor.  Inevitably as well, there was a ban on marbles during class time and the rule was that any bouncing marbles was to be immediately confiscated by Ms. Sharp and redistributed amongst the rest of the class for good marks in math.

Damn.  It was too bad for Jason.  I mean, little did he know, but he was at the short end of Ms. Sharp, a secret agent of the Grade Four, Communist-Wealth-Redistribution System at the time.

That, and he was up against the only Chinese kid in math class who had just lost all his junkers at morning recess...

Ah, grade four marbles.  I don't know about Jason, but I have many fond memories of the game where the stakes were always high and the first one to the pot always called the shots.

Black magic.  Stamped it.  Noooooo erasing.

Kung Fu Chicken

If it's Thursdays, it's the Toucan...

Rituals.

There's something comforting in meaningful repetition.   Repose in habits.  Tranquility in patterns.  Don't get me wrong...I'm game for head-turning surprises and all, but every so often, it's nice returning home for some behaviours.

I mean, I was brought up on rituals.  Food rituals, to be more specific.  Dinner first, soup last.  Don't lick your chopsticks and never pick at food furthest away from you on a common plate.  Juk (rice soup) and Yow Ja Guei (Oil-Fried Ghosts..love the literal translations) on Sunday mornings.  Green onion pancakes with hoisin sauce on the side on Saturdays.  At the table, I'm on my dad's left, KY's to my left, I'm kicking KK's feet under the table, and Calamity Zam is beside my mom, who sat across from my dad, keeping things in control.

It was deep fried shrimp with honey and  sticky fried rice on Fridays.  Short-cut pork ribs in black bean sauce and whole steamed fish with soy sauce and green onions anytime of the week.

On weekends, if we roasted chicken, my mom would do up the bird in the oven and hand it over to my dad on a big round wooden chopping board.  My dad would take a big-ass meat cleaver, go outside with the steaming bird, set it on the cement patio, and WHACK WHACK, hammer the bird with the cleaver, Chinese style, before giving it back to my mom.  Fancy-pants electric meat carver?  Not in our household, man.  In my mind, it was always full on Kung-Fu/axe-murderer, backyard poultry-action minutes before dinner.

And dinner was ALWAYS glorious.  If you've never had any of my mom's roasted chicken cut up in the traditional Chinese style, then at least you'll know that you've missed one of the best meals in your life.  That chicken was  served with her famous ginger, salt, and green onion sauce on the side, white rice in a bowl, and steamed baby-bok.  "Sik fawn, sik fawn (Eat! Eat!)" at the beginning,  math quizzes at the table in the middle, and farts accompanied with stifled laughs and murderous glances from my dad at the end.

These days, I'm not as fancy as my dad with the ol' meat cleaver, but we have our own food rituals.  Dante knows about the BANG BANG BANG of the espresso making on the weekends. Oatmeal with blueberries and milk (creamy style) in the mornings and pancakes on Sundays.  Home made pizza on Fridays, panfried trout on Mondays, and tacos on Wednesdays.  There's always some sort of baking going on on Thursdays and the Wild Man knows that Wendy and Colleen make the best ribs in the neighborhood.  He's best buds with the bartender, sweet potato fries, and mango juice at the Toucan and at Phnom Pen, it's the Special #1 for me and Soup A for Mel.

Food rituals.

Yeah, that's right,  I love food rituals.  Even if it's kung-fu chicken...

 

                                  

Playing for Change

"Don't you know

They're talkin' about a revolution

It sounds like a whispah"

Tracy Chapman.  Tom Waits.  The latter is more absurd than the former yet both paint images of desolate landscapes with their words, lives lived on the fringe, of troubled times today but minds bent to brighter days tomorrow, all the while resting on sunset hazes of yesterday.

I've had one of her songs in my mind this last while, her singing about quiet revolutions and hurricanes of change.  Can't get it out of my head and nor do I want it to leave; music is about emotion and who can live without that?

And then my friends out east send me this link of a music video from the movement called Playing for Change.  It's starts off with a guy on the street, playing his guitar to Stand By Me.  He looks like he's been around the block once or twice but he's singing and playing and he doesn't care.   The video cuts to Grandpa Elliot and he's on the street and singing.  And then to the Netherlands (what a voice) , back to New Mexico, then France, Brazil, Russia, Venezuela, Congo, South Africa, Spain.  From country to county, the creators of the video film ordinary people, strangers to each other, singing and playing a different track of the same song, with each new addition being laid on top of each other and building on the momentum of the previous melody.  The whole thing is a simple yet moving exercise that is infectious in its melody and uplifting in its meaning.  It's music without boundaries, weaving people from different places and different lives into a common voice.

To me, music is about emotion.  Music is about a common language.  And sometimes, music is about change...

"Don't you know

They're talkin' about a revolution

It sounds like a whispah"-Tracy Chapman Talking About a Revolution

How to Make Squid

Squid.

Love it.

Properly cooked squid, with a sprinkle of cumin, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and a dash of lemon zest should be soft and tender, never overcooked.  Think of the ocean in your mouth and that's the way it should be.

Here's how I do it:

1.  Buy some squid.  I don't live beside the ocean, so it's rare that I find squid off the boat.  However, I've found frozen wild squid in a box at my local AP and it seems to work okay.

2.  Thaw squid.  Run it under hot water for a quick thaw or, conversely, leave it in your fridge.  Unless you like eating Squid a las Frumpy Lettuce, remember to put a plate under the box to catch all the melt or you'll end up having squid juice mixed in with your veggies in the crisper.  That happened to me the other day.  Not a good scene.

3.  Clean squid.  Take a sharp knife (always use sharp knives), cut off the tentacles and save those.  Pull off the head and discard those.  Stick your finger inside the body cavity (the tube) and dig out the entrails.  Discard those.  Squids have a back bone that looks like a clear piece of cartilage in the shape of a long pen; pull that out and discard that.  Put tentacles and tubes in a bowl and rinse under cold water.  

4.  Dry squid.  You know that fancy pants/high tech salad spinner you received as a wedding present but never use?  Dig it out of the box, throw in the squid, and give it a twirl or two.

5.  Cut squid.  Slice the tubes into rings half inch thick.  Don't slice the tentacles.  Leave them whole as they're fun to play with once at the dinner table (i.e.  leave a few tentacles hanging out of your mouth while you moan and roll your eyes.  The Dman loves that...).

6.  Dress squid.  Hand-ground cumin, salt, pepper, bread crumbs and lemon zest.  Toss the rings into the mix, coat them well, and fire up the stovetop.

7.  Cook squid.  Heat pan, toss in some butter and wait until it smokes.  Toss in the squid and tentacles and start your watch.

8.  Stop cooking squid.  Here's the important part:  unless you like the feeling of rubber tires in your mouth, NEVER overcook squid.  3-4 minutes maximum, then take it off the hot pan immediately and toss onto a serving plate.  Like shrimp, it doesn't take long to cook squid. Rubbery squid means that you've just wasted your time with steps 1 through 7.  If that's the case, then sit down, contemplate your inability to work a stopwatch and start over again.

9.  Serve squid.  Toss in a bit more salt, squeeze a dash of lemon juice, and serve hot.  Cold squid cooked in this style tastes like lumps of oily stale bread and you've just wasted your time with steps 1 through 8.  If that's the case, sit down, contemplate your inability to move hot food from the stove to the table and start over again.

10.  Eat squid.  Hopefully you've chilled that bottle of gwerztraminer or prosecco prior to all of this.  Tuck in and enjoy.  Oh...and don't forget about the tentacles-hanging-out-of-your-mouth-and-rolling-eyes thing.

That's the best part.  Just ask the Dman...

  

Crackers

The Dman has a few uncles. One is a world traveler who knows how to survive in the mountains days on end eating nothing but a handful crackers and a chocolate bar. He has another uncle who simulates living on mountains and enjoys eating quite a few handfuls of crackers and chocolate bars (judging from this past weekend, I'd say a lot of Toblerone bars as well). Finally, he has one uncle who is neither mountains or chocolate bars: he's just crackers.

The Dman hung out with Unkee Chunkee at a park and these are the shenanigans they (mostly he) get into:

1. Swings. Unkee Chunkee, trying to launch the Dman into the sky and the Dman squealing "Higher, higher! I want to go higher!"




2. Bikes. Dman riding his bike. Cool stuff. Down the hill, all by himself.



3. Crazy Bikes. Unkee Chunkee taking Dman's bike and showing him how it should really be ridden.

Like I said...no mountains or choco bars, just crackers.

And he wanted to be my latex salesman...

If we ever make the decision to home school this guy, I've long come to the conclusion that a main part of the curriculum will involve watching Seinfeld episodes a least several times a day.

You can learn a lot from Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer.  So many life lessons, so many insights.  Stuff like this: