A Walk, Some Fishing, Wine, Web Stuff, Skiers, Snowmobiles

MENTAL HEALTH DAY

I spent too much time at the computer on Saturday. Forgot to post anything. So, here’s the latest.

Sunday I went fishing on Cabin Creek. It’s about 15 miles from town and the road is plowed. There were still some fish below the campground and where it goes into the Madison river. After the sun came out and the trees started dripping I walked upstream to where it gets narrow and took some pictures. None of them came out close to the way I saw them – oh well!

I finished the number crunching for heavy particulates and dispersion patterns, then jiggled with the models. I’ve added a sidebar widget for new and updated material – it’s way down on the bottom left. As soon as I figure out to make the text links work in the widget I’ll fix that part too. The pages on culture history are roughed out and when I get some time away from the snowmobile morass I’ll get back to the earth sciences. Right now everything is a bit rough.

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I noticed a post in the Winehiker about the nouveau wines – I’ll go to Bozeman next weekend if they don’t make it to our village by then. The wines are usually cheap and good enough for my standard hot spicy wine recipe that I do in the winter – maybe the French had this in mind to make them drinkable.

The recipe is simple enough:

Hot Spiced Wine

1 Bottle of red wine
2 (or 3, or 4) oranges
several teaspoons/tablespoons of sugar
3-4 whole cloves
2-3 sticks of Cinnamon
Brandy (or Madeira – to taste)

Add the wine to a pot and heat gently on the stove. Peel and slice one orange into slices and add them, along with the juice of the second orange. Add several whole sticks of Cinnamon and the cloves. Bring the pot to a boil for a few seconds, (not too long – the first steam is the alcohol,) then turn the heat back down so it is barely simmering, (or less.) Add the sugar, (to taste – I like a lot,) and brandy and serve in thick mugs.

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The early ski season is upon us. 300 obnoxious adolescents for “ski camp,” about 120 athletes from Sweden, Germany, Finland, France, and our own U.S. Army, National Guard, and Reserves. The Olympic biathlon teams are straggling in and getting fit for stocks at Altius, (as in swifter and stronger.) The Norwegians are doing it alone for now. This year’s schedule is really a mess. And then, the Russians are being secret, and strong again.

There are too many grubby men skiers in this world. They are also; loud, arrogant, entitled, imperious, and unwashed. Maybe they think they can be themselves in this little village and nobody will notice. We do! Hell, they walk 5 abreast in the middle of the street – “Look at me – I ski!”

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I’ve got most of the data together for the ‘clean snowmobile’ post. Last year there was another zero pollution sled built by Utah State University researchers. Several others are cleaner than a Prius. Why don’t the NPS planners take this changing technology into account? Who knows.

One sled was even provided by the NPS – they have ignored the results! The sleds were so quiet and clean that cross country skiers shouting at each other were at least two orders of magnitude louder. God bless the bureaucrats! More on this soon; time to run.