Cedar Creek
So, Greyhound from Milwaukee to Minneapolis went ok, no crazies, boring,and an hour late all in all not too bad. On the way to Cedar Creek stopped at a grocery store to buy food. A few quick points,
-I have no car
-The nearest grocery store is far enough away that its a daunting task to get there by any non-motorized means
-The next intern won't be arriving for 3-4 weeks, hopefully by car
-I need to supply myself with a lot of food to last that long, and the kitchen as far as food goes is bare, just some cookware, no spices, no salt, not a thing.
Long story short I dropped $190 dollars, and while I embellish the difficulties slightly, I will probably be able to use a truck here to go buy food if I need to, part of me wanted to see if I could make it though. If you care I wound up with not enough meat (it was not a cheap store) , a lot of staples (4 lbs pasta, 8 lbs potatoes, 5 lbs rice, 5 lbs carrots), no soy sauce, no black pepper, and the store had no shaving cream, lots of veggies (a good part frozen), a lot of cheese, a lot of fruit (nanners, apples, oranges, grapes to be frozen) the essential baking ingredients, and a few other things. I think I could make it if I have to, but living without soy or stir fry sauce is uncivilized in my opinion. But enough about food, except to say this. The kitchen I'm in has 3 long tables 2 stoves and 4 refrigerators, I have replaced the HP apartment problem of not enough space, with the new not enough food to use it dilemma, Oh Dinner Club, how I long for thee.
When I got to cedar creek and plugged in my clock/radio I discovered an 80s channel in 2 stations so things were looking up. Woke up this morning at 6 am to billie jean is not my lover. Then I went and burned stuff. But first I had to work a flapper which is a rubber pad on a long stick that puts out small fires, we also had 3 jerry-rigged pickup fire trucks which were doing most(all) of the work in containing the fire. We burned maybe 20 acres with a drip torch, basically mix of diesel and gas (turns out that it burns rather well). And may I add that dried grass, say 1 meter square and 2 feet high can generate a lot of heat very quickly. Tomorrow we'll burn something like 200 acres of savannah, I'm a little excited to see that.
Went for a run after work, took a shit in the woods in the middle of it because I had to and was left with last year's leaf litter to wipe my ass, it took my mind back to a very memorable sprint down a rather prominent mountain once upon a time. All in all, good run, saw 2 deer, 4 cranes?/herons?, found one turkey feather, and the shower at the end was most enjoyable.
General thoughts, Every one here seems friendly, and I really like the feel of the place, although maybe not a fair assessment as the weather seriously could not have been better today, which is good because I'm somewhat isolated, at least for the moment, but I think I'll be able to fill my time with some pretty cool stuff. I think I'll let people know about this blog in a week or so if I think its interesting as opposed to painful. I think in the future that I'll try to be a bit more concise, which will help. In any event good night gentle reader (at this point me, I guess) and hopefully thy slumber will be broken only by the melodious strains of "Don't Stop Believing"
man I am still king of the run-on sentence.
-I have no car
-The nearest grocery store is far enough away that its a daunting task to get there by any non-motorized means
-The next intern won't be arriving for 3-4 weeks, hopefully by car
-I need to supply myself with a lot of food to last that long, and the kitchen as far as food goes is bare, just some cookware, no spices, no salt, not a thing.
Long story short I dropped $190 dollars, and while I embellish the difficulties slightly, I will probably be able to use a truck here to go buy food if I need to, part of me wanted to see if I could make it though. If you care I wound up with not enough meat (it was not a cheap store) , a lot of staples (4 lbs pasta, 8 lbs potatoes, 5 lbs rice, 5 lbs carrots), no soy sauce, no black pepper, and the store had no shaving cream, lots of veggies (a good part frozen), a lot of cheese, a lot of fruit (nanners, apples, oranges, grapes to be frozen) the essential baking ingredients, and a few other things. I think I could make it if I have to, but living without soy or stir fry sauce is uncivilized in my opinion. But enough about food, except to say this. The kitchen I'm in has 3 long tables 2 stoves and 4 refrigerators, I have replaced the HP apartment problem of not enough space, with the new not enough food to use it dilemma, Oh Dinner Club, how I long for thee.
When I got to cedar creek and plugged in my clock/radio I discovered an 80s channel in 2 stations so things were looking up. Woke up this morning at 6 am to billie jean is not my lover. Then I went and burned stuff. But first I had to work a flapper which is a rubber pad on a long stick that puts out small fires, we also had 3 jerry-rigged pickup fire trucks which were doing most(all) of the work in containing the fire. We burned maybe 20 acres with a drip torch, basically mix of diesel and gas (turns out that it burns rather well). And may I add that dried grass, say 1 meter square and 2 feet high can generate a lot of heat very quickly. Tomorrow we'll burn something like 200 acres of savannah, I'm a little excited to see that.
Went for a run after work, took a shit in the woods in the middle of it because I had to and was left with last year's leaf litter to wipe my ass, it took my mind back to a very memorable sprint down a rather prominent mountain once upon a time. All in all, good run, saw 2 deer, 4 cranes?/herons?, found one turkey feather, and the shower at the end was most enjoyable.
General thoughts, Every one here seems friendly, and I really like the feel of the place, although maybe not a fair assessment as the weather seriously could not have been better today, which is good because I'm somewhat isolated, at least for the moment, but I think I'll be able to fill my time with some pretty cool stuff. I think I'll let people know about this blog in a week or so if I think its interesting as opposed to painful. I think in the future that I'll try to be a bit more concise, which will help. In any event good night gentle reader (at this point me, I guess) and hopefully thy slumber will be broken only by the melodious strains of "Don't Stop Believing"
man I am still king of the run-on sentence.
posted by Joe Little at 8:56 PM
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