Two Hours For The Price of One: Daylight Saving Time is Over

Oops, we are not saving daylight anymore.  It's a free-for-all, a scrum and losers get the hindmost.  Get yours while you can because it will be dark soon and you won't be able to see a thing for a few months.  I wonder what the temporal version of "green" is.

Anyone whose stomach is on a meal schedule that was well established for the last eight months will have to suffer until they adapt to Standard Time.  If this is done for farmers, as I was told it was originally, I think the cows walking to the barn to be milked when their udders are full have the final say.  If this is done to put us all into jet lag all at one time, it's working.

My eyes pop open when there's a certain amount of light out, usually dawn, no matter what time it has been decided it should be.  When days start to get long again, that's when I'll be happy.  The tilt of the earth to and from the sun, shooting stars and the gibbous moon are better guides - certainly more fun - than arbitrary moving up and falling back of an hour of time twice a year.  Ugh, more coffee please.

After a Dream

"Good morning.  Is there any coffee?"

"Yes.  Mugs are up above the counter, on the left."

"I had such a weird dream last night.  Want a cup?"

"I'm good.  What was the dream?"

"My legs fell off, but I could still walk."

"That's weird all right."

"Yeah.  I was sitting in a big wooden chair.  You know, one of those outdoor chairs like we saw at the outdoor center.  What're they called?"

"Adirondack?"

"Yes.  I was sitting in the sun and then my legs fell off like they were branches coming off a tree.  It made a loud cracking sound.  No blood or anything.  Just crack and there they were lying on the ground like dummy legs.  But then I got up and went in the house and I was fine.   I have no idea."

"Well, your legs are still there.  I can see them.  All ten toes.  You okay?"

"Uh, well, I was fine.  Now I don't think so.  What do you think it means?"

"It, well, um.  You need a hug?  I give really good hugs, remember."

"I do.  You do.  You sure my legs look okay?"

"Look more than okay.  Great legs.  All hooked up to the hip bones.  Hug coming at you.  Set down your coffee and get a proper hug."

"Mmmmm.  It was just a dream.  I love you."

Skilled Barista, Delicious Coffee

Horrible coffee was established and bubbled along dismally for decades in this country, at least at diners and coffee shops.  Usually, we were sold weak, drab brews where you could taste the coffee filter paper more than the coffee - essentially just dark water.

A few determined coffee lovers who were fortunate enough to travel abroad brought back espresso pots from Italy and presses from France, obtained real coffee beans to grind and savor by rich cupfuls.  They were on to something, but the enjoyment was not widely known on this side of the Atlantic.  

Ever since the 50's percolators sporting glass bubble gauges on their lids brewed Folgers freeze-dried coffee grinds, accompanied by catchy ad tunes and smiling hostesses wearing aprons and helmet hairdos on TV.  Worse yet, Sanka crystals promised to release "that rich just-brewed coffee flavor" into our instant cups every morning.  It was all there was for most of us.  

Then, from the soggy realm of Seattle, Starbucks woke the masses up to freshly ground, richly flavored towers of coffee heaven.  It made the ordinary instant coffees we were swilling all those years literally pale in comparison.  Now, we have become a demanding and fussy coffee-imbibing public that demands perfection in flavor and presentation.

In response to demand for a place in a paradise that includes a good cuppa java, coffee shops have brought baristas to the fore and the best shops have begun competing for honors in coffee presentation regionally and nationwide.  Temperature, flavor balance, residue, foam percentages, and patterns of decoration in the foam on coffee concoctions factor into choosing barista champions.  The bar has been raised again and again by competing specialty coffee bean purveyors to my and all other coffee lovers' delight.  Not only do great baristas understand the difference between different beans and roasts, but they care about the presentation of a great cup of coffee in its many forms and drinks.

In Capitola today, a barista at Verve handled her pots, steamers and frothers with such panache and, well, verve, that I decided to give her and the cafe my unsolicited Five Beans Up award of excellence.  My barista has not competed for awards, she said, but others in the shop have and were awarded prizes, which are display at the counter, an impressive distinction for the shop.

I had only found one barista in Monterey in the past five years who could approach the artistry and attention to detail I found at Verve today, and the shop he worked in has now closed, so my search will continue here.  I hate to think I'm spoiled in terms of coffee enjoyment.  Let's say I'm highly interested in a peak experience when I can find it.

So, that will be a cappuccino double-shot....

Automatic Breakfast

In the morning, after a night's sleep that left me feeling like I had suffered some sort of defeat at the hands of an unruly mob, I stand in the kitchen and try to focus.  Coffee has been made and is cooling slowly in the coffee pot.  I rub my eyes and recall odd images from my sleep, feel unsure of my balance, just a little.  Why did I get up, I wonder.  Shouldn't I be sleeping longer than this?

I can't figure out what to do.  I take two steps toward the sink and stop.  No.  Not time for food yet. Two steps back toward the bedroom.  I stop again, rub my eyes some more, frown.

Back into the kitchen and stop.  Coffee?  I decide yes coffee.  I can't remember what that means though.  Mug?  Yes, mug.

Find mug, shuffle to coffee pot, pour some into the mug I find in the cupboard.  Set it on the table.  Food?  No, not food.  Food later.

I go to the fridge and open it, overriding my own decision.  It's an instinct, I guess, a reflex action.  Stand me in front of a fridge and I will reach in and get food out and cook it.  Well, it looks like no food after all.  Fridge is pretty empty.  Some primitive wrinkled Neanderthal part of my brain takes as a challenge:  Make something from nothing.  I take stock and formulate a plan, but it takes a while.  Brain synapses are wearing frumpy sweaters and complaining.  I go and get the mug from the table, sip the strong liquid, hoping to feel fortified and more alive sometime soon.

Somehow with the moving and shuffling, I am feeling reassembled.   Coffee is running around my brain throwing circuits back on, turning on the lights.  It's weird, but I can feel it happening.

Ancient inborn reactions to food are occurring:  I am in a kitchen, there is an onion in my hand.  Must be time to cook.  I feel like a detached observer of my own hands, which are flying into action.

Pan on the burner, blue flame is licking underneath.  Onion on cutting board is stripped of its paper, stem end cut off.  Sharp knife slices end to end and the onion falls into two halves.  Radial cuts of the cool onion and then cross cuts formed small cubes.  Pan's hot; in goes olive oil and some butter, which wrinkle and squirm as they warm quickly over the heat.  Onion dashes into the pan and hisses in surprise.  A minced quarter of red pepper joins the onion.  They soften steadily, and their aroma lifts up into the kitchen, right past my nose.  A flick of salt, a few grinds of pepper, dust it with dill, a pinch of oregano, a few leaves of basil.  Looks and smells pretty respectable.  

Two eggs are cracked into a bowl and beaten rapidly.  They foam and swirl to a soft yellow.  The onion sizzle is good; time to fold egg into the pan, so in it goes.  A bit more butter.  Grated parmigiano like a little snowstorm drifts over the nearly done frittata.  One tortilla left in the whole universe and it's landing in a warm pan next to the egg pan.  It puffs up, sending up the warm nutty fragrance of toasting grain. The food is done, ready to eat.  

I set the plated food down and look at it steaming before me.  I warm up the cuppa joe with more from the pot and sit down to something like a miracle: Food prepared by an expert.  Everything's quiet again. What just happened?  I'm feeling like someone else just cooked in some parallel universe kitchen and handed the food across to me.  It's good, tender, and my mean dreams are all gone with the night.  More coffee and I can call it a morning.

Now it's time to write.

River and We 16 With Coffee (Rogue River Part IV)

What is crucial to life as you float down a river? My mind eddied off to the left and contemplated it all, considered the meanderings and left them, floated back and left them again. The arc of the sun from the eastern arising to the western setting encompassed the entirety of the universe as we then knew it. All of what is important in life fit within that arc and exactly that - nothing more mattered.

We had left our watches back at the put-in camp out of necessity. Few of us owned a waterproof timepiece that would stand up to a minute or two of light splashing, never mind a true soaking, but that was just as well for it nudged us toward the goal we had hoped for: Getting our senses back. We needed to reacquaint ourselves with the arc of a summer day.

I awakened each day at predawn never sure quite what had opened my eyes. Most likely it was birds. Osprey chirping, eagles' dry shreep-shreep-shreep and the unholy prehistoric graaaaaak of a blue heron. I went for slow walks along the river or up around camp to see what might reveal itself, and I simply sat by the graceful curling rapids and listened to the river in all its range of sounds. Underneath all was a steady heartbeat indistinguishable from my own.

We were pleased to no end to discover that one of the oarsmen, Tom, was a devout and highly obsessed coffee brewer, a barista in disguise. He arose almost as early as I every morning and set about preparing his special brew with what turned out to be characteristic precision and care. Attention to detail matters, Tom and I agreed. He had purchased Peets coffee in advance in a very delicately blended mix, estimating almost exactly how much each of us would care to drink each morning. Starting with the large red speckled tin coffee pot that was set to boiling, he brought out filters, cream, organic sugar and a tea assortment for those unable or unwilling to savor a cuppa joe. Carefully pouring the hot water through the exactly measured grounds in the filter suspended over the coffee urn, Tom could not and would not be rushed or distracted from his crucial chore. This was not coffee to be gulped and ignored just to get a caffeine hit. Banish the thought! This was a special nectar whose full rounded rich flavor exemplified the joys of eating outdoors in a wonderful place.

We learned to be patient, and patience was rewarded. After we had been on the river only one day, for the most part we looked like a pretty motley crew and we were not ambitious nor full of urgency in the slightest. Morningtime found us gradually assembling near the brewing coffee with a distant, unfocused and vaguely unconcerned demeanor. We shuffled and murmured and smiled and remembered we had no idea what time it was and did not even care. We were entropied motes floating, loosely assembled in time and space with one bond between us: A warm, aromatic cup of perfect coffee. We took sips between long gentle inhalations of morning air and then gradually formed a novel idea that breakfast might be nice to have.

So, two of the group were handed likely cooking implements and foodstuffs for the meal. Breakfast was made. We sat again by the river in our camp chairs and stared again at the flowing water, taking long drafts of coffee, savoring what was put on our plates. It seemed that breakfast was reinvented, rediscovered and marveled at as if we were emerging from a coma in a new century.

The several cups of caffeine began to take effect in many ways: Suddenly awakened kidneys went into full gear, heart rates rose noticeably and minds were now alert. Murmuring changed to shouts and songs. It was time to go downriver again. Pack and prepare, assemble and load. Of one mind, we were 16 river floaters with all gear dry bagged, bodies sunblocked and wrapped up again in our stiff, awkward vests and oarsmen taking up position on their respective cooler boxes amidships. We were rogues on the Rogue and having none of this softened pace. Take us down 'er, men! We are ready for what she may have for us!

And ever the river flowed. It always seemed to be something more than a river and yet was only a river. It was simply water flowing down grade to the ocean, of course. But it was free and set us free again, held a mystery deep within itself - green, liquid, reforming constantly and endlessly. Beside it and now riding it again, we were of a mind: the day was in full blaze and the rapids awaited once more. (To be continued)