Who's Your Huckleberry!

Tonight is the season finale' of The Mole so tonight we find out who is who's Huckleberry!

The Mole is the only game on TV where no one really cares who wins. What matters is WHO is sabotaging the games so the winner get's less money.

Mark from Wisconsin does not seem to be the Mole at all, therefore he is the prime suspect. The guy I had my money on all series was Paul and BAM - he is gone.

Now I'm looking more closely at Nichole. At first I did not consider her because she was being to blatant and TRYING to get people to think she was the Mole. However, if people thought that she was trying they would not take her seriously. Yet last night she said she would have had no problems doing things backwards (because of the camera image being backwards) but she really did not have a clue on the other side and how to help someone else. Her camera work was pathetic.

Craig - I like Craig but again, getting sick and an ambulance ride just seems to easy. Being able to keep his diary . . just to easy.

So I have to go with the Occam's Razor - (a principle named after William of Occam, a 14th century philosopher, which states that, if there are a number of explanations for observed phenomena, the simplest explanation is preferred. This is also called a scientific parsimony.)

Nichole is the Mole . . . . . or Mark, because I can not see him being The Mole so it will probably be Craig.

Did I make myself clear?
===========================
Did someone mention Johnny Depp?




OK - now we can all relax and have a cigarette.
==================================
My beer sadly sucks.

When I brewed my first batch of beer I came away with this thought "If this is drinkable it will be a miracle". I scorched the bottom of the pot and my cold break after the boil, where you have to get the temp from 212 to 75 as FAST as you can while still maintaining sanitary conditions took WAY too long and created diacetyl**.

Still - I had hope. I bottled last week with the idea of four weeks of bottle aging might smooth things. I tasted the beer yesterday knowing that it was still "green" but this would give me an idea of what it MIGHT taste like.

mmmmmmmm!!!! burnt rubber! I love it so!! . and the texture is . . . buttery. SURPRISE - exactly what I had predicted which in a way is a good thing. I have a clue what I'm doing, I just have to do it better. Which I have done in Batch #2, #3 and #4.

The burning part has been fixed when I DON'T use a tip from the local Homebrew dude.

The texture(mouth feel is the appropriate wording in beer talk) was full of diacetyl.

Diacetyl is a ketone compound that can be beneficial in limited amounts. It gives a butter or butterscotch note to the flavor of a beer and is desired in heavier pale ales, Scotch ales and stouts. HOWEVER - it tends to be unstable and can take on stale, raunchy tones due to oxidation. If a beer is not cooled ASAP once the boiling is finished diacetly continues to be produced.

So - there you have it. I'll try it again next week and I'm bottling #2. Batch #1 was a practice batch to see what I had to learn to do it correctly.
====================================
Hitching to the West.

We left me in Glacier National Park where I had decided to stop heading West and hang there for a while.

Fast forward five years.

My buddy Elweed and I are on a vacation and we find ourselves in Glacier National Park once again. We have already experienced the wonders of high altitude and alcohol as Elweed drank that bottle of schnapps like it was candy and his tent never did get set up before the rain storm arrived. It's a good thing it rained though . . . nuff said.

Still we decided to go backpacking to some far off hidden lake for a three day outing. The camp people are telling us to make sure we make a lot of noise because a Grizzly had mauled someone last week so we each tied a can with stones in them to our feet AS INSTRUCTED.

So we clanged our way up and up and up for 10 miles. It was the most beautiful hike I had ever been one. We would stop and drink out of freezing cold, crystal streams and after about 10 hours reached our area.

No one was there as this lake was in the middle of one mile high cliffs on almost all four sides.

Being somewhat tired we figured we would make some food. We had packed in freeze dried camping food and a small tiny little stove flame thing. Elweed decided to make a freeze dried omelet and turned on a puny little flame and sat there for 15 minutes trying to get the food to do SOMETHING.

Nothing was happening as I think the altitude and freeze dried food do not mix. So he drank most of it and dumped the rest next to the tent. I settled for candy bars and peanut butter.

We hiked around and and took in the sites. As the sun was setting made a little fire which did not stay lit and went to bed.

About midnight we both wake up, ALERT. Heart pounding. SOMETHING was trying to get in our tent. We both whisper about where the food was and nothing besides US were in the tent. Were WE the food? WHY DID YOU DUMP THAT OMELET BESIDE THE TENT!

THERE IT IS AGAIN!! Are those claws on top of out tent? HOLY SHIT it's trying to get in!! Like claws on top of the pup tent raking down the top, again and . . .AGAIN!! WTF??? We hear sounds . . . . not a bear . . .smaller.

I decide to peak out of the tent. What I see is what I did not expect to see.

Marmots - probably about five of them were jumping on top of the tent and sliding down. Scared the CRAP out of us. We found out that, yup, this is not unheard of. The rangers COULD HAVE WARNED US!!!

So after a long while we get back to sleep. Early in the morning I wake up and look outside again. I can still the scene in my minds eye.

The mile high cliffs above us have what looks like a fog ring just below the top of the cliffs. All the way around. Too cool!

The sun is starting to rise when we hear more noise, sort of grunting and once again I peak outside and this time I see a raggy looking mountain goat poking about looking for food.

We get up and sort of push him away making noise but he just stands there watching us.

Getting our little inept stove out again we try to make breakfast but as soon as the food comes out here comes Mr. Goat. We shove him away physically but he is bull headed and keeps poking his nose into our business.

We sort of skipped breakfast and decided to head back.

The trip back was uneventful except we found climbing UP is way way easier then going down. Our legs were getting mushy. Elweed kept finding really awesome rocks and somehow he kept talking ME into putting them into my back pack.

Years later threw them away.

We're on one of those "just over the next hill" trails and we both decide to climb a cliff next to the trail to see how far we have to go. It's maybe only 30 feet up and looks climbable.

After 10 feet we decide to leave our packs on the ground and climb down taking off the packs and up we go again.

The sun is beating down on us and sweat is dripping in our eyes as we near the top. I finally get to the pinnacle, look over the top . . . . . . . at smooth blacktop and cars. DAMN - it's a parking lot for the lodge where our car is. We were only one corner away. Now our FREAKING packs are way below us.

ANYWAY - that was our backpacking adventure. We got our packs, jumped in the car and and found a camp site to hang out until the next morning when we would head back to Wisconsin. We still had $50 between us and if we ate . . candy bars we would have enough money for gas.

The next day we were at Customs heading into Canada where it looked like we would have a shorter distance. The customs guys told us they wanted to talk to us so we were sitting there waiting to be interviewed.

Elweed, OF COURSE, had no ID with him but we seemed to be good people, maybe a little smelly from camping for 10 days and the car looked like. . . . . well . . . .messy is one word that comes to mind.

The customs guy said very kindly that we could enter Canada IF we would let them search our car. Then he pointed to a hippy van that was completely torn apart.

We both said that's OK, maybe we will head back south. I still have never been to Canada! Refused entry my one and only attempt.

We made it back on fumes . . literally. I ran out of gas the next day driving to the gas station.

Tomorrow - back to hitchhiking.
=============================================
So much else to say - have to save it!
Cheers
Rod