However, before I attack that goal, here is a little update on what's going on in Orygun. In mid-September Akiko and I moved out of the tiny studio hotel room near Portland to an even tinier hotel room in Salem. I had been told many times that Salem was a shithole full of nothing, but migrant workers, meth-heads and religious right freaks. While that description isn't too far from the mark, there are some surprising advantages to living in Salem.
First, it has a ton of great Mexican food. There are little trailers on every block hocking home made Mexican dishes. Most of the current Mexicans seem to be from the state of Michoacán, at least judging by how often this word is plastered all over everything. There are six Muchas Gracia taco shops in Salem. Muchas Gracias is a Mexican food chain that was started in California by a Mexican worker who was busted by la Migra and then given amnesty. He is a true believer in the American dream and now has more than 50 store locations in CA, OR and WA. Having visited several of them, they are a far cry McDonalds. They are all unique in some way although the menu is generally the same. The food isn't fancy, but I never miss an excuse to grab one of their tacos. My Spanish is dreadful, but here is the source of my info on Muchas Gracias. Correct me if I botched any details. http://www.muchasgraciasmex.com/about.html
The second surprisingly cool thing about Salem is the number of little mom and pop stores. Fish stores, bakeries, donut shops, farmer's markets, butchers, etc. Sadly lacking are any asian super markets worth visiting. Nonetheless, in Salem you are more likely to bump into a small non-big box store than you are home-depot, Lowes or Burger king. The other refreshing aspect of all of these places is that they are not boutique -neither in appearance or attitude nor, more importantly, in price. Maybe Salem is backward and not progressive. Or maybe the people here have got it right.
The fairgrounds are number three on my list of reason why I like Salem. People who don't share or understand my bicycle affliction can skip this paragraph. The Salem fairgrounds are my new neighborhood playground. There never really was a playground near to where I lived as a kid. We either lived way the hell up in the mtns or we lived in the sub-urbs. I am fine with that, because at age 37 I have a playground in my neighborhood. The fairgrounds are a 5 minute bike ride from my hotel room. That means that I am 5 minutes away from: a BMX track, a pump track, 4 dirt jump lines and some "north-shore-style-stunts." (For those of you who don't get the bike thing and are still reading this, think: swing-sets, slides, teeter-totters, and jungle-gyms...for bikes.) Since the rain is supposedly on its way here and I will only be in this neighborhood for a week or so more, I have been playing in my personal playground at every opportunity. In three weeks of playing, I still hold the record for the oldest guy to hit the big dirt-jump line.
None of these points are why we moved to Salem. The real reason was that Akiko couldn't handle 2.5 hours a day in the car to get back and forth from work. This issue became particularly pressing as we got closer to harvest time, which is in full swing right now, although the harvest here is kids stuff compared to the German harvest.
Akiko is generally working 6-10 hours per day 5-6 days per week. The times that I was lucky enough to experience the harvest in Germany the teams were working 10-18 hours per day 6-7 days per week. (I jumped in at my leisure for a few days and it was hard work.) The big difference here in the US, is that "white people don't drive tractors." That is the nice way to say that migrant labor does all of the really hard work: picking the grapes, loading the trucks, etc. If you take the picking and the transportation out of the harvest work load, you've got easy street. While it is still a bit or work and requires know-how and experience to get the grapes from the trucks to the tanks, it is a lot easier if you don't spend 6 hours of your morning picking and schlepping grapes.
I am sure there are, in fact I KNOW there are, wine makers somewhere in Orygun or the US for that matter that actually work in the field; pruning, harvesting, spraying, etc., but I am surprised by how many do not. At the same time I am surprised by how many also claim to know "their" grapes intimately. That is tough to do without getting mud on your boots.
OK, before I say something I will regret, let me move on to my goal for the day.
So, I picked our day in Badlands for today's show and tell. The Badlands are an incredible visual experience, especially if one includes the approach to them. The portion of South Dakota to the east of the badlands is Microsoft Windows desktop prairie. Rolling green hills, blue skies and puffy white clouds. As much as we all tried we weren't able to get a decent shot of this landscape from the car at 70 mph. We could have stopped, if there had actually been anywhere to stop and if we hadn't been trying to make time. At the time it didn't seem worth while, but in retrospect I wish we had taken a minute to get a shot of the MS Windows prairie.
So as we approached Badlands we were looking up at the horizon looking for jagged peaks and huge bowls. All we saw were lots of small gullies in the plains from erosion. Some of the larger gullies were brutally carved out with impressive features, but where were these maze like canyons carved into mountains? The "duh moment" came as we crested a large MS Windows knoll. There below us were the Badlands carved *into* the prairie floor. Upon seeing it for the first time it was a shock. A little reflection where we were helped it make sense. Or the other way around, made it obvious that there couldn't really be a mini-rocky mountain popping up out of the South Dakota prairie.
This photo almost looks unreal. Part of that is because of the weird blur line half between infinite distance and very close. There may have been a drop of water on the lens as we did get hit by some rain clouds. One way or the other the colors and the shape were just incredible. This photo does not do the dramatic changes across the strata any justice.
This shot shows some of the other colors that were in the soil and the rock. I think we saw red, green, purple, pink, blue, black, bone white, yellow and orange rock and soil in a time frame of about three hours. All of that with a back drop of blue skies, which explains the poor contrast (brutal midday sun).
Another shot showing the beautiful blue skies and the colorful strata. Whoever took this picture must have one leg shorter than the other...I guess that's me.
Maki and Akiko. Yikes.
Akiko and I. No comment.
Not a terribly flattering view of it, but this campsite was actually very nice, clean and cheap. I think we paid $10. The photos above are only about 5 minutes from the campsite, which was flat as a pancake.
I am half drunk. Maki is freezing. We tried warming the plates to keep the food warm, it was windy and cold. The steaks and the mushrooms were great, but could have been hotter. The trouble with Maki, Akiko and I is that we all love beer, wine and food. The usual routine after a day in the car was to break out some beers to unwind. Whip up a small snack to eat with the beers, while drinking beer. Have a couple of beers with the small snack. The ladies would run off to shower while I fed the dogs and drank more beer. When the ladies were back we would start cooking dinner while finishing the beer and getting the first bottle of wine started. Generally by time we got done eating is a good ways past midnight and we were all pretty much cross eyed. Once we hit bear country we were forced to slightly modify this routine. I said, "slightly."
Akiko says I spoil the dog. It was damned cold (actually it wasn't that cold, but it had been in the 90s during the day) out under the open skies and the poor old dog was freezing. She's nothing but skin and bones these days.We got up the next day and hit Mt. Rushmore and Crazyhorse and camped at the foot of Devil's Tower. Maybe I'll get around to posting that sometime before Christmas.
