Don't these people have jobs?

Owing to the mercifully quiet week at work, my now short commute, and an all-too-rare occurrence of J. actually making dinner, I went cycling after work yesterday. I'm no Lance Armstrong, obviously, but I felt like I pushed it pretty hard -- I am certainly feeling it in my thighs this morning, and I passed more than I was passed. In two hours, after all the traffic lights and transitions between trails were accounted for, I was able to get in around 18 miles (home to just past the East Falls Church Metro and back). I got back around 7:20, just in time for a quick shower and J.'s delicious ochazuke (Japanese salmon and green tea soup). Not a time-maximizing workout. So how do dedicated cyclists put in enough miles in a week to get a consistent workout? If cycling is your primary form of exercise, I reckon you would have to go out at least three times a week, for at least three hours at a time (20-25 miles), preferably longer as your body adjusts to the requirements of your typical ride and begins to maximize its own efficiency. Where do they find the time? I suppose they probably don't cook dinner from fresh ingredients every night, don't read books, and do all their chores on weekends. Come to think of it, that's true of the vast majority of people out there -- at least a handful of them is cycling instead of veging out in front of the television.

Blue Cheese

Attended one of Cheesetique's cheese tastings (or "classes" as Jill, the proprietress, likes to call them). This one was on blue cheeses. It was fantastic as always, though I must admit that this much blue cheese with very little accompaniment was borderline too much even for someone who loves cheese as much as I do. The membrillo that Jill served this time did help to break things up a little. Of the ten cheeses that we tasted, there were only one or two that I probably would not go out of my way to have again. Some of the highlights were Cashel Blue from Ireland, an aged Stilton (4 months, which doesn't sound like much, but it's next to impossible to age blue cheeses for any length of time, and a regular stilton is usually only about 2 months old), a sheep's milk blue called Ba-Ba Blue, and, of course, Valdeon, one of Spain's great cheeses, and the one that the membrillo was intended to accompany. The Valdeon was far more intense than I remembered, and looked quite different -- a brownish-gray, with far more mold than I am used to. The Most Unusual Cheese award probably goes to an artisanal concoction called Whiskey Blue, which is what you think it is -- soaked in bourbon. Certainly distinctive, I am not sure I would call it good -- the shaprness hits you in the nose rather than on the palate. Jill was her usual enthusiastic and funny self, and explained the fascinating story of making roquefort, though we did not taste it. Props yet again to her and Cheesetique for putting on a great event.

Recreational Fire Extinguishing

I bought a fire extinguisher over the weekend. I get a discount on my renter's insurance if I have one in the apartment. Just a basic red thing, about 14 inches tall, with a black handle. The package read "Recreational Extinguisher." I guess I am expected just to go around putting out small fires for fun.

Selfishness

There is no such thing as truly selfless behavior. Anyone who does something that appears to be helpful to or supportive of others does so at least partially out of selfish considerations. Either he believes that his kindness will eventually be reciprocated, or, more interestingly, he derives intrinsic pleasure and benefit from the act of charity itself. It is generally believed that the most selfless act most of us will ever undertake is bearing and raising children. Children, by definition, are unable to reciprocate the care and attention we lavish upon them or, until a certain fairly advanced age, even appreciate what we do to them and for them on a rational level. Yet I do not believe that child rearing invalidates my initial suggestion. The only difference is that the gratification is delayed somewhat. One example would be vicariousness. Living vicariously is a form of selfishness, and those that have never achieved certain things in their own lives raise children and encourage them to achieve those things in their stead. The other obvious example smacks far more of commerce – the desire to be taken care of in old age. People strike an implicit bargain when they start a family: I take care of you while you're young, and in return you will take care of me when I'm old.

All this seems to imply that those who choose not to have children are the people who are open and comfortable with their selfishness. Why even pretend that I am doing something altruistic, they seem to be saying, when in reality I wouldn't be? Yet this is not so. There are people who categorically refuse to start a family, yet they stubbornly care for and support others who they perceive to need that support, sometimes at a great discomfort to themselves. Why? Same reasons – they derive a benefit from doing it. It makes them feel useful. It allows them to perceive themselves as good persons because they are sacrificing their own comfort and happiness for that of someone else. It shows to those around them, they hope, how kind and caring they are. It gives them a sense of righteousness. And it has the added benefit that assuming the recipient of their support is reasonably mentally competent (a deeply needy spouse, for example), it at least carries the possibility of being appreciated in real time.

So, children or no, we all go around pretending to be selfless while in fact deriving an essential benefit from our behavior. I should probably point out that it is possible to perform a truly selfless act, but by definition that act has to result in the death of the actor, since death is the only thing that makes it impossible to derive any sort of direct benefit so self. I am not talking about suicide bombers here, obviously – what they do is the most extreme form of selfishness. I have in mind those very few soldiers who, in times of war, have willingly put themselves in the line of fire to save their comrades.

Mendocino Grille

J. treated me to a delicious dinner at Mendocino Grille in Georgetown for my birthday last night. Located on M Street, Georgetown's main drag that now seems to be dominated by overpriced, overly pretentious salons and day spas, Mendocino serves New American cuisine and claims to use local, organic, sustainably-farmed ingredients whenever possible. The space is small – a bar up front that seats no more than ten, and one ground-level dining room split into two sections by a sommelier station – minimally decorated with some exposed granite tile and mirrors, and very inviting. The menu was not extensive but everything on it looked interesting. It was complemented by two specials, an appetizer and an entree, described by our waiter who had a horrendous hairdo but was otherwise polite and professional. Befitting a restaurant with a name like Mendocino, the wine list was long and 100% American, although not all the wines were from California. The prices were not particularly attractive, but there were a few bottles to be had for less than an arm and a leg. We asked for a recommendation, specifying that we wanted something on the lower end of the price spectrum, “$50 or less.” He duly recommended a few wines, but all were over $50. This has happened to us before. Is this kind of slight upsell becoming standard practice at better restaurants? Too bad if it is – while I understand the business motivation behind it, the customer that is not being a pain in the neck for the staff should be accommodated.

We ended up with a bottle from Santa Barbara's Oreana Winery that they call simply Red Table Wine. The restaurant had it listed as “Winemaker's Mistake,” but evidently that was their own invention. The story, apparently, is this. One of Oreana's winemaker was blending several barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon and inadvertently included one of Syrah. Initially devastated over his error, he tatsed the wine and discovered that by sheer luck, he ended up with a blend that was not only drinkable but had a distincitve character. He bottled it. With a story like that, we had to try it, of course, and since it was available by the glass as well as the bottle, the waiter generously brought out a taste, along with a taste of a Bordeaux-style blend from Washington State for comparison. The Washington wine was better on the nose – deeper, with a more pronounced ripe berry aroma – but the Mistake was better on the palate, I thought, or at least more versatile. Relatively soft and not particularly tannic, it had enough structure to stand up to food and while the fruit was very prominent (as it always should be, in my book), the Syrah added a touch of spice that made the wine more interesting. And as it was one of the least expensive bottles on the list, and had a label that showed a giant orange question mark on a black background without a single word of text, we were sold.

For appetizers, J. went with a cauliflower and apple soup, while I ordered the special, which was Mendocino's version of boudin blanc, made with chicken and foie gras. J. loved the soup. It was definitely well-made and very flavorful. I'm just not crazy about cauliflower, especially in pureed form. Not sure why – I adore all other cruciferous vegetables – but cauliflower has never transcended the ordinary for me, and the soup didn't taste like it had enough apple to balance it out. The coup de grace of the soup, though, was the fact that it came with a side of cornmeal-crusted fried oysters, perhaps four or five of them, served separately in a small square bowl. I tried one – it was delicious. Fresh and tender. J.'s attitude towards fried oysters, of course, lies somewhere between adoration and worship, so she had no complaints. My boudin was likewise excellent – creamy and sinfully rich, served with succulently sweet braised cabbage and a dollop of plum mustard – a condiment I had not encountered before. Deep purple in color and very thick, it tasted exactly like its namesake components. A little went a long way. All in all, a fantastic dish, a choucroute alsacienne of sorts ratcheted up several orders of magnitude, mercifully served in a portion small enough to do exactly what an appetizer is supposed to – peak your curiosity and get you salivating for the main course.

While deciding on the entrees, J. beat me to the finish line with her decision, and ended up with what I am convinced is the best dish in the house – quail stuffed with pheasant sausage. I almost threw all dining conventions to the wind and ordered the same thing, but my desire to try as many different things as I could made me go with the pork instead. The quail was truly out of this world. Two quail breasts, completely deboned (talk about labor-intensive!), wrapped into perfect spheres around delicious sausage stuffing, tender and mild, served atop succulent and extremely flavorful brussel sprouts cooked with bits of bacon, garnished with fresh figs in the corners of the large square plate. My pork was also very good, though if this was an Iron Chef competition and each dish was prepared by a different contestant, it would undoubtedly come in second to the quail. It was essentially two dishes in one – on one side of the plate, a boneless pork chop, perfectly seasoned and grilled to medium (at my request), sliced and placed over a heaping of fresh lamb's lettuce and sauteed chantrelle mushrooms. I don't eat that much fresh pork these days, especially during the summer, but lately, whenever I do it seems to be tenderloin. The pork chop was chewy by comparison, but not tough. It almost forced you to eat more slowly and appreciate the flavor. On the other side of the plate, was a small square of pork belly, braised until almost liquid, served over a dollop of creamy polenta, obviously freshly made. The pork belly is a culinary black hole – the most possible flavor in the smallest possible space which nothing escapes – and it didn't disappoint. Barely an ounce, it positively exploded on the palate with flavor of deeply seasoned pork and a velvety, sinfully rich texture of melted fat.

Dessert decision was easy. After a meal like this, we were not about to eat anything even remotely resembling cake, but cheeses occupy a prominent place on Mendocino's menu, and can be had in a larger than usual variety of quantities and combinations. We opted for two, a sheep and a cow, accompanied by a thick and delicious fig paste (standard issue with all cheeses) and spiced nuts, which we chose from a list of several available “accents.” The sheep was Abbaye de belloc from France – definitely aged, firm, on the sharp side but with prominent sheepy flavor. Start with a good manchego and take a few turns through the Pyrenees into France. The cow was Val bagner from Switzerland. Washed-rind as far as I could tell, it was moderately stinky, very strong-flavored with a great texture – just enough grain to recall a well-aged Ementhaler and tie it to its Swiss origin, but really in a class by itself. Both were excellent dessert cheeses, and the servings were generous enough to make the $8 price tag an excellent value. The only miss were the spiced nuts. Truly spiced with cayenne and god knows what else, they were hot, and disappointed J. who was looking for something more cinnamon-y and nutmeg-y. After squeezing the last drop from that bottle of Winemaker's Mistake, and on a school night no less, dessert drinks were out of the question, and we ambled out into the warm Georgetown night, sated and happy. The best birthday meal in a long, long time, and one of the best on record.

Rant: Christmas

Christmas?! It's mid-September, for heaven's sake! You better believe it. The L.L. Bean Christmas catalog showed up in my mailbox yesterday. If that weren't enough, I also saw a table of Christmas cards at a local Borders. This is insane. I know that over the last decade or so, most retailers started to push holiday merchandise earlier and earlier before each holiday every year, but until now, it seemed that for the most part, at least they would wait until after Halloween to start on the Christmas stuff. Not this year, apparently. We still have Halloween and Thanksgiving to get through, but evidently those are getting short thrift this year in favor of the Big One. Or, worse, it will all be out at the same time, for a perfectly overwhelming scene. I bet global warming will kick in in earnest this year, too, so in a few weeks, we will be standing around in 85-degree heat, wearing shorts, not knowing whether to buy that plastic Jack-O-Lantern, a turkey-shaped candle, or splurge for the dancing Santa, since all three will be right in front of us.

All this is rife with cultural implications, but put those aside for a moment. It strikes me as suicide from a business point of view. First of all, who is going to think about Christmas shopping this early? Despite the ever-longer holiday shopping season, the number of folks fighting the crowds on Dec. 24th doesn't seem to get any smaller from year to year, so as a society, we clearly do not have any more foresight today than we did in the past. I am one of the biggest planners among my circle of friends, and I usually buy a fair number of presents, but even I refuse to start rolling until early November. Financially, people are still recovering from their summer vacations and back-to-school shopping. You know that catalog is going to get crumpled, torn, lost, or eaten by one of those adorable yellow labs it so prominently features. By the time people are ready to start thinking about gifts, it will be nowhere to be found, and for a company like L.L. Bean that depends so much on catalog sales, that will be disastrous. Unless, of course, they are planning to send out another one (or two, or three), wasting paper to print them and energy to ship them. The bombardment never stops, I guess.

Chocolate Notes
Tried Lindt's single-origin 75% dark chocolate from Ecuador last night. It was good -- less intense and more subtle than I expected. But I am wondering if it's not quite sweet enough. It's not that it's too bitter -- it's not -- but the sweetness I expect from a square of chocolate wasn't quite there. Amazing how much impact a miniscule difference in ingredient proprtions can have on the flavor of the finished product. Just about any chocolate with 71% or 72% percent cocoa content is delicious, but add an extra 3%, (a mere 4 grams or so) and the balance is tilted away from perfection. Uncharacteristically, J. declined to join me, so she couldn't offer a counterpoint. I suspect she would have been more excited about it.

Project Euler

Solution to Problem #2. Still a brute-force approach. The next one won't be so straightforward. Damn that one-minute requirement!

# Project Euler, Problem #2
#
# Find the sum of all even-valued terms
# in the Fibonacci sequence which do not
# exceed one million.

n1, n2 = 1, 2
sum = 0

while n1 < 2 ="="" sum =" sum" n2 =" n2,">

Beethoven

Finally got through the last sonata on Schiff's latest Beethoven disc. No. 15 in D, known as the "Pastorale." It's one of his "main" sonatas, but I wasn't familiar with it until now. I enjoyed it for the most part. For once, Schiff agrees with the work's nickname in the liner notes, but I am not sure I heard much nature in the music. The minor-key sections of the Andante are far too dark and emotional, the scherzo is too brash (at least in Schiff's hands) and, at a hair over two minutes, too short to evoke a coherent visual image, and the closing rondo is vintage, juicy Beethoven that sounds, as it should, like good music, not chirping birds or howling winds, and readily echoes the thematic material of the opening, nicely bringing the sonata full circle. Pigeonholing a work as "program" music is almost always a bad idea, and it certainly is here -- this is good, solid piano music, with few gimmicks and no need for non-musical metaphors.

My timing couldn't be better -- the next installment comes out this week. It contains "The Tempest" -- who names these things? -- that I will actually be able to compare with another recording.

Project Euler

My solution to Problem #1 from Project Euler (and, I should point out, my first functioning Ruby program). They liked my answer.

# Project Euler, Problem #1
# Compute the sum of all natural numbers below 1000
# that are multiples of 3 or 5
#
# The problem gives no specific instructions about
# numbers that are multiples of both, like 15, but
# apparently they want us to count those once. The
# code below counts them as multiples of 3, and the
# answer matches with what they want.

numbers = 3..999
sum = 0

numbers.each do |number|
   # Is it a multiple of 3?
   # If so, add to the total
   if number % 3 == 0
       sum = sum + number
   # Otherwise, is it a multiple of 5?
   elsif number % 5 == 0
       sum = sum + number
   end
end

puts "The sum is: " + sum.to_s

Busara

Though the ingredients and preparation screams "Italian," I believe the dish is actually Dalmatian in origin. A truly authentic version would leave the shrimp unshelled.

• 1 Tbsp. + 1/4 cup good quality olive oil
• 8-10 medium shrimp, deveined and optionally shelled
• 2-3 large cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 2 large, ripe, flavorful tomatoes, seeded and cut into bite-size chunks
• Juice of half a lemon, optional but recommended if the tomatoes and/or the wine don't have much acid in them.
• Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
• Generous handful of fresh basil leaves, torn or julienned
• Generous handful of fresh parsley leaves, chopped
• 7 oz. spaghetti

1. Heat 1 Tbsp. olive in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add shrimp and saute until just cooked through, about 1 min. per side. If cooking them in their shells, you may need 30 sec. longer per side. Remove and set aside.
2. Cook spaghetti in a large pot of salted boiling water until al-dente.
3. In a deep saute pan or skiller, heat remaining 1/4 cup olive oil over medium-low heat. Add garlic slices and cook until they just begin to change color.
4. Add the wine and turn the heat to medium high. Careful: it is probably going to sputter. Let it bubble for a while. Do not let it boil off completely.
5. Add the tomato chunks, stir once or twice and immediately turn off the heat -- the idea is not to cook the tomatoes. Add the lemon juice, if using. Season generously with salt and pepper.
6. Add the cooked spaghetti to the pan. Timing note: Ideally, they should be just done at this point. You want to time things such that you are draining them while the wine is reducing. Add the shrimp and fresh herbs. Toss well.

Serve with crusty bread. For a little extra zing, sprinkle with hot red pepper flakes.

Serves 2 as a main course.

Wine: Pinto Grigio.

From the No One Really Needs an SUV department:
On the way to work this morning, saw a VW Golf, early-00s generation, with a kayak, a Thule clamshell container and a mountain bike all comfortably attached to the roof rack. Who says a large vehicle is required to transport outdoor gear?

Bodies

Attended the Bodies exhibit over the weekend. J. has been wanting to see it for some time. I was mildly curious but didn't have any specific expectations. It proved to be very disappointing. First of all, the admission price is a complete highway robbery -- $26/person. I know everything is getting expensive, and major art museums are charging upwards of $20, but this is, in essence, a traveling exhibit on the subject of medicine, and not a very large one at that. But that wasn't the biggest problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was bored to tears. There are very few things that I have no interest in, but medicine and biology in general are right at the top of that short list, and the entire exhibit was basically one long anatomy lesson. The most controversial aspect of the show -- the fact that all specimens were real human tissue, preserved using novel techniques -- had no impact on me one way or the other. To me, they looked plastic. More than once I had to stop and remind myself that I was looking at what used to be a real human being. The exhibit was not without its redeeming qualities, however, the best of which was a display that showed a healthy lung next to that of a smoker. If everyone saw that display, local governments wouldn't have to ban smoking in bars by fiat. At least J. enjoyed the show quite a bit, being the moderate medical geek that she is.

The show was followed by another disappointment -- lunch at Pizzeria Paradiso in Georgetown (the exhibit is housed in the old Newseum building in Rosslyn). I've eaten at both locations numerous times, and the pizza has always been excellent, except yesterday. For something different, we ordered a basic Margarita and added eggplant and pine nuts to it. Well, as usual the eggplant was the problem -- precisely the unfortunate sort of thing that creates eggplant haters in this world. Evidently, they sliced up some eggplant and just threw in on the pizza raw. It was bland, undercooked and tasted like cardboard. The cheese on the pizza was another problem -- there was too much of it, and it was already rubbery by the time the pizza showed up at our table. I hope that it was just an off day that can be attributed to a large Sunday afternoon crowds, rather than permanently slipping standards at one of my favorite restaurants.

On the positive side -- finally installed and tried out the new clipless (SPD) pedals on my bike on Saturday. Fantastic. My big fear initially was being unable to unclip quickly when I needed to stop, but that fear proved unfounded -- it actually took me longer to learn how to clip in than to unclip, but even that was not a problem after a few laps around the parking lot of my building. And the pedals came perfectly adjusted right out of the box, I didn't have to tweak the tension at all. I rode to Bethesda and back, a hair under 20 miles round-trip, and now I'm craving more.

Rant: Job Interview

I think I am beginning to understand. I finally interviewed a candidate for my (as in "to work for me," not "to replace me") position. I thought it stopped just short of being a train wreck. Trivialities first. I realize I am in IT, and being 2007, we're in the post-Internet-bubble world. It's a little like Postmodernism in art -- it is not the same as Modernism, yet we can never go back to the way artists thought before Picasso et. al. So I knew better than to expect a well-fitting suit, white shirt, polished shoes and a properly tied tie. But an untucked pink shirt, top button undone and tie loosened, wrinkled khakis, clunky casual shoes, and one of those slouchy, unconstructed cotton sportcoats that he took off as soon as he walked into my office? Evidently, it is now too much to ask someone to show a modicum of respect for the occasion by being neat and well turned out.

On to the substance. Why do people insist on trying to bluff their way through things? Why must they talk at a hundred miles an hour for ten minutes, boast about how they believe in automation, how they were never given an opportunity to achieve great things in their current job, use the word "endeavor" until I was ready to vomit, and sprinkle it with a few "highleveldesignlowleveldesign" for good measure, but when I ask them for details of what they, themselves, have done on a specific project, they can't tell me anything, at least not in a way that I understand? I will be the first one to admit that I am not the computer geek that many of my colleagues are, and that I don't know the inner workings of JXPath. But I've been in the industry for twelve years, and have actually built a thing or two that worked. I can't be completely clueless, can I? If someone can rattle off a dozen buzzwords from the apache.org front page, that does not make them an expert in all of them, does it? Ok, I am probably not being sufficiently generous. Perhaps this is a problem of communication, not of expertise. But is that not a serious problem in and of itself? I mean, I am going to have to talk to the guy on the daily basis, and he'll have to talk to me. We don't just sit around playing with XML databases all day while the guys in Stuttgart are doing the real work. We've got customers to worry about.

The kicker, however, was the test. It is not a difficult test -- a couple of basic programming problems (and I mean basic -- compute the product of all element in an array) to be written in Java. He writes pseudocode. Explain the difference between a redirect and a pipe in Unix. No clue. Write a representation of a book in Java. He comes back with no class keyword, no return types, no braces. And guess what his resume says? BS Computer Science; Sun Certified Java Programmer. What is wrong with this picture? We graded generously (I would gave given no credit for the programming problems, but M.M. gave him 2 out of 5), and he scored a 62.

To my amazement, M.M. thought the guy basically knew what he was talking about, which kind of made me worried for a minute -- maybe it was all me after all. But the test results were worrisome to both of us.

Never was I able to offer the following interview advice with more confidence: be honest, answer the questions, and whatever you're talking about, be absolutely sure that you are making sense. I used to think that those were the lowest common denominator in the professional world. How naive of me.

To shake off the traumatic experience, ran about five miles last night (the Four Mile Run trail is seriously creepy after sundown -- ladies, stay away. Gentlemen, too.), followed by a Magic Hat Hocus Pocus from my fridge. I felt better.

Executive Privilege, Pizza and Beer

I intuitively abhor the Bush-Cheney agenda of unlimited expansion of presidential power, not because I am a tree-hugging pinko commie, but because the balance of powers is a pillar of our democracy. If that's compromised, what's left? Is it also not true, however, that decision making by committee is the most inefficient and ineffective way to make decisions? And what is the US Congress, if not the most extreme expression of just such a form of decision making? So should I not therefore cheer any movement towards curtailing the insanity that is the US Congress's day to day operations, with its oversight hearings, filibustering and back-room dealing? No, of course not -- it all gets back to Winston Churchill in the end.

All this was discussed with C.S. last night over some beer and pizza at Rustico. He pointed out that the extreme form of decision making by committee practiced by the US Congress actually causes some decisions not to be made, and some laws not to be passed, thus helping our entire system to be less unwieldy than it otherwise might, or at least helping it grow more unwieldy at a slightly slower rate. Perhaps.

The beer raised fewer questions -- it was Rustico's bi-monthly glass giveaway, a double feature this time -- Otter Creek and Wolaver's, which have apparently merged. Wolaver's brought a Farmhouse Ale as well as a pale ale supposedly on cask (we didn't try it). Otter Creek had something they called an Australian-style Sparkling Ale, an Oktoberfest and, I think, a brown ale that we didn't try. Of the ones we tried, the Farmhouse was probably the best of the bunch -- fairly funky and barnyard-y, it interpreted its name literally. I expected something along the lines of the Smuttynose Farmhouse (warning: serious beer geek info) which is a Belgian saison-style beer, but this was all good old American micro -- hoppy and dry. Still, distinctive and enjoyable. The Oktoberfest was good as well -- a bit lighter in color and less malty than a typical German Oktoberfest, but definitely a well-crafted brew. Mysteriously, it showed up somewhat warm and flat, English-style. I didn't order the Australian-style stuff (unfortunate name -- I instantly though of the Foster's oil can), but C.S. did, and I tasted a bit. A noble effort, but not my style -- dry, but not particularly hoppy. Kind of creamy and smooth on the palate. And it didn't strike me as any more sparkling than anything else.

The pizza, for once, was almost a complete miss. The combination of ingredients was worthy of California in the early days of Wolfgang Puck: duck confit, cracklins and brie, and in retrospect, there is a good reason why this sort of "experimentation for its own sake" cuisine didn't last. But this is C.S. we're talking about, and if I didn't try this with him, I certainly wouldn't with anyone else. So we ordered it. What showed up was a thick layer of uniform off-white cheese, already rubberizing in the now-cool evening air, sprinkled with an equally uniform layer of crispy brown crumbs. Which was the confit and which were the cracklins,
there was no telling, either by color, texture or flavor. Perhaps a blender was involved. The real offender, however, was the brie -- apparently the kitchen melted it complete, with rind, and while there are very few foods that I truly dislike, brie rind is one of them. The pizza tasted musty and off-putting. Thank goodness for the abundant beer.

Pasta with Sausage, Mushroom and Spinach sauce

Trader Joe's fresh chicken sausage works particularly well for this, and makes for a slightly lighter sauce than the traditional pork stuff, good though that is.

• 1 2-oz package dried Porcini or mixed mushrooms
• 1 Tbsp. + 3 Tbsp. olive oil
• 2-3 Italian sausage links, casings removed, crumbled
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2-3 cloves garlic, diced
• 2 tsp. fennel seed
• 1/3 cup white wine with good acid
  
• 1 28-oz. can whole tomatoes, pureed
• 2 Tbsp. each fresh basil and fresh parsley, chopped
• Dash of dried thyme (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Dash of cayenne
• 1 6-oz. package pre-washed baby spinach leaves

1. Place dried mushrooms in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Cover the bowl and let stand about 20 min. Drain in a strainer and rinse well with cold water. If there are any large pieces, cut them into halves or thirds. Set aside.
2. Over medium heat, heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a saute pan large enough to accomodate the spinach leaves later in addition to all other ingredients. Add sausage, breaking up with a wooden spoon. Saute, stirring frequently, until mostly cooked through and starting to brown. Remove from pan and set aside.
3. Heat remaining 3 Tbsp. olive oil in the same pan over medium heat. Add onion and saute, stirring occasionally until it starts to brown.
4. Add mushrooms and saute, stirring frequently, for 2-3 min.
5. Add garlic and fennel seed and saute until garlic starts to change color.
6. Add wine, turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil, scraping up bits from the bottom of the pan. Allow the wine to bubble until it's reduced by about half.
7. Add tomatoes, basil, parsley and thyme, if using.
8. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add cayenne.
9. Return sausage and its accumulated drippings to pan, stir to combine thoroughly and bring to a boil.
10. Turn the heat down as low as it'll go, cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 20 min., until the oil begins to separate from the tomatoes.
11. Turn the heat up slightly, add the spinach and cover again, squashing the spinach into the sauce. Cook 3-4 min. until spinach begins to wilt. Stir it into the sauce until the rest wilts. Adjust seasonings.

Serve over penne, rigatoni or other short, tubular pasta, sprinkled with freshly-grated Parmesan cheese and and julienned fresh basil leaves.

Serves 4-5 as a main course.

Wine: Any Italian red that's not too delicate and has good acid -- decent Chianti, Primitivo, Negro Amaro, etc., though in a pinch, you can just drink up the leftover white that you didn't use in the sauce.

Beethoven

Got through two more Beethoven sonatas from the new CD last night -- Nos. 13 and 14, 14 being the "Moonlight." 13 is probably not one I will go back to very often. The structure is again unusual, and the second movement has something to it, but as a whole it didn't grab me. Maybe I wasn't focused enough. The Moonlight, on the other hand, is really cool. I've heard it god knows how many times, but I forgot how compact it was. The famous opening movement is less than five minutes long. Maybe that's what accounts for its popularity -- almost radio-friendly. And Schiff's interpretation really is distinctive. He plays the entire first movement with the sustain pedal down, creating a humming resonance. Combined with his relatively brisk tempo, it creates an expansive sound that is far from delicate. In the last movement, his dynamics are extreme -- he positively pounds on the keyboard in the forte sections, making it sound almost scary. Good stuff.

Goldberg Variations

Heard Simone Dinnerstein play Bach's Goldberg Variations at An Die Musik in Baltimore yesterday. Though it wasn't quite the religious experience one might expect hearing the Goldbergs competently played in a small room, it was excellent. Dinnerstein really is a far cry from Gould, just like the article said. The slow movements were beautiful, very lyrical, her sense of time very fluid. She is not afraid to lag behind the beat for an instant, or let a note sustain a hair longer, if it adds to the drama. I am sure there are some purists who would scream bloody murder, but for my money, it's the way to do it. My favorite -- the 25th -- was gorgeous. Her fast movements were actually faster than I expected. Closer to Gould's '55 version, though maybe not quite that fast. J. thought they were sometimes rhythmically uneven, not as "metronomic" as they should have been, but I didn't notice. I was probably too busy being impressed by her articulation. Every note was crytal-clear and distinct, even at breakneck tempos.

There was a reception afterwards. We stayed only for a couple of minutes, but long enough to meet Dinnerstein, say thank you for the lovely performance and exchange a couple of words. She is far less glammed-up and more approachable in person than the photos on her website make her look. She is coming to the National Gallery in the spring, playing all of Beethoven's cello sonatas in chronological order. I'll be there.

In preparation, I listened to Gould's '81 Goldbergs in the morning. They are really quite amazing. I used to say that I preferred the '55 -- vigor, energy, recklessness, all that -- but I am realizing I never really sat down and listened to the '81s carefully until yesterday. I might have to switch my allegiance. Not that I have daily conversations about the Goldberg Variations...

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Conclusion

Saturday morning, we broke camp and, after breakfast in town, hit the road. We drove Southwest, towards St. Stephens, hoping that the border checkpoint wouldn't be too busy, not being located on a major trucking route. Sadly, we were wrong – it took us three hours to cross, though the time in the booth was less than two minutes. As on the way up, all the officer wanted to know is whether we bought anything in Canada. He was surprised when we said (untruthfully) no, but took us at our word and waved us through. The traffic was light, but the drive still long, and we didn't hit J.'s parents' house in Schenectady until after ten.

The following morning, after a sugar-laden breakfast, I left J. behind to visit with her folks for a couple of days and drove the rest of the way home. To signal the end of the trip with perfect timing, the weather was overcast. Around Union, NJ, the skies opened up with a torrential rain, and the three lanes of the Garden State Parkway ground to a crawl. A far cry from the empty highways and sunny days of Eastern Canada. I finally rolled in around dinner time, the normally seven-hour drive stretched to almost ten, not quite ready to face the daily grind.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Seven

We spent our last full day of fun in Canada hiking. It promised to be another sunny, unseasonably hot day. After a leisurely morning at the campground eating oatmeal and drinking tea, we drove briefly into town to mail some postcards from Alma's one-room post office, then, on a ranger's recommendation, headed for Laverty Falls. The trail wound through the woods, descending gradually towards a stream. The vegetation was typically northern, though less scraggly than in Cape Breton, being at a lower elevation. Eventually, the trail vanished and we were walking along large flat rocks alongside the stream. The Canadian Park Service, we realized, are far more cavalier about blazing the trails than their US counterparts. A group of hikers coming towards us asked, in French, whether they were following the trail correctly, then immediately repeated the question in English. I gave directions in French.

From that point on, the trail followed the stream for the most part. Every now and then, we came across small waterfalls. Some emptied into pools of water deep enough to swim in, but we pressed on for Laverty Falls proper, which we reached after another half-hour or so. Probably 50-60 feet high, the waterfall emptied into a large pool. A family with two small children had preceded us, the kids now happily splashing around in the water. We waited for them to leave, eating some Cliff bars in the meantime. When they moved on, leaving only two teenage couples drying themselves off on a nearby rock, we changed behind a thicket of trees and jumped in. The water was cold but not frigid, and very invigorating. Getting under the waterfall itself proved to be more challenging than it looked from the shore – the flow of water away from the spot where it hit the surface was quite strong – but I did eventually grab hold of a rock and pulled myself up onto an outcropping directly under the rushing water. Never having swam in a waterfall before, I was surprised by how loud it was – deafening, actually. We splashed around for a few more minutes, then climbed out and dried off before hitting the trail for the return hike.

We were back in Alma by around 4:00, sweaty and grimy. Too early to eat dinner, but having eaten no real food since breakfast, we were starving. Parkland Village Inn, where we stayed the night of our arrival in Alma, had a patio overlooking the beach – now enormous due to the low tide – and the ocean way in the distance. The breeze coming in off the water was surprisingly chilly – enough to make us put on our fleece jackets even though we were sweating a scant few minutes earlier – and amazingly refreshing. We ordered some local lager and fried scallops – the restaurant offered a choice of foods, but not preparation methods. Everything was fried. The beer showed up in plastic cups, and under most other circumstances I would have turned my nose up at it, but after a day of hiking and swimming, sitting as we were breathing the cold, salty air, it tasted wonderful. The scallops – well, words fail me yet again. The frying did no damage. The cornmeal coating was neither heavy nor greasy, providing just a bit of crunch for interest. Enormous, succulent, and perfectly cooked – just a hint of translucent gray in the very center of each giant mollusk – they almost overwhelmed you with the half-sweet, half-salty flavor of the ocean.

Needless to say, instant noodles and canned sardines back at the campground were a huge letdown by comparison, but such is the fate of a camper. We were in the tent by 10:00, exhausted and already feeling a little sad in anticipation of having to leave Fundy the following morning.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Six

Our first full day in New Brunswick was dedicated to experiencing Fundy’s famous tides first-hand, in a sea kayak. We had arranged a tour in advance, with a local outfit called Fresh Air Adventures. The departure time was 8:15 a.m., and they were emphatic that because of the unforgiving nature of the tides, we could start no more than five minutes late. So we were up and out early, into a town that was still sound asleep. A real breakfast was out of the question, but luckily, a convenience store across the street from our hotel was open enough to sell us two styrofoam cups of abysmal coffee, some bananas and two surprisingly decent blueberry muffins. We breakfasted on a picnic table outside the store, already enamored of what was promising to be a spectacular day as far as the weather was concerned.

Fresh Air was a scant two blocks away, a two story clapboard house on a half-acre of lawn, a couple of hundred feet away from where a stream flowed into the bay. The lawn was strewn with kayaks. The owner – his name escapes me now and I neglected to write it down – was very nice if a bit servile in his manner. A former schoolteacher, we later found out. He introduced us to Robert, our guide, a local about our age, who gave us the rundown of basic safety, five minutes worth of instruction on how to paddle a kayak, and showed us ho to put on paddling jackets and spray skirts. He then gave us an amazing piece of news: we were the only people on the full-day tour. A couple dozen feet away, the half-day tour was going through their safety briefing – at least fifteen people. I was very glad to have paid the extra money. Robert and I carried the boats to the water while J. followed with the paddles, and we were off.

The Bay of Fundy was not identifiable as such – despite the crystal-clear day, we could not see the Nova Scotia side. We paddled West, in the direction of the bay’s mouth. We were moving into the wind, so we stayed close to shore to avoid the worst of it. Most of the time, Robert kept his boat close enough to ours to allow for conversation without raising our voices. He made a few comments about the bay, the famous tides, and the local wildlife. A porpoise flashed its fin a couple of hundred yards astern – scant consolation for the previous day’s dearth of aquatic life.

After a while, the tide began to recede, opening up rocky beaches along the shore. At one point, Robert pointed to a hole in a rock outcropping that jutted out into the water. The hole was easily twenty feet above the surface as we passed. “Once or twice,” he said, “we paddled a boat through that hole at high tide.” We paddled on, contemplating the landscape. On one hand it was a generic Northern coastline – sheer cliffs of brown rock topped with scraggly pines. On the other, being on the water, a mere six inches away from the surface, bathed in the uncharacteristically bright sunlight reflecting off the bay’s surface, inhaling the invigoratingly salty wind with every swing of the paddle, was breathtaking. There was no other place I would have rather been at that moment.

Eventually, the shoreline curved and we faced directly into the wind. Though we were paddling with all our might, progress was slow. J. had to take breaks every couple of minutes, and when I was the only one paddling, the best I could hope to achieve was to keep the boat from drifting backwards. Another rocky outcropping loomed in the distance. “We could go as far as that rock,” Robert said, “or we can turn back now. It’s up to you.” Erring on the side of caution, we turned back. Soon it was time for lunch. We pulled up on one of the rocky beaches we passed on the way out, now a lot wider since the tide was approaching its low point. Unbeknownst to us, both boats’ holds had been stuffed with gear – a camp stove with its fuel canister, plastic dishes, a wok, and several containers of food. Robert quickly set up and a few minutes later we were enjoying delicious chicken burritos with peppers and onions, pink lemonade, and generous pinches of dulse – local reddish-brown seaweed dried into flakes, salted, and served as a snack or lunchtime side dish, the way potato chips might be served elsewhere. The beautiful weather was holding up, the wind that was buffeting us on the water a few minutes earlier was now a gentle breeze, and sitting on the coarse sand, sated and slightly intoxicated by the intensely fresh salty air, we were as far away from the daily grind of home as we would ever be on the entire trip. Robert started to explain the Fundy tides.

Due to the combination of the Earth’s rotation and the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the tide cycle is six hours and 13 minutes everywhere in the world. Additionally, the Earth’s axis, which is not completely true but “wobbles” a bit as it rotates, produces a sloshing effect in the world’s oceans. The length of the Bay of Fundy happens to be such that a single “slosh” takes exactly six hours and 13 minutes to travel all the way to the innermost point of the bay, combining with the natural cycle in phase and augmenting the change in the water level. New Brunswick’s celebrity is somewhat ersatz, it turned out – the highest tide ever was recorded on the opposite side of the bay in Nova Scotia – an even 54 feet! The explanation over, we chatted about this and that. Finding out that Robert was from a small town in the French-speaking part of New Brunsiwck, I dusted off my French. We had no trouble understanding each other, though the conversation was admittedly brief. More curious was the fact that Robert had to look for off-season work anew every year. His guiding at Fresh Air was steady (he had been doing it for four years) and provided a place to live for the season, but he could only do it June through October, and was on his own the rest of the year. The previous winter, he was lucky to get a job with the provincial government, assisting on a research project in Moncton. Unfathomable to me, but liberating, I am sure, if you can handle the lack of permanence.

The remainder of the trip was short, and we were out of the water by 2:00 p.m. The launch site was bone-dry by now, and we disembarked on another beach, met by Fresh Air’s owner and driven back into town. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable and spectacularly organized trip. The folks at Fresh Air deserve major props for their work. If you are ever anywhere in the vicinity of Fundy National Park, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you make a detour and take a paddling trip with them.

The long hours of Northern daylight left us with quite a few hours of productive time, so on a whim we decided to check out Hopewell Rocks, about 20 kilometers East of Alma. Small islands with some trees and shrubs at high tide, they are exposed for the giant rocks that they are when the water recedes, leaving odd-looking clumps of vegetation atop otherwise barren formations. Curious enough, and certainly a good way to demonstrate the tides’ drama, they are also a tourist trap par excellence. Save for a mini-gang of Quebecois bikers (far thinner and more fit than their typical American counterparts), we were the only visitors who did not arrive by tour bus. I can report, with some disappointment but little surprise, that the slice of Canadian society who chooses the bus tour mode of sightseeing offers no respite from its American brethren’s lack of taste, discretion, or personal fastidiousness.

Hopewell Rocks dispensed with, we drove back into Fundy National Park proper, found our campground and claimed the site – camping at last! After a surprisingly satisfying dinner of instant noodles and canned sardines cooked on my trusty single-burner Coleman, we retired, exhausted but elated, into the tent, reasonably confident that the raccoon that had paid a brazen visit to our campsite an hour or so earlier would be our biggest natural threat.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Five

The following day, we had made arrangements to sail Ingonish Bay on a whale-watching tour. Several outfits, all of them roughly the same in size and the boats they use, ply the bay during tourist season. Ours was the exception – called Sea Visions, it uses the Avon Spirit – a replica 1880s freight schooner and whenever possible conducts the tour under sail. The Avon Spirit was built locally a decade ago, as part of a project to preserve the ship-building tradition in Nova Scotia. Once a mainstay of Nova Scotia industry, it has stopped being commercially viable around World War II, and most of the last generation of craftsmen to have practiced it are no longer around. In an effort to preserve what it views as a fundamental part of its heritage, the government of Nova Scotia has funded the building of several very authentic, save for Caterpillar diesel V-6s, replicas of late XIX-century schooners of the type that had once sailed up and down the Canadian and New England coasts delivering consumer goods to seaside communities. Launched in 1996, the Avon Spirit served as a training ship for four years before being sold to its current owner for a surprisingly reasonable CDN 400,000. He added some modern navigation equipment and entered the tourist trade, where it remains to this day.

We boarded along with about three dozen fellow passengers and headed out to sea. Once we left the vicinity of the dock, the crew – only three people, two of them college-age kids evidently doing their summer jobs – raised the sails. Fully rigged, the ship is a breathtaking sight, especially from its deck. Unfortunately, though it seemed breezy to us, apparently it takes a lot of wind to move the ship at a respectable speed, and the engine remained on for the duration of the cruise. The weather was beautiful, the vibration and the noise from the engine intrusive, but not excessively so, and we had a reasonably pleasant ride. Crucially, however, in two and a half hours on the water, we did not see a single whale.

It was almost lunchtime when we docked, and after some very satisfying seafood salad sandwiches at a local bakery, it was time to say good-bye to Nova Scotia and head on to our next destination. In the interest of time, we had to forego driving around the northern tip of Cape Breton and instead headed back along the Cabot Trail, retracing our tracks of two nights ago. This time, however, we saw everything we missed on the way up. One curiosity was a tiny Indian reservation, barely half a kilometer wide, that advertised itself with “Tax Free Shopping” signs – not an insignificant draw as sales tax in Canada can be as high as 13%. A greater one was the Gaelic College, located, ironically, in Englishtown, NS. More of a cultural and crafts center than a real school, its chief distinction to the passerby are road signs in Gaelic found within twenty or so kilometers in either direction on the Cabot Trail.

We hit the mainland in need of gas and a snack, which we found at that most Canadian of places – Tim Horton’s donuts. Though not the best donuts in general, they handily beat both Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme, and is the only major corporation I know of that really lives up to its motto – “Always Fresh.” The glazed sour cream donuts in particular are delicious – dense without being heavy, sweet but not cloying, and small enough to be enjoyed with a minimum of guilt. We would return to Tim Horton’s twice more.

We were headed to Alma, New Brunswick, and though New Brunswick is Canada’s smallest province, it is still big, and the hopes of having dinner in Alma were dashed early. Instead, we made a half-hearted attempt to find interesting food on the outskirts of Moncton, NB. We never did, but the short drive along the road leading into town shocked me a bit – a church on every block, sometimes two, many of uncommon Evangelical persuasions. Were we headed into Canada’s Bible belt? When we finally did stop for dinner – at a Subway attached to a gas station – the impression of having been teleported to rural American South was reinforced. Guys in wife-beaters and mesh truckers’ caps gassing up their beat-up GMC Sierras. Young women with overbleached hair and bad skin smoking outside with vacant expressions on their faces. A camo-painted quad in the corner of the shop, the grand prize in a local sweepstakes. Though New Brunswick is officially bilingual (the only province to be so, in fact), we were only hearing English.

The last hour of drive was once again in the dark, and once again along a small, deserted road. Luckily, the mountains were far less forbidding, and we were once again spared a moose encounter, though we did see two foxes along the road, their eyes glowing eerily. We checked into the surprisingly luxurious Parkland Village Inn in Alma around 11:00, tired but ready for the next day’s adventures.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Four

Tuesday would finally have us hiking in Cape Breton National Park, but first there was a bit of a problem that we needed to address. Our initial plan was to camp in the park, but the one campground reservable in advance, and the one I therefore reserved, turned out to be at the opposite end of the park in Chetticamp – a 113 km drive around the tip of Cape Breton. We would then have to come back early the following morning for our whale-watching cruise on the Ingonish end of the park. A bigger issue, however, were bears. Perhaps out of thoroughness, but quite possibly out of the high likelihood of an encounter, Parks Canada provides exceptionally detailed information about bears and handling an encounter with them, all the way down to recognizing the signs of a bear's aggression and how to behave during an actual attack. J. was instantly petrified, and I, frankly, was none too keen either on the idea of having to play dead in the tent in the middle of the night, while the cuddly-looking 300-pounder dined non-chalantly on some of that tasty Trader Joe's trail mix pried from the trunk of our car. Luckily, the minimalist but perfectly situated Island Inn where we were staying had a room available Tuesday night, and a very reasonably priced one at that, so the decision to wimp out was a no-brainer. The following night's lodging secured, and the Inn's miserly, unsatisfying complimentary breakfast consumed, we were off for the trails.

Our first hike was the Franey trail, only 7.4 km, but with a 330 m elevation change. We climbed steadily as the old-growth mixed hardwoods of the Acadian forest gradually gave way to the shorter, more uniform black spruce of the taiga ecosystem at higher elevations. Challenging to be sure – rated “moderate” by Parks Canada, it would no doubt be classified as “strenuous” in the US – but, not surprisingly, well worth the effort. The views from the top were nothing short of breathtaking – two of the highest peaks on the island – Cape Smokey in the east and Money Point in the north – framed the Middle Head Peninsula jutting out into the ocean directly below. Deep green of uninterrupted pine transitioned abruptly into the calm but forbidding steel gray of the ocean waters. A microscopic white speck of a church on the peninsula reminded you that everything here is far bigger than you would like to think. Far bigger than you, or anything your ilk is likely to build. The weather was overcast, but it only added to the gravitas of the landscape. We sat on the flat granite rocks, replenishing our reserves with some Cliff bars and water, contemplating the vastness of it all and enjoying the intense solitude of the spot. Eventually, some footsteps roused us from our reverie – a family of German tourists, in excellent English, asked us whether they needed to go back the way they came. Telling them that they didn't – the trail was a loop – we waited until their voices receded in the distance before starting down ourselves.

It is on the descent, the trail now wider and more open, that the wisdom of that morning's decision not to camp was painted for us in stark colors. Just as we were expressing disappointment and not having seen any of the supposedly abundant wildlife, the rustling of an obviously large animal came from the shrubs on our left, followed by a growl and a rattling kind of sound. J., contrary to everything she has just read in the brochures, froze dead in her tracks, her face ashen with fear. Telling her to keep going and not make eye contact, I tried to see the animal out of the corner of my eye. I never did. Realistically, it was probably a moose – we were seeing countless piles of moose scat all along the trail – but it will forever remain etched in our memories as a near-encounter with a bear.

Similarly to Acadia, our second hike was, though not completely flat, far less challenging. We hiked out to the tip of the Middle Head Peninsula we saw from the mountains a short while earlier. Starting at the Keltic Lodge resort – the only hotel on the peninsula and the ne plus ultra of luxury lodging on Cape Breton – we walked along the rolling green hills that gave Nova Scotia its name. Canopies of pine periodically opened up onto gorgeous views of the coastline. Here, you were one with the ocean. A small fishing village had once been located on the peninsula; it was abandoned when the once plentiful salmon was no longer a viable catch, its disappearance nominally blamed on acid rain but never definitively diagnosed. Today, no trace of the village remains. We reached the meadow at the end of the trail and cooled off in its plush grass for a while – it had become sunny and unseasonably warm by this time – listening to the seagulls and cormorants clamoring for their favorite perch on a giant rock just off shore, before returning by way of more beautiful views of the coast.

Showered and changed at the inn, we were faced with the prospect of finding dinner, now that the camp-appropriate instant noodles and canned fish were no longer an option. The Ingonish area of Nova Scotia, though officially incorporated into four towns – Ingonish Falls, Ingonish Beach, Ingnonish Ferry and Ingonish itself – is really just an ongoing chain of widely-spaced houses and businesses along the Cabot Trail. There is no town center or “main drag” of any sort, and restaurants are few and far between. After consulting the dreaded AAA Tourbook – a tome which, when it comes to restaurant recommendations, appears to be willfully ignorant of the very concept of good food, we decided to try The Atlantic – the more casual, less expensive of the two restaurants at the Keltic Lodge resort. The choice proved to be serendipitous, not because of the food but the view. We arrived to discover a full dining room and a patio that was completely empty despite the peak dinner hour. Puzzled initially, we realized, not without some shock, that the 25 or so degrees centigrade was simply too warm for the locals. Eventually, several outdoor tables were filled with some Americans and Germans, but by then we were already seated at what I am convinced is the absolutely best dinner table in the whole world. The entire coastline, now completely bathed in the softening glow of the setting sun, unfolded before us as we leisurely sipped on glasses of Ontario-brewed Sleeman, cool (to us) ocean breeze gently rippling the canopy of the table's umbrella.

The meal itself was satisfying if not particularly memorable. The highlight was the mussels – truly local, they were raised an at aqua farm a few kilometers away in Cape North, and tasted it. Small but intensely flavorful, they were easily the equals of the ones we had in Maine. Steamed in some local beer with no other embellishments, they made me question the whole garlic and white wine school of shellfish cooking for a moment. Skeptical of dishes that aspire to be creative at a restaurant I have not researched, I opted for fish and chips, made with regionally, if not locally, caught haddock. The fish was good – fresh, and not overloaded with batter, but not particularly distinctive. The fries, utterly forgettable. J. opted for a haddock sandwich and some seafood chowder, a Nova Scotia-wide specialty. She praised the chowder and, like me, was ambivalent about the haddock.

The cumulative effects of the day's activities would have precluded any late-night revelry even if there was any to be had in Ingonish, and by ten o'clock we were asleep, mercifully free of any threat of an ursine invasion.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Three

Monday morning found us at the Cat Ferry terminal, five minutes past the requisite 7:00 a.m. arrival. The scene was one of complete chaos, and at that moment, it seemed impossible that all the cars could get checked in and put on the ferry in an hour. After a brief parking lot dance with a long-wheelbase GMC Yukon, we joined one of about a dozen lines of cars, roughly half of them with Canadian plates, to wait for embarkation.

The Cat, which runs between Bar Harbor, ME and Yarmouth, NS, Monday through Wednesday, and between Portland, ME and Yarmouth the rest of the week, is a remarkable vessel. Built in Australia in 1998, it is one of the fastest ferries in the world, with cruising speeds of up to 40 knots (about 55 mph). At full power, its water jet engines expel enough water to fill an olympic-size swimming pool every 33 seconds. Designed to transport 900 passengers and 240 vehicles, including 14 tour buses, it makes the voyage from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, once an overnight affair, in a hair over three hours.

Amazingly, the entire mad cauldron of cars and motorcycles was loaded onto the ship in about 45 minutes. We drove into the cavernous hold, directed by staff in bright red overalls wedged the car between a railing and a red Chevy Aveo from Quebec, and squeezed ourselves between rows of tightly parked cars towards the stairwell, taking the liberty to fold others' rearview mirrors as we passed. Clearly, the ferry was designed to be used in a part of the world where the average size of a passenger vehicle is quite a bit smaller than in North America. Once on the passenger decks, the atmosphere was far more inviting. Rows of airline-style seats (but with more legroom), a cafeteria in the middle, a gift shop, several sitting areas with large movie screens. After the Aussie-inflected safety video, we were underway, only a few minutes past the scheduled 8:00 a.m. departure.

The Cat really is fast – a quick glance at the water outside tells you that you're moving far faster than any boat you may have been on in the past. To me, it felt amazingly solid – no vibration, no noise, just the gray waters of the Atlantic speeding past. Once on the open ocean, however, the ship did pitch noticeably, and therein lay its biggest problem. J. got exceptionally sea-sick and spent the entire crossing in her seat, with her head on the table, unable to take advantage of the open rear deck or the surprisingly decent breakfast at the cafeteria. This was, all told, the biggest misadventure of the entire trip.

We arrived in Yarmouth on schedule, losing an hour in the process – Nova Scotia is in the Atlantic time zone. After another 45 minutes or so we passed through the border checkpoint, where we were interviewed by a very polite young officer who asked us all the same questions we used to get asked before Sept. 11^th – why we were in Canada, how long, and whether we were bringing anything not for personal use. Make no mistake – crossing the border, at least the one with Canada, in either direction, is not about security. It's about taxation. As long as we convinced the guard that we didn't have anything that we would sell and avoid taxes, we could have had a trunk full of nuclear explosives. After a lunch at a random pub across the street from the dock (mediocre sandwiches and excellent smoked haddock chowder), a stop at a tourist information office and another at a Canadian Tire store (a kind of industrial Target) to buy propane for our camp stove, we were finally on the road to Cape Breton around 3:00 p.m.

The advantages of being a large, sparsely populated country are most readily apparent on the Canadian highways. The major roads – roughly the Canadian equivalent of our Interstates – were uniformly excellent, had very little traffic, particularly long-haul truck traffic, and as a consequence no road construction to speak of. The disadvantages are equally apparent, however – we didn't reach Canso Causeway, which connects Cape Breton Island to the mainland, until almost 10:00 p.m.; the town of Ingonish Ferry, where we were staying, was still two more hours away on the Cabot Trail – a much smaller, twisty mountain road. My paranoia of having to face any form of law enforcement in a foreign country didn't help -- it confined us to driving within 10 km/h of the speed limit, which alternated between a semi-generous 100 km/h and an almost-brisk 110, dropping to 80 in the mountains. We finally arrived in Ingonish Ferry around midnight, after a final 100 km on the Cabot Trail, keeping our bloodshot eyes peeled for moose.

The drive did offer a priceless moment of realization that there still are pure places in this world, and that rural Nova Scotia is one of them. At one point along the way, we had stopped at a tourist information office to call our hotel and arrange for late arrival. The staff – two high-school-age kids, a girl and a guy, unfailingly polite and friendly, asked us to sign the guest book. While I was on the phone, J. went to sign, and discovered that the previous visitor, as a stupid joke, signed in as Paris Hilton. J. commented. With complete seriousness and a straight face, the girl asked, “Who's Paris Hilton?” Ah, to be so far away!

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Two

Sunday was our day to hike the Acadia National Park, and after a delicious breakfast at a downtown spot called Jeannie's Breakfast (cinnamon-raisin French toast for me, multigrain pancakes for J., with a side of grilled kielbasa – why don't more breakfast restaurants serve it? It's not like Bar Harbor is a hotbed of Polish cuisine), we headed into the park.

Acadia, most of which is situated on Mount Desert Island just off the coast of Maine (Bar Harbor itself is also on the island), was the first National Park east of the Mississippi, established by Woodrow Wilson in 1916 as Lafayette National Park. It was renamed to Acadia in 1929, when a wealthy donor bequeathed additional land to the park on the condition that it be renamed to something that sounded less French. Freedom Fries are decidedly not a recent idea. Today, Acadia preserves over 29,000 acres of land crisscrossed by some 120 miles of hiking trails.

Faced with such a dazzling array of hiking options, we inquired at the visitors' center for recommendations. A friendly young ranger whose first name, according to her name tag, was McKenzie – Nova Scotia seemed really close all of a sudden – offered a few options and sold us a detailed trail map. The centerpiece of Acadia, if one can be chosen, is Cadillac Mountain, a 1,530-foot summit that is the highest point on the East Coast of the US. According to McKenzie, the vast majority of park visitors drive to the top. Sad, but not surprising – we were already seeing these people in the visitors' center parking lot. Large families in RVs or rented Kias that have never seen a mile of trail and give our country its semi-deserved reputation for obesity. Hiking up, by contrast, would have provided the solitude we were seeking, but a 1500-foot climb that would then have to be descended seemed a little daunting even for us, and with only one day in the park, we decided to favor breadth over depth (or height, as the case may be) and settled on other options.

The Ocean Trail, in the southeastern end of the park, took us along the shoreline out to the tip of Otter Point. The trail was flat but progress very slow because literally at every turn, a view of the ocean more beautiful than before opened up and our hands reached almost automatically for our cameras. We passed Thunder Hole, among others – the namesake of the beer we had the previous night. It is a narrow crevasse between two walls of sheer cliff with some large loose rocks on the bottom. When the surf is sufficiently strong, as it was that day (though just barely) the incoming waves roll the rocks around the bottom and smash them into each other, creating a sound that really does sound like distant thunder.

Backtracking slightly from Otter Point, we turned off onto Gorham Mountain Trail to begin climbing its namesake. Gorham's elevation is “only” 525 feet – peanuts to anyone who has done any serious hiking in the Southwest, as we have. Or so we thought. The ascent was actually quite strenuous – steep, with sizable rocks to scramble over every few feet. Though the weather was perfect – sunny and dry, improbably it would prove to remain that way for the rest of the trip – the sun was beginning to warm up quite a bit, and we were sweaty and tired by the time we reached the granite plateau just beneath the summit. The highest “point” itself – more of a saddle than a peak – was a short walk away and offered breathtaking views of the Atlantic to the east and the majestic, pine-covered Cadillac to the northwest. A few hikers were at the top, transfixed by the forbidding beauty of the Maine coastline, but relative to the parking lots and nature trails of the bottom, the isolation was exactly what we were hoping for. After more landscape photography, a protein bar and lots of water, we exchanged picture-taking favors with a young couple from Delaware. A t-shirt I was wearing triggered a short conversation. He turned out to be a PhD student in computer science at the University of Delaware. He seemed very nice and approachable, and his girlfriend was very attractive. I wish I had asked their names. The descent along the northern ridge of the mountain, though also rugged, was short, and by early afternoon we were back at sea level.

Our second hike of the day was going to be another climb – to the top of Sargent Mountain, at 1,373 feet the second highest in Acadia. The first hike took more out of us than we anticipated, however, and by the time we were at Sargent's trailhead on the shores of Jordan Pond, an inland fresh-water lake close to the geographic center of the park, J. did not look confident. We ended up hiking the circumference of Jordan Pond instead. I was disappointed initially – the views from Gorham were so spectacular that I was craving more of them – but the hike ended up being very enjoyable, and less than a mile into it I was glad we did it. Jordan Pond is a classic mountain lake – calm, cold and crystal-clear, surrounded by pine-covered mountains, waiting, quietly, for the sufficiently determined traveler to discover it. It reminded me of a lake we hiked to in Colorado's Rocky Mountains many years ago. The trail, while not as deserted as we might have wished – we saw three or four groups of hikers along the way – was still uncrowded enough to afford plenty of opportunities to stop along the way and contemplate the gently rippling waters without a human in sight.

As it happens, J. had actually been to Acadia as a child, and remembered it surprisingly well. Of all things, she remembered eating popovers (whatever those are – the best J. was able to offer was “puffy, doughy, eggy things”) in an outdoor restaurant right inside the park. A visitors' center and restaurant was not far away, and J. recognized it as the same one she had been to many years ago. It being tea time, we stopped in to experience the mysterious popover in its natural habitat.

My feelings about restaurants and lodges inside national parks are mixed. In Wilson's time, when even outdoor tourism was a far more genteel affair and outside of major cities accommodations were few and far between, they made sense. Today, however, with true wilderness being increasingly scarce and at the same time increasingly easy to reach, the uncompromising part of me wants to do away with them and send their customers, many of whom, it seems, only care about the lodges and restaurants anyway, outside the park. In the event, however, a table placed directly in a meadow and a glass of fresh cold iced tea was a welcome sight. The popovers turned out to be, well... puffy, doughy, eggy things. Balls of faintly sweet dough four or five inches in diameter, they are completely hollow inside and must be served and eaten while hot before they collapse, souffle-style. Served, appropriately, with blueberry jam, they were a delicious respite from the protein bars and trail mix we were grazing on all day, and a lovely finale to what was by then almost ten miles of hiking.

Tasty though it is, the popover a meal does not make, and it was time to start thinking about dinner. We had originally planned to camp in Acadia, but faced with an 8:00 a.m. ferry the following morning and the requirement to show up at least an hour before departure, we thought it would be wise not to have to break down camp in a hurry. So it was back to the Anchorage for a desperately needed shower, and back out in search of food.

Initially, the idea of dismembering a whole lobster and eating it one tasty morsel at a time, interspersed with long periods of manual labor to extract the next one didn't appeal to me, but by this time I was ready to attack the sucker. J., who subscribes to Andrew Todhunter's dictum that you can never have too much lobster, was ready for more. One hears much about overfishing these days. On the evidence we saw in Maine, lobster is plentiful, and I couldn't help but wonder whether we were fiddling while Rome burned and whether in a few years, a decade at the most, the Maine lobster would go the way of Russian sturgeon. On the other hand, a few days later in New Brunswick, we would find out that back in the day there was so much lobster in the Fundy area that you didn't even have to set traps – you simply went out and collected them from the ocean floor at low tide. You certainly cannot do so today, but perhaps the lobster is still a more common creature than some if its ocean-dwelling brethren.

We headed out of town into the Maine hinterlands, away from the tourist traps. On the way into Bar Harbor the previous day, we passed several establishments that called themselves Lobster Pounds, and it was those we were now seeking. We settled on one in Trenton, ME, about ten miles west of Bar Harbor, attracted by the abundant picnic tables outside and columns of steam billowing from the kitchen. A clapboard shack by the roadside, with only a decrepit auto repair shop next door, it proved to be a goldmine of all things lobster. Chaos ruled in the small front room, crowded by a mixture of locals and tourists trying to place their orders and dominated by a giant tank full of live lobsters. The poor fellows were so crowded that they could barely move, but for most of them the discomfort didn't last long. Every few moments, one was plucked from the tank, thrown for a split second into the mechanical scale suspended just above, then sent into the kitchen to become someone's dinner. You ordered from a whiteboard on the wall – either just lobster by the pound, or as a dinner which came with an ear of corn, some coleslaw and a small basket of steamed mussels. We opted for 1.5-lb. lobster dinners which, a bit disappointingly, were not any less expensive than at the touristy restaurants, and, not realizing that mussels were included, some steamed clams that by contrast were dirt-cheap and ended up being even better than the ones in town.

The wait was long. I sipped my soda, the only choice of beverage available, and enviously watched the two middle-aged couples at the next table who brought two bottles of white wine and an ice bucket, apparently in no violation of law or policy. Why didn't I think of that? After a few minutes, I walked over to the large kitchen windows to watch the proceedings. Several giant vats, each about the size of a commercial washing machine, were bubbling with seawater. Everything went into one of the vats, including the corn, cooked while still in its husk. The lids were tied to strings that ran through pulleys above each vat. The cooks would put whatever it is that needed to be cooked into a large net, yank the string to open the vat, blasting themselves with a cloud of salty steam, throw the net in and shut the lid. About a dozen windup timers were lined up on a ledge above. Whenever a lobster went in, one of timers would be switched on. When ready, the cook would pull the string to open the vat again and, in another blast of steam, pull out the dripping net.

I was starting to get mesmerized by the uneven rhythm of the grueling work when it occurred to me that the entire place was family, or at least locally, staffed. The girl cooking most of the lobsters couldn't have been more than seventeen. In flared jeans and a fitted black t-shirt decorated with bits of chintz, her skin not yet ruined by the heat and the salt, she looked like she belonged at a suburban mall. Any wonder family businesses around the nation are dying out, retiring owners unable to pass the reins to the unwilling young generation? After slinging lobsters and bushels of corn every summer of her teenage years, I wouldn't blame her for a second for wanting to get as far away from the business as possible and not look back. How much longer before immigrant labor has to be brought in to do the same work? And is that labor going to be willing and able to trudge to the northern reaches of Maine for a few months every summer? And even if it does, who is going to manage them? Are we seeing the last generation of the American family business, all but invisible but a vital element of our culture?

When our lobsters finally showed up, they were plopped directly on plastic trays, the drawn butter in a plastic cup, the shellfish in paper baskets. Both the mussels and the clams, of which there was an alarming amount, were phenomenal. It's really impossible to describe the flavor of a good bivalve, especially one as fresh and flavorful as this. A bit sweet, faintly rubbery at the stem that attaches them to their shells and almost creamy elsewhere, they smelled and tasted ever so slightly of the sea and had an almost wine-like effect on the palate. And the lobster... suffice it to say that in an instant I understood all the hype surrounding the ancient crustacean. To be sure, the primitively idyllic setting, the sunlight reflecting off the lobster's glistening, deep orange carapace, the clean, piney northern air and complete disregard for elegance and table manners conspired to embellish the perfection, but even taken on its own terms, the lobster was special. No easier to describe than the mussels, it was so rich that it bordered on overwhelming, but never went over the line. Every bite, perfectly balanced in texture between firm and tender, would linger with a delicious aftertaste long after you swallowed the last of it. The closest equivalent in terms of sheer sensory intensity that I could think of, besides sex, was top-quality sushi.

Sated and happy, we drove back to Bar Harbor. The night was still relatively young and, in one of her occasional eating-everything-in-sight moments, J. wanted dessert. We headed downtown and picked another place at random, this one featuring a large balcony overlooking the waterfront. J. had some blueberry pie, excellent by her estimation, while I, deprived of an adult beverage with my dinner, opted for some liquid dessert – Cadillac Mountain Stout from the aforementioned Bar Harbor Brewing Company. It proved to be another winner – dark, intense, complex, with just a hint of coffee and a more pronounced chocolate flavor. A perfect ending to a perfect day, marred only by a drunk yelling obscenities on the sidewalk below.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day One

Hopelessly unsophisticated by today's standards, my trusty old Jetta has no navigation system, no GPS to suggest alternate routes and no satellite radio to provide real-time traffic reports, so the drive to Bar Harbor ended up being an all-day affair. Surrounded by throngs of families in minivans with bikes strapped to the back and clamshell containers attached to roofs, heading to their preferred beach spots along the Atlantic coast, we crawled through Connecticut, then Massachusetts, then New Hampshire, on that mother of all East Coast highways – the I-95. The traffic congestion finally opened up in Maine, and we briefly considered hitting the coast early and driving up Route 1 – by all accounts a beautiful road through charming coastal villages – but decided against it in the interest of arriving in Bar Harbor at a dinner-appropriate hour. Stepping out of the car in front of the Anchorage Motel in downtown Bar Harbor, however, melted away the stress and frustration of the day-long traffic jam in an instant. I have not breathed cleaner, cooler, more unapologetically fresh air since at least my sojourn to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a year earlier. A single whiff was enough to tell us that we were in a different, and much more pleasant, world. Cleaned up and changed in Anchorage's minimal but perfectly adequate accommodations (with the exception of pillows, which were the least comfortable I've ever seen with a possible exception of a business hotel in Kyoto some years ago – those were filled with puffed rice, I think), we walked into town in search of dinner.

Bar Harbor is a quaint coastal town, but, lacking a permanent presence that benefits, say, Burlington, VT (University of Vermont) or Annapolis, MD (the Naval Academy), it exists solely for, and depends exclusively on, tourists, and even the most cunning, sophisticated traveler is liable to get tourist-trapped sooner or later. Having done no research on the Bar Harbor culinary scene ahead of time, we resorted to walking up and down the main drag, looking at posted menus. Earlier in the day, J. had irreversibly fixated herself on having lobster and/or steamed clams for dinner, but being two of the three most celebrated foods of the area (the third is blueberries), they didn't really narrow down our choices. We settled on Galyn's, about two blocks from the waterfront, on the strength of fresh fish specials hand-written on a large chalk board by the entrance. The space was quaint, the host polite but not pandering – a good sign in a tourist town – and we were initially encouraged despite the most saccharine form of smooth jazz being piped into the dining room. The food, however, ended up being a mixed bag at best. We started the meal with some steamed clams, which, while criminally overpriced, were the best we had ever had up until then – plump, insanely fresh, smelling faintly of the ocean and bursting with an intense, slightly sweet shellfish flavor. Entrees were more problematic. Not too keen on paying a fortune for tourist-grade lobster, I had got my hopes up for some fresh fish, but the only truly local catch available was haddock, and it was baked. Haddock is bland enough as it is, and a few moments' sear in a pan with a few drops of good olive oil would do wonders for the fish, but Galyn's clearly did not think so, or didn't care enough to think about it at all. Worse, all their fish was served with the dreaded rice and vegetable of the day. Perhaps my big city snobbery is getting the best of me, but in this day and age there is no excuse not to tailor the side dishes to the featured ingredient. I mean, how difficult is it to throw your salmon over some sauteed spinach? Sticking to her plan, J. ordered lobster. It came – you guessed it – with rice and vegetable of the day, but she said the lobster itself was good. I opted for lobster pasta, which, while also inexcusably expensive, was quite satisfying. The linguine was perfectly al-dente, and the basic sauce of olive oil, white wine, cubes of fresh tomato and a surprisingly generous heaping of garlic (one way in which the generally high culinary standards of today did rub off on Bar Harbor) framed the large chunks of fresh lobster meat nicely without overpowering them. My initial impression was that the tail was a little tough and therefore overcooked, but I was to be proven wrong the next day. Galyn's strength turned out out to be in their beverages. The wine list was full of interesting bottles, but we opted for some locally-made beer – Thunder Hole Brown Ale from the Bar Harbor Brewing Company. It was delicious – a deep reddish-brown, with a rich yeasty aroma and beautifully balanced – not a hop bomb that destroys food, but not a wimp easily overpowered by a bowl of garlicky pasta either.

On the way into the restaurant, I spotted its quaint-looking bar, and eager to shake the last bits of the long drive, we retired there after the meal. It was lovely – small, cozy, inviting, and, amazingly for a Saturday night at the start of the tourist season, empty. J. played it safe with a decaf, but with the temperature outside now in the low sixties, I couldn't resist a Manhattan, which was excellent. After chatting a bit with the bartender who expressed amazement (though no disappointment) at the lack of a crowd, we toasted to the official start of the trip and ambled back to the Anchorage through the side streets, the Manhattan delightfully doing its job.

Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Intro

In keeping with unfortunate trends throughout the nation, the semi-sleepy suburb of Fort Lee, NJ has recently lost a landmark – Callahan's Restaurant. Situated in a standalone clapboard building on Lemoine Avenue for decades, Callahan's specialized in greasy culinary Americana – hot dogs, burgers, Italian sausage sandwiches – served in a two-notches-above-dive setting of clean formica counters and faux-Tiffany lampshades. Callahan's chief attraction, however, was not the food but is marquee. Overlooking the passing traffic in full color was a giant Weird NJ-worthy hot dog, accompanied by the delightfully campy slogan that read “So Big, So Good.”

Heading out of Fort Lee and East over the George Washington Bridge with J. one Saturday morning in July, my VW's windows rolled up and air conditioner on despite the early hour, it occurred to me that Callahan's owners inadvertently left us with a bit of advertising genius – nowhere else have I seen such a perfectly succinct description that captures the essence of so many things so well. Canada, for example. Who needs “The True North, Strong and Free?” Way too pompous. “So Big, So Good” is so much more to the point, and it holds the distinction of being translatable into French for the Quebecois without a single additional word. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before Canada, there was Maine to be visited, Acadia to be hiked, lobster to be eaten, and Bay of Fundy to be crossed.

Clive James, Beethoven

Finished Clive James last night. Fantastic book. Really defies any kind of capsule review. I can definitely see myself going back and re-reading individual essays with a notebook and a highlighter – something of which I, sadly, don't do nearly enough.

Also finally gave a good listen to the first sonata on the latest installment of Schiff's Beethoven cycle on ECM that came in last week. No. 12, in A-flat. Liked it a lot. Unusual structure – the first movement is theme and variations instead of the near-ubiquitous sonata form, and the “normal” order of the slow movement and the scherzo is reversed. The slow movement is marked Funeral March and subtitled “On the death of a hero,” but in the liner notes Schiff says that we shouldn't make too much of that, and he sure plays like he doesn't – quite fast, almost at Andante tempo. Just can't picture those pallbearers trotting along with the casket on their shoulders. But it sounds good, and doesn't really lose any of the gravitas to speed. The contrast between the plodding, almost hammered-out major-key passages and the lyricism of the minor-key sections works great. The closing Allegro is necessary, seeing how the Funeral March ends, anti-climactically, on a fermata, but it, too, just kind of stops without any fanfare.

Anyway, I have Canada to worry about, so here goes.

Intro

I've resisted blogging for a long time, primarily because I don't really have anything to say. I am convinced that the same is true of the vast majority of bloggers. I mean, I do have something to say obviously, but not the world at large. A certain lackadaisical web master, however, convinced me that because he can't keep his backups running smoothly, I should find a new home for my Canada travelogue. Hence this blog. The name of the blog is misleading, by the way -- there will probably be very little about LPs here, though I do collect them half-heartedly.

I did stop and think about what it was that made blogs so intuitively distasteful to me before I gave in and clicked the button, and after some reflection I realized that most of them remind me of nothing so much as a perpetual Christmas letter. You know those things that your friends and relatives send you (unsolicited) around winter holidays, to tell you about all the tremendously exciting (to them) things that they did the previous year? They send the same one to everyone because they cannot be bothered with a personalized letter or e-mail. Single spaced, with margins all but obliterated because the thing has to fit on two sides of a single page, and leave room for a low-resolution photo of their smiling little brats. Well, blogs allow you to inflict the same kind of experience on your readers on a daily basis, if you so desire.