Autumn in Review

It's cold and dreary outside. I've got the Michael Buble Christmas album playing. Jarling's put out their closing sign. Ohio State just trounced Illinois on their own turf, Memorial Stadium, less than a mile from here. The wind's out of east this afternoon. If you walk out into the parking lot, you can smell the humiliation.

The winner of this rivalry, dating back to 1902 (year of the first Rose Bowl, year Texaco was founded, year Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to ride in a car), gets the Illibuck. Which is basically a wooden turtle. Go figure.

What can it mean, you ask? The seasonal shut down of Champaign's favorite frozen custard spot. The yearly defeat by the Buckeyes. The... did he say Michael Buble?

That's right. Autumn is coming to an end. Since we're slipping into the holiday season, let's take a look back at the 2013 Fall Season.

Corn Maze
We returned to the Hardy Reindeer Ranch to navigate the corn maze. That night was dark and freezing. I did my time in Scouting circles as a youngster and learned this very important maxim: Always Be Prepared. Pursuant to that notion, I brought flashlights, gloves, hat, scarf, and a small bottle of Canadian Whiskey.

The maze layout this year looked like one of the guys from Easy Rider. At least before driving through Mississippi. They had six stations spread through the maze with hole punches. You wandered around with a punch card and looked for every station. We got them all. After two hours.

Here's what it looked like:

We Had the Runs
We did the Rattlesnake Master 5k/10k. This was my 7th and final race of the year. I did one adventure run, two 10k runs, and four 5k runs. It's only the last run of the year because I can't find a December race. Next year, I'll try to find something more productive to do with my time. The run was gorgeous, open prairie-land bordered by trees turned orange, yellow, and red.

Sebastian, who ran the 4th of July Freedom run with us, signed up for this one as well. Then we all went for a post run breakfast at Le Peep, the local Champaign version of IHOP. I got a bacon and potato skillet topped with cheese and basted eggs. So disgustingly unhealthy. So delicious. Also, I doused it with Cholula. Because Cholula. I rest my case.

Aine had pancakes. Of course.

The results:
James 10k - 54:37, 37 out of 83 (pretty much dead center of the pack, where I always find myself)
Aine 5k - 30:38, 69 out of 170
Sebastian 10k - 42:26, 7th out of 83 (he's sort of fast)

This is how we looked:

Bayern Stube
Means "living room" in German. A kitschy little German food restaurant north of here in Gibson City. We make a yearly pilgrimage to gorge on pork and potatoes.

They sell their beers by the liters. I kid you not. There are few things as terrifying as a liter mug of beer. I'll be honest, I wasn't man enough to order a liter of beer. I had two half liters.

Seriously. I don't have the upper body strength to lift it since we stopped doing P90X and they refuse to bring you a straw.

As you can see from the pictures, the walls are covered in animal heads, shelves full of steins, German musical instruments, and bizarre weapons. Like a flint lock pistol that's also a hatchet. Try tucking that one into your waistband.

While you wait for your meal and sip your half liter of beer, they bring soda bread and "sausage butter" to munch on. It looks like butter, spreads like butter, but smells and tastes like summer sausage. Which is sort of how I imagine heaven.

For dinner, I had the Bismark Schnitzel, named after the Chancellor because this is how he preferred it. Pork Schnitzel topped with baked apples and Gruyere. I ordered potato pancakes and saurkraut.

Ainers got pork cutlets covered with brown gravy and potato pancakes and vegetables on the side.

I didn't get a picture of her plate. This is her trying to get a picture of the tapestry behind Jessie. The artist took the time to weave an ornate hunting scene. Including one of the hunting dogs taking a steaming crap in the cold Bavarian woods.

Germans.

Say Cheese
We cut into the second pound of cheese. The one we let age three months. Let me tell you. All the difference. It tasted sharper and had a drier, crumblier texture.

This was the most successful cheese of the year.

Parting Shot
We had our first snow of the year. Baron von Flopsburg found it delightful.

Fraulein Fattywurst prefers to stay in where it's warm.

For lack of anything better to do, I decided to make flash cards of all the flags and capitals of all the countries in the world. And then learn them. I'm at 75% on the capitals and 90% on the flags. When I get these down I'm going to add the US States and Territories and probably all the disputed territories. Like Transnistria and South Ossetia. Look 'em up. They're real places. At least, they're trying to be. But probably not Cascadia, because yawn.

How Sweet It Is

Urbana Sweet Corn Festival 2013
We did it again. It was so hot this year. I think we hit 85 degrees mid-day. Sweat was had by all.

Of course, the Motor Muster was there again.

Aine said, let's get a picture of the one with dead children in the back.

Instead of the old timey bus, this year they had a sweet Woody. Wait, what did I just say?

I scoured the streets for a 50s model Chevy Bel Air. I finally found one. Not the color I would have chosen, but it was the only one there.

Then we had to walk slowly around all the 1910s and 1920s model cars. Because of Downton.

And no Central Illinois festival is complete without overpriced beer in collector mugs.

Sure, it's the same price as a six pack, but can you drink a six pack in the middle of main street in front of your county courthouse? I didn't think so.

The One Community Stage had a lively performance by Bone, Jugs and Harmony (pun intended). They performed with whiskey jugs, kazoos, and all manner of ridiculous instruments. Aine said, I think this is kids' music. I said, no, these guys are for real. They're local and play venues all over town.

You're probably wondering, where are all the spectators? They're crowded in the shade of the building to the left. By this time in the day we hit the low 80s and people were passing out from heat exhaustion. All precautions had to be taken.

Kansas headlined the entertainment this year. Aine said we had to go since they play the theme song to Supernatural. I said, fine, but we leave as soon as they play Wayward Son. Wouldn't you know it. They played it last.

Here's videographic evidence that we were there. With the entire population of Champaign County. Forgive the sloppy camera work. The camera man had been drinking since three that afternoon.

The Blerch Shirts Have Arrived
We ordered Blerch shirts from the The Oatmeal website for the Pumpkin Classic 10K in Morton.

It's based on a six part comic you can read here:
The Oatmeal

You only need to read the first part to understand the shirt, but I would suggest reading all six.

Rocking the d20

So, a few of us decided we wanted to try out Dungeons and Dragons. It was decided that since I'm the only one not in grad school, therefore the only one with free time, I should be the one to learn the hundreds of rules and DM the first game.

In the picture above, you'll see the practice game from the other night where Aine, as a Level 1 Elf Wizard, defeated 4 Goblin Minions with her Magic Missile. That's right.

Coming Soon
Labor Day - Arthur Cheese Festival and the 5k Rat Race.
Hard Cheese - Three weeks to go!

Jabbo Cider Review

As American as Apple Cider
Apples come from the hills of Kazakhstan. They traveled to America on British ships in the 1600s. As seeds. Funny thing about apples. If grown from seed, the tree will produce bitter apples. You can't eat bitter apples, but you can turn them into hard cider. The American colonists loved two things: representation and getting their drink on. Grapes and hops and sugarcane didn't grow well on the Atlantic seaboard, so wine and the ingredients for beer and rum had to be imported. Apple trees could be grown almost anywhere and you can get 12 to 14 gallons of cider from a single tree in a year.

As a result, the cheapest, most accessible, and most popular adult beverage for the first two hundred years of our history was hard cider. Which they called cider. Non-alcholic cider wasn't invented until Prohibition. In 1700, the colonies were producing 300 thousand gallons of cider a year and the average man drank 35 gallons a year. By 1810, Vermont alone had 125 distilleries producing 170 thousand gallons a year.

George Washington preferred hard cider over beer. Benjamin Franklin said, "it is bad to eat apples, it is better to turn them all into cider." John Adams had a tankard of cider every morning for breakfast. Andrew Jackson, when he wasn't busy killing men in duels, drank cider.

Sarah Palin wasn't the first politician to appeal to Joe Six Pack. To appeal to the blue collar workingman, William Henry Harrison, in his 1840 bid for the presidency, called himself the "log cabin and hard cider candidate."

Cider's most important evangelist came in the form of the American Dionysus, John Chapman. You know him as Johnny Appleseed. Our popular conception of him is wandering missionary, spreading God's word and planting apple trees willy nilly. That's pretty much not how it happened. He did become a missionary later in life, but he got his start in the world as a businessman. Chapman traveled around the US establishing apple tree nurseries and hiring local farmers to manage them. Since the apples from all the trees he planted weren't edible, there was only one thing to be done. Thanks to Chapman, cider production soared.

The sad decline of cider is a complicated story. The 1840s saw a huge influx of German and Irish immigrants who brought with them a powerful love of beer and improved brewing methods (specifically, bottom fermentation which was superior to top fermentation practiced in the US... which produced beer of inconsistent quality before refrigeration and modern sterilization techniques, but that's a whole other story). During the mid-1800s, an apple blight swept across the US, severely depleting the apple tree population. Also, more Americans began to settle and farm the Midwest, which meant more land for growing hops and barley.

The biggest blow to the dominance of cider came with the Temperance Movement, beginning in the 1820s. The movement caught on with Anglo Protestants, that is, the cider drinkers. The Catholic beer-drinking Irish and Germans had none of it. At end of the 1800s, politics were heading toward national prohibition and the new soft drink Coca Cola snatched up the cider demographic. By the time the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, the American tradition of guzzling hard cider was gone with the wind.

That is, until the 1990s when American hard cider became popular again, thanks to Woodchuck.

The Survey
Since hard cider plays such an important role in our national and cultural heritage, I decided to try them all. I mean, anything worth doing, is worth doing to excess.

Angry Orchard - From the company that brought you Sam Adams. If the creepy man tree on the label doesn't scare you off, the taste will. I tried the Crisp Apple variety first. It tasted like sugar added juice box apple juice. If I wanted something this sweet, I would have made some Kool-Aid. I tried their Traditional Dry variety, but it was still too sweet.

Crispin - A California cider. This was probably my favorite of the ciders. Light-bodied, dry, crisp. It was both refreshing and intoxicating and had a really clean apple flavor. I had it again at Blue, Brews, and BBQ. It also tastes good out of a plastic collectible cup. This will be my go to cider.

Magner's - An Irish Cider. I ordered this at Dublin O'Neil's, Champaign's Irish Pub. It came on ice, which was a little disconcerting, but apparently that's a perfectly acceptable way to serve cider. This didn't have much flavor (maybe it was watered down) and I wasn't very impressed.

Woodchuck - The American cider that brought cider back. This wasn't as juice box sweet as Angry Orchard, but a little too sweet for my taste. By the way, a woodchuck is the same thing as a groundhog, only it has nothing to do with wood or chucking. The name is a corruption of the Algonquian wuchak.

Hornsby's - The one with the rhino. This was Aine's favorite. My second favorite. It was mostly dry, with a lot of apple flavor. This one tasted like actual apple juice from an apple. Not the from concentrate stuff with lots of sugar like they give to kids these days.

So, now you're armed with truth. If you love America, drink some cider.

Champaign Freedom Celebration 2013

Independence
Yesterday, July the 4th, we celebrated Independence Day. We were one of the first nations to name a day disconnected from any religious tradition, but devoted solely to our national identity. Unlike France's Bastille Day, to name one, ours does not celebrate a battle or a military victory, but a parlaimentary motion to approve a document.

In June, Richard Henry Lee submitted a resolution the Continental Congress to declare independence from the British Empire. Many of the delegates had not been given approval to vote for independence by their states, so the Congress decided to the let the situation marinate. In the meantime, they appointed the Committee of Five, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson, to draft a document justifying independence. Since the heavyweights in the committee were occupied by pressing work in more important committees, the work of drafting the document was shuffled down to the most junior member, the shy, lanky ginger nobody really knew, Jefferson. No one expected much from the declaration. Jefferson needed to slap some words on paper for filing purposes. Instead, he wrote one of the most brilliant and politically radical philosophical treatises in history.

Friday, June 28th (that's right, the 2013 calendar syncs up with the 1776 calendar), the Committee of Five presented Jefferson's declaration to the Congress. They spent the weekend chugging hard cider and haggling in back rooms and on Monday, July 1st, debates over Lee's resolution and Jefferson's document began in earnest. On Tuesday, the political ducks were in a row and the Congress approved Lee's resolution from the month before. The United Colonies were independent of the British Empire. John Adams went home and wrote to Abigail:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

After haggling over wording (about slavery) on Wednesday, the Congress voted to approve the final handwritten copy of the document (dated July 4th) on Thursday and they rushed it off to the printers. Historians disagree about who signed it when, but most agree that the final signed copy on display at the national archives was drafted (and signed by Hancock) sometime after July 19. The majority of delegates didn't append their signatures until August.

Independence wasn't a reality until Cornwallis' surrender in 1781 and the subsequent Treaty of Paris in 1783, but in early July 1776, the idea, long incubated, was born: the idea of a government instituted by the governed to ensure the inalienable rights of its citizens. And that's what we celebrated yesterday.

Three Point One
To celebrate, we ran the Freedom 5k.

Of course, we needed patriotic attire for the run, so we bought some 2013 Flag Shirts from Old Navy.

It started and ended in a grove of sycamores in front of Assembly Hall.

Here's the Before Picture (see how happy and naive we look):

And the After (see the exhaustion):

For the weary runners, watermelon:

After the race we met up with Sebastian.

His usual workout takes him on 10 mile runs. So, while we were happy that we came in under 30 minutes, he seemed ambivalent about coming in under 20. We consoled ourselves with a fattening breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and pancakes at Le Peep.

Fireworks
Even though the Freedom Celebration took place only half a mile from our apartment, we decided to drive, so we wouldn't have to carry our chairs that far. We were still tired. We ran a lot that morning. However, when we reached the parking lot, we realized it was about the same distance in the other direction. So we drove back home and walked anyway.

The festivities were set up on Stadium Terrace, a huge green area across from Assembly Hall. They had bounce houses for the kiddos, food vendors, and a 60s and 70s cover band. The band was pretty good when they were singing. Sometimes between songs, they made jokes. They weren't funny.

We arrived early and brought books. We wanted to enjoy the music, the weather, and some cold beverages from Friar Tuck's while we read and waited for the sun to set. However, the booth wasn't Friar Tuck's, local liquor store, it was Fryer Tuck's, local purveyor of fried foods. I looked around at the coolers brought from home and the dads furtively pouring their beers into nondescript plastic cups and I realized I had misjudged the situation. So I trekked off campus and bought beers and a cooler from Walgreens. Aine hassled the Fryer Tuck's staff for two plastic cups. Then we moved our chairs to the middle of the field, far from the roving police officers.

By that time, it was too dark to read. The sun was setting.

Shortly before the start of the fireworks, I had to go to one of the Port-a-Pottys to release some of the beer. I am generally horrified at the thought of public restrooms, so when exiting the little wigwam of feces, I took a generous helping of hand sanitizer. On the walk back, I found the hand sanitizer was taking an unusually long time to rub in. Also, it was strangely fragrant. Also, it foamed the more I rubbed.

I sat down and expressed my bewilderment to Aine.

She said: "You brainless scumbag. That's soap."

Apparently there were little motion activated sinks inside the Port-a-Pottys. I thought they were just really high urinals.

It was too late at that point. A local pastor said a prayer, a local choir sang the Star Spangled Banner, and Champaign Fire Department retired the flag while a bagpiper played Taps. Then the explosions began.

The first fireworks celebration for July 4th took place in Boston in 1777. So, when you watch fireworks on the 4th, you're participating in our second oldest national tradition. The first oldest is complaining about taxes.

Here are the obligatory blurry fireworks pictures.

Parting Shot
We were a stop on the Wedding Victory Tour!

The Mud, the Blood, and the Beer

Allerton Adventures
We went back to Allerton to hike some of the trails. This time, we brought proper footwear. We forgot mosquito repellent, though, and that brought about our downfall.

We started at the trailhead beyond the sunken garden, the spot we turned around last time.

On either side of the trailhead, they planted something that looked like lantana. The flowers bloomed in little clusters, what the sciencey folks call an inflorescence, and the leaves were small and fern-like. I think it might be a type of yarrow, but I don't know.

On the trail, we mostly saw Red Oaks, Swamp White Oaks, and Horse Chestnuts. Like all Illinois trees, they were tall and terrifying.

About half a mile in, we reached the Dying Centaur.

The trail was muddy and the mosquitos thick before we got to the Centaur. After we continued, the forest became boggy with small lakes standing among the trees. The trail was so muddy, even the deer had trouble keeping their footing.

We eventually came to a point where the water completely covered the trail as far as we could see and the mosquito clouds were so dense, we couldn't stop moving for pictures or piddles, so we flailed our way down a smaller trail to the road.

We followed the road for another half mile or so to see the Sun Singer.

This monumental statue of Phoebus Apollo had a miniature Pegasus on his helmet.

And around the pedestal, a base relief of the Muses.

We didn't take any pictures from the front because he was, shall we say, pretty much naked, and this is a family-oriented blog.

More very pretty flowers had been planted around the monument. I learned these from Dad on my last trip to Austin: Coneflowers.

And these are Butterfly Weed?

Then, on the mile and a half walk back to the car, it started raining. Aside from the mosquitos, the humidity, the mud, and the rain, we really enjoyed this hike. We'll definitely go back!

Blues, Brews, and BBQ 2013
We met Amy and Sebastian by the Blind Pig and walked over to the festival. Everyone was there. We saw yuppies, hippies, hipsters, trailer trash, chicago trash, bikers, kickers, students, and blues musicians.

They had a motorcycle show.

And this weekend coincided with the first annual Corvette Festival.

Our first goal after gaining admittance (it was free, but they hassled us for donations), was obtaining the eponymous Brews. Ignore the advertising on the sides of the collectible mugs. We started with Blue Moon. Then I moved to Crispin Hard Cider.

As soon as I got my beer, a band started playing a cover of Jimmy Reed's Big Boss Man and I knew that everything was right with the world. Except for the weather.

This being Illinois, they had the obligatory Sweet Corn Booth.

We all opted for Barbecue, to round out the trifecta. Sebastian got BBQ Nachos and Amy an Italian Sausage Slider, both from Chester's BBQ. Aine and I got the Tips and Taters from King Biscuit. That's right. King Biscuit.

Then we ate barbecue and drank beer while listening to The Blues (Chicago Blues, of course, remember where we are) on one of the four stages. Pretty much everything the festival promised.

The bass player in this band had the most epic tassels of all time. John Wayne ain't got nothing on his fringe game.

We had a great time.

But then it started raining. Again. Only one of us came prepared.

Parting Shot
I am Catladriel. Queen of the Groceries. Beautiful and terrible as the Noms. All shall love me and despair.