More trail bread

Last time I mentioned trail bread, it was baked bread -- hardtack or a baked soda bread. Today I tried to fry bread -- bannock -- to see how well that'd turn out. So I took 1 cup of whole wheat flour, one tablespoon baking powder, one tablespoon sugar, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and mixed just enough water into it to make a dough, then patted out two patties, let them rest for a couple of minutes while I got the cast iron fry griddle nice and hot, and then fried away until they were nicely brown on both sides. You tell me what you think:

The texture is typical of a whole wheat soda bread. Whole wheat flour has stuff in it that results in whole wheat breads typically being less "fluffy" than white bread, and that is true here too. Still, the texture is quite acceptable, it is not chewy, just a little denser than you might be accustomed to from looking at yeast-based breads that have more time to rise and shine (baking soda is fast acting so it simply doesn't have time to puff things up a lot before it runs out of poop). *And* this particular kind of bread would fry well over a campfire, just pack the dry mix into a plastic zip-lok bag, add water and flatten out your patties, toss onto lightly-oiled frypan, voila. Of course, I don't suggest going backpacking with a cast-iron griddle even though cast iron is *the* right way to fry things ;). But even an aluminum skillet should work okay as long as you get it hot before you toss the patty into it.

So therein ends my experiment in whether it's possible to fry bread over a campfire with nothing but dry ingredients and water. The answer: Yes. It's a bit denser than yeast-based bread, but it's still quite edible, and will complement your rehydrated bean dish just fine.

-- Badtux the Cooking Penguin

Cracker-biscuits

Okay, disappointed by my last attempt at some sort of trail bread, I regrouped. I decided it needed some baking powder to give it at least a *little* loft, and since I wasn't going to haul it for more than a week, I didn't need it to be perfect hard-tack dryness, so baking it hard as a rock wasn't necessary, and I could make it a bit thicker. So I patted out a rough square, gave it a single whack with the roller to even up the top, trimmed the edges and turned them into two round biscuits off to the side, scored the resulting loaf with a pizza cutter, replaced the cookie sheet on top of the glass cutting board where I was doing all this, flipped it all over, remove plastic wrap from the top of the resulting loaf and two biscuit patties, let it rest for a few minutes while I cleaned up all the dishes I'd dirtied (the mixing bowl, the measuring cups, etc.), popped it into the oven at around 380 for 20 minutes on side 1 and 15 minutes on side 2, and... success. The resulting biscuits taste fine, they're crunchy on the outside and dense but soft enough to eat on the inside, and hopefully they'll survive being squished into a backpack better than regular bread or biscuits or crackers despite not being hard as a rock.

Oh yeah, the rough recipe:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspons baking powder (Clabber Girl brand)
Roughly 1 cup water

Mix to a stiff dry dough, adding water slowly. Pat out to a rough square roughly 1/2 inch thick, a *single* whack with a rolling pin to even out the top, trim the edges and make a biscuit or two out of them to the side, then use a pizza cutter to score the resulting loaf into roughly 12 squares. Let rest, then poke some holes with a fork like a saltine, but not all the way thru. Flip the resulting loaf and biscuits over onto an ungreased non-stick cookie sheet, and poke more holes with a fork. Bake for 20 minutes on one side, then 20 minutes on the other side at around 375-400F. If you're going to eat within a week this should get them hard enough, if you want something for long term storage, then back off the heat to about 285F and bake until dry all the way through.

Next up: Figure out some way to make trail bread actually *on the trail* from its individual components. The problem is that it requires baking. I'm wondering if my grandmother's hot water fry bread might work better, that's corn meal, flour, and baking powder, with hot water added, patted out and then fried in bacon grease or other oil. That'll work for car camping pretty easily, but oil is heavy and in short supply if you're backpacking. I guess corn tortillas could be done even more easily, since they're just masa flour and water rolled flat then cooked on a griddle for 40 seconds per side with no oil or grease required except what's seasoning the griddle, but corn tortillas don't go all that well with many of my favorite trail foods. Oh well, I guess I'll just pre-make trail bread...

-- Badtux the Cooking Penguin

Fly like a penguin

Added together some mineral spirits and silicone, and did the second coat of seam sealing of my new Tarptent Moment. I made an especially large batch because I wanted to coat the floor, though I could only coat the inside of the floor at the moment because I seam-sealed the top seams and they must dry first. I did this all in my big music room because it's raining outside.

What I can't figure out is why the room keeps pivoting around me. Fly like a penguin, to the screen, fly fly fly like a penguin...

-- Badtux the Too-much-glue Penguin

Cool book

Zero Days, by Barbara Egbert, the story of a mother, a father, and their ten year old daughter who through-hiked the entire Pacific Crest Trail in one season. The weak link in the trio, BTW, turned out to be the mother, who had to drop out a couple hundred miles before the end of the trail because her knees totally disintegrated. The kid was fine -- was by the end of the trail hauling a larger percentage of her weight than the adults were, yet was spending half her time yelling "Come on, slowpokes, keep up!".

I'm not ever going to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail in a season. I know my limits, and spending that much time away from my beloved books and kittehs isn't happening, not to mention that I like my comfort. The occasional three-or-four-day backpacking trip along portions of the PCT is all I'm interested in, enough to let me see some of the best scenery, but also enough to know that civilization is underrated (especially that part of civilization called HOT SHOWERS). But here's two flippers up for those few brave fools who do this trip. If we had more such fools doing senseless things like through-hiking the PCT, and fewer fools doing senseless things like shooting federal judges, bombing civil rights parades, and disrupting town hall meetings with shouts of "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!", the world would be a much nicer place...

-- Badtux the Appreciative Penguin

Food for the trail

Looking to broaden my diet when I go camping, so here's a couple of things I'm going to try:

Corn tortillas: These require two ingredients: Corn flour, and water. That's it. Oil your griddle with your choice of oil such as olive oil (and making a usable steel griddle that'll easily slide into a backpack is an interesting exercise for later), heat it up, mix corn flour and water to desired proportions in a bowl or something, toss on griddle for 30 seconds, turn over, wait 30 seconds, done.

Lentils: The problem with most beans for camping is that they take so friggin' long to cook. Unless you're cooking over a campfire and have a *lot* of wood available, that's not acceptable, especially here in the west where wood may be scarce and thus we're stuck with liquid-fueled or canister stoves for the most part. Red lentils (masoor dal) take only 10 minutes to cook after you bring the water to a boil (which takes about 3 minutes with typical stoves) -- acceptable. I just need to find a good recipe that can be done with only powdered spices, since that's all I can carry in a backpack...

Basmatic rice. Regular rice is too dull and dreary. This would go good with the lentils too.

Any other suggestions for what I might do for something from my local Mexican or Indian groceries that's a) easy/quick/little fuel to cook b) has a long lifespan and needs no refrigeration, and c) is easily transportable in a backpack?

-- Badtux the Food Penguin

Hiking in the rain sucks

Admittedly it would have been better if I'd brought my rain pants and some waterproof boots, but I was experimenting to see if those were really necessary. Conclusion: Yes, they are. But the bigger issue was the fact that the $#%@! mist was so thick that I couldn't see a dadburned thing. The whole point of grunting uphill for three hours is so that you can see a view when you get to the top. If all you can see is freakin' mist... well. Bah humbug!

Other than that, everything seems to be working okay. A bit tired, but that's to be expected, given that I had roughly 3500 feet worth of total altitude gain during the hike (once I got to the top, the road back was up and down from hilltop to saddle and back up to hilltop again to hike the ridge back to where I started in this loop hike). I had hoped to explore some of the old ranching ruins and old ranching roads, but I couldn't see a #$%! thing once I got up into the mist level, so that will have to wait until next year, probably (since the season is turning to the point where long hikes in the desert aren't feasible -- even this early into summer and even with the rains we had the past few days, the stream was almost dry).

-- Badtux the Hiking Penguin

Pack is loaded...

27 pounds, including food and 8 pounds of water. The 8 pounds of water is for desert hiking, though it's the rainy season so no desert involved here. This load includes a very small tarp-tent, barely big enough to sleep in, that weighs in at 24 ounces, as well as full rain gear (because it's going to rain tomorrow), complete safety gear, cooking gear, and lots of socks (see previous parenthetical statement about rain). Because it is impossible to keep your feet dry in the rain, I'm just going to have to hike with wet feet and trust my duct tape on strategic spots, wicking socks and trail runners to do the job of keeping my feet from turning into blister-fests :-(. 'Cause ain't nothin' except the Great Penguin Himself who could keep my feet dry in that situation...

So now to see how my leg handles under load, backpacking an overnight trip. Wish me luck.

-- Badtux the Waddling Penguin

On the list

... for one of these -- the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Sleeping Pad. Right now I'm sleeping on a 3/4 size pad that's only 1" thick when I go backpacking, and I'm an elderly penguin and that's hard on my back. This one will pack down to the same size as the 1" pad and weigh 1oz less, while being almost full length (my pillow will go under my head) and 2.5 inches thick.

They're supposed to arrive at REI on April 1. I'm at the head of the list. Oh yeah, how much I'm paying for it -- $19. Yep, you read that right. $19. That's because of the REI "bonus" program where if you use their credit card, you get credit towards REI goodies...

-- Badtux the Hiking Penguin

Camping gear - what worked, what didn't

I'm getting pretty close to the "perfect" camping gear, but here's what worked and didn't for last week's trip:

First, the stuff that worked well:

• Kelty Light Year +30 sleeping bag: When I washed it in down wash, it got fluffier and warmer. Huh, imagine that. It worked fine for the temperatures that I encountered, the coldest of which was about 40F. Indeed, my biggest problem was overheating.
• Coleman portable LED lantern: This is the small flat 2-LED one. It hangs up in my tent via its little lanyard hook and provides plenty of light to read by.
• SVEA 123 gasoline stove: This is a classic design dating to the 1950's. Unlike the modern gasoline stoves it has no pump or anything, just a wick inside the tank to carry gasoline up to the area near the jet where it can get vaporized. In the colder windier temperatures it was a bit of a pain to get primed because the jet stalk has to get heated up hot enough to vaporize gas before it'll do the dirty deed, but really, it only has one moving part -- the flame adjustment knob -- so it's not as if it could get broken or anything. Some kids got out there without anything to cook their weiners on, so I let them use my frying pan and the SVEA and it worked fine for that too.
• Snow Peak titanium pot and mug. These nest and are very compact and durable. I used the pot to heat up things like canned chili, the mug to heat up water for freeze-dried dinners and hot chocolate.
• Petzl Tikka XP head lamp: I had some battery issues (see below) but the headlamp itself was a trooper, lightweight and plenty of light for what I needed.
• Fenix P2D flashlight: This flashlight is almost small enough to carry on a keychain, yet is extremely bright when you need some extra light on the subject beyond what the TIkka XP headlamp can put out. The downside is that the lithium batteries that it uses are expensive if you don't buy them in bulk from a wholesaler like I did, and they don't last long at full brightness. But then, it's not as if I run this flashlight at full brightness for very long anyhow -- the TIkka XP is my normal light source when not in the tent.
• Tarptent Rainbow tent: This is one well sorted little tent. It looks small on the outside, but inside it has plenty of room for one person and some miscellaneous gear scattered around. It's well ventilated (to the point of draftiness) but you can use jackets or other gear to direct the draft away from you if that's a problem and in warmer weather, you want that draft to keep you from overheating. There are gear loops in exactly the right place to hang up your little LED tent lantern to either read or light up the interior of the tent while setting up your sleeping pad and bag, and the roof is plenty high and wide to sit up and exit the tent without bumping the wall or top of the tent. The semi-freestanding setup (with the two trekking poles) saved my bacon at one campsite where there was slick rock beneath an inch or two of soil, and all in all it's just a very well designed and well-sorted little backpacking tent with no weaknesses that I have thus far discovered.
• 2006 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited: Simple as dirt. Reliable as dirt. Goes anywhere sensible. Has plenty of room to haul gear and supplies for a 1 week trip without being overcrowded, unlike the short-wheelbase Jeep. Isn't outrageously long and wide like the new 4 door Wrangler.
• REI storm-proof matches. These things work where nothing else does. High wind, rain, you name it, these things sneer at it and will get your lantern or stove lit.
• Camelbak "double hump" day pack: This is just big enough for a 100oz water bladder and essential supplies (e.g. spade and T.P. as well as a first aid kit!). Much more convenient than carrying a conventional day pack and water bottles.

Things that did *not* work out too well:

• Phoenix "wind-proof" butane lighter. More like, "flame-proof" -- I could rarely get a good flame out of the thing, especially when there was any wind (so much for "wind-proof"!). Mostly I ended up using my REI matches to light my stove.
• Generic 1-mantle propane lantern: To be fair, I think the problem is with running low on propane, but it would stay lit for a while, then poof to an orange glow rather than a bright white glow. It worked fine on previous trips. I'll have to try it with a new propane cylinder.
• Energizer AAA 1000mah NiMH batteries: They're worn out and no longer hold a charge yet I've only charged them maybe 50 times max. Bummer. My Tikka XP would only run a couple of hours per set of batteries before the little green "need new batteries" light started flashing and the headlamp itself started getting dim. I had two sets, I had to recharge them every day (my Jeep has an inverter and I brought the recharger with me of course). Time to toss these and get some new batteries.
• Wal-Mart blue foamy sleeping pad combined with Therm-a-Rest Prolite 4: The Wal-Mart foamy was used mostly to insulate the feet from the ground, but was always trying to roll back up and was hard as a rock under my feet. Next time I haul along my nice thick full-sized Therm-a-Rest air mattress and quit trying to be fancy with the sleeping pad. I might have to use the Wal-Mart foamy + Prolite 4 setup when I'm motorcycle camping, but my Jeep has plenty of room for the big air mattress, so I might as well carry and use it.

Finally, food that worked out well:

Note that I try all of my food before I carry it into the field, so I had good luck with everything I ate. Some highlights:

• Dennison's Hot & Chunky Chili on pita bread, topped w/Cheeze-Whiz: Pita bread carries well. Top it with chili and some Cheeze-Whiz(tm) after a hard day of hiking and you have the food of the Gods. Note: Needs a dash of Tapatio hot sauce, but not as much as you'd think.
• Beef Stew freeze-dried entree': Once again, add a dash of Tapatio. This is comfort food for the soul on a cold and windy day.
• Cajun Red Beans & Rice, Ham, and Sausage MRE: Mmm. Not available in the current MRE meals, alas. Once again, a dash of Tapatio (or the included Tabasco) does it good.

For my December trip I'll take the thicker sleeping pad and the REI Sierra Dome tent, which is more airtight and better suited for cold windy weather as compared to the drafty Tarptent at the expense of being big, bulky, and much harder to set up than the Tarptent (which is ludicrously simple to set up -- stake out the four corners, stake out the two "beaks" which really aren't all that critical, and you're done). Oh well, it was cheap ($89 at REI Outlet).

-- Badtux the Camping Penguin

In the desert

It's funny, how some people look at the desert and just see rocks and dirt and dead things. I post a photo of my campsite in the desert, and these people think it's some sort of horrible place, rather than one of the most interesting places on the planet. What's with that?

-- Badtux the Puzzled Penguin

A side discourse on camping and trail food

Minstrel Boy claimed that MRE's taste "like sawdust". MRE's are actually quite tasty, I ate several of them this trip and they were pretty yummy. He likely was thinking of freeze-dried food, which is pretty awful. But MRE's are quite heavy as well, so my trail food does not include them.

Unfortunately I make the decision to leave town with about five hours' notice, so I was not going to cook hardtack or carry hard salt bacon or do anything like that prior to leaving. I was hard pressed enough getting all my camping gear out of the plastic bins that I'd hauled back from storage the previous evening (I'd hauled it to storage when I thought I was going to move, as one less thing to move on moving day). So I tossed some MRE's into the big black bear canister for car camping, and tossed some freeze-dried and some tuna (pouch) and ramen noodles into the small bear canister for backpacking, and headed out. Luckily I like tuna and noodles. And while freeze dried is nasty, there's a few freeze-dried that taste okay either with MRE crackers (sorta hard-tackish) or with enough Tabasco. Still, if I were planning a long trip, this is not what I'd do for food.

But, alas, that is what happens when you are a penguin pining for snow and suddenly realize that there is still snow in the Sierras...

Hmm. Between the MRE's and what little freeze-dried I have left and the stuff in my pantry, I have enough food for several weeks. And the white gas, propane, and isobutane to cook it. Not bad for disaster preparedness, even if it's accidental...

-- Badtux the Camping Penguin

Great balls of fire!

I tried making the Penny Stove today. I didn't have a Heinekin can so I tried to jerry-rig it using soda pop cans. The first time I tried to light it, a ball of flame exploded out of it and threw the penny halfway across the kitchen and singed my feathers. After that, I couldn't get the #$%@ thing to stay lit.

Because of this failure, I decided to turn it into a Trangia-style open-center burner with liner. But when I went down to my garage and fetched my Dremel tool to do the cutting, the power switch finally died (it had been on its way out for a while). Sigh. Oh well, the thing is 15 years old and I've used the stew out of it over those years, so it was about time it died. So off to Wally World I went to get a new Dremel tool along with some epoxy (don't fuss, Wally World is the closest place that stocks them and with gasoline at over $3 per gallon I'm not going one inch further than I must!), then off to the grocery store to pick up some drinks (to get another supply of aluminum cans to chop up) and frozen pizzas (for the next round of pizza testing).

So now I'm going to build a Photon Stove, but using the penny valve rather than a screw. Hopefully I won't have another explosion...

-- Badtux the Singed Penguin

Back from backpacking

How does a penguin hike, you ask? Well, in this case, thanks to New Balance trail runners. New Balance makes shoes in a bunch of different widths, including "flipper feet wide".

Here is this penguin's portable iceberg, nicely appointed (click for bigger pic):

Now, it occurs to this penguin that he has been somewhat remiss in his cat blogging. Indeed, both the curmudgeonly Mencken and the mighty Fang have bitterly complained that this penguin is ignoring them in favor of those nasty "politician" people. Thus I shall rectify that problem: Hmm. That doesn't look like a cat. Let's try that again: Darn, that doesn't look like a cat either! Let me try this one last time...

Ah yes... the curmudgeonly Mencken simply cannot maintain his usual disdainful posture when there's an ear-rub to be found...

And that is all from my iceberg for this Sunday. Hope your weekend was as pleasant as mine!

-- Badtux the Backpacking Penguin

I survived jury duty...

They didn't call me. SOB! I just had to check a web site twice a day for a week to see if they wanted me to report. Not that I would have been chosen for a jury -- it's a "jury of peers" and hey, how many penguins are subjected to trial by jury? A penguin on the jury of a people trial just doesn't work out! But it's nice that I'm finished for a year with that silliness.

In other news, I got a new tent, an ultralight one-man tent (no link, not sure I want to recommend it yet). Last night I set it up to seam-seal it. Because it was raining outside, I set it up in my living room, using string and weights to take the place of stakes. The Mighty Fang was much help in tying the strings (not!).

-- Badtux the Judicial Penguin

Back from my backpacking trip...

There's nothing like backpacking into the wilderness with all of civilization being the 30 pounds on your back to realize just how nice civilization is. Especially grocery stores. I took enough food for three days. I finished it all by the end of day two. I must be the only penguin in existence that can actually gain weight while hiking 20 miles a day with 5,000 feet altitude gain both ways (don't ask -- I swear that this particular park defies the laws of physics here!).

Anyhow, other than blistered feet (forgot the Right Guard to sweat-proof my feet!), I'm back, and intact. Meanwhile, let me tell you a little story about tents, and condensation.

I have Eureka Zeus EXO tent. It's about 5 years old, and well used. This is a large 2-man tent, but very lightweight (under 4 pounds) because it is a single-wall tent built with coated nylon ripstop rather than with polyester. One day a couple of months ago I managed to "force" one of the poles and it split at the end. The whole tent is looking rather faded, so it looked like it was time to buy a new tent rather than get a replacement part for the old one. The nylon fabric these things are made of is UV sensitive and decays with time, and I'd rather replace it after five years than risk the thing totally failing when I needed it.

So anyhow, I look for a replacement tent, and they've replaced the Zeus EXO with the Zeus LE. The Zeus LE has two doors rather than one. It has two top vents rather than one. It should ventilate better than the EXO did. Not that I had any problems with the ventilation of the EXO, mind you. But still, seemed like a reasonable thing to pull the trigger and get the new LE.

BIG mistake. I went to the exact same location, under the exact same conditions, with the LE and found out a few things:

• All tents condense on the inside of their outer fabric when the air goes below dewpoint. What matters is how well they keep the wet fabric away from you. So let's see how well the two tents do that:
  1. The EXO had your head at the all-mesh door that was between you and the vestibule fabric. It had side flies that started about a foot and a half up at the head, and came down to the foot corner on the side. All that could get wet was your feet. Big deal.
  2. The LE only has about six inches of mesh at the head. It is easy to rub the wet fabric above it with yoru head. On the left and right of your head is the outer wall. It is easy to roll over and rub your head on the outer wall. BAD news.
• The Zeus EXO already required an astounding eight stakes to stake it out -- four at the dome corners, two for the vestibule, and two to pull out the side flies. The Zeus LE requires *TEN* (10) stakes to stake it out -- four at the doam corners, four for the two vestibules, and two for the end flies.
• If you have the vestibule open on the EXO to get more ventilation, you can still put your boots under the remaining half of the vestibule to keep the mud and dirt out of your tent. If your vestibule is open on the LE, your boots are out there in the open ready to get full of water if it rains or dew if it gets below dewpoint.
• The LE is a *very* complicated design, with lots of little pieces of fabric stitched together. This gives it lots of places to leak. Which means lots of places to work seam-sealer into the stitching. Which means lots of places where you can miss getting seam-sealer into the stitching and thus get a leak :-(.

Progress? Hardly. The Eureka Zeus LE simply *sucks* compared to the EXO. The Eureka marketing department looked at the common complaints about the EXO -- that it only had one door (the one at the head of the tent), that it needed more ventilation (true, it can get a little stuffy in there with the vestibule closed), and then they completely ruined it. Part of the problem is that they were working under a strict weight budget and thus, for example, could not make the side flies wide enough to fully protect the side walls. Part of the problem is that they were working under a strict dollar budget and thus could not go to a more lightweight fabric. And part of the problem is simply lack of imagination on the part of the Eureka engineers.

The good news is that Eureka apparently realized that they screwed up. On their website it appears they have discontinued the Zeus LE in favor of resurrecting the old Zeus EXO as the "Zeus Classic". The "Classic" still has the same flaws that led to the LE redesign -- the ventilation is still poor when you close the vestibule and it still only has one door -- but at least it isn't dangerous when it's damp outside. Not that this matters to me anymore. I've decided to eBay the Zeus LE to someone who lives in a desert (where condensation isn't an issue) and get a tent that weighs an entire 23 ounces, and only needs six stakes to set it up, not eight or ten. Yes, the Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo weighs an entire 23 ounces, or roughly 1 1/2 pounds... now that's more like it when ya have to haul your entire house on your back!

Anyhow, now you know why I'm a conservative (of the old fashioned sort, not one of these big-spendin' big-war-makin' neo-conservative types). You don't take a reasonable design (like the old EXO) and just throw it away and start over from scratch. You look for little ways to improve it, ways that will address the biggest flaws without totally discarding the good parts. The ventilation could have been improved, for example, by making the vestibule vent slightly larger and the top vent slightly larger to get better cross-flow through them. There was no need to simply re-do the entire tent and risk ruining it. Yet that is what they did. Similarly, there was no need to invade Iraq and get involved in a gigantic nation-building scheme, when sanctions were working fine at containing Saddam's ambitions. If it turned out that the sanctions were leaky, the conservative thing to do would have been to re-tool the sanctions to give them more teeth. Yet taking the huge risk of invading Iraq, a risk which George H.W. Bush had warned about ten years prior, is exactly what the neo-cons did rather than taking the conservative choice of tweaking what was already working. Conservative? Hardly! Bah humbug!

- Badtux the Backpacking Penguin

Fuckity fuck fuck

Just disqualified myself from working for a political campaign. Good!

I was going to go camping with my new tent. But it is raining outside. Now, I hear you saying, "No duh, it's the rainy season in Northern California. So? You're an aquatic waterfowl, what do you care about rain?" Well, granted, rain just beads up and rolls off of my fine feathered carcass (thanks to the wonders of Marmot and Outdoor Research and Gore Inc.), and the gear in my backpack is either in heavy-duty utterly waterproof kayaking drybags or doesn't care if it gets wet, but still. I am wimp. Hear me whimper.

Of course, it's not *entirely* paranoia. I set the tent up in the living room of the apartment where my iceberg is currently docked and ran a line of seam sealer across the major seams, but I probably need another coat or two of seam sealer on the seams before I can really trust them not to leak. And sleeping in a leaky wet tent is just plain miserable. But it would just be miserable, not dangerous. I am such a wimp...

So I curl up with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate. Hey, don't misunderestimate the danger of a cup of hot chocolate! Why, if I set it down on the futon beside me as I blog from my notebook computer and accidentally spilled it, it could soak my clothes and cause burns! Oh the dangers I put myself through for your sake... what can us say, us fowl (penguins and chickenhawks) must make sacrifices. Why, maybe I'll even put pants on sometime today! (Which of course is more than the brave cheeto-stained-finger warriors of the 101st Fighting Chickenhawks, 1st Chairborn Brigade, will do as they blog from their mommy's basements in support of a war they refuse to fight in, but still).

Oh, as you may have noticed, I'm back on my old ugly template. The new one I tried out just could not be made to work across all major browser platforms. I finally got it looking good under both Firefox and Opera, but then it broke under Internet Exploder. Sigh. Back to Web 0.9 (i.e., table tags).

-- Badtux the Cocooning Penguin