My cousin Danielle got married last weekend and as part of the festivities we all went sailing on a couple of racing trimarans. They aren’t as roomy as the TimeMachine but boy are they fast. Even loaded down and in light air we still zoomed around at a good clip by our standards.

[John Williams on his F-31 Gimme Samoa]

If you look behind his head you can just make out the speed of 7.2 kts but you can see by the water that it can’t be blowing much more than 8.

[Wing and a Prayer]

My uncle (Bill Coxwell) built this trimaran out of a Moore 30 and a Stilletto 23. Very cool.

[Bill]

[Gimme Samoa with Wing and a Prayer in the distance]

We got all the girls on our boat leaving Bill with all the muscle.

[Fancy sailcloth]

As most of you know, we are planning to take a break from cruising. Since we don’t know when or where we will take it up again we have decided to put the TimeMachine up for sale. There are too many boats sitting in storage and we’d rather see the TimeMachine on the water and being enjoyed. Also, Cheyenne has certain criteria for the next cruising trip: standing headroom everywhere and a dedicated double bunk! We still plan to haul it out and do some necessary work and a few cosmetic things. A classified ad will be in the June issue of Latitude 38 among other places.

The obvious questions is “What will happen to the blog?” We’ve been discussing it and the current plan is to continue blogging in continous manner using the same database. However, after we sell the TimeMachine we may move the continous blog to another domain and leave sv-timemachine.net as a static site about this experience. We are radically unprepared for normalization and have no intention of settling down to normal jobs, so the adventures should continue although they may not always involve sailing.

Among our first HEB purchases, once I recovered my dignity after dorking out over the cheese products, were a bunch of asparagus and real parmesan cheese (pricey stuff too).

We have an alcohol stove on the Time Machine and it’s great in that it runs on unpressurized non-scary fuel and doesn’t go through a ton, and it is so easy to deal with that a medium sized crustacean could probably figure it out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really get all that hot. Browning things has always been a problem. Boiling a large kettle of water takes half a day. Now that we are temporarily installed in a house with all the modern conveniences, we can cook things over an electric stove—and I LUUUVV cooking on red. The other night I converted thirty-minute’s worth of carefully slivered garlics into a smoking black crater in about thirteen seconds. The power.

We love asparagus and one of our favorite cooking methods is to pan sauté it. If you are of the conscientious persuasion, you might not burn the crap out of it and it will turn out beautifully.

WHAT YOU NEED
Bundle asparagus, washed, ends trimmed, and chopped at an angle into 2-inch pieces.
Garlic. I love the stuff and use around half to a whole bulb. Cut into chunks (e.g., each clove into maybe three pieces).
Balsamic vinegar (maybe two tablespoons’ worth).
Red pepper flakes. The hot stuff.
Salt.
Pepper. Freshly ground; I like black pepper the best.
Parmesan cheese.

THE METHOD

Put a tablespoon or so of oil in a skillet over a mostly red burner, then add the garlic bits. Fry in the oil until they turn golden brown and are as done as you care them to be. It is difficult to flip the things; I use chopsticks. You are going for crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside. When ready, remove from the pan and set aside.

[Hmm. Some of those are a little more done than I had anticipated. Do as I say not as I do: take yours off before they turn black and don’t waste time trying to get photos.]

Now add the asparagus and crank that burner to full red (you know, use your discretion). Saute for a while, stirring around so the asparagus cooks evenly; taste occasionally to get your preferred doneness (probably around ten minutes for me). When just done, turn the heat down to medium and add the balsamic vinegar, stirring so that it coats the asparagus and reduces away.

[Super action shot of balsamic addition. Nice and stir.]

Toss in a pinch of red pepper flakes and grind a bunch of pepper over the pan; add salt to taste and chuck the garlic back in as well. Mix around and kill the heat. Serve with fresh grated parmesan over the top.

[More action photography. Can you believe that this stupid Safeway “disposable” pepper grinder is the best I’ve ever encountered? I’ve refilled it about a million times. Makes nice chunky pepper grinds, not that powdery shit I find so dissatisfying and takes forever to grind. Right after Joshua took the photo however, I inhaled a good snort of ground pepper from the steam and collapsed into a huge sneezing fit.]

Despite the overly cooked garlics (and, honestly, the asparagus could have been cooked with a lighter touch—I’m telling you though, taking cooking photos messes with your timing), the asparagus was awesome as usual and we snarfed it down before we could get any good pictures.

(By the way, this is the same way we cook green beans. Super excellent.)

I have been late in updating the site with text but it has been a social marathon for us since arriving in Rockport. Joshua’s cousin Danielle got married this past Saturday (we didn’t even know until we arrived) and relatives have been materializing from everywhere and there were dinners and drinks and much visiting to do. Now that the wedding is over, things are quieting a little.

Choosing Texas as the reinsertion point after being out of the country for so long hasn’t exactly done any favors for our culture shock. Where there were Mexicans/Panamanians/Salvadorians/Cubans/Colombians/etc. before, there are now Texans, speaking Texan (e.g., “That y’allses truck out there?”). Texans with tattoos of the state of Texas that say “100% Texan”—we saw two of these in one day. Country music stations predominate and Miller Lite is drunk (the low-carb choice, I’m told).

I have managed to curb my slack-jawed staring at every new thing somewhat. I still can’t get over how nearly every person in this town drives an enormous, shiny new truck—the kind with four doors, a roomy back seat, and a built-in flight of stairs to help you get up to the cab. Many of these trucks have a burly rack over the grill, presumably so that one can go blasting cows or small volkswagons with immunity.

As with every new and exotic country we visit, the first sightseeing mission is always to the grocery store. One must eat and you never know what you might find. The Rockport HEB is brand new, easily the size of an IKEA and just about as difficult to navigate if you deviate in any way from the prescribed flow. I brought the camera.

The shredded cheese display is so massive that I had to climb back into the frozen meats trough to fit it all in one frame. Fortunately, HEB shoppers do not find strange foreign types frolicking in the meat freezer that odd and I didn’t get kicked out.

Here’s a close-up. White, yellow, mixed. Repeat unnecessarily.

We spent about an hour in HEB (enough time so that I was nearly crawling out of my own skin by the time we hit the checkout line)—mostly because we got lost a couple of times and had to navigate back to hit the frozen aisles, which is a labyrinth of seven-foot high freezers covering an area the size of a city block.

All the key ingredients you need to make a, uh, molded salad.

Rockport Beach Park, Rockport, Texas

This is a really cool bird that nests here in Rockport. The best part is that when they feed they “skim.” Flying close to the water and dipping their beak in as they go along picking up small fish and crustaceans. Notice that the lower beak is longer than the top. You can kind of see it in the video. I’m not happy with the video quality, but we had lots of trouble with windows (wmv) embedded video so I’m trying flash video instead. It works better but I haven’t figured out the quality setting yet.