11/03/2009

Rest in peace, dear stove. Rest in peace.

Poor dear stove
It's hard for a gearhead like me to let go of a piece of really good equipment when it dies. It's even harder when there is nothing wrong with it. My old Bluet Turbo 270 camping stove finished its last canister this morning while making my coffee. There is no more gas for my stove. Ever.

Camping Gaz (or "campingaz" as they wanted to be known but no one could spell correctly, so they just let people spell it as two words), formerly Bluet, was a French company that made, among other product, backpacking stoves. Their most famous products were their little blue stoves that used little blue gas canisters. In earlier days, the stoves would strap to the canisters and puncture them to get fuel, leaving the stove attached until the canister was empty. The improved method was the addition of a self-sealing, threaded top to the canister that allowed the stove to be attached and removed as needed, making for a much more packable appliance.

I bought my 270 either during the summer before my senior year in high school or during the year off that followed. I can't remember. When I bought it, I had to light it with a match or a lighter since Bluet didn't make a piezo ignitor yet. A few years later, when they offered it as an accessory, I snapped one up, put it on and continued to happily use the stove. Its only moving part was the control knob. It allowed you to go from a barley-lit simmer to full-on volcano with extremely fine adjustment. It performed well in the wind, it had wide pot supports (important for vigorous stirrers like me), and it never, ever failed to light or gave me any problems.

A few years ago, Coleman bought a few European gear makers, including Bluet/Camping Gaz and Great Britain's Epigas. Coleman were then bought by Sunbeam -- yeah, the toaster folks. Sunbeam then fell on hard times, reorganizing themselves as American Household Inc. but still not doing so well. Then, in 2004, Jarden, the parent company of folks like Diamond matches and Bicycle playing cards, bought American Household and, just as you'd predict, all of American Household's holdings got reorganized, including and specifically Coleman.

Because the Gaz products competed directly with the Coleman's Peak line of stoves, the trusty old Bluets were redesigned (poorly) and relabeled as the "Twister" series (y'know, cuz they twist onto the canisters?). Federal regulations on shipping pressurized gas canisters changed slightly, causing manufacturers to have to retool to meet the regs, then the regs changed again. Gaz fuel started to be harder to find. Retailers started to limit their stock of Gaz products to just the canisters, eliminating the 270g canisters first, and then slowly getting rid of the 470s. Some larger retailers like Cabela's correctly predicted the direction Gaz/Coleman was going and pulled all the product from their shelves so that they wouldn't have to deal with customers who bought the stoves but then couldn't find fuel. And then came the last nail in Gaz' coffin: Coleman, who to this day hold a large stock of Gaz fuel in their Wichita, KS, warehouses, added a "hazard shipping charge" to the canisters that pushed the wholesale price of a single canister up over the retail price. In a matter of weeks, Gaz effectively disappeared from the American market.

There is nothing wrong with my stove. It works perfectly. I've taken it with me on trips in a dozen countries or more, on three continents. I've made meals on this stove that were better and more memorable than ones made in the comfort and amenity of my own home. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of these stoves out there in the world, no doubt in similarly perfect operating condition. The free market killed this stove. The needless buying and selling of companies, the mergers, the acquisitions, the money-can-correct-competition attitudes of folks in suits who never go camping killed this stove. This perfect stove. My very first camp stove.

(None of the "facts" above have been verified. I assembled the [ahem] history from a variety of accounts told to me as I looked for canisters on the web, in (what turned into several hours of) phone conversations, and at local and distant retailers. But it's a good story, I hope well-told, and it gives me a reason to be bitter about a wrong inflicted upon me (the loss of my favorite stove), so it's what I'm sticking with, truth be damned.)

10/22/2009

I may have to go read her book now

9/30/2009

Garlic Fest 2010

Shantung purple, or maybe Metechi
Alan and I do so much with garlic -- pickling, roasting, smoking, and just general cooking -- that we decided to start producing our own. This morning we took over a plot of Alan and Nikki's garden that had been tomatoes, which don't do well around here, and repurposed it for garlic. We put down Chesnok red, Stull, Metechi, Romanian red, German white, Shantung purple, and Siberian, as well as some stuff that Alan and Nikki had picked up at a market in Boise. I've got a few heads of some spicy hardneck stuff that I get at the Central Market in Poulsbo that I'm gonna put in tomorrow or the next day. By next spring, we'll be knee-deep in awesome, delicious garlic.

9/28/2009

Racing

I've been racing sailboats for years, but, except for a short stint as the co-owner of old Woolgatherer, never as the captain and sole owner. Yesterday I raced East Wind in the Port Townsend Sailing Association's fall Night Cap race (an odd misnomer, since the races start at 1pm on Sundays). After racing here in Port Townsend for a few years, I've become fond of the fleet, and of many of the folks in it. They're a friendly bunch, even when they're competetive, especially the Tbird crowd.

All the usual suspects were out yesterday. The Tbirds were well-represented with Dorado, my old neighbors on Rowdy, my old skipper John on his new, racy Tbird Thatuna -- we missed Scott on Tzieu, and the friendly crew of Coco Solo. My crew (Ron and Alison, of course) and I got lots of friendly and welcoming shouts from all the boats, but especially the Tbirds who were happy to add to their numbers in the form of a familiar sailor (me).

The course started at City Dock, went out to the newly-moved Y buoy, south to the tower off Fort Flagler, back to Y, and back to the start. We didn't start as aggressively as I'd've liked, but that was fine. I'm still learning the helm, and Alison, despite all her years of racing and cruising, has never sailed on a Tbird, quirky boats that they are, so we held back a bit and tried to stay out of the fray. The fleet was pretty tightly packed on the way across town to Y, but since the buoy had been moved, many of the boats lost position when they finally noticed where it had be repositioned. We rounded Y, leaving it to port, and decided that, since it was our first time out and we were more interested in the sail of it rather than the race of it, we weren't going to fly the spinnaker. This actually worked pretty well, as the wind had shifted and the leg from Y to the tower was almost a beam reach. About halfway there, though, the wind shifted again, and the folks with their chutes up just pulled away, leaving us way back with Pacemaker and No Name. Doug pulled ahead at the tower, Ed chose a better tack after the tower, and we got left behind.

Soaking up the sunshine, seeing a bait ball get attacked by salmon and gulls, and just enjoying the day suddenly took precedence and we ended up finishing dead last by quite a bit. I'm actually anxious to see the race results to find out just how far behind we were. DFL is fine with me, though. It's not DNF, and if my friends and I are having a good day, then all is right with the world.

Now that I'm not on a dedicated, campaigning race boat, I don't think I'll be finishing quite as well as I have been, but I do anticipate that I'll be having more fun.

9/23/2009

Uh... [heh] New boat!!


Since East Wind was for sale, and I've been looking for a boat anyway, John sold her to me for a song. Now I am officially poor. Not only do I own a boat, I own a wooden boat.

Seriously, though, I'm very excited. Ron, Alison, Logan and I went for an inaugural sail last night. Lovely weather, a little bit of wind, and some champagne. I'm actually really pleased that, of all the boats I could have purchased, the one that I actually did purchase is one that I know absolutely everything about. I know all her quirks and shortfalls, all the things I want to and need to repair or replace. None of her projects are daunting or scary, and I have the know-how (or friends with know-how) to do all of it. I'm excited and happy.

9/17/2009

New boat!!

John, the owner of the Thunderbird I've been racing on for the last year, got tired of East Wind and all her aging-wooden-boat problems and, in a surprise move, bought another Thunderbird, Thatuna. She has been racing in Seattle for a lot of years, doing Leschi and Lake Union racing through the Center for Wooden Boats and in other series. More race-oriented than ol' East Wind, Thatuna has aluminum spars, newer sails, and a cockpit set up more for short-handed racing than cruising. I'm excited because she's fast; I'm bummed because we (I) put a lot of work into East Wind to make her a good racing boat and now we have to start -- well, not from scratch, but... There are as many things that need to be fixed/updated/adjusted/replaced on the new boat as on the old boat. [sigh] Oh, well. We've got all winter, and in the spring, she'll be even faster than East Wind ever was. Hm.

9/03/2009

Changes and updates

I realized today while catching up with my blog reading that I haven't posted in almost six months. I have a few ideas about how I can used this blog more effectively than I have been, but rather than start with big plans, I'll start small:

The Redline has been turned into a townie. I swapped out the Origin8 Space Bar that I never really liked with a Nitto Promenade. HUGE improvement. It's made me ride the Redline for almost all of my in-town errands, and the increase in just that little bit of activity has alreay made a positive impact on my mood. Problem was, it was starting to skip in the middle cogs. Old chain on the cassette that came with the bike -- who knows how many thousands of kilometers on that pair. So, on my last trip into Seattle, I stopped by Recycled Cycles and used some of my (surprisingly large amount of) store credit on an 11-34 cassette and new chain. I complemented this replacement with a Deore long cage rear der that I'd been saving for something that never happened and a bit of a brake tune-up, and now the townie conversion is almost complete. The change from a 27 to a 34 in back makes it a totally different bike. All I need now are some of those Planet Bike 29er fenders and this will be the perfect uglified townie.

There. Small update. Now I'll try to add on a more regular basis and keep up-to-date.

3/30/2009

A Walk In The Woods

12/12/2008

There goes all my money

One of the YouTube channels I watch posts a lot of baroque music. Recently, a snippet of a publicity vid got posted, and I was absolutely transfixed. I searched a bit and came upon the Naïve Classique catalog. Much to my pleasure, Quimper Sound in town can get anything in their catalog. I have a bad feeling this is where the majority of my disposable income will be going for a while.

12/09/2008

Coffee


I don't drink good coffee. Let's just get that out of the way right now. This is not to say that I don't enjoy good coffee. On the contrary, I adore good coffee. I'm just too lazy to make good coffee. I don't have a grinder at home, so I grind at the store. At the supermarket. I can hear the gasps of horror. Stop it.

Anyway, I ran out of coffee the morning I left for Twisp last week, reminding myself to buy some either on the way, or in Twisp at Blue Star, while having my last cup. Despite reminding myself several times, I forgot. So, on my first morning back home, imagine my indignant surprise when coffeetime rolled around and there was none to be had. Well, not none, exactly...

There in the back of my cabinet was an aged tin of espresso. Aged. Three years old at least. Coffee that has followed me through two house moves. Oh, crap. No. Four years. Why do I even have it? No matter. It was coffee, and it saved me going out in the weather to get fresh(ish) coffee. But how to brew it? I'm a press-pot man. This was not the grind for a happy press. I dug into my camping gear bin and pulled out my old Morenita that I'd purchased years ago, maybe even back in college. I waxed fondly nostalgic for a moment, remembering the days when I thought carrying five pounds of kitchen gear into the backcountry was a worthwhile pursuit. Quickly getting over it, I pulled out my even-more-ancient Gaz stove, loaded the Morenita with the ancient espresso, fired up the stove and waited to see what would happen.

Not so bad, as it turned out. Coffeemakers of this type so thoroughly abuse the coffee that putting good coffee in them seems a bit of a waste. The years-old espresso was a bit meh, but it was caffeinated and tasted like, well, coffee, so it wasn't so bad. Possibly for that reason, when I went to the grocery store last night, I forgot coffee. Again. Damnit. So, this morning...