Countdown at 5 days

Wisconsin doesn’t win many firsts, but we were apparently the first state in the nation in rainfall over the last two weeks with all of the usual consequences that go along with that. An elderly man in the Madison area was swept away by flood waters from his car into a culvert and drowned.  Milwaukee released 296 million gallons of raw sewage into local rivers and Lake Michigan so that the effluent didn’t back up into people’s basements.  We have had plenty of heat to go along with the rain which has meant high humidity and a healthy crop of mosquitoes.


Closer to home, I moved Justin back into the dorms for the fall semester on Thursday.  He was ready to go back to leading life without parents nagging him, and we were ready to stop nagging him.  Classes start next week.  I talked to him last night on the phone, and it sounded like he was making new friends and settling into dorm life.

Allie is still in Greece, vacationing with her Turkish boyfriend. It sounds like they are having a great time, living on a meager budget but enjoying the street food and beaches. My last “to do” task will be picking her up at the Chicago airport late Tuesday night and driving to her Milwaukee apartment where she will start the fall semester one day late on Wednesday.  I will try to get some sleep on Wednesday before taking off west in the Brew Hut.

Most of my preparation work for the trip west is done.  I’ve been picking up little odds and ends at the last-minute.  The square plate at the bottom of the Brew Hut’s trailer tongue’s jack has seemed a little shaky to me, so Amazon shipped me an 8 dollar Camco cone stand which is supposed to be more stable and multi-functional.  We’ll see.  The plate can be re-installed if the plastic thing doesn’t work out. If it works, I can eliminate the cinder block that I’ve been carrying around as a jack stand.

I also restocked green (raw) coffee beans for the trip.  Friday afternoon was spent roasting so that Julia can have fresh coffee while I’m gone.  Most people don’t know that you can freeze (colder the better) freshly roasted coffee in small one pound freezer bags, and then use one bag at a time (defrosted and staying at room temperature), and the quality is excellent.  Blind taste tests don’t lie. What you don’t want to do is take frozen coffee back and forth out of the freezer allowing it to partially defrost or be exposed to humidity. It should go without saying that the coffee has to be fresh-roasted.  Putting stale coffee into the freezer doesn’t preserve anything.   For myself, I plan on roasting coffee in the Brew Hut while traveling.  Still working out those details.

Other than that, I’ve been stocking the kitchen with canned goods (black beans, coconut cream) and spices so that I can make my staple curries and dirty beans with rice.

Recent reports from the Badlands are that it may be muddy with reduced access to the location that I hoped to camp, but weather changes.  We’ll see how it goes.  There will be a back-up plan.