Wedding and Cherries

We did it.  We finally got married!  It took us months to actually set the date, and then a week to plan the wedding.  It was perfect, and very low-cost! A friend of mine painstakingly made my dress, and it turned out graceful and beautiful.  The groom's suit was found at the thrift store.  We paid for a photographer with a veggie share, and the dressmaker's work with a work day at her house, home-made cheese, and herbs.  Seating was on home-made benches...boards supported on log sections, covered with a length of unbleached muslin.  My bouquet was collected from my parent's backyard.  A close friend made the cake, her sister did my hair, my sister made the flower decorations, bouquet, and some of the refreshments, and my mom made the rest of the refreshments.  That same sister also played the piano for the ceremony, perched up on the back of my brother's pickup truck.  I rode to the wedding in the back of a Madsen, pedaled by my father.

The ceremony was on land we lease, under a spreading cottonwood tree.  We had no attendants, a friend did the 'marrying', and there was no reception; just a simple dinner with family.   

We did take a short little honeymoon at Allegany State Park, in a rustic cabin beside a babbling brook.

 It was just what we needed...a little break before diving back into work on the houses and garden.  

I do thoroughly enjoy married life!

While my Dear Man and I were busy marrying and making merry, all the plants in our garden were busy growing...and the fruit trees were fruiting!  We recently picked the biggest Chinese Cabbage I've ever seen... 

Such a lovely head...it is very satisfying.

We also have Kohlrabi that is getting too big, broccoli and cauliflower growing to picking size, and cabbages swelling.  Frustratingly, varmints are getting into our fenced-off garden, and doing their best to destroy our crops! 

This spring we discovered four different cherry trees on our land...and they are all loaded with cherries!

And, for a day, with children...

We harvested quite the bounty!  Yum! Yum!

What a Long Hot Summer!

For the first time, I am actually looking forward to Autumn!

This summer was the hottest and driest most people can remember.  We had to lug water for the garden nearly every day...in order to actually produce produce.  The heat was great for peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and some of the other veggies though...
Look at the size of those Lemon Drop pepper plants!!

Since the harvest has been coming in, I have made a few varieties of hot sauce, dried cayenne, dried sweet peppers, smoked varieties of hot peppers, a couple ristras, and sold and eaten lots of fresh peppers.
I even made a connection with a local hot sauce maker to piggyback onto his bottle order to make my hot sauces look professional!
5oz Woozy bottles with Cayenne sauce and The Redheaded Stepchild hot sauce mix!! (we haven't finished making labels...)

I sure do enjoy working with peppers!  Next year I plan on trying some rather unusual types of super-hot peppers...

Something else that has been making this summer busy is my dating/courting someone!  I've been trying to keep up with my responsibilities at home, and do as much as possible with 'My Man'.

Just recently we decided we wanted to get married, so are working on figuring out an appropriate date for that event.

Wow!  It is strange to think, at this time last year, I had no idea this was coming!

I didn't end up taking any bike trips this year, and haven't ridden as much as I would have hoped.  I even got my driver's license...

  I am not getting a car, though.  No way!  Bicycles are the way to go!

The milk supply I was using for cheesemaking stopped, since the farmer ended up with calves...but hopefully this winter I'll be able to start that up again.

Sorry it has been so long since I posted....I'll try to post more regularly, but I really can't promise anything....especially when my life is busy with unblogworthy stuff...

Gorgonzola Goop...

One reason Gorgonzola isn't as strong flavored as Stilton is because the surface growth gets scraped off periodically.

I just scraped it for the first time...very interesting!!

The surface was covered with white mold, blue mold that seemed to be dying, and yellow-orange bacterial smear.

I scraped it off, and ended up with a lot of goop!

The cheese smells quite repulsive, but I tried a small piece that broke off the side, and it tasted amazing.

It was creamy, with nice blue mold flavor.

The final scraped cheese looks a little less wild than before....and hopefully the blue mold will be able to take over the rind.

It goes to the basement to age for a couple more months....

Will it work??

I pulled the Gorgonzola out of the mold today, and wasn't terribly impressed by what I saw.

Because there were no holes in the sides of the mold, the whey had no way to escape.  (pun intended)

I salted the cheese, and put it in a small fridge in the basement, to potentially stay at 55*F for 30 days.

I hope it doesn't just fall apart!

Gorgonzola? We'll see....

Well, I made my very first batch of Gorgonzola cheese!  We shall see, in time, how it turns out...

Here's a photo of the beautiful Jersey milk I used.

I added mesophyllic starter culture, let it ripen for 30 minutes, then added rennet.  Here I am checking to identify the flocculation point.  "Flocculation" is the point at which the solids begin to separate from the liquids in the milk.  The evening milk took 11 minutes to flocculate, and the morning batch 10 minutes.  Therefore, I let the evening batch rest 45 minutes total, to get the best curd set for this cheese.  The morning milk set 40 minutes.

After the designated time for setting up, I cut the curd into 1/2 in cubes and let them rest 10 minutes.

The next step was to dump the curds into a cheesecloth to drain.  The evening bit drained for about 17 hours, and the morning curd drained for only one.

While waiting for the morning curd to finish draining, I mixed up an inoculate so the cheese grows blue mold.  I used 1 tsp of Gorgonzola cheese (the moldiest part I could find) and mixed that thoroughly with 1/4 cup of cool water.

Finally I was able to cut up the two batches of curd and mix salt and the blue cheese slurry into them.  

I put the larger bowl of curd (the morning curd) on the bottom and sides of the mold.  The smaller bowl of curd went into the center, surrounded on all sides by the newer curd.  

Now I have to flip the cheese every 15 minutes for 2 hours.  Then it goes into a cool room for 3 days.  I still have to flip it a few times each day, but not quite as often.  After that, it will go to start growing mold!

Wet Gravel and Jerky...

I slept better this night, but Tuck didn't sleep very well.  Strange.

We ate dry cereal for breakfast, and then were on the road by 8:30.  

This time I was planning on nearly completing the Pine Creek Rail Trail by evening.  First, we needed groceries and water. In Jersey Shore we stopped at a gas station to relieve our bladders and bought a gallon of water and some pretzels.  I asked the cashier if a grocery store was nearby, and he gladly informed me of a Weis just up the street. 

Since our diet had deteriorated considerably during our visit, I wanted to bring it back up to a somewhat healthy level.  I bought cabbage, apples, grapes, granola, cookies, soy milk(so it wouldn't spoil un-refrigerated), and peanuts.  

We then proceeded onto the trail.  It was a lovely place, but I got very tired of grinding endlessly along a flat gravel trail.  There were no downhills, and that meant few brief breaks.  Just pedal, pedal, pedal, until it was time to snack or go to the bathroom.  Ah, well, at least it wasn't uphill!

We met a group of interesting elderly cyclists on the trail.  They were from near Wellsville, NY and were working on riding 100 miles this year.  It was fun encountering them repeatedly on the trail, since we were headed in the same direction.  

We stopped at Cedar Run for some more of the amazing jerky we had eaten on the way down.  This time I bought 10 pieces!  It had started pouring just as we rode up to the little store, so we sat on the porch and chatted with a couple guys that were also sitting there.  The rain didn't let up very quickly, so Tuck decided we should eat some ice cream while we waited for it to quit.  The ice cream was good, and the conversations floating around were interesting.  By the time the ice cream was gone, so was the rain, so off we went.

Everything was wet, so the gravel stuck to my tires and swished through my fenders annoyingly.  

Here's a photo I took while waiting for Tuck near Rattlesnake Rock.  I took a quick walk down to the rock, and was pretty impressed, but saw no rattlesnakes.  Tuck had already run over two snakes today.  One may have been a small rattlesnake, but I'm not sure.  Yes, they were alive and slithering!

We stopped at the Tiadaghton Camping Area for the night.  We didn't have a camping permit, so we hoped any officials would just stay away.  It rained again, so the ground was rather wet.  We ate random food that we could find in the bag, such as cabbage, apples, grapes, fig newtons, and so on.  It was a very lovely place to camp, and we had it to ourselves.  We even saw some Bald Eagles glide majestically through the gorge.

Both of us were having great difficulty walking.  My Achilles tendons were extremely sore and had been most of the day.  Tuck's thighs were very sore.  I figured the extreme soreness was a result of the mountain yesterday, and hoped it would recede by morning.

The rain stopped enough for me to set up the tents.  Tuck was fixing his front tire, which had acquired a slow leak towards the end of the day.  The leak gradually got faster and faster, and by the time we were at the campground, he had little difficulty finding the puncture.

The sunset was very picturesque...

We bedded down and fell asleep hoping nobody would show up to kick us out... 

Rain on the Mountain

Tuck slept well in the graveyard.  I had a terrible time falling asleep, and then didn't sleep very well anyway.  I wasn't tired enough, after only 40 miles.  We got out of the cemetery early, rode to Boyer's to get milk for our cereal, ate there, and then were on the road by 8:30. 

We took Rte 61 to Sunbury and though it was mostly a 4-lane highway, bicycles were legal, and the shoulders were wide enough for us to comfortably ride.  

We picked up the PA bike route J in Northumberland. A few miles later, we stopped to eat lunch at a little river-side park in Milton.  

Here I discovered my back brakes had worn down so far they completely ceased to work!  I had no back brakes, and still had a steep mountain to descend at some point!  My front brakes were very worn also, but still worked well, thankfully.  I now know to carry an extra pair of brake pads!

In Milton we used the library - for their bathroom!  We appreciated the existence of public bathrooms in gas stations, grocery stores, and libraries.  It was very convenient!

Here is a random photo of the town of Milton...

It is right on the lovely Susquehanna River....

In Dewart we abandoned bike route J for motor vehicle route 44.  That took us through some Amish country, and I snapped a picture of a team of working mules patiently waiting on their driver. 

This particular farm had at least six huge mules instead of draft horses.  It was nestled prettily between some mountains.  One of which we soon would reach the base of.  Which I did not want to climb.  It was late afternoon and there was a threat of thunderstorms, but Tuck convinced me to do it anyway. 

It was a very long ascent.  I took my time, and had a lot of breaks, because I hate feeling sick from riding too hard.  It took us over an hour to get up to the top.  Near the top, the wind started blowing, the sky clouded over, and thunder could be occasionally heard.  Tuck was quite a distance ahead of me, and it suddenly started pouring.  I had put my holey rain poncho on just in time.  Now I just walked up the mountain.  Around the next curve, and there was the top!  Finally!  The rain was coming down like a water main upstairs just broke.  I took off my helmet so it could wash the sweat off my face.  It felt amazing!  In just a few seconds my face was clean and cool.  I wanted to take advantage of the free shower, but it would have been too chilly, and rather indecent, considering the circumstances.  The rain didn't last very long, but I enjoyed every minute of it! The view from the top was lovely; of the sun on distant mountains, rain in the valley, clouds moving away and the blue sky spreading.

We made it safely down the mountain, despite wet rims and no back brakes, in my case.  In a way, the water on the rims was helpful - water cooled brakes!  

The sun came out at the bottom and turned the wet road into a silver ribbon...

Our moods were suddenly improved - I think getting poured on at the very top of a mountain was the best thing that happened to us all day - other than the spaghetti...

We stayed in an old cemetery at the base of the mountain, in Collomsville.  We were right next to a cow pasture.

I cooked up some spaghetti for our supper...

It was very tasty, especially with cheddar cheese melted into it, but unfortunately I didn't make quite enough.  We finished it all, and were still a little hungry.

As we set up camp, the locals looked at us curiously, but nobody bothered us.  It was a pleasant spot, and I was glad we had come over the mountain.

Heading Home....Finally!

After six weeks of visiting our dear friends in Berks Co, PA, it was finally time to head home.  Thankfully, they weren't sick of us yet!!

I re-planned the first leg of the trip so as to avoid a few undesirable roads we had traversed on the way down.  This time, we took Rte 183 over Blue Mountain, instead of 645.  It was much more manageable, but also busier.  We sailed down the far side, reaching the fasted speeds we had reached so far - 37mph!  

We appreciated the wide shoulders on most of the highway...

There was a lot of evidence of coal mining in the areas we rode through today.  Towns with names such as Minersville, and Coal Castle.  Chunks of coal littering the banks along the highway.  Interesting...

Neither of us was feeling very well, and the uphills tended to make us feel rather sick, just from the exertion.

 We took a lot of short breaks, and one longer one.  The longer break was after lunch, at a little memorial for a chapel that had collapsed in a winter storm in 2003.  Tuck took a short nap and I snacked and took a few photos.  Here is a little poem in a display, about what happened...

  Only the grotto remained standing...

We continued on, and slowly worked our way up an endless hill.  I briefly thought it was taking us to heaven...it seemed to never stop going up!!  Disappointingly, it was only taking us to big busy highway intersections...oh well.

We had our first nasty driver encounter on this ascent.  We had paused for one of our many breaks, and I noticed a truck coming up the road, but his wheels were well onto the shoulder.  I motioned at him to move over, not sure if he had noticed our presence.  Sure enough, he knew we were there, and then moved over even closer to us!  He roared past, scaring us pretty bad, but thankfully not touching either of us.  After that, we were quite paranoid of truckers, but everyone else was considerate of the two toiling cyclists on the hill.  Some were even friendly!  Also, a few motorcyclists gave us the 'fellow cyclist' wave.  It was nice to feel welcome on the road, even if it was only by a very small percentage of motor vehicle drivers.  

That evening we stayed at a cemetery just outside of Mt Carmel.  I stopped at a Boyer's not far from the cemetery and got peaches and tomatoes.  That, and hard-boiled eggs, is what we had for supper.  I was hungry falling asleep, but my huge calorie needs hadn't kicked in yet, breakfast was only a few hours away, and supposedly it is good to eat a light supper! 

Mountains...Three of Them!

We were able to get started pretty early this morning, since we had little packing to do.  Of course it didn't rain...we had a roof over our heads!  It was a foggy morning, but the sun was shining, and this was going to be our last day!  I had enjoyed the trip, but was ready to be at our destination.  It didn't take long to ride out of the fog...there was just a pocket of it...

 Right away we had a mountain to climb...but it wasn't too bad.  The first few hundred feet were steep, but 

 the rest was quite manageable.  There was very little traffic, and that made it that much more pleasant. 

The stripe across the mountain was our road... 

Shortly after that mountain, we worked our way into mining country.  We ended up taking a mining road over a mountain....lots of trucks, and a narrow, worn-out road.  Thankfully the way up wasn't steep...just long.  It felt like we were climbing that mountain forever!  We had some moments of confusion right before the extended climb...and weren't sure if the road was the correct one until we reached the top!  According to the way my map was drawn, we should have turned left to get to Good Spring, but road signs and a passerby both said to turn right.  We turned right.  It was the right way to turn!

Here is a photo of the destruction from strip mining...

 The quick descent was pleasant, but we had to stop a few times to cool our brakes.  We were becoming more confident at higher speeds now...and allowed ourselves to nearly hit 30mph at times.  It was exhilarating! 

We had one more mountain to cross....and we both were dreading it.  It was bigger than any we had scaled yet, and Route 645 took us straight up one side, and straight down the other!

The town of Pine Grove was right before the monster, and we stopped at a gas station to fuel up before the climb.  We had used up the last of the cookies we had brought from home, and had no snack food of any kind left.  I bought orange juice, gross pastries, gross jerky, and some other snack food.  We ate most of it there, so Tuck sent me back in to get stuff to eat while riding up the mountain...then we pedaled hill-ward.

We couldn't ride up it. It was incredibly steep, so steep that it was impossible to ride.  We walked all the way up Blue Mountain.  I had never sweat that much in my life!  The trip down wasn't much better, since our brakes heated up so quickly we had to stop frequently to cool them. 

Only a few miles to go after the mountain....what relief!

A view of the beast....

Another view of the same beast....

We arrived around 6:30...and our dear friends were surprised to see us!  I had told them to expect us in a couple of days....but the trip had gone more quickly than I expected...

A Day of Firsts...

We woke up ready to ride this morning... 

Packing went smoothly and quickly, and we were back on the road between 8:30 and 9:00....if I remember correctly.

The trail ended in the PA town of Jersey Shore...where we stopped to take care of our now-dry, but very smelly, unwearable clothing. 

Squeaky Kleen Laundry did the trick...

Across the street from the laundromat was a store I had never seen before.  A store of addictions...and it was very busy...

We had two route options after Jersey Shore...we could take route 220 to Williamsport and then pick up Bike Route J, or we could take the smaller route 44 down to Allenwood, again picking up Bike Route J across the Susquehanna River.  We decided to go with route 44, since 220 was limited to only motor vehicles...

This added one mountain, but we thought that would be okay...

We did survive...but some of it was very steep!

Here are our bikes near the top...with the final murderous incline in view...

There were no shoulders, but the traffic wasn't bad at all.  We even saw a couple other cyclists on our way up!  They were on fancy racing bikes, and were breezing past us on their way down, but it was encouraging to see them...

Here is the not very gradual incline we just rode up...

And here is the very steep bit we were about to tackle...

After we conquered the beast...this is what she looked like...

On our way down the mountain we had to stop a couple times to cool our rims since we tried to keep our speed under 30mph.  A cyclist passed us going the same direction...on his fast light bike.  At the bottom of the mountain we passed him....he had stopped for a snack.  A few miles later he caught up to us and chatted for a bit...

We then had our first flat....Tuck had noticed a slow leak on our way up the mountain, but just pumped it up hard, and watched it carefully.  A few miles after our cyclist friend left us, Tuck's tire went splat...patching was necessary.

In one the small towns along the Susquehanna that we passed through I stopped at a grocery store and picked up bananas, apples, fig newtons, cookies, walnuts, and yogurt.  I had started craving fruit for the last few days...especially bananas...

When we left the store, I was suddenly incredibly tired.  It was only mid-afternoon, but I felt like setting up camp and going to bed right away.  Unfortunately that was not to be...

We had decided to try to make at least 60 miles today, because that would make it possible to get to our destination tomorrow....

By the time we got to Shamokin Dam, I was getting slightly irrational in my handling of tractor trailer passes...I even panicked once and almost crashed.  After that, I was very careful and made sure I was relaxed and didn't freeze up whenever one went by.  Thankfully, almost every truck was very courteous.  One even forced oncoming traffic to get over so he wouldn't intimidate us!

Riding through Shamokin Dam and Sunbury was pretty frustrating.  We had a hard time finding the correct roads, and the traffic was pretty bad...

The dam itself was interesting though...

A few fisherman were wading and boating just past it...

As we were riding along a street that I was desperately hoping was the correct one, a young man stopped us with great enthusiasm.  He had been thinking of bike camping and thought we were "rad".  It was a "sign from God" that we rode past his house...nobody like us ever comes up his street.  He was very excited, and I sure hope we didn't discourage him by our lack-luster responses to his questions.  We were tired, frustrated, and not even sure if we were on the right road! 

Thankfully, not far out of Sunbury we came upon a cemetery with an old church-turned-dining-hall, parsonage, new, larger church, and outside pavilions and bathrooms.  We stopped and asked the parson if we could camp in the graveyard.  He was very generous....gave us the key to the dining hall and told us we could sleep inside if we wanted...oh joy!

I was so exhausted this evening that it was wonderful not having to set up camp!

We didn't even fix supper...just ate fig newtons, walnuts and yogurt...

It was great to sit on real chairs...with backs!  We brought our bikes inside the little sanctuary, and were able to take sponge baths in the bathrooms.  Flush toilets and plenty of easily accessible clean water were also welcome luxuries!!

It was a wonderful place after an exhausting, 63-mile day...