El Gringoqueño

The Student Has Become the Master

“Hey, Jaimito, do you want to race in the park today?  I’ll kick your butt.”  You gotta talk smack with the little boys lest they get too uppity.  “Think you can beat me, Jaimito?”

It’s been fun racing with the kids in park.  It’s amazing how fun something as a simple foot race can be.  It’s invigorating, healthy, and makes me feel like a little kid again.  It’s beautiful to experience the sublime pleasure of racing toward the branches of a leafy tree in the distance.  Jaimito is fast though.  The first time we raced, I actually had to try to beat him.  Yikes, this little eight-year-old is going to be kicking me to the curb before too long.  I need to lose a few pounds if I am to have any hope.  We have since made running in the park part of our ritual.  I’ve gotten steadily faster, I’m happy to say, as I’ve lost a few pounds and my legs have gotten stronger and more accustomed to sprinting.

Jaimito responded to my gentle taunt, “Yeah, Daddy, you probably will win.”

“Ohhhh! Jaimito, that’s no attitude.  You have to believe you can win.  If you give up before you start, you will surely lose.”  He was quiet, so I continued. “Don’t you want to win?”

“Meh,” he responded with a shrug.

“Oh come on, Jaimito, you’re just worried that you’re going to lose and don’t want to pretend you care.  I see through you.  Don’t you want to win?”

Jaimito thought for a second and responded “No, it’s not that, Daddy.  I just like to run.”

Fortieth Birthday Bike Trip Part #1

So I turned 40 in January, the big Four-Oh. I don’t know why, but forty looms like some big scary milestone. I’ve tried to put it out of my mind. Look, it’s just arbitrary; 40 doesn’t mean the same thing it used to. We are younger, fitter, and more vigorous, so Laura and I have decided that forty is fuerte.  I like that and to celebrate I didn’t really want a big bash; I just wanted to ride my bike around Puerto Rico.

So off I went in an attempt to do 320 miles in four days.

Here I am departing from our little house in Guaynabo on my 20 year old Casati Bicycle. It’s old, yes, vintage perhaps, but it’s only been ridden once or twice a year for the past ten years.  Remember, it’s not the years, it’s the miles.  My everyday ride is the mountain bike.

With Laura and the kids in tow, we headed north through the city, and with the awful traffic only averaged around 4 miles an hour for the first hour. Once we got the coast it opened up a bit and I had more fun. You see, here’s my butt. That’s pretty much the view my lovely family enjoyed for four days.

Now, some of my cycling compatriots might chastise me for not shaving my legs, having a spiffy carbon fiber frame, fancy clothes, and an uber-light wheelset. In my defense, I present the following:

1. Shaving is a lot of pain for no gain.
2. What father of four has 3 grand to drop on a bike?  I like the old bike.  I can fix whatever I need to.
3. Fancy clothes?  I just wanted to be seen by cars and not die.  Functional clothes are more to my liking.
4. Well, yeah, I have wheelset envy.  *Chuckle*  Some of the new wheelsets are awesome.  I’m saving my money.

Let me digress for a moment here.  Before the trip, I knew I was going to have to get a new rear cassette.  The existing cassette was a hold-over from my racing days, mostly flat riding and the largest sprocket only had 21 teeth, way too few if I should ever encounter any hills.   I went on Ebay and found a nice old 7-speed Shimano Hyperglide cassette and called it a day.  Once the thing came in the mail, I went to take the wheel off and realized my old one was a Uniglide cassette.  D’oh.  That’s bike talk for incompatible.   I hadn’t taken my rear cassette off in a couple of years, and I had forgotten it wasn’t Hyperglide.  Sigh, senior moment?   Now, granted, I should I have worked all this out well before the trip, but I put it off, and now I was leaving the next day, and all I had was this leg breaking gearing that was just not going to do.  My solution:  Grab an 8-speed Hyperglide cassette off an old mountain bike wheelset, and shim it with a loose cog.  Nice.  It worked, and my legs were saved if not shaved.

Day one took me along the north coast heading west.  I had a gorgeous view of crashing waves and beautiful beaches for much of the trip from San Juan to Barceloneta.  I made it 43 miles that first day, before I kind of ran out of gas and sunlight far short of my original goal of 75 miles.  Seeing as how I had not ridden farther than 30 miles in a day for over 10 years, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

That night, we found a little pizza joint called “Jimmy’s Pizza.”  How fortuitous.  Pizza wasn’t all that special, but we had fun and Jaimito and I told the uninterested staff we were Jimmys.

Here we are pictured in “I roll with the O’Malley crew” shirts graciously provided by my cousin Genevieve DeBose.  It’s like I had my very own team.

Stay tuned for part two.  Hopefully it won’t take as long as this one.

NASA is Having More Trouble Than I Thought

I brushed my teeth and turned to get into bed, but was impeded by various space-faring vehicles: an X-Wing, Rocket, and some little people.

“Oh look at the little space port that someone built in our bed. Isn’t that cute?”

“They are so cute, with their little spaceships,” Laura agreed.

“I hadn’t realized that the NASA budget cuts would take affect so quickly. Seems they’ve gotten pretty desperate if they’re using our bed as a launch location.”

*ROFL*

Javier Ties His Shoes

“Hey, Javier, can you get Asier’s shoes for me?” We were heading out to the hardware store to replace our butane tanks. Need some fire for grillin’. I asked Javier, if he could put on Asier’s shoes for me.

“Yes, Daddy, I can do it.” And he scooted off looking for Asier’s shoes. I watched him unstrap the velcro on the little red, blue, and yellow Superman shoes and carefully place them on Asier’s little twinkly toes.

“Good job, Javier. That’s great. I didn’t know you could put Asier’s shoes on.” Javier smiled. “Okay, let’s go get in the car.” I looked down and noticed that Javier’s shoes were a mess. The laces were dragging in a tangle. “Javier, do you need me to tie your shoes?”

“Uh, huh.”

“Hey Javier, we need to practice tying your shoes, so you can tie them yourself.”

“I already tied them, Daddy,” he declared.

“Oh really?”

“Uh, huh. I tied them myself.”

Now it was becoming clear. They were in a tangle because he had attempted to tie the laces himself, looping and pulling and twirling this way and that until they held together.

“I like your style, Javier. You’re a can-do boy.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” He understood from my tone it was a compliment, but didn’t quite grasp why his failed attempt at tying his shoes would warrant praise.

“I just like that you just tried to do it yourself. I liked that you didn’t let anything stop you. You didn’t know how to tie your shoes, but you tried anyway. That’s cool,” I said.

I looked back at almost five year old Javier sitting in his booster seat, his shoulders straight, his head held high.

2009 in Retrospect

I got to know my compost pile.   I collected the paper, vegetable refuse, grass cuttings, and piled them up in a chicken wire silo in the back yard.  It smelled sweet as it decomposed, and I watched the little bugs and the lizards that scampered across it.  I watched the millipedes churning away in the compost’s belly excreting black gold.

Occasionally, a hearty squash seed would start to sprout and I would hesitate as I turned it under with my pitchfork.  He was trying so hard, I would muse.  As the soil became fertile, the neighboring tree’s roots reached up and suckled at its base.  The yellow flowers were bigger, brighter, more numerous this year.

I planted some tomatoes, too.  I placed the seeds in egg cartons and when they were “estrong enough” (Princess Bride, anyone?), moved them to beds mixed with compost soil.  The tomatoes grew big and round, fragrant and luscious.  Before too long, though, they began to whither.  One by one, in a period of a three or four weeks, half of the tomatoes were dead dry sticks.  I soon discovered my enemy – snails.  I poured salt on one and watched him bubble and froth until he was just a puddle.  I decided to never do that again, and the snails would have my remaining tomatoes – every last one.  I will try again this next year.

As well you may know, I’ve been experimenting with coffee cherries; from fruit to roast.  It has been fun to see how much work goes into a simple cup of joe.  It’s mind boggling how complex the whole process is.  There are infinite opportunities for failure throughout, and you never know how a cup will turn out.  How late did the cherries mature? Did they ferment too long? Did they dry too slow? How was the roast? Too hot? Too short? Too long? Not long enough? Was the brew water temperature too hot, not hot enough? How long did it steep? My goodness, and to top it off, it seems that the the particulars of the bean, our little diva bean, require all those variables to be adequate to her liking.

The cup of coffee is always good, I’ve found, but always different.  It’s frustrating and wonderful.

Coffee Cherry Tea

I sun dried these coffee cherries after pitting them.  The cherry eaten raw is sweet and fibrous.  After tasting the raw fruit I was convinced that it would make a decent cherry pie, which you will see in the next post.  The farmers told me I was crazy and urged me to make tea from at least some of them.  I was happy to oblige.

I decided I did not want to toast the dried cherries, and instead made a green tea from them.

Delicious.  Although there were no overpowering flavors, it made a delightful breakfast tea, said Laura.  And it definitely had caffeine. We were buzzing on it afterward.  Beware.

First Look at Project Coffee 2009

Here is my humble drum roaster for roasting coffee.  It’s a steel can that I re-purposed by cutting, shaping, drilling, and riveting.  It’s ugly, but I can say it works.  Check out my coffee below.

In order to calibrate my roast, I put 2 and a half cups of fresh café oro (green unroasted coffee) and set the clock for 20 minutes at more or less 450 to 500 degrees F. There was furious cracking at the end of the time, and I quickly extracted the beans and cooled them by tossing them between two metal colanders. This also removes the chaff, which is a thin skin that surrounds the bean and flakes off during roasting. Usually, I don’t like my coffee so dark,  but surprisingly it was delicious, full bodied, fresh, with a hint of smokiness.  I expected it to be burnt tasting, but it was fabulous black, smooth, flavorful.

The next batch, I put in just 2 cups of café oro and set it for 17 minutes.  By color alone, this batch came out more like what you find in the supermarket, a nice medium brown roast. Again, I cooled it, removed the chaff, and ground that sucker up to brew. This one tasted different. I’m no expert in all the adjectives, but it seemed like I could taste more of the coffee bean this time and less of the roast. The flavor was fuller but still smooth and drinkable. There was no hint of smokiness. It was equally fabulous, but different.

Side by side comparison of the color.

Next batch, I’m going for 18 and a half minutes.

Upcoming – next post on how the coffee cherry tea came out.

Being Handled by My Daughter

All the kids are in nine million different after school activities, and as per our lot in life, Laura and I get to drive them all over God’s creation at all hours of the day.  Recently, Olaia, auditioned for a local production of the opera La Boheme.  Awesome, she made it.  It’s an honor, and our talented little singing girl is excited beyond measure.  But – the rehearsals are murder.  Tonight for example, she has a rehearsal from 6:30pm to 10pm.

“Olaia, do you know we’ve made 4 round trips to Santurce today?  Twice for Jaimito and now twice for you,” I complained.

“Daddy, you and mommy are like Miracle Max and his wife – making miracles.”

I laughed, ’cause that little girl knows how to tickle my funny bone.  She knows I’m weak for Princess Bride quotes and uses that knowledge to her advantage.

“Hello,” she said next, “my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”

“That’s funny, Olaia.” And I launched verbatim into the battle of wits and other snippets.  Suddenly I forgot that two hours of my day had been spent as a bus driver.  I was just hanging with my wise and funny little girl.  I am one lucky daddy!

Boo-boo-bacca and the Sloppy Joe

“Hey Asier, say Chewbacca.”

“Boo-boo-bacca.”

That’s been our running joke for the past couple of days.  Asier is little Mr. Boo-boo-bacca boy.

That reminds me; a couple of months ago, Olaia said to me, “Hey Daddy, there’s that one store – the store with that sloppy joe chair.”

“The what, Olaia?  Sloppy Joe?”

“You know, that chair that goes back and is comfy.”

“Oh, you mean the La-z-boy chair.”

“Yeah, you know what I meant.”

Haha, it’s been a few months but every time we see a La-z-boy recliner or anything that resembles one, we all say in loud voices, “Hey Olaia, look, there’s a Sloppy Joe chair.”

Good times were had by all.  My family never ceases to crack me up.