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Listing all posts with label Book Review. Show all posts.
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Christopher has discovered another book he felt worth reviewing for Seattle Socks. It is an amazing idea to take on the bike ride that Vic and Ray set out for. 1909, I imagine socks were made of natural fiber, but probably not created as well as we have here on our web site. For the camping portion of their trip, they would have found enormous comfort with the Extreme Socks.
Two Wheels North
By Evelyn McDaniel Gibb
Oregon State University Press - 2000
Touring by bike has become a popular way to see the west coast and has peaked my interest for a few years. I saw the book Two Wheels North sitting on a library book shelf and picked it up. My guess was that it was a memoir of a trip riding to Alaska or somewhere cold, sadly it wasn’t, it recorded a cycling from Santa Rosa, CA to Seattle, a route I have driven non-stop along I-5. But the interest factor for this trip is that it was in 1909.
Evelyn McDaniel Gibb tells the story of her father, Vic, and his friend Ray, fresh out of high school who decided to cycle from Santa Rosa to Seattle to see the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The boys loaded their bikes with gear for camping, cooking, hunting and fishing before heading out on roads that were rarely maintained for automobiles. They took stage coach routes most of the way and when necessary pushed their bikes along the rails. They were committed to cycling as much as they could as they were to be given a reward in Seattle upon their arrival for doing so. With no funds to get them all the way to their destination they worked odd jobs on farms and mills paying to buy food, mend bikes and pay for ferry crossings.
They sustained injuries, sickness, hunger, theft, law enforcement, being trapped in tunnels with a train and their fair share of animal encounters. Along the way they were forced to walk their bikes over 200 miles. I have been tempted to cycle US-101 to California, but the luxuries I plan to use along the way would have been unimaginable in 1909, a day and age when Tacoma’s Stadium High School was said to be the finest school west of Chicago.
Gibb’s recount of her father’s story is well told and stems mostly from her interviews with him and retells the story he and Ray wrote via letters to their local paper in Santa Rosa. In fear of alarming their families, their letters did not include their dangerous encounters along the way. It’s an inspiring tale that is very humbling for anyone who has driven the same route or has ever embarked on a long bicycle journey on a well tuned bicycle with lightweight gear on a paved shoulder.
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Another Book Review. Christopher loves to cook and share food. His take on Kitchen-Confidential is a little colorful as it seems the book is also. Christopher recently spent a month in South America, enjoying several countries. Soon, he is about to leave for the UK. Hopefully, there will be blogs relating to his recent travels. The weather appears to be warm in the UK, maybe he should pack some low organic cotton socks for when he is relaxing.
In Kitchen Confidential, Travel Channel host and rough cut gem of a human being Anthony Bourdain offers an inside look at the restaurant kitchen. I wouldn’t say an expose, but just some damn good anecdotes and lessons learned from years of living and breathing the restaurant world and tumbling through the rough life that it often spawns outside the kitchen. In his book, he did not live the “American Dream” of rags to riches. He came from a well to do family with a well rounded east coast upbringing and was then thrashed to the bottom rung, partially by his involvement in the cookie culture. After a few too many cocaine and heroin binges and horrible restaurant experiences he managed to turn his life around to become known around the world as a chef, writer and after writing the book a television host.The book is part autobiography, part chronicle of New York restaurants and part guidebook to being a chef. When I say “chef,” I mean it according to his definition of being a captain of your own pirate ship. The debauchery committed in the kitchen including drugs, sex, extreme profanity, health code violations and overall angst towards one another can be appealing to some and a deterrent for patrons to even set foot into their favorite restaurant.
Bourdain’s lessons learned are very helpful ranging from how to purchase ingredients, build a menu, be a human resources guru and work with New York gangsters. The book is great for anyone who enjoys having food prepared for them and loves a good laugh spawned from a wicked sense of humor. With decades of experience in nearly every type of kitchen, Bourdain profiles dishwashers to owners, from the cream of the crop to the bottom of the barrel. His descriptions of former crew members are the making of a cast for an instant cult classic film where the camera never leaves the kitchen. If possible, read the updated edition because Bourdain reflects on how Kitchen Confidential changed his career and gives reactions from his fellow cooks.
