Combined Captain and First Officer
Entry:
Three Months on the Road!
Captain: Tonight we plan to be at Sunset
Ridge RV Park in Stillwater, Oklahoma. When we arrived at our spot for last
evening, we were told they’d sent us an email saying they were full-up! We
scrambled to find another place nearby and ended up at a little park next to a
National Guard Installation, behind a Motel 8.
It turned
out to be a nice little park with trees, grass and exotic chickens. The First
Officer struck up a conversation with the woman in charge, who just happened to
be an Air Force Vet who had, at one point in her career, worked in the White
House! It’s amazing who you might meet in unexpected places when you hit the
road.
Today we’re
celebrating our three-months-on-the-road anniversary. We’ve decided to try something different and blog
while we’re in motion. As I type, we’re doing 65 mph on the Kansas Turnpike,
and the First Officer is dictating words for the blog at approximately a mile a
minute!
Since the
rolling green hills of Kansas, dotted with cattle and sheep, can’t really be
captured in words or photographs that do it justice, we thought we’d take a
stab at writing little things we’d think of the day after writing a blog entry.
Stories that were, if you’ll allow, “a day late and a dollar short.”
Here are
some We-forgot-to-mentions . . .
Black Turkey Vultures – Up the hill and around the bend at
our Mississippi River Camp, a very tall steel latticework tower loomed above a
cement cul-de-sac at the end of the paved park road. Around six in the morning,
I ventured near the tower while walking the dogs. I got a shock when I looked
heavenward to see at least 10 black turkey vultures looking down at me! Yikes!
These birds
were as big as chickens, but their heads were not bald like the vultures you
might be picturing. They had small heads most likely devoid of feathers, but
their heads were small and hawk-like with no long, skinny necks, a scary flock
indeed! They were using the tower as a lookout for their first meal of the day
and when one of them took off, I could see the bird’s wingspan was tremendous.
I didn’t stick around to see what morsel this bird brought back from the river as
I began to fear the whole flock might descend on me and my little rabbit-like
Chihuahuas! Creepy!
An Impressive Lady
First Officer: Most of you know I like to wear my
Air Force cap. Yesterday when I went into the RV Park’s office I met a real
neat lady who, when she saw my hat, said that she had spent 25 years in the Air
Force before retiring. She asked me what I had done in the service, and I told
her radar maintenance on F105 Fighters. She told me she’d been in Command and
Control, flying in the big 747 Flying Command Posts. Later she was assigned to
the White House. She said that’s why she stayed in 25 years because she kept
getting really neat assignments. I immediately thought to myself, she was
getting those assignments because she was such an impressive and capable lady.
A little
while later, as I was connecting the utilities to the rig, she came out with a
new connector for the cable TV. I thanked her and then as she started to turn
away I said, “Ma’am,” she turned around, and I threw her a highball (salute).
She returned it just as crisply and militarily correct as you can ever imagine.
That was neat.
Captain:
The Starship Arrowstar Galley
Much to your
captain’s delight, the FO has taken a liking to cooking. Our morning rest-stop
breakfasts have become his domain with these sumptuous offerings: French toast,
pancakes, egg sandwiches with turkey bacon, scrambled egg tortillas, and my
favorite menu: pork chops with hash browns and fried eggs (he flips them over
without resorting to a spatula – it’s quite a show) and freshly brewed coffee.
Sometimes he
takes requests for dinner, too. I complained I didn’t get my favorite breaded
tenderloin sandwich while we were in Kokomo. I explained how the pork
tenderloin sandwiches are pounded so thin before they’re breaded that it’s
questionable if there’s really any pork buried in the bread crumbs. So far the
FO has taken two stabs at recreating this tasty treat. They’ve both been yummy,
and I’m delighted to think we can reproduce these in our own kitchen without
traveling all the way to Kokomo.
Recipe for Breaded Tenderloin
Sandwiches
Buy thin-cut, boneless breakfast pork
chops or tenderloins
Pound them as thin as possible with
the back side of a butcher knife or a meat pounder
Dip the meat into a whipped egg and
then into Progresso Italian Bread Crumbs
Fry in about ¼ inch of light olive
oil (you can add a pat of butter to the oil if you wish)
Salt and Pepper meat to taste.
Grill the buns by draining off almost
all the oil and put them face down in the hot skillet.
Put it all together and serve. The
meat will stick out of the bun an inch or more. CKT likes hers with a little
mayo and Frank likes his with a slice of cheese. Of course you can also add a tomato
slice and lettuce for a truly stupendous sandwich.
End Log
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