The Ethiopian Egg

Ethiopian food is one of the kickass things I learned existed when I moved out of the Land of Chili and took up residence in DC. I'll admit it's not for everyone, though...you have to eat with your hands, which is pretty f'n gross sometimes, but I don't mind when Ethiopian food is on the table for some reason. Another case of situational ethics, I guess.

Another issue is that you'll get some food served up that you really have no idea what it is. My best advice is to grab a double handful when that happens. Just dive in and own it. I think I've eaten some animal's stomach more than once, and that ish was outstanding. Had I known it was stomach, I would not have gone forward with the eating.

One thing I always recognize, though: The Egg. For some reason, if you get one of the group platter meal things (just a shitload of food on one big tray, so multiple sets of hands can be a-grabbin'), they 'garnish' it with a gigantic hard-boiled egg. The egg is covered in all kinds of spices and sauces, and even though it's probably an Ostrich egg or something, I'm always pumped about eating that thing.

I usually have very little competition from the other diners, which rules. I'm happier when I don't have to share.

I Smell a Rat

Seriously. I could smell this bastard as soon as I walked out the door. That's my foot in there for scale, which makes that rat about a foot long. F'n gross.

Sightings

A 3-day weekend of skating, going to stupid hipster bars, skating, and watching the World Cup culminated on Saturday with a positive sighting of my favorite head scar and the newly-wedded Jbanks .

I then ended Saturday with a healthy slam at one of the dirtiest spots of all time. Seemed about right.

Tragic

Check out this satellite photo of the ever-growing oil slick, courtesy our friends at British Petroleum. Good thing that we'll be drilling more and more of these wells off the Eastern seaboard.

Everything you see that's reddish-brown is oil. Keeping in mind that this photo is from 400 miles above the earth, all i can say is holy shit that's a lot of oil:

photo via GeoEye

50% Beard, 100% Amazing

I'm not sure why Nate had to shave half his beard last Friday, but I'm pretty glad he did. Maybe it was because he had a roommate move out that day and was feeling empty, thus only half of his former self.

Maybe it was because he spent more than half his day helping that roommate move, without reward of beers and/or foodstuffs afterwards, so he was feeling halfway unappreciated.

Regardless, I'm happy he decided to shave that day. I'm even more glad that he didn't kill me after I took these photos. Because I always figured if I saw a dude with this look in his eye it would be the last thing I ever saw.

The Incredible, Photogenic, Egg

This might be in the top ten all-time of kickass photos of eggs. If, you know, there were actually such a ranking system for photos of eggs.

No fancy effects, no light stands or egg models, and no photoshop work. This is what happens every time I cook, actually; my food is surrounded by soft, early-morning mist and a harpsichord is playing lilting melodies in the background. If you listen closely you can hear it...

Big-Ass Trees

Redwoods are really big trees. I knew this. I'd heard about them, read about them, seen them on tv. Even so, I was still stunned by how big they were in person, and just how much space they took up. As we drove through Humboldt Redwood State Park, it was crazy seeing these gigantic trees whipping by on both sides of the road.

It is even crazier to see them closeup, tho...they're just immense, and so tall, that there's not really any branches around you, since most start at least 40 feet up. It's pretty much open space with gigantic trees every 20 or 30 feet.

I saw these in Humboldt Redwood State Park a few days ago. We're lurking in Bend, OR today and pushing east to Missoula, MT tomorrow.