More COVID-19 Chronicles - Baking in Place

Note

This post is not about smoking weed while sheltering in place. It’s about actual baking. If you’re a ganja aficionado looking for hot tips on how to score the kindest bud, you’re on the wrong blog. Also, if you’re high right now, I guarantee you won’t make it to the end of this post. Maybe you can half-watch the vlog version, though:

Introduction

As we all shelter in place, it’s natural to think, “There’s must be more to life than working from home and watching Riverdale and Stranger Things.” So why not learn to bake? In this post I provide advice on how to source your ingredients during these trying times, and then I’ll walk you through some tried and true recipes and share some expert techniques.

Stocking your pantry

Stocking up on baking supplies is going to be very difficult during the pandemic due to all the hoarding that’s going on. The entire baking aisle has been ransacked … no flour, no sugar, no yeast. As if people even knew how to bake! This is what happens when everyone’s garage is packed to the gills with extra toilet paper but they still feel like they need to do something.

If you can’t find cake flour but do have all-purpose, here’s a neat tip from The Joy of Cooking: 

Cake flour is made of soft wheats, and their delicate, less expansive gluten bakes to a crumblier texture. Although you will not get the same result, in emergencies you may substitute 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons sifted all-purpose flour for 1 cup cake flour.

Note bene: it says right there, you can only make this substitution in emergencies. Well, guess what? The US has been formally declared to be in a state of national emergency, so you may make the substitution! Nobody will come after you … you are within your rights. 

But what if you can’t even find regular flour? Just keep looking! And do not, in desperation, resort to gluten-free flour. With all this coronavirus craziness, haven’t you suffered enough?

Finding unsalted butter is going to be a particular challenge. You have two options (beyond showing up within minutes of the store’s dairy delivery):

1. Go ahead and buy salted butter. How bad could it be? Surely a little salt never hurt a baked good? Just use less added salt in the recipe, and if it doesn’t call for any, just add more sugar. (Note: I haven’t actually tried this.)
2. Take off your damn surgical mask for a few seconds, let your glasses un-fog, and then stare really hard at the supermarket shelves. Look all around, scanning first left-to-right and then in an expanding spiral. After your eyes have roamed around long enough, they’ll get so tired you’ll be unable to focus and you’ll just sort of zone out, like looking at one of those Magic Eye autostereograms, and then suddenly you’ll see it: a block of super-fancy Irish unsalted butter that costs like $9 for half a pound. In fact there are two boxes left. Buy them both. Yes, it’s a ripoff, but remember, your 401(k) has lost like $300K in the last two months. It’s all Monopoly money now. Get that butter.

Now, yeast can be even harder to find right now. There are two ways forward. Option one: you could phone your mother-in-law and she’ll actually mail you some. This puts her at risk, though, as she must brave the post office because her mailman doesn’t pick up outgoing mail.

Option two: you could borrow some yeast from a neighbor. Remember, though, you can’t just walk over there and ring the doorbell. You’ll have to stake the place out. Stand in the driveway for as long as it takes for somebody to come out, knowing this could be days. (I know, that’s crazy—but do you want to bake or not?) If your neighbor doesn’t recognize you, back up an extra six feet and take your mask off momentarily. If you’re still not recognized, it’s because your hair has gone grey for the first time due to the salons being closed. Loudly announce yourself by name (but for God’s sake put your mask back on first, as loud voices more readily transmit the coronavirus)! Instruct your neighbor to leave the loaner yeast on your porch for you to retrieve later.

(Why wouldn’t you just get yeast from Amazon? Think about it. This is Amazon’s finest hour. They couldn’t have engineered a better way than COVID-19 to finally gratify their rabid appetite for total retail domination. Don’t let this pandemic be the death blow to all small businesses. Save that Prime membership for when things are back to normal!)

Now, if you run out of baking powder, that’s actually not so big a deal. You can make your own! It’s even easier than homemade hand sanitizer. All you do is substitute, for each teaspoon of baking powder, ½ teaspoon of cream of tartar, 1/3 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, and 1/8 teaspoon salt. But don’t try to store this—use it right away. And don’t get all clever and add some Drano or Comet thinking that’ll protect you from the coronavirus. It won’t, and your baked goods will taste like store-bought.

Okay, enough about ingredient sourcing. It’s time to explore some classic recipes.

Gold layer cake

2 cups cake flour (remember, subtract 2 tbsp if using all-purpose!)

2 tsp double-acting baking powder

¼ tsp salt

½ cup butter

1 cup sifted sugar

3 egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla

¾ cup milk

Lemon custard or raspberry jam

Whipped cream (not from a can!)

2 small children

Have all ingredients at about 70 degrees, except the children, who should be at about 99. Sift the flour. Resift with the baking powder and salt. At this point in the preparation the two children should come running through the kitchen, fighting as they go, and knock the mixing bowl from your hands. About half the dry ingredients should end up on the floor. Using the kind of right-brain, gut-fueled math that chickens employ when they bob their heads while walking, figure out how to add back in the right combination of dry ingredients to replace what you lost. Now cream the butter, work in the sugar and egg yolks, add the vanilla, and mix together all the ingredients, gradually, in 3 parts, alternating with the milk, though at this point you’re too furious to really follow these directions very carefully—everything has frankly become a bit of a blur. 

Stir the batter until smooth. Bake in two greased layer pans about 25 minutes at 375 degrees. When both you and the cake have cooled off, use a long serrated knife to slice off the convex part of each layer, so they’ll be flat. Take the part you cut off and shovel it into your mouth. “Holy shit,” you’ll say, “that’s amazing.” This will be the best cake ever, trust me. Your kids will run over and start cramming cut-off bits into their mouths too, and nobody will be able to believe how phenomenally good this cake is. As if it were even necessary at this point, assemble the cake layers with the lemon custard or jam between, and coat it with the whipped cream.

Now, if you don’t have two small children, and don’t dump half your dry ingredients on the floor, and just follow the more basic recipe, will the cake still turn out? It will be … okay. Just okay. For it to work right, you need the accident to happen. Don’t ask me why.

Sugarless chocolate cake

10.5 oz unsweetened chocolate

10.5 oz unsalted butter (or regular butter in a pinch)

6 eggs

½ cup almond flour

1 cup powdered erythritol (C₄H₁₀O₄)

Melt the butter and chocolate. Beat the eggs until foamy, then add the sweetener, and mix. Add the butter and chocolate, along with the almond flour, and stir just until combined. Bake in a greased pan at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. When it has cooled, dust with cocoa powder and then throw the whole thing straight into the garbage. When your kids protest, shriek at them, “People are dying, and you’re all broken up about not getting to eat a stupid cake that’s totally disgusting anyway, due to having no sugar?! Really?!” That ought to teach them a lesson. The little bastards.

Scones

Sift together in a large bowl:

   1¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour

   2¼ tsp double-acting baking powder

   1 tbsp sugar

   ½ tsp salt

Cut into these ingredients, until the size of small peas, using a pastry blender or 2 knives:

   ¼ cup cold butter

Wait a second. Cut into them? Size of small peas? Two knives? Sounds like a lot of hassle! And look at the ratio of ingredients: a single tablespoon of sugar, and a quarter cup of butter? Scones are ridiculous. If you think these things are worth the inevitable heart attack, why not just peel a stick of butter like a damn banana, and eat that? Go ahead. You’ve earned it.

Uncle Max’s 2D biscuits

Sift together:

   1 ¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour

   ¼ tsp yeast

   ½ tsp salt

   2 tsp double-acting baking powder

   2 tsp sugar

   ½ tsp baking soda

Cut in:

   ¼ cup lard (yeah, baybee!) or 5 tbsp unsalted butter

Add and lightly mix:

   ¾ cup buttermilk

Turn the dough onto a floured board. Knead it gently for 30 seconds. Pat the dough until it’s ¼” thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter. Bake 10-12 minutes. Note that the biscuits will not rise, due to the yeast being dead. It expired in 2012. What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t I give you two perfectly good strategies for obtaining fresh yeast? These biscuits will be so flat, you’ll practically lose sight of them when turning them sideways. Serve them anyway and tell your family it’s matzo.

Mom’s amazing boule

Note: these ingredient quantities are for a 4 quart Dutch oven (i.e., the kind of shallow, enameled, cast-iron covered pot that costs like a gazillion dollars). If you don’t own one of these, now’s a great time to buy one online. I mean, what else are you gonna spend your money on right now?

3 cups white flour

½ tsp non-dead or undead yeast

1 ½ tsp sea salt

1 ½ cups warm water

Dissolve yeast in water. If you’re not sure it’s alive, take some more of it from the package and put it in warm water with a little sugar, and wait 5-10 minutes. It should get all bubbly. (This is called proofing.) If it doesn’t bubble up, your yeast is dead! Damn it, how could you let this happen again?! Go back to the earlier step of hustling up fresh yeast wherever you can. Then, combine dry ingredients, and add the water/yeast solution and combine well. Cover with plastic wrap and a damp towel. Let sit at room temperature for 18-24 hours.

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Place Dutch oven with lid in (actual) oven to heat up. Transfer dough to floured surface—it will be almost sticky—and form into a round boule. Use as little flour as possible! Place round on a piece of parchment strewn with coarse cornmeal.

When Dutch oven is hot—after about 1/2 hour—take it out, carefully, using a proper potholder that your mom sewed, not one of those stupid knitted ones you got at the middle school craft fair, because with that knitted kind your thumb will go right through it and you’ll burn the crap out of yourself, causing you to drop the Dutch oven on the floor, barely missing your foot due to your catlike reflexes but denting the hardwood floor because the Dutch oven weighs like a gazillion pounds. When you’re done cussing and running cold water over your thumb, place dough with parchment into Dutch oven, replace lid, and slide into oven; reduce heat to 425 and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake for another 15 minutes until nicely browned. Cool on rack; cover with towel. Eat with good butter—salted, perhaps, just to use it up because that’ll give you a smug feeling, knowing you can buy more salted butter easily, though deep down inside you’re wondering: how did we get to this place, where we can get a smug feeling just from eating butter?!

Other notes: did I forget something? Like, kneading the bread? Who ever heard of bread dough you don’t need to knead? Believe it! You really only knead this for about 10 seconds before forming it into the round. Also, you can slash the dough in a pattern just before baking if you wish. Optional: give it a second rise of 2-3 hours before baking, and/or add 1 tbsp vinegar to dough before first rise. If your Dutch oven is larger than 3-4 quarts, adjust recipe accordingly so your bread is not too flat.

By the way, I feel honor-bound to point out that the photo below is from my mom (as is this recipe). I’ve never baked bread in my life. (But the burned thumb due to knitted potholder? Yeah, that was me.)

Calzone

Follow the instructions in your favorite pizza recipe, except when it’s time to move the unbaked pizza from the cutting board to the heated pizza stone, fumble it completely so it is not longer even remotely disk-shaped, but more closely resembles a deflated basketball. Cover any gaping holes with bits of dough, performing dough-grafts by harvesting from other parts of what is now, let’s face it, a calzone. Lower the oven heat because this bad boy is going to have to bake slowly for a long time so the middle isn’t raw. Would it help to try to stuff some ricotta in there? No … I think you’ve caused enough damage already.

Virtual baking

Binge-watch The Great British Bake Off while practicing calligraphy.

Flourless chocolate cake

This is a great recipe for when you can’t buy flour, duh!

¾ cup unsalted butter

12 oz. bittersweet baking chocolate

6 eggs

1 ¼ cups sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream (because it’s just about the only brand left with real vanilla and no “natural flavors” by which the food industry means “artificial flavors”)

Brandy or chocolate liqueur

Chop chocolate into ½” pieces. Put in saucepan with butter and cook over low heat until melted. Let this cool until it’s room temperature. While it’s cooling, beat together eggs, vanilla, salt, and sugar, using an electric mixer at full blast. It should be thick enough to form little crests, more like waves than dunes. Gently mix with chocolate mixture but don’t overdo it. Pour into darling little ramekins that you’ve buttered generously. Bake for about 20 minutes. Be sure to test the mini-cakes for doneness by putting a fork in them. If the fork comes out clean, it’s time to take them out of the oven and serve them warm with vanilla ice cream. Actually, you baked the little cake-lets way too long and they’ve turned into little hockey pucks. You’ll know you’ve failed when your small children only pick at them, and/or try to lever them out of the ramekins and hide them under a napkin.

After a reasonable period of mourning—perhaps a week is enough since pandemic time crawls by so slowly—try again with a whole new batch of ingredients. This time, take the little cakes out of the oven a lot earlier, so they are almost still a liquid. They should jiggle just a little. Again, serve them warm. Now they’re underdone but you’ve already added the ice cream so it’s a little late to put them back in the oven. Instead, drizzle them with 2-3 tbsp of brandy or liqueur, and then drink a large tumbler of it, neat. See? Your stupid cake is getting better already. Next, leave your rapidly puddling dessert on the table, abandon your family sitting there, take the bottle of brandy or liqueur with you to the living room, and binge-watch Tiger King. There. Now you’re sheltering in place!

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum

Vlog

This week’s post is available as a vlog. Just kick back, crack open a beer, and click below.

Or, if you prefer my text to my mug, below is the classic format.

Introduction

Five weeks into shelter-in-place, it’s still hard to find toilet paper. I’ve never seen anything like it—but did you know this isn’t our nation’s first paranoia-induced toilet paper shortage? It turns out there’s a lot we didn’t know about this basic consumer product. In this post I’ll delve into the following:

• The great TP famine of ‘73
• Non-pandemic toilet paper hoarding
• How unnecessary toilet paper actually is
• The psychology of toilet paper stockpiling
• Toilet paper hoarding as microcosm

Ah, “microcosm” … there’s a real English-major word for you. Don’t worry, I won’t get all eggheaded on ya. How could I, with such a low topic?

(Check out these stoked shoppers. One is saying to the other, “Look, not only do they have toilet paper here, but a choice of brands! It’s like 2019!”)

The great TP famine of ‘73

The world has seen pandemics before, and it’s seen worse. But this bizarre toilet paper hoarding? Actually, that’s happened before too, and what’s more, there was no global crisis precipitating it. This was back in 1973, and as described here, it all started with a congressman who, irritated with a relatively unimportant pulp paper shortage, which was “allegedly caused by companies that increased paper exports to avoid Federal price controls,” took to the American media to drum up support for his constituents. The press ignored him until he reframed the issue as a potential toilet paper shortage. This they jumped on, as did news agencies globally. Pockets of Americans started stockpiling, though this fell short of a national phenomenon. Then Johnny Carson got involved.

Johnny worked the news tidbit into his opening routine, during which—struggling to keep a straight face—he declared, “I wanna tell you, it is serious.” After that broadcast, everyone went nuts and started hoarding toilet paper, just as we are now. Perhaps they were being even sillier, believing in a nonexistent supply problem without even having an ostensible cause to point to. (Even before the Carson piece, the Scott Paper Company went on television to confirm that their production was as high as ever.)

Is it ever rational to second-guess the toilet paper supply?

There certainly are circumstances in which it’s perfectly rational to expect a dearth of toilet paper. One of these is large public events. I learned early on to bring my own TP roll to bike races, as the portable toilets often run out. One year at the Everest Challenge stage race, a guy coming out of the San-O-Let warned me, “There’s no paper. I had to use my arm warmers.” I thought he was joking, until I got in there … how disgusting. Fortunately, I’d planned ahead.

The other time you should BYOTP is when traveling to certain countries. Some of them simply don’t use toilet paper (more on this later) and others tend to run out due to theft. A Quora discussion on the topic “Why is there no toilet paper in Chinese public toilets?” tackled this apparently widespread problem. A few respondents explained the rationale behind the behavior:

It’s because they used to [be] poor or they [are] actually poor now … in 2018, Chinese per capita disposable income is 28228 Yuan or about 4000$ per year. And rural people’s per capita disposable income is 14617 Yuan or about 2000$ per year, 40 Yuan per day. Let’s say one roll of toilet paper is maybe 2 Yuan, so it’s almost 1/20 of rural people’s income for one day.

For some old people, extreme poverty had a destructive influence on their morality—Stealing will let you survive and being lawful makes you (and your children) starve to death.

One correspondent even provided this security camera footage.

Lest you think only Internet randos are reporting this, the New York Times wrote here about how technology is being used in China to address the problem: 

The authorities in Beijing are fighting back, going so far as to install high-tech toilet paper dispensers equipped with facial recognition software in several restrooms. Before entering restrooms in the park, visitors must now stare into a computer mounted on the wall for three seconds before a machine dispenses a sheet of toilet paper, precisely two feet in length. If visitors require more, they are out of luck. The machine will not dispense a second sheet to the same person for nine minutes. 

Still, the prevalence of toilet paper theft is subject to exaggeration. One person in the Quora thread chimed in to state that he generally has no trouble finding toilet paper, providing ample photographic evidence. He also shared this photo of a method used to deter waste:

Perhaps I’ll steal that idea and post a handy usage guide in my own bathroom!

Is toilet paper even necessary?

Sometimes, a westerner’s inability to find toilet paper is a matter of foreign custom. Russians, for example, used scrap paper until fairly recently. As described here, their first toilet paper factory was built in 1969, and due to low output the product was strictly rationed. One citizen recalled, “The lucky ones who managed to buy it would thread rolls on a string and walk home wearing their spoils like a necklace, to the envy of passers-by.”

This scarcity of toilet paper in Russia continued for decades. A respondent to this Quora thread wrote, “I was in Russia for one month in 1985. There were baskets of ripped up newspapers in each bathroom stall.” A friend of mine who visited in the ‘80s reported a similar scenario, and in fact accidently walked in on two maids as they cleaned his hotel room. They were caught red-handed with the roll of toilet paper he’d brought from home, passing it back and forth and giggling. It must have seemed absurdly posh to them.

Moreover, many countries simply don’t want toilet paper. This fascinating thread provides lots of testimony from people, mainly in India, who consider it disgusting that anybody uses toilet paper instead of water. Some examples: 

Unless I live in a desert, I would never want to carry my mess in my pants for days!

Let’s imagine, a crow shits on your shoulder or head … Will you still use a tissue paper to clean it? 

Water is more efficient and practical for a populous country like India where we have plenty of rivers and ponds. It will be quite impractical to switch to tissues.

This valiantly but imperfectly translated assessment actually blames the western toilet paper tradition for the Black Death:

Britain enraptured from crapping from the windows … within the eighteenth century and victimization pans to shit in rooms so property somebody carry it and inflicting plague and Black Death to toilet rolls. We washed our bottoms and washed our hands at the moment. So, no plague. No Black Death.

One helpful respondent offers this challenge: 

Put some Nutella on your right hand. Then wipe it off with a piece of paper, preferably toilet paper. Put some Nutella on your left hand. Now wash this with water, preferably a faucet. Now touch and smell both the hands. The right hand would smell of Nutella and you may feel some remnant on it too. But the left hand neither smells of Nutella nor there is anything to touch. Now imagine. Put your bodily waste instead of Nutella. Now tell me, which one is more hygienic??

From this same thread I learned that Pakistanis also prefer water to toilet paper; that Italians also do; and that an American who lived in India for 38 years learned to prefer water to toilet paper. He writes, “There is nothing better than a jet of water to pressure-wash the exhaust port of your Death Star.”

Within this anti-TP context, it’s hard for me to understand why—at a time when people all over the world are dying of a horrible virus—Americans are getting so worked up about their preferred method of, uh, cleaning up. What’s the big deal, when toilet paper alternatives clearly exist? Maybe it’s because America is also out of hand sanitizer?

Which brings us to …

The psychology of toilet paper stockpiling

Chances are, lots of people hoard toilet paper simply because others are doing it. Imitation is perhaps the quintessential human behavior: it’s how we all learned to talk, after all. Where such copycat behavior is concerned, rest assured very little contemplation of supply chain fundamentals is going on.

Beyond that, this hoarding behavior may give us some sense of control at a time when we feel we have little. As articulated by this article in The Conversation, “Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.” The article also points out, “Modern economies run on trust and confidence. COVID-19 is breaking down that trust. People are losing confidence that they will be able to go outside and get what they need when they need it.”

I have to think the CDC’s reversal on wearing masks hasn’t helped maintain this trust. “You don’t need masks,” they told us, and look what happened: those who defied the CDC and hoarded masks anyway are now almost the only people who have them. In this way cynicism and distrust have been reinforced.

Toilet paper hoarding as microcosm

There is no overall supply problem with toilet paper, and actual usage of this product is not increasing. If anything, we’re all scared shitless. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) Therefore, if nobody altered their behavior in any way—that is, if they purchased toilet paper on the same schedule they always have—we would all continue to have plenty.

And yet, in the short term we don't, because too many people are behaving irrationally. It doesn't take unanimous foolishness to create a problem; just a critical mass. After all, it doesn’t help me to think rationally about the toilet paper factories running at full capacity, because irrational behavior is creating outsized demand. The shortage, in short, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The paranoid and/or highly organized types have far, far more toilet paper than they need, while the optimistic and/or disorganized among us are running out. The clear thinkers don’t get to lord their sensible approach over anyone; instead, they’re trampled by the stampeding masses.

In a more general sense, one downside of freedom is our vulnerability in the face of what can amount to crowdsourced public policy. Consider the problem of non-vaccinators (aka anti-vaxxers): they don't perceive diseases like measles or HPV as a threat because they've never encountered them, so they declare these diseases a non-threat and stop vaccinating their children. By behaving ignorantly, they are creating widespread problems that affect everyone in their cohort, and sometimes beyond. Measles, for example, could be eradicated worldwide if everybody were vaccinated; instead, it persists and is making a comeback. (As reported by the CDC, last year saw more than 22 outbreaks, with well over a thousand victims, here in the US—a country where this disease was thought to be eliminated 20 years ago.)

This same phenomenon could happen with COVID-19, as frustrated citizens demand an end to shelter-in-place and/or ignore the rules. By mistaking the success of social distancing for a lack of need for it, they lead us back into danger. Lashing out at the authority they’re tired of bending to, they err on the side of undue optimism. Oddly, this is almost the reverse of the toilet paper irrationality: in that case, they’re being unduly paranoid about something they have relatively easy influence over. As the Conversation article notes, TP hoarding “is an example of ‘zero risk bias,’ in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount.” In other words, it’s easier to hoard toilet paper than to shelter in place … never mind the return on investment.

Where the microcosm breaks down

Fortunately, there is enough toilet paper to go around, ultimately, and we'll reach a point where so many people have so much stockpiled, they'll eventually stop hoarding it. Their garages will get so overrun with TP, they'd feel silly buying more, and will finally learn to pass up their next opportunity to continue stockpiling. Eventually, the shelves will be replenished, and then the hysteria will die down and we'll go back to normal, which consists of all Americans having enough TP in their homes that they don't worry about it. Supply and demand will once again be in perfect balance. You might call it “hoard immunity.”

Alas, the world's overall resources don't work like that ... there really isn’t enough to go around, which is why a lot of people are malnourished, don't have educational opportunities, don't have great access to affordable health care, etc. The supply and demand of money has never been in perfect balance. Just about everybody wants more money, and it never starts to look ridiculous to stockpile it. Industries like advertising and marketing exist to increase demand, irrespective of the target market's standard of living, which in turn drives up monetary greed.

This brings us to what may be the harshest, most protracted aspect of this pandemic: long after the toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and mask shortages are over; when the shelter-in-place rules have finally been relaxed; well after the coronavirus has either run its course or been thwarted by a vaccine, we will likely be stuck in a terrible recession. And unlike the toilet paper shortage, it won’t affect people equally. Once again, the have-nots will take it the hardest.

Obviously there’s not much I can do about COVID-19 or its economic devastation. But where toilet paper is concerned, I will do my part: I haven't stockpiled any and I'm not going to. This is my symbolic stand, the simple, tiny gesture I’ll make in solidarity. I'll leave some toilet paper for the next guy and if I run out, so be it. Life will go on. (Or not.)

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

My Father’s Things ... Looking For a Home

Introduction

This post is about getting rid of my late father’s stuff. Not the valuable stuff, like his house and his car (which have new owners), but all the rest of the stuff that meant something to him, and possibly even to somebody else (given that there are over 7 billion people in this world).

You’ll get to see some of this stuff showcased below, in case you want any of it. But I’m also going to proselytize a bit about not accumulating stuff. You might find that amusing and/or a needed wake-up call.

A soldier’s things

There aren’t many activities sadder, I think, than going through a dead person’s stuff. The poor guy … his stuff outlasted him, and now he can’t use it anymore! In case the sorting activity itself isn’t enough to make you cry, it helps to get the Tom Waits song “A Soldier’s Things” in your head. Although I have just discovered there is some debate about the meaning of this song, I take it to be about a yard sale for all the stuff a soldier left behind when he didn’t make it home.

Some time ago I went through a similar process with the bike gear left behind by a friend of mine who drowned. That was almost unfathomably tragic but at least I had the satisfaction of finding good homes for the vast majority of the stuff. Many friends bought his old bike components (with the proceeds going to Mark’s widow) simply because they wanted something to remember him by. I myself am enjoying Mark’s old rollers, and I suspect I’m using them more than he even did.

But with my dad’s belongings … well, it’s all just such weird, arcane stuff. My dad realized well ahead of his death that he ought to do something with all of it, since it’s not really anything you could offer up at an estate sale. But by that time he was so old and sick, I found myself suggesting that he not spend his last months or years on this Earth getting rid of it all. I suppose it was reasonable advice but now I’m dealing with the aftermath.

A bit of advice

If you’re the hoarding sort, as I’ll confess to (somewhat) being, it sure doesn’t hurt to pair up with somebody with the opposite approach. My wife has a strong aversion to almost all physical objects. A running joke in my household is that I have to keep moving, or she’ll drag me out to the curb. As her most recent birthday was approaching, I suggested that I find some object in the house, gift-wrap it, and announce—as she opens it—that I’ll get rid of it before the end of the day.  She was delighted by the idea—and not just as a joke. She’d have actually been thrilled (though I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it).

But even if you aren’t lucky enough to be mated to an anti-hoarder, here’s a suggestion: as you approach retirement age (but while you’re still energetic and have your wits about you), go through all of your belongings and ask the following questions about each object:

• Is this making me happy?
• Is this making me money?
• Would my kid(s) want to inherit this?

If the answer to all three questions is any version of “no,” get rid of the object. If the answer to the third question is “yes,” ask yourself a follow-on question: would my kid(s) want this now? If so, offer it up. If your offer is declined, maybe you answered the question wrong (i.e., you should jettison the object).

My dad’s stuff … you want it?

Okay, let’s get into the stuff itself. Some of it my brothers and I are keeping, like an assortment of beautiful, expensive-looking prisms. (There are dozens of them, weirdly enough, so if you have a thing for prisms, let me know.) Obviously some stuff has sentimental value, like the homemade coat rack with our initials carved in the base, and thousands of photo slides, most of which nobody has ever laid eyes on before (since slide projectors take so long to load up). But the vast majority of the stuff had value only to him (and perhaps not even much value, as most of it spent the last few decades out in the garage or moldering away in boxes).

Exhibit A is his recumbent tricycle. Five of the six members of our family find the original, classic bicycle design to be a rare example of perfect functional elegance. The recumbent makes about as much sense as microwave popcorn (i.e., none at all). When I see a person riding a recumbent I feel terribly sorry for him. He looks like a tortoise flipped over on its back. Oh, these recumbent riders try to look like they’re enjoying themselves, but they’re not. There is actually no logical way to explain this recumbent-riding behavior except a nerdy person held prisoner by his own iconoclastic yearnings. When my dad purchased this tricycle, to replace the recumbent bicycle he never quite managed to learn to ride, I was dead set against the idea (but I kept my mouth shut … there’s simply no point arguing with an iconoclast). He never ended up riding it much because it hurt his neck.

But anyway, perhaps you’re a weirdo yourself and think a recumbent trike is a fine idea (the product does, after all exist), so here’s a movie showcasing it. I will confess that my narration of this video flies in the face of everything I’ve just typed.

And now, on to the telescopes. Why don’t I want these for myself, you ask? Well, the Bay Area isn’t exactly a great place for astronomy. If you want to see anything cool, you have to take a trip to the middle of nowhere. I’m a true family man, so I don’t fancy the idea of a solo astronomy expedition. And I can’t bring my family on such a trip, because I’m married to The Woman Who Ruined Astronomy.

Here’s what happened. Like twenty years ago, before we had kids, my wife and I did a mountain biking vacation in Moab, Utah. My dad drove down and met us. We were camping in Arches or Canyonlands, and the astronomy was superb. Thus, my dad—a fanatic stargazer—gave us a free (if unsolicited) astronomy lesson that lasted, it seemed, for at least a couple of hours. I have to confess, when I peer through the eyepiece of a telescope I seldom see anything interesting. Often I think I’m only seeing the reflection of my own eye. Sometimes there are little pinpricks of light. It all just seems so pointless and arbitrary. The constellations? I have no use for them. I can recognize Orion’s Belt, and the Big Dipper, but all the rest? Forget it. Anyway, at some point my wife heard a noise. We were at a totally deserted campsite pretty much in the middle nowhere, and that sound could have been anything. A wolf, a puma, maybe even a Sleestak! So my wife turned on a flashlight and shone it around. This, of course, spoiled everybody’s hard-won night vision. My dad snapped, “Thanks a lot. You just ruined astronomy.” I guess it didn’t occur to him that she valued her own safety more than the wonders of the celestial heavens. My dad’s utterance instantly became a classic quote, trotted out regularly to this day, pretty much whenever somebody notices the night sky.

I wish I could have seen my dad in his element, holding forth at a star party to people who actually cared about astronomy. Surely he was everybody’s hero in that exalted realm. His telescopes are amazing. One of them in particular seems to be a crazy hybrid of state-of-the-art commercial technology and his own carpentry. My dad actually worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, fixing this giant flaw that originally plagued it. He was the real deal when it came to aerospace and optical engineering. It’s really a crying shame that although my dad had four sons, not one of us appreciate astronomy enough to want this stuff, but that there’s what it is. Anyway, here are a couple of videos showcasing the amazing telescopes themselves along with the crazy menagerie of tripods that supported them. If you are serious about astronomy, give me a shout and claim one or more of these for yourself. (Note: if you’re thinking of using one of these to spy on your sexy neighbor, consider that you would probably end up getting a very good look at his or her pores.)

Now, scopes ain’t all that he had … all kinda crazy shit was in this baller’s pad. (I’m paraphrasing Ice-T because that’s what my dad would’ve wanted. No he wouldn’t.) He also had all manner of useful, high-tech instrument. Unfortunately I can’t identify much of anything. I know that he built a number of interferometers, unmatched perhaps by anything ever produced by anyone, but he apparently didn’t save any of those. Suffice to say, the instruments in his collection were all top-of-the-line, made in America because nobody else knew how to build this stuff. Check it out:

Hey, wait! The video did not capture everything. Here are yet more instruments:

Here is a close-up of the two grooviest instruments:

Wow, what a lot of cool stuff. Probably the Smithsonian museum would love this stuff. Or maybe the Antiques Roadshow would pay a mint. Or some mad scientist would give anything to get his or her hands on it (either to put it to good use, or to store it in his or her house for a decade or two). Anyway, it’s free to a good home.

And now for one more thing: the Hewlett Packard 85 computer. As described here, this bad boy cost $3,250 back in January of 1980, which equates to over $10,000 in today’s dollars.  It sported 8K of RAM. (To put that in perspective, a decent modern laptop has 1.5 million times as much memory.) The HP-85 was a good investment: my brother Bryan and I both learned how to program on that machine, and one of us makes his living writing code. (Hint: it’s not me.) Here’s a print ad for the HP-85, followed by a video:

Some years ago, my dad offered me the computer. I politely declined, because I just couldn’t imagine myself actually making the time to mess about with it, and my kids would be even less interested. So it would just sit around taking up space. Well, I should have accepted, because that would have made my dad happy, and now here I am storing the damn thing anyway. (In a storage locker, no less, because I couldn’t bring myself to take it to the Goodwill or a disposal center.)

So, if you want any of this stuff, let me know—and if you don’t, forward this post (via this link) to everybody you know, and hell, even a lot of people you don’t know, and have them all do the same. Threaten them with bad luck if they break the chain—whatever it takes to find the right home for all these things! You’d be doing me and my father’s memory a huge solid.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Dyna-Drive - Letter to an Old Gearhead

Introduction

Recently, I got into a long, rich e-mail exchange with a guy named Kevin, who is my friend John’s older brother.  I know almost nothing about Kevin because back when we all lived in Boulder, we were teenagers, and no teenager ever has anything to do with his kid brother’s friends.  But Kevin is restoring a 1983 Team Miyata, which instantly provided enough rapport for us to practically become pen pals.

That’s where you, vicious reader, come in.  (You didn’t think I was going to call you “gentle reader,” did you?)  Because I don’t know Kevin, he could be any 40-something collector of excellent old bikes and their paraphernalia.  If that’s you, read on.  If that’s not you, what’s wrong with you?  Racing bicycles of the early eighties are far cooler than fantasy football, online gaming, etc., and the sooner you realize it the better.  (If you love old bikes but are a young dude who can’t stand the thought of anybody being in his forties, click here instead.)

Dyna-Drive – Letter to an Old Gearhead

It’s been awhile ... maybe you thought I forgot about your Team Miyata restoration and the parts I offered you.  Not so.  And even if I did forget, my wife would’ve reminded me.  I told her about the project, explaining it in a way that would interest her (“I’m giving away some bike stuff”) and she asked, “Does this guy need any whole bicycles?”

So, I finally went out to The Box to find out if I really do have the parts I promised you.  Sorry it took me so long, but hauling out The Box is no small matter.  It’s buried under a bunch of other stuff in the garage, and the garage itself (a small one, built to accommodate a Model-T Ford) is like a jack-in-the-box, where when you pull out one thing, the top pops off and suddenly there’s crap everywhere and it looks like the home of a hoarder, so you can barely thread your way through it and then there’s a TV crew out there in the driveway wanting to film an installment of “Filthy Hoarders Bay Area:  Bike-Induced Squalor.” 

I also have to be braced emotionally for such archeological projects.  I start to get sentimental because whenever I blow up the garage, I come across relics of my daughters’ recent past that remind me how fast they’re growing.  I’m chucking aside new winter boots, winter boots that won’t fit anymore, little coats they barely got to wear, and then the rag bag, which is actually a box, which is always overflowing and is 90% kids’ garments.   I guess there’s some guilt there because we could have given these garments to the Goodwill, except they’re all stained because my kids are, apparently, slobs.  So I’m like, “Dang, Lindsay was wearing this dress only a month ago.”  The way the years have flown by, it’s like the kids just got here, but they’ve already got one foot (each) out the door.

Below the rag “bag” is the New Bike Stuff Box, which is a Huggies diaper box, so I feel guilty about that.  Should’ve used cloth.  In the New Bike Stuff Box are gobs of new cogs, new chains, new cleats, new Conti 4K tires, and little-used 4Ks I took off my bike so I could put on new tires for Everest Challenge but then afterward was too tired to put the old tires back on, and all of this is enough to make me drool over how well equipped I am for all the miles I have yet to ride, but of course there’s some guilt there, too, because I have so much, and there are people in this world riding Forté (i.e., house-brand) tires, or fricking Ultegra, or low-end Campy, or worse, some of them are on cobbled-together mixed-part mixed-vintage bikes like all those poor Europeans had who dropped my ass on Alpe d’Huez despite my big fancy American equipment and attitude.

So then I get to the second diaper box, which is The Box itself.  The Box is fricking heavy, with the accumulation of decades of bike stuff, and I dreaded hauling it out because my back is currently in the thrown-out state.  I don’t know how it got here.  I sat down too quickly, or got up too quickly, or sat too long, or blasphemed too many times, I have no idea.  A buddy of mine threw his back out putting on a sock.  It sucks being old, but I guess the alternative (i.e., being dead) is no better.  I wish you could have heard the wounded-animal noise I made hefting The Box onto a rubbish bin so I could rifle through it.  (Did I say “rubbish bin” instead of “trash can” just to sound British?  Of course.)

The stuff in that Box ... it’s just amazing.  It’s like the parts are copulating in there.  I always come across stuff I cannot account for, like (in this case) an extra Dura-Ace Dyna-Drive crankset.  I know I promised you some chainrings off this crankset, but since then I verified with my brother Bryan that I had actually put my extra Dyna-Drive crankset on his old Team Miyata a couple decades ago.  (My original Dyna-Drive crankset is on Full Slab.)  So I thought Bryan was going to have to send you the chainrings you need, which means you’d almost certainly never get them, because he has more kids than I do and doesn’t even have time to read his e-mail—and hasn’t, in fact, even read any of our glorious Miyata restoration e-mails, hasn’t even stumbled across the link you included to the treasure trove of old Miyata catalogs online where he could drool over the very catalog that once hawked his very bike.

But lo and behold, I do have a Dyna-Drive crank from which to cannibalize chainrings.  Sweet!  And that’s not even the weirdest thing I found in The Box.  I also found a cadence transmitter for a Polar bike computer.  How is this in here?!  I’ve never owned a Polar device in my life, and I’ve never been a big fan of measuring cadence.  I do have a cadence mech now—I couldn’t outrun such nerdy technology forever—and it’s kind of depressing sometimes when I’m slogging up Lomas Cantadas in my lowest gear, which is shamefully low due to the unholy combination of a compact crank and a 27-tooth rear cog, and my cadence is in the 40s.  At that point can I even call myself an athlete?

I’ve got a slew of corn cobs in The Box, even a Regina which is weird because I’ve never owned a chain that’s even compatible with Regina.  Just all kinds of stuff and it takes a mighty, mighty long time to go through it all looking for specific stuff, especially since I keep getting sucked in, inspecting this or that part closely, not just because it’s cool-looking (which of course it all is), but because time after time the picture gets all wavy, like how old TV shows used to indicate that a dream sequence or flashback was beginning, and suddenly this isn’t just a 53-tooth Mavic chainring, this is the chainring off Pete’s old Rossin, the chainring we all called “the working man’s chainring” because it was so manly, so Sean-Kelly-like, because at that time having a 53 was unusual and was the equivalent of an amp that goes up to 11.  If you were willing to fork out big bucks for that extra tooth, it meant you really cared about going fast.  (As juniors, we had gear restrictions, and the 53x15 was actually still legal, whereas a 52x14 was not.)  This led me to ponder whether or not it’s pathetic that as teenagers my brothers and friends and I talked enough about any specific chainring to have to name it.  Well, maybe we were, but at least we were disciplined, sportive teenagers who weren’t glued to screens all the time.

Then I found myself looking at a Suntour Sprint rear mech, which was on the Sanwa I bought in 1986 from this Brazilian twerp whose goal in life was apparently to go as long as possible without actually working, no matter how much freeloading this required, and no matter how many belongings he had to sell.  He tried to sell that Sanwa to me for months, and my bartering tactic—“I don’t need another bike, and I don’t even like that bike, get it away, I don’t want it”—was so ruthlessly effective that I finally got the bike for like $140 and gave it to my brother Max, who, years later, was sprinting all-out on it, on the Broadway bike path, when the frame snapped in half and he stacked so hard he got a case of whiplash that bothers him to this day.

So, yeah, I’ve got original Dura-Ace Dyna-Drive chainrings for you, but oddly the inner chainring is a 39, which definitely was not stock on that crankset.  Nobody was using 39s until about 1987 or 1988.  That crank is a 1982.  Oddly, even though it’s newer than the crank, that 39 is really, really worn.  Kind of a wave-shape as well.  Very likely to skip.  Look:

See that chainring next to it?  It’s practically new.  It’s got at least 10,000 miles left in it.  Also, being a 42, it’s more appropriate for your restoration.  But though it’s Dura-Ace, it’s not Dyna-Drive, so in that sense it’s not very authentic.

So what else did I find?  The Dura-Ace AX pedals are in better shape than I remember.  Pretty smooth, actually.  You’ll have to furnish your own toe straps but those  aren’t hard to come by.  But the thing is, you need to get past your fear of these pedals and actually install and use them.  Get yourself some old-school cycling shoes, in plain black leather, some old Vittorias or Dettos or something.  Why?  Because clipless pedals on your old Team Miyata is just not right—it’s almost a crime, really, particularly when the Dyna-Drive pedals are arguably the most distinctive thing about that entire era of Dura-Ace componentry.  

Besides, you have to honor these pedals, given the good long while I spent staring at the right one, recalling the cool old machine shop I took it to after stripping the threads during one of my many overhauls (back in my college days).  These were the little threads on the inside of the pedal, where the spindle would be if these crazy pedals had a spindle.  The machinist installed a HeliCoil for me, which worked like a champ, but he also got a gleam in his eye and offered to modify the pedals to use cartridge bearings, and even a special setup for races that would involve mineral oil instead of grease, for maximum efficiency.  I almost went through with it (but was too broke).  Anyway, I raced for years on those pedals and never had a problem.  That yours exploded was probably just God punishing you for doing a triathlon on a pure road racing machine like your Team.

Alas, though I did find a Dura-Ace bottom bracket, in the original box no less, it ended up being the spindle, one matching cup, and another random cup from a totally different era of BB.  The one Dyna-Drive cup is 36x24, which (needless to say) is the Italian thread and size, totally useless to you, though a BB with only one cup is pretty damn useless anyway.  The spindle is pretty badly pitted, as you can see from this photo (note also the close-up of the worn-out chainring teeth):

But the spindle being pitted doesn’t really matter,  because it cannot be used with non-Dyna-Drive cups anyway.  Recalling that incompatibility has been less than enjoyable.  My 1986 Team Miyata broke (well, the fork broke) during the 1990 Collegiate National Championship road race, and after a brief stint on an Orbit (painted orange with a spray can) I bought the steel Guerciotti, Bomb Pop, that was my favorite steel frame ever.  As Bomb Pop was Italian, I had to figure out a new Dyna-Drive-compatible BB and went through half a dozen different combinations of spindles and cups, getting most of my parts from Peter Rich over at Velo-Sport, who was cool enough to let me return one part after another when it didn’t work out, which was every time.  I was working down the street at Square Wheel and one day I looked through the (non-online, paper-bound) Euro-Asia wholesale catalog and discovered you could still order a new-old-stock Dyna-Drive BB, which I did.  I have no idea what happened to my old English-thread Dyna-Drive BB.  Could still be in the Orbit.  I will never know, because I managed to actually lose that Orbit (or did I sell it to Max?) along with the 1986 Team Miyata which really only needed a new fork, but which is definitely lost forever (possibly in my ex-stepfather’s attic).

But wait, you’re asking, what’s that other BB spindle in the photo?  That’s a ’99 Dura-Ace Octalink spindle, probably left over from the Italian-thread BB I bought for Bomb Pop, which I later installed on Full Slab, and eventually had to cut up with a Dremel tool.  But what’s important here is that the Octalink spindle is no wider than that old Dyna-Drive spindle.  This suggests that, modern Q-factors being what they are, you could probably find a low-profile BB for your Team Miyata that would work a lot better than that goofy sealed sumbitch you got in there now. 

Which is good, because I had a long, fun chat with Bryan and have determined that he never did have a Dyna-Drive BB for his Team Miyata, so he got away with a Campy, though his chain line wasn’t perfect.  You could make him an offer for that Campy BB, but you’d either rip him off or pay dearly because those were sweet.  They had these so-called “labyrinth seals”—not a rubber seal, but just a carving into the aluminum rim of the hole in the cup where the spindle went through.  It always seemed to me that such a design would do nothing to keep water out, but it really did work.  After the Steamboat Springs road race in 1983, which was a miserably rainy affair, I actually took my bike (an ’83 Pro Miyata) into the shower with me, and didn’t even need to overhaul the BB afterward.  Smooth as glass, those Campys.  Damn it, maybe I’ll make Bryan an offer myself.  I’ll conjure up a bike to go with it!

By the way, see that grubby red Cinelli handlebar plug in the photo?  That’s the last part I have left from the Mercian I wrote about recently, my second-favorite steel bike ever.  Those were cool plugs because they were squishy, so at high altitudes (e.g., Mount Evans at over 14,000 feet), they popped out slightly.  I dreamed of going down to sea level and reinstalling them to increase this effect.  It’s kind of sad that the bar plug is all I have left of that Mercian.  I mean, a pair at least would have been nice.

Okay, so the last thing:  you’re probably wondering what those Superbe Pro brake levers are doing in the photo.  They have nothing to do with your Team Miyata!  True, but as we’ve discussed, neither do the more modern Superbe Pro brakes you’ve got on your bike now.  And these levers are the right era, and are beautifully made, and let’s face it, aero levers have no place on your ’84 Team.  They just don’t.  Look at that catalog photo:  the brake cables come straight out of the top of the lever, like they should for that vintage.  Sure, aero levers existed back then, but the Team Miyata was a no-nonsense racing bike and aero levers hadn’t earned their place on it yet.  (Miyata was a pretty cool company:  starting in 1982, they finally acknowledged that no Japanese company could produce a good rim, and switched to Mavic GP4s.  On the other hand, that aero water bottle in the photo is pure nonsense and is painful to look at, especially against the backdrop of such a sweet bike.  It’s like if Natalie Portman had tattoos on her face, or those plug-style earrings.)

Of course, the problem with these Superbe Pro levers is that the hoods are gone.  Isn’t it strange how even rubber is higher-tech than it used to be?  Back in the ‘80s we had to replace our brake hoods somewhat often.  Everybody stocked replacement hoods.  You could even put Modolo hoods on your Campy levers and many did.  Or there were the A‘me  ones that came in every different color.  I even remember Armor-All’ing the Dia-Compe hoods on my Miyata 310, to extend their lifespan.  

And now?  Nobody ever needs new hoods.  Ever.  My 1999-issue Dura-Ace STI levers not only have the original hoods, but they’re in mint condition.  (Just the hoods, though ... the levers are beat to hell, the decorative caps busted off, big Phillips-screw exposed, and I even had to file them down after a crash because the scraped-up plastic—plastic!—was so barbed it could have cut my lily-white fingers, though those barbs would never present a risk to a professional bike mechanic, who it is said bleeds on the inside.)  Anyway, you can still find replacement hoods, as these take the same ones as old Campy levers.  (Click here, for example.)

So, this stuff is yours for the asking:  the Dyna-Drive era chainrings; the 42-tooth chainring; the awesome old Dyna-Drive pedals; the non-aero brake levers.  I’ve even got a couple rolls of brand-new Benotto tape in white (with albeit yellowed plugs) you can use if you like.  But I’m keeping the spindles and the Cinelli bar plug.

Epilogue

I got a great reply to this letter from Kevin, which proves that it is humanly possible to make it through a long, dense spew of text like this.  There is much of his reply that I’d like to include here, but of course I have to draw the line somewhere.  I particularly enjoy and appreciate the perspective he finds for all this lore:

The curse of a passion like this is the almost impenetrable gulf it puts between you and outsiders who have no idea what you are talking about and hardly see anything of value in a decades-old box of copulating bike parts.... That Cinelli bar-end plug doesn't speak for itself, it needs an interpreter. Wherever its mate ended up, we can be pretty confident that it is not the crowning centerpiece of a memorial shrine to the long-gone days of Mercian-riding bliss. It’s probably floating in one of those swirls of trash in the Southern oceans. It’s the human component that makes objects into what they are, if that isn’t too obvious to state.