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    Five High

    Last Thursday, my brothers and I took an overnight train from Northern California to Northern Oregon as part of an every-other-year reunion. The trip, which would take eleven hours if you drove from San Jose to Portland instead, took twice that long on the Amtrak Coast Starlight. But the meals come with the ride and everyone gets a bed and a hot shower, so it’s a cozy way to watch the world go by. In hindsight, for all the time sitting and staring out the window, we could’ve been stacking M&M’s. Just five of the colorful candies one atop the other would’ve landed my brothers and me in the Guinness Book of World Records.

    Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  Buy a bag of plain M&M’s (you’ll have zero chance with the peanut variety), count out five, and let the stacking commence.  You’ll get to a tower of two quickly.  You’ll get three one atop the other with time and patience.  But that’s the proverbial end of the line, my friends.  You won’t make it to four.  If you did, you’d join the two co-holders of the former world record.  Last January, Will Cutbill, a twenty-something British engineer, pushed the record to a stack of five.

    The “original” M&M’s

    The history of M&M’s suggests it’s only appropriate a Brit broke the stacking record.  M&M’s were copied (and somehow uniquely patented) from British-made Smarties, the first candy where a hard-shelled coating protected the chocolate inside from melting.  Here’s another interesting M&M’s factoid.  The first “M” is for Forrest Mars, Sr., the founder of the Mars candy company.  The second “M”?  Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of Hershey’s Chocolate.  No, the companies didn’t join forces to create M&M’s.  During the wartime years of the 1940’s Hershey had a monopoly on rationed chocolate so Mars was forced to use them as their supplier.  Today, M&M’s have evolved to a “fully Mars” product.

    It’s safe to say Will Cutbill wouldn’t have broken the M&M’s stacking record without the pandemic.  He was in the middle of the UK’s third lockdown earlier this year when he pondered a lifelong dream of getting into the Guinness book.  He also had a bag of M&M’s in his hand at the time.  Practice led to more practice, and as you’ll see in the video here, the record-breaking moment came as a happy, unexpected surprise.

    Marawa Ibrahim – Most hula hoops spun simultaneously

    Maybe you’re thinking what I’m thinking.  Why can’t one of us become a world record holder as well?  As I type, I’m munching on Triscuit wheat crackers.  I just built a stack of five on my desk.  What if I went to the store and bought several more boxes, then stacked all those crackers to the ceiling of my double-height living room?  Wouldn’t I and my Triscuits join the Guinness book as well?

    Eliud Kipchoge – Fastest marathon

    Not so fast, record-setting wannabes.  As you should expect, Guinness has a tried-and-true process, not only to establish world records but to decide if they’re worth pursuing.  You must submit a formal application (even if attempting to break an existing world record).  Your attempt must be deemed ethical (ex. no killing of animals).  Your attempt mustn’t be harmful to the participant (ex. excessive consumption of alcohol).  Your record must be deemed environmentally friendly.  Finally, Guinness must approve the process by which your record will be adjudicated (which in Cutbill’s case included a video instead of an in-person judge). Oh, and unless you’re willing to contribute several thousand dollars to speed things up, plan on a year or more to complete the process.

    Mya-Rose Craig – Most northerly climate protest

    Now you know why the Guinness book hasn’t grown to a ridiculous number of pages and entries.  The content is regularly reviewed against cultural, societal, and environmental standards.  Records even slightly in question are removed.  For example, Guinness used to list the “largest fish on record” of a given species.  Then people started overfeeding fish just to break the record.  Guinness realized this kind of manipulation was not only cruel but potentially a source of litigation, so they removed the entries.

    This quick dive into the pool of Guinness World Records has me thinking my brothers and I made the right choice in not challenging the M&M’s stacking record.  We’d be better off drinking a Guinness than breaking one of their world records (yes, the beer and the book come from the same family).  Besides, how would we stack five M&M’s on a rocking, rolling passenger train anyway?  Nope, not interested in breaking world records today.  But if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to stacking my Triscuits now.

    Some content sourced from CNN Business video, “Good luck breaking this deceptively tough world record”, the Guinness World Records website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Shelf Life

    The rural neighborhood I live in hosts a Nextdoor electronic newsletter, allowing residents to post online for all sorts of reasons. (Loose animals are a frequent topic.) Today, however, one thoughtful neighbor said to look beyond first responders and hospital staff for a moment and acknowledge other workers deserving of the spotlight: grocery store employees. Talk about people we take for granted. After all, they’re keeping an eye on 20,000 different products on the shelves of the average U.S. supermarket.

    I had to double-check that number to believe what I was reading.  Nielsen, the research and ratings firm not only confirmed the number but said U.S. grocery stores experienced a 4.5% decline in 2020 (so more like 18,000 products).  Shouldn’t surprise us, especially with global supply chain interruptions.  And it’s easy to remember the most popular products missing in action.  Bath tissue, cleaning wipes, and canned soup, for example.  Others however, you probably didn’t notice.  Bumble Bee, the tuna maker, reduced its product count from 300 to 225.  Progresso Soup (a personal favorite), dropped its canned choices from 90 to 50.

    Now, guess what?  Bumble Bee is not only back to its 300 products but adding new ones regularly.  Progresso is back to its ninety soups and doing the same thing.  So much for the “death of variety”, huh?  And speaking of variety, did I say ninety soups from a single manufacturer?  I’d be lucky if I could name twenty-five (“tomato”, “chicken noodle”, “clam chowder”, uh, uh…)  No wonder soup gets so much real estate on supermarket shelves.

    J.M. Smucker is taking a similar tack.  They make a dozen varieties of peanut butter and two dozen more of jelly but last year you had to go without “Simply Jif”, “Reduced Fat”, and “Omega 3” versions of both.  Today, not only are their PB&J’s back but Smucker has introduced “Jif Natural Squeeze” and a smaller snack version of their popular “Uncrustables” frozen sandwiches.  It’s as if the pandemic was a small speed bump en route to ever-increasing variety.

    Post Grape-Nuts cereal (which earned solo attention from me in “Ever Eat a Pine Tree?“) disappeared entirely in 2020.  For a while there you couldn’t find any version of the tooth-shattering cereal on the shelves.  But now the gravel is back, and Post is making a bold move to “apologize” for last year’s inconvenience.  If you paid $10 or more for a box of Grape-Nuts from November 2020 to March 2021, Post will issue a partial refund for the “unreasonable” portion of the cost.  You need your receipt, of course.  Clever marketing there.  How many people keep their grocery store receipts from six months ago?

    Speaking of bold moves, here’s one I think we should sustain; a sort of pandemic silver lining.  At many hotels “housekeeping” has been reduced to the time between stays instead of every day.  My wife and I recently spent four nights in a Marriott hotel and at no time did housekeeping enter our room.  Instead, we gathered up dirty towels and exchanged for new ones at the front desk.  We emptied our own trash.  We made the mini soap/shampoo/conditioner bottles last.  It was hardly an inconvenience.  It was also nice to know our room was undisturbed the entire time.

    Similarly, dropping grocery store product totals from 20,000 to 18,000 was subtly a good thing.  We were forced to simplify our pantries and go more back-to-basics.  We cooked more.  We ate more whole foods (instead of fast foods).  Let’s hope those habits remain, even while consumer goods manufacturers crank out ever-more variety.

    There’s a newish bad habit driving grocery store shelf life however; one bound to stay a while.  The percentage of snack/junk foods you’ll find is higher than pre-pandemic days.  Why?  Because working from home drives the demand.  Accordingly, you’ll find 10.9% more salty snacks on the shelves, 11.5% more energy drinks (including PepsiCo’s caffeine-laden Mountain Dew Rise), and 14.8% more pastry items.  And (most disturbingly), you’ll find 79.2% more pre-mixed cocktails.  Whoa now.  Somebody might want to post on Nextdoor for the invention of a web-based sobriety test.  They’ll make a fortune.

    Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “These foods disappeared from grocery stores last year…”, the CNN Business article, “The Grape-Nuts shortage is over…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Bl-ess-ed Island

    I’ve always liked Southwest Airlines’ slogan. “Wanna Get Away?” Their first television commercials featured people having bad days – then up pops the Southwest phrase in big, bold letters. It wasn’t so much where you wanted to go, just that you wanted to go.  So today I have Southwest on the brain, not only because I “wanna get away” (and don’t we all?) but because I know precisely where. Take me to the Julian Alps in northwest Slovenia, please.  There you’ll find a tiny fairyland oasis known as Lake Bled.

    Let me tease you with a photo.  Here, you’re standing on a steep vista known as Little Osojnica Hill.  Lake Bled’s emerald green waters are a squarish mile of blended glacial melt and hot springs.  And those mountains in the distance?  You’re looking at Austria and its Alps.  The country and its majestic peaks are less than ten miles from Slovenia and Lake Bled.

    But forget about the surroundings for a moment because it’s Lake Bled I really want to talk about.  Here’s how you get there.  From Frankfurt, Germany, catch a 75-minute flight (KLM or Lufthansa, not Southwest) to Slovenia’s capital city of Ljubljana.  Instead of spending time trying to pronounce “Ljubljana”, make your way to the city train station.  Travel thirty miles northwest on the rails and step off at the Lesce-Bled station.  Congrats!  You’re only a two-mile walk from Lake Bled.

    Now for the best part.  You’re not only going to Lake Bled; you’re going to the island in the middle.  Bled Island may be the most picturesque islet I’ve ever seen.  It’s perfectly surrounded by the lake.  It’s lush with trees.  But best of all, Bled Island hosts a soaring 17th-century pilgrimage church.  It’s like a miniature Mont-Saint-Michel, only it’s not in France and you have to climb a wide stairway to get to the church doors.  Brace yourself; we’re talking ninety-nine steps on that stairway.  But you’re not gonna come all this way and not see the church, right?

    Earlier I told you Lake Bled is like something out of a fairy tale.  Here’s another reason why.  The only way to get from the lakeshore to the island is on a pletna.  What’s a pletna? A wooden, flat-bottomed boat, seating a dozen or so and powered by a very-much-in-shape Slovenian oarsman.  He stands in the back like a Venetian gondolier, using his two oars to propel the boat slowly across the pristine waters.  Doesn’t it just add to the image?  Better than muddying up things with something motorized.

    Bled Castle

    If Lake Bled and its islet aren’t enough to get you booking flights, how about a couple more temptations?  High above the lakeshore stands the oldest medieval castle in all of Slovenia.  Drawbridge, moat, courtyards, towers; Bled Castle has everything you’d expect in an 11th-century fortification.  Must be worth the price of admission because it’s one of the most visited attractions in the entire country.

    Yum!

    Maybe you’re not into castles.  How about a plate of Chantilly cream pastries instead?  The cremeschnitte is the region’s culinary specialty.  The pastry is so highly regarded, the Slovenian government designated it a “protected dish” in 2016.  An annual festival celebrates nothing but the dessert.  Over the last sixty years, a hotel near Lake Bled has baked over sixty million of them.  That’s what I’d call a recipe refined to perfection.

    In a recent post I mentioned my daughter is getting married next year.  For my future son-in-law’s sake, I’m glad she didn’t choose the church on Bled Island.  Local tradition says it’s good luck for the groom to carry the bride up the stone steps before ringing the church bell and making a wish.  Up ninety-nine steps?  The groom better be as strong as a pletna oarsman if he’s going to make that kind of climb.

    Photos are nice but videos are the real clincher.  Spend a couple of minutes with the following YouTube tour.  I guarantee you’ll “wanna get away” to Bled Island, and soon.

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Picking Poison

    If you have me over for dinner and ask what I’d like to drink, I’m probably going to disappoint you. My go-to “adult beverages” are wine and, well… wine.  Nothing mixed.  Nothing with a lot of proof on the bottle.  A margarita with Mexican and a beer after a long day in the sun, but otherwise it’s pretty much a glass of Chardonnay or a full-bodied Cabernet. Not much creativity in picking my poison, it seems. Yet that’s not quite true.  Out on my property I’m faced with poison just about every day, as I fight a persistent onslaught of noxious weeds.

    Dalmatian toadflax

    Noxious weeds make their appearance around here every spring – without fail – just when I’m fooled into thinking this, this is the year they’ll cut me a break and infiltrate someone else’s property instead.  I’ll walk out one morning and seemingly overnight the uninviteds have taken prominent positions among the prairie grass.  Knapweed.  Toadflax.  Mullein.  And the worst of this noxious bunch: thistle.

    Weeds annoy most anyone, but noxious weeds deserve a place in Hollywood’s scariest horror flick.  These bad boys earn descriptors like “aggressive invader”, “detrimental to native plants”, and “poisonous to livestock”.  Noxious weeds fall into a family of growees known as “alien plants”, which means they don’t belong here in Colorado.  Nor anywhere else on Earth if you ask me.  Name one redeeming aspect of these pernicious inhabitants.  I can’t, except perhaps I get a solid workout while I struggle to keep them at bay.

    Thistle

    Operative phrase there, keep them at bay.  Not kill them.  Most noxious weeds establish an underground root system as strong as chain link fence.  Many are impervious to the most aggressive chemical warfare.  Try yanking out the whole plant and you’ll burn through a bank’s worth of sweat equity.  Better to use something gas-powered instead.  Or a flame thrower.

    Knapweed

    Yes, Colorado has its Rocky Mountains and seasons of snow, but most of the Centennial State is high and dry desert.  We’re constantly challenged by drought, and in those conditions noxious weeds thrive.  Our county even has a “Noxious Weeds Division”, of the Environmental Division of the Community Services Department.  Send them an email and they’ll tell you everything you need to know about noxious weeds.  Most disturbingly, how they’re here… to… stay.

    Let’s get to know these persistent plants a little better:

    • Diffuse knapweed – Picture a tumbleweed.  Large, round, and spiny.  Not very nice to look at.  You can knock off knapweed by severing the single taproot, but, its seeds can still develop on the cut plant.  Time for a bonfire.
    • Dalmatian toadflax – Showy, yellow, snapdragon-like flowers.  One plant can produce a half-million seeds.  The best way to control this bugger is… with bugs.  Can anyone spare some root-boring moths or stem-boring weevils?
    • Common mullein – Starts as an innocent, flat, green “rosette”, then bursts into a ramrod straight stalk, several feet tall.  Mercifully, mullein has a shallow root.  Meanwhile, people think you’re growing corn in your pasture.
    • Canada thistle – Small purple flowers bunched on tall, dark green stalks, replete with thorns and other self-defense mechanisms.  Hand-pulling this freakshow of nature stimulates its growth.  If you ask me, Canada thistle is better named “Satan’s Rosebush”.
    I prefer this kind of dalmatian

    How do I know the exact species of my noxious weeds?  Because my county’s Noxious Weeds Division tells me… when they send letters threatening to charge for maintenance if I don’t do it myself.  My advice: it’s best to obey the Noxious Weeds Division.

    Mullein

    Now for some noxious weed trivia:

    • Worldwide damage caused by noxious weeds: $1.4 trillion USD.
    • Russian thistle lives longer than humans.
    • Giant hogweed (which causes a nasty, blistering skin rash) earns a spot in the Guinness Book as “world’s largest weed”.  Its umbrella-like blooms can hover more than eighteen feet, on stalks three or more inches around.  “Giant” indeed.
    • Lastly… (and my personal favorite), before the chemical embalming process, tansy ragwort was used to line coffins because of its ability to repel vermin.  Hey!  Another redeeming aspect of noxious weeds.

    I have a fond weed memory (believe it or not).  When I was a kid, I stayed at my uncle’s house for several days alongside a cousin about the same age.  Somehow my uncle had us weeding his front yard (work in exchange for food?).  Those straight-and-tall weeds looked like a vast army of soldiers.  So that’s how my cousin and I took to the job.  We split the yard down the middle, declared ourselves generals, and started taking down the soldiers one by one.  When the dust cleared and the “bodies” were removed, the battlefield was admirably clean.  We declared victory and went inside for a much-needed shower.

    I’ve just returned from another battle with my noxious weeds.  I lopped off dozens of mullein tops with my pruning shears, to shut down their seed spread.  It’s exhausting work and I’m done picking poison for the day.  I could use a drink.  Nothing mixed, of course.  A beer will do just fine.

    Some content sourced from the Noxious Weeds and Control Methods guidelines document, State of Colorado, El Paso County, Community Services Department, Environmental Division.

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    Meet Cute

    Every now and then McDonald’s gets it right. In 1973, they introduced the Quarter-Pounder because customers demanded more than a 10 oz. patty inside of a boring bun. In 1987, McDonald’s added “PlayPlace” indoor playgrounds to suburban locations: crawl tubes, slides, and ball pits contributing to countless happy childhoods.  This year, the restaurant chain is stepping it up with its McCafé Bakery offerings. The Apple Fritter, Blueberry Muffin, and Cinnamon Roll will step back to give the spotlight to the newest McDonald’s kid on the block: the adorable Glazed Donut.

    Seriously, just look at this little guy.  Isn’t he the cutest donut you’ve ever seen?  The McCafé Glazed Donut looks like a happy gathering of donut holes, all nestled up against each other for warmth and protection.  The Donut is pleasingly symmetrical.  Even the spelling is cute (instead of the more substantial “doughnut”).  And the best part: its “donettes” pull apart the way you would a hot, flaky croissant.  It’s like getting seven for the price of one.  And it’s cute to boot.

    I admit I didn’t wake up this morning intending to write about cute donuts.  Even the headline about this doughnut’s upcoming debut didn’t really catch my eye.  But then I saw the photo and I was utterly smitten.  It’s the same way I felt when I first saw a package of those colorful little Plink garbage disposal cleaners.  I just had to have them.

    Some would describe this as a “meet cute” moment.  Meet cute is the early-on scene in television or movies where two people connect for the first time and you just know they’re headed for romance.  The Hallmark Channel is all about meet cute.  Any scene where Hallmark movie man meets Hallmark movie woman, combined with something funny or unusual is 99% headed towards future romance.  It’s like you’re ten minutes into the story and you already know how it ends.

    Plenty of “meet cute” in this one

    And that’s how it’s gonna go with the McCafé Glazed Donut.  We had our meet cute this morning.  Now I have two weeks of anticipation and heart palpitations before I can actually buy one.  But I already see it.  I (almost) already taste it.  And the whole pull-apart thing?  Pure sex(y) appeal.

    Meet cutes don’t always lead to predictable endings.  After the meet, the movie leads you to believe the characters are destined for romance.  But sometimes they’ll throw a curve (usually in the form of a third character) and the story goes in another direction.  Could happen with the Glazed Donut too.

    Let’s use supermarkets as an example.  You stroll into the store, grab a basket, and think about your shopping list.  But before you even reach the aisles you’re greeted with front-of-store marked-down day-old doughnuts.  They’re just sitting there like little round orphans, begging you to spend another $0.69 to “adopt” one.

    They’ll be front-of-store by tomorrow

    So you do.  And you make sure the little guy’s placed in your basket as an easy find.  Then you slide behind the steering wheel and polish him off before you even leave the parking lot.  Tastes great, right?  Maybe now.  Later you’ll reflect on the slight, sickly feeling in the pit of your stomach and wonder why you caved.

    That’s my thinking with the McCafé Glazed Donut.  I can cruise past the Fritter, Muffin, and Cinnamon Roll without so much as a passing glance.  But mark my words, next month I’ll find any excuse to be near a McDonald’s during McCafé Bakery hours.  I’ll purchase the Glazed Donut and my meet cute will blossom into a full-on romance. When I consider the Protein Shake I have most mornings, I’ll feel like I’m about to cheat on my mainstay.  Heck, this scandal could go viral! I see the headline now: Man Opts for Sweet & Sexy over Cold & Icy.  But can you blame me?  My Protein Shake really IS cold and icy, and there’s nothing satisfyingly pull-apart about it at all.  Meanwhile a small, soft, almost UFO-looking donut beckons.

    Forgive me, my beautiful, healthy breakfast-in-a-cup.  Looks like I’m gonna stray.

    Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “McDonald’s is adding a sweet new treat for fall”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

About Me

The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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