Something's Fishy with this Fish

Fish. Some are pretty to look at, some are fun to catch, some keep the jellyfish in line, and it is said that altogether they are all an important integral part of the food chain. Not my food chain, but someone's food chain they say. That was until yesterday.*

Although sushi currently seems to hold the title of "greatest thing ever," I have always personally been under the impression that mankind did not discover flame broiling simply to have another task added to his day and in which to potentially cripple himself with, but rather because he once killed something, immediately took a bite out of it, and thought, "man, there's gotta be a better way." Persuaded at times by family and friends to occasionally question these assumptions I have always been disappointed and have always been told that that particular place either did not have very good sushi or just not very good sushi at that particular time. With odds such as these even if it turned out sushi was delicious I doubt it would be worth the culinary gamble you need to go through in order to get the good stuff.

Similarly once or twice I have deigned to try fried fish under the belief that fried batter makes everything better, and while this is still universally true, better does not necessarily translate into good. Fried catfish and fried Chinese-body-bone-and-eyeballs fish would taste better still without the catfish and bodies, bones, and eyeballs.

I have also since been fed salmon, tilapia, cod, orange roughy, and likely other tasty sounding but not terribly tasty tasting fishes only to be unimpressed every time. Canned tuna continues to be an offense to both my taste buds and my nose buds.

But I had not, until recently, tried ceviche. The thought of adding acid to fish for whatever inexplicable reason just never sounded appealing to me. It turns out, however, that a handful of hydrogen ions and a little bit of denaturing of proteins are exactly what is needed to take the fishy out of fish. I am still not entirely convinced that there was in fact fish in the dish, but I am repentant. I was wrong. I am sorry fish eating people of the world. Fish, or at least the fish served in the ceviche at Rosario's, is in fact palatable if not enjoyable to eat. What else can a little bit of acid improve? Liver? Gibblets? The global economy?



* In the interest of full disclosure. I had actually had one prior occasion where I sampled and did not die from eating fish. The butterfish in Hawaii is actually quite good if you can get all the bones and what not out of it. But come on; it's called butterfish. It's like God was demanding it be eaten.

Big Bend Camping Adventure Extravaganza Part II

It's a well known fact that you cannot have a camping adventure extravaganza without at least a little adventure -- the extravaganza's implied -- and in Big Bend it turns out you cannot have an adventure without a 10 lb bass jumping on your chest. It actually probably wasn't a bass -- my suspicions point to some sort of coked out gar -- but nevertheless a fish of some size sprung out of the water and viciously assaulted me. I am not sure whether this was its intention or not -- I'm still not 100% sure what happened exactly -- but whatever it was trying to do it successfully flopped around my side of the raft and onto my abdomen for a good 5 or 10 seconds before returning back to the murky depths from which it came leaving me with only a nice, superficial yet bloody abrasion on my right side. This story would be more odd than humorous were it not for the fact that this happened a total of three times during our two days on the river. A prior encounter led only to the fish briefly bouncing off the edge of the raft while a later incident resulted in the fish harpooning my right thigh leaving yet another, though smaller, superficial bloody abrasion. Aside from me being the victim the only other common denominator in all this is Sara being in front of me stroking away with her mighty oar. I am suspicious that she had a role in this somehow -- perhaps she's some sort of freaky Mexican fish whisperer. I don't know, I have a lot of suspicions. Whatever the conspiracy, I totally got taken by a fish. (Though in my defense he sucker punched me!)

That random adventure aside, our planned adventures did not quite work out quite as well. One of the alleged highlights of rafting through Santa Elena Canyon is going through the illustrious "Rockslide." "Class 4 due to its technical nature!" the old woman told us. Whatever crazy woman. I could have waded through that thing and I'm pretty sure a leisurely stroll through a series of rapids does not qualify for class 4 rapid status. This is not to say it all wasn't a bit hairy as we did get stuck, quite a bit, and we did start to take on water at one point as we were all busily debating whether or not the rapids we were in were in fact the dreaded Rockslide. I just feel that if something's gonna be a class 4 rapid someone better drown. They don't need to die or anything -- I'm not a monster -- but a little bit of water in the lungs isn't asking for much.

Lastly, sometimes in dry times, in dire straits, in long car rides, adventure must be improvised. And that's what the Livestock Game is for! Based loosely upon some simple ridiculous game from Josh's childhood, we together combined our huge medical student brains to form an improved -- dare I say awesome -- version great for all ages. Basically it's a straightforward points based game with the title of Livestock Game Grandmaster going to the one with the most points when the car finally stops. Unfortunately only two people (or teams) can play at a time as it's dependent on opposing sides of the road, but this limitation aside I think we have a winner. Here's how the points go:

• For each cow/steer you get 1 pt
• For each sheep you get .5 pts
• For each goat you lose 1 pt (see! the game teaches integrity!)
• For each horse you get 3 pts and you get to hit the other person (gently, hard, you decide!)
• For each donkey/mule/burro you increase your score by 50%
• For each dog you steal a point from the other player
• For each buffalo you get 2 pts and you get to smack the other person
• For each deer you get points from both sides of the road for 5 minutes
• For each buzzard/vulture resting on your side you get doubling points (i.e. 1 for 1 vulture seen alone, 2 for two vultures, 4 for three vultures, 8 for four vultures, etc.)
• For each wild animal alive and not otherwise mentioned (i.e. snake, fox, raccoon, etc) you get 20 pts.
• For each graveyard you lose 50% of your pts
• For each unicorn the other player has to be your slave for the rest of their life

And here's Annie's photos!: http://www.flickr.com/photos/annichani/sets/

And Paul's photo!: http://picasaweb.google.com/paulbgravel/BigBend2007