BACON EXPLOSION!!! OH MY!

I finally cuccolded wife into letting me buy a Bacon Explosion from Burnt Finger Barbecue earlier this week. Knowing that it would be something we wouldn't likely be able to get or possibly make up north we took a crack at it.

I found this delicious gem of bacon latice wrapped-sausage wrapping-bacon on an internet article listing someone's top choices of bacon products. Next to the bacon chocolate (yes, if you add just the right amount of bacon to chocolate it's phenomenol), this was next on my list to try. I was patient and waited a few months before diving in and paying $50 bucks to have it two-day shipped with dry ice to the door. Well worth it. Before ordering I had also found a site with step-by-step instructions to make your own, and I would have except, I have no way to smoke it for a two to three hours.

But after we consumed almost the entire thing (I only feel a little guilty), I will definately try and make this on my own in the future. I'll fake the smoked flavor if I have to, this was good. Great even. I'm a fan of bacon. The best news is that even though the guys we bought this from have a patent on it as their own (for selling commercially obviously), the recipe leaves enough to be desired to change it up and make it even better. I'm already formulating my own version.

Per instructions to choose your favorite sauce, I basted this bacon yule log with Bull's Eye, one of my favorite bbq sauces, during the last five minutes. I opted for the "sweet and tangy" versus the normal mesqite I would have bought, and glad I went with my gut on it.

Be jealous you bacon fans, oh so jealous.

6.5 days of corporate torture left...

The longest two weeks of my life. That's probably not true, but the fact remains, I no longer want to spend my days tooling around a health club I'm paid to babysit. I love working out, and sometimes I even dig the health club scene. It's such a different animal trying to keep a plce running though. The grease, sweat, chains, and rich north texan attitude that if you fix things you're sub-human and therfore deserve disdain for your presence and boorish attitudes as reward for trying to make others lives more fulfilled.

I rant about work. Sometimes I feel its all I have with this company.

the Road to Nowhere...

I will soon literally be living... on a road to nowhere. In roughly one month's time I will be there, where this photo was taken. I'll be hanging out over Dead Dog lake, and have a view over to Frobisher Bay. And depending on how the work permit thing works out, I may get the chance to blog and photograph my way across Iqaluit for a little while.

Important things for the Arctic...

I'm from Wyoming. I know cold, even bitter freezing -40F with wind cold. I've done it, lived through it, but never dealt with it being sustained for very long periods of time like I'm going to face in Iqaluit.

Being familiar with brutal cold I've always layered in the cold. The norm while plumbing in Laramie, Wyoming was a tank top under long underwear under t-shirt under hoodie under heavy insulated coat (a combination of all, or stripped down moving back and forth indoors). I usually wore long underwear under jeans and thick socks, and if I was going to be in sustained wind I wore insulated bib-overalls for my legs. I always wore waterproof work boots, NO steel toes (its like having ice on your toes all day).

But that's Wyoming. And in Wyoming a -10F cold snap may last a few weeks but usually hovers in the 20's a lot. In Iqaluit I here it hovers in the -10F range and snaps down to -40F for weeks or months at a time. So the wife and I have been buying more cold appropriate gear. You might note the pictures above. Those are Cabela's TransAlaskan II pac boots, which are ridiculously well insulated and "rated" to -100F. I'm 2 inches taller in them, rounding me up to 6'5". I doubt I'll be wearing them all the time, but these should be a great addition. Apparently a multiple Ididatrod champion helped them design them.

And the coat is my new favorite coat of all time. North Face Steep Tech work jacket. I had to wait for over a month to get it in the 3X size so the sleeves and chest were the right lentgh and size (37" sleeves and a 50" chest) but it was worth the wait. It's a technical shell designed for people who work in Alpine slopes and mountaineering. With kevlar shoulders and seems, heavy duty nylon as tough and thick as 10 oz Carharrt duck cloth, fully seem sealed and wind/water proof and highly mobile with well articulated shoulders this is the jewel of my survival in Iqaluit.

Other than that it's all balaclavas, well insulated gloves, wool socks, Under Armor base layers, ski goggles, heavily insulated Wolverine hunting boots for "warmer" weather, and lots of good fatty food to keep the mitochondria at full speed.

Let's go!

The Final Nail

This is it, the final nail in the coffin of my corporate career. I will submit my notice as to my exit today, and do it gladly. So far our circumstances have been reversible, expensive but reversible. We could retract some of what we've done but once I give the day I'm quitting my job away to the company officially I have nowhere to go but Iqaluit.

It will be a glorious day. I've wanted to quit this place so many times but was trapped by the humdrum existence of paycheck to paycheck slavery. I finally get my respite. My chance to serve some other purpose with my life.

Goodbye you corporate adultress! Goodbye you lifeless shell of greed! Goodbye you soul sucking character leach! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!

****Update**** Nobody to tell anything to, its a paid holiday. I wasn't even supposed to go to work. Woops!

ARCTIC BOUND!!!

The real reason for this particular blog starting is to try and chronicle going to the far northern arctic and living there, what its like there, what the people there are like, and how me and my wife will live and survive and hopefully thrive there.

Our journey begins in a few weeks as we sever ties, pay bills, muster resources, and figure out what all we'll be able to pack and manage to take with us on our flight and what we will have to ship. Suffice it to say, current airline regulations make this difficult. Canadian border services makes it more difficult and our destination raises the bar to make this a fairly massive undertaking even with just the warm clothes we'll be taking.

Wife has been as detail oriented as ever, checking everything repeatedly. We should be booking tickets tonight and I will likely be trying to convince her to join me in our last cheap abundant buffet style chinese food smorgasborg in The Colony we may get for what could be years to come. Knowing her prediliction for chinese food this shouldn't be a chore to convince her. It will only be a chore in the sense of finding time in the midst of selling our last few big items (read: car) before we make our trek.

Look out Iqaluit, here we come.

Hello Blog!

First entry, making pork roast, have to go now.