Conversation

I'm secure enough to admit that I have a bit of a shoe fetish. Shoes rank right up there with beer, manners, and proper hygiene - that is to say, something on which I expend some mental energy. Not in the fussy, dapper way some men contrive their appearance, just so. More like the relationship between a carpenter and his favorite tools. And after seven various minor surgeries for ingrown toenails, I can authoritatively state that good shoes are proper hygiene.

With my big, meaty, wide, "Yaba-Daba-Doo!" triple-E twelves, I have come to value fit over fashion. At one point, I had more than twenty pairs of Birkenstocks in the closet, under the bed, and under foot. You'd trip over them, piled like firewood, upon entering my house. Lest you judge to harshly, too prematurely, I should disclose that I was managing a Birkenstock store in Seattle's University District at the time. I amassed my collection at significant discount. Still, the label of fetishist probably sticks well before twenty.

An annual ritual, Mom would return from J.C. Penny with spanky back-to-school garb (think Beaver Cleaver chic), and a new pair of Chucks. Charles Hollis "Chuck" Taylor joined forces with Converse Shoes in the 1920's, promptly redesigned their basketball shoe, signed it, and dubbed it the Chuck Taylor All-Star. Constructed of rubber and canvas, in low and high-top versions, these "gymboots" have become the best selling shoe in history. I would snatch the shoe box, and bolt out the door to find my friend Matt, a virtuoso in the art of breaking in new sneakers. We'd soak them in water and roll them in dirt, grinding the mud into the fabric, scuffing the white rubber toes and outsoles.

These days, Chucks are made overseas in factories owned by Nike (so I'm told), and no longer constructed with two plies of canvas, but remain essential in their form. I found some on sale last January and bought two pairs, mixing the black and grey, keeping a mismatched pair in reserve. Occasionally, my odd shoes are noticed in the locker room at station 41, with two-dozen firefighters at shift change. The minority opinion consists of agitation, confusion, disapproval. I explain that Converse means opposite or reverse, left vs. right, black vs. not black. This seldom furthers my case for individualism, and usually results in head-shaking and a cautious retreat.

But, they still feel right. I can walk miles in my All-Stars, the flat sole flapping down the sidewalk, the heel squeaking a little as my foot lifts. I like them knotted low, and jam them on like loafers. During the sockless season, they get washed frequently, and emerge from the dryer hot but still damp, stinking of rubber and canvas, evoking memories - shoe stores, gym class, the excitement/dread of a new school year. Olfactory memory resides in a powerful corner of the brain, and the ghosts of these experiences spring forth fully fleshed-out with the emotions of the moment. But now, a new memory, a recent memory, a happy memory, competes for my attention when I get a whiff of All-Stars - fire hose.

Your bread-and-butter fire hose is constructed from a rubber tube and fabric jacket, similar to the Converse Chuck Taylor shoe. I am sure, in both cases, that the particulars of the materials employed have evolved a little over the years, but their essence remains the same. Both are unrelentingly robust and reliable. Both require periodic washing to prolong their service life. And both smell the same when wet.
You will find us rolling a thousand or more feet of hose after a good-sized house fire, stooping to start the coil, straining to carry another dirty length to the tailboard. Back at the station, we replace the missing hoselines on the engine. We unroll the fifty-foot lengths of soiled hose, laying them out in parallel rows on concrete apron, and wash the grime from the fabric. The washed hoses are doubled and hoisted into the hose tower, hung from the bars where they air-dry for days. One of our Saturday station chores is to lower any dry hose, re-roll it, and arrange it on a rack, like so many books on a shelf, until needed after the next fire.

I'm drawn to hose towers. They usually contain tools, supplies, and flotsam from the fire station collects there, in lieu of a proper hook or shelf. Spare bunks, giant squeegees, brooms might hang from a pegs. Washing a fire engine begins and ends with a trip to the hose tower for the bucket, soap, and brush. Some towers double as a drill facility, and the ladder, to the hose rack at the top, intersects steel gratings pretending to be floors in a building. The ladder is, at best, perilous, at worst, outfitted with some abominable safety belt that slides on a cable, and sanitizes the visceral thrill of the climb. My preference is for a window at the peak, from which you can scan the neighborhood for smoke, or shoo pigeons for sport.

As I drive around, tooling along back roads or side streets, I occasionally spot an old fire station, converted into a garage or re-purposed for the city or county. The hose tower, an architectural feature as distinctive as a steeple, always gives it away. I dream of living in an old fire station someday, with a brass pole, and a hose tower stacked with books. An antique fire engine might drip its fluids quietly, slowly greasing the floor, and I will be cautious - Chuck Taylors, Chucks, are positively dangerous on an oily floor.

Sweet Dreams

We are winning the race, my partner and I. Our jack is not your standard Safeway-issue model, this is a racing pallet jack. Bright yellow, with handles for carrying up the stairs in this epic steeplechase event, but still heavy for two men to lift. On flat terrain, one steers, the other pushes off. We alternate propelling it, but rules dictate that three feet must be on the jack whenever it is being scooted. Our legs strain as we tromp side-by-side up the endless steps, lugging our load in the dark. Sponsors' stickers adorn its vertical surfaces, non-slip tape on the forks. Our thin lead is but seconds, and the next team is hot on our heels. I can hear their panting below us, as they ferry their pallet jack...

Dong-ding-dang-dong

The distant notes descend the scale, reaching down, pulling the curtains across the strange screenplay in my brain. Hunh? 'zatta call? I place my hand over the pocket of my gym shorts. Buzzing. Aw, crap. "Engine forty-one, BLS..." I throw off my unzipped sleeping bag, shuffle into my clogs, and strain to comprehend the words on my pager, glowing teal in the dim ward. My eyes won't quite focus, so I try to recall the dispatch moments ago. Somewhere on Puget Avenue... I'm not driving us there, and that's more than I need to know right now.

My bunker pants wait beside the engine, pushed down around the boots, suspenders splayed out around the feet, ready for disaster. Holding the boot loops, I jam my feet in, wiggling into the heavy trousers, flipping the straps over my shoulder with an exaggerated shrug. As I climb up, I peer around my seat at the computer screen, glowing atop the pedestal to the left of the Captain's seat. Unknown medical. I'm awake now, and mentally preparing myself for the worst: heart attack, stroke, miscarriage...

Our trip is short, less than a block. As we roll on-scene, I hop out and pull the aid kit and O-2 kit from their cubby, behind my seat. Cap'n's saying something from the cab, out his open door, something I can't quite make out, over the idling diesel.

"Schlem! Code Green," he repeats. A young woman is standing in the entrance to the veterinary clinic, holding the door open, her hair backlit in a wild halo.

"Sorry!" She waves.

I don't wonder at how we were called to the vet's office at 0530, but I'm happy to head back to the station. We put the engine away, readying our gear for the next call. Back in my clogs, I scuff up the stairs to the ward. Chief's up, and the smell of his excellent coffee is calling me, in a round, roasty whisper. Up the stairs. I can still get one more hour of sleep. But I don't. For fifteen minutes, I wait for a mantle of relaxation to pull me down. I finally get up and resign myself to a great cup of joe. I kick my clogs back on and hope there's still half-and-half.

Sleep has become a dirty word in the fire service. The realities of protecting life, property, and the environment, twenty-four hours a day, necessitate that firefighters occasionally go without sleep. The City's taxpayers resent paying us a union wage while we sleep. Our administration is skeptical of the endless studies correlating sleep loss with health and safety problems.

Our schedule is the envy of civilians, about eight days a month, not much more than the accepted forty-hour work week. That's at least twenty-two days off, if you aren't blessed with an, increasingly rare, overtime shift. The danger inherent in our work led our union, long ago, to negotiate regulations that protect us from working too many hours in a week. Regulations also prevent us from working more than twenty-four hours in a row, excepting a disaster like fire, earthquake, or UFOs landing at the courthouse. Sleep loss compromises your ability to make decisions, drive fire engines, and, we've since learned, increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. And a busy, sleepless night will also destroy the following day, a day off, a day of plans, time with family or children.

But, for many firefighters, every night is a busy night. Sleep disorders are a common side-effect of repeated sleep interruption. Years of waking up two, three, -six times a night can shatter the gears of the internal clock governing the normal cycle of day-time waking and night-time sleeping. Once awakened by an alarm, emergency or not, these firefighters do not drop back into the restful slumber they need. Every shift has its night owls, firefighters who spend the night in a recliner, channel surfing, unable to sleep. Others find that the communal noise of the ward keeps them awake. It's no coincidence that difficulty sleeping, sleep apnea, and snoring all share the firehouse dormitory. When the subject of snoring comes up, I guiltily redirect the conversation.

Luckily, we still have a tradition of naps in the afternoon, a secret, not widely advertised. After lunch, time allowing, captains close their office doors, pipemen, drivers flop into the Laz-E-Boys. Blankets are tucked up around shoulders, eyes closed. The possibility of being up all night is a persuasive argument, but I'm seldom sleepy enough to make it happen. Recently, I began trying to nap the day after I work, usually through lunchtime, and it makes the remaining day more enjoyable. Occasionally, I'll crash for four hours or more, a luxury when I can pull it off.

In the station, at bedtime, a switch is flipped from Monitor to Alert, usually by the probie or least-senior man. The ubiquitous background of fire department radio traffic is switched off, unless a rig in your station is dispatched, in which case, tones are audible by everyone in that firehouse. A given rig may not roll on a given night, but when someone else goes out, all are roused.

We are seeing progress in our department, though. Walls have been erected in the largest wards to shield sleepers from their neighbors' noise. There is increasing talk of segregated crew quarters, isolating individual companies from irrelevant tones, and the disturbance of people coming and going from a shared sleeping area. A couple of our stations house only one company, and there the sleep is better, but that duty is generally meted out to senior members. It would be nice to have that kind of experience in the larger stations, with a dynamic collection of characters in the daytime, but peace and quiet at night.

In high school, I learned a trick from my best friend's mom. She spoke of seeing colors, lights, when she went to sleep. I didn't understand what she was talking about at the time, but now I do. The rods and cones, on the retina, fire randomly when your eyes are closed. Easy to ignore, they form random shapes and patterns, swirling, floating, when you allow yourself to see them. If you relax, your mind will impose sense onto the image, like finding pictures in the shifting clouds. You may find you need to clench or rub your eyes to start the show. It's very relaxing, and very distracting from the day's events and concerns. It's my experience that the hind brain soon takes over, segues into unrelated visions, and usually into sleep.

I know I'll sleep well tonight, I'm tired, and I have a race to win.

International Association of Fire Chiefs' report on sleep deprivation

Passing

"Medic forty-six, Aid forty-six, Engine forty-six, ALS, cardiac history, witnessed collapse, CPR instructions being given..."

We might be shopping for groceries, or dinner may already be on the table. We might be snug in our bunks, living beautiful invented lives, in our dreams. When the call goes out, and the tones go off, we scramble to our rigs, abandoning whatever we were doing. There are calls, and there are genuine emergencies. Chest pain is right up there, but a collapse with prior history is a red alert. We move faster, we drive faster, and when we arrive, we run up the stairs. We trot, panting, into the living room or through the kitchen, taking clues from family, finding our patient, assessing him even before we touch him with our gloved hands.

We arrive first, in the aid car, at the address in the mobile home park. A worried, but calm, woman meets us at the door and directs us in. This guy is in the bathroom, a common enough place to have the big one, so frequent, it's become cliche. He's a dark purple-blue and not breathing. I drag him, by his wrists, into the living room, where we will have room to work this patient, surrounded by panelled walls and knick-knacks. We cut off his t-shirt, and this guy is fat. His belly rises above his chest like pregnancy. I start compressions and my partner fumbles for a moment with the AED, the automatic external defibrillator that we carry in our EMS kit.

Our new protocol dictates two minutes of CPR before delivering a shock, via the AED. This is a marked change from how we did things in the past. Our instincts and training have always told us to get a shock on board as fast as possible. Now, we are trained to slow down a bit, to perform good CPR, give the heart time to flush out metabolic toxins, in order to maximize the potential for life-saving conversion to normal sinus rhythm. It seems to work, too. My buddy, Mike, on engine 43 brags about a three for three save rate since the new protocol.

"How 'bout some oxygen?" I suggest this kindly, keeping count in a corner of my mind while I form the words. He hooks up the bag-valve mask to the Oh-two regulator.

The medics arrive with the engine company. CPR is hard work, and like any difficult task, we throw manpower at the problem. I'm only into a minute of compressions, and the extra hands ready the monitor, a fancier AED, placing sticky electrodes on shoulders and legs, the large patches on the chest. Tools, medications are readied. One of the medics tries to tube our patient, to put an endotracheal tube into the lungs, a patent airway, a guarantee that we can deliver ventilation. Hands off, I cease compressions to minimize movement. The other medic is trying to find a vein in the elbow, Chad, the pipeman on the engine, assembles the IV tubing and bag of saline.

"It's in!" I place my hand on the big round stomach and feel bubbling as the air is forced down the esophagus, as the BVM is squeezed.

"Feels like it's gastric," I state, wondering if that makes sense. A stethoscope on his chest confirms it, no air is moving in the lungs, the tube is in the wrong hole. It's pulled out and I resume CPR, but we are having difficulty getting air into the lungs without the tube.

"Clear the patient, analyzing," we move back, not touching the body, the monitor recording the absence of electrical activity in the heart. There's nothing to shock, no uncoordinated contractions, no sign that this heart is fighting to survive. "Resume CPR."

Chad takes over compressions, a medic calls the doc at the hospital, laying out the details of the code. He lists the patient's history, medications, interventions, waits a moment, listening, and hangs up. "Stop CPR. What time is it?"

Family is comforted, explanations offered. The body is covered. We pick up the garbage we generated, scattered on the floor. We shuffle our gear outside, leaving the Captain and medics to express our collective regrets.

I've been party to this drama repeatedly, and the tone is usually the same, a hushed reverence when someone ceases living. We habitually distance ourselves from our patients, relating to them as a problem to be solved. We do our best, and, in the end, if it's not enough, we usually shrug it off as that guy's time to go. But deep inside, we know that this man, this woman, had a life before they died, and they leave a hole, however small, after, in this universe. It's a privilege to be present for that pivotal crisis, when a person is facing certain death without our skills. We don't know the past, we can't know the future, but we are there, in that moment, to help.

I attended a memorial this week for my (ex) step-father. It's a complicated relationship to explain, but wasn't in life. He loved me and everyone in his extended, blended family. I went, reluctantly, knowing I'd be facing down a lot of ghosts. My kids were there with their mother and step-father, and my son sat with me. Former in-laws, lost friends, all present in the church where I had been married twenty-two years ago. Family animosities, arguments, and ambivalences were pushed down below the level of the solemnity of the ceremony. We laughed and cried and hugged. I had some cookies and caught up with people I will probably never see again.

Wayman died from a terminal cancer. He didn't pass in a chaotic, heroic minute, it dragged on for weeks, then months. I'm sure he received the best possible care from doctors and nurses during that time, but I wish I could have been there for more than a phone call to Florida. He had a long full and happy life, and we all miss him terribly now.

I'm tired of attending funerals, tired of shaking out my Class-A uniform. I know, as I age, this is only going to get worse.

A Comic Book Model

"I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine." -Kurt Vonnegut
Before fire brigades came into being, whole communities could erupt in flame, the conflagration spreading like the wild fires that plague California and western forests. Then someone had a better idea: "Saaaay, what if we picked some guys... Gave them, um, buckets of water! ...and they would extinguish fires before they consumed our town? Whaddya think? Huh? Huh?" Or something like that.

Since that moment, Fire Departments have become entities with a broader mandate of disaster mitigation. Car wrecks, heart attacks, funny odors - who you gonna call? We regularly, daily, roll on the report of a "man down", called in by a helpful Samaritan, universally a malt-beverage-enthusiast napping in the shrubbery. We drill for the predicted, and inevitable earthquake. We have a tractor-trailer stuffed with sensors, equipment, and rubber suits waiting for the tanker car carrying methyl-ethyl-mess-you-up to derail in the switch yard. If you are in a trench, installing pipes or cabling, and you should find yourself suddenly in a cave-in, buried in glacial till, we have a plan. All this official and professional worry is financed by your tax dollars. We are the City's residents' insurance policy.

Our training, equipment, vehicles, and responsibilities necessitate a certain cost to the City to effect our mission. This necessary investment in social services, schools, police and fire departments, roads, water and sewage systems, hospitals, are a hallmark of civilization. We, long ago, signed a compact acknowledging the benefit of taking care of each other. It costs money, real money, money that people grudgingly pay with their mortgages, cars, businesses, and lesser purchases. Someday, somewhere, you will need the safety net that society provides. The fire engine (or police car, clean drinking water, public transport) is the incarnation of an ideal, rooted in the greater good, the assurance that help is at hand.

We are a force of good in a harsh and indifferent universe. One of my favorite captains, thirty plus years-on, we call him Uncle Ronnie, once told me, "When you start hating your patients, you start hating your job, and it's time to go." He's right, there are guys on the job who suffer from this creeping cancer, it poisons every public interaction, and there is only one cure. It's not our job to judge or select our customers, no matter their emergency.

So, can you really blame the family with a feverish child, lacking a trusty pediatrician, and the funds to pay her fees, for dialing 911 at midnight? They (or their better-off neighbors) pay our wages, buy our shiny fire engines and aid cars, and they know we will come. We stomp up the stairwells, knock on the doors, find the patient, collect vital signs, and arrange transport to the hospital, all for the price of a local phone call. There are system abusers and it's a tired cycle. Cynicism creeps into our conversations en route to these calls, friendly wagers are laid on the weight of the patient, the number of floors back down to the ambulance. But we come, we help, and it feels pretty good.

There exists a pernicious notion that fire departments can profit (at least in WA state) by billing insurance companies for the transport of patients. Utter dreck. The private companies that subsist on this commerce have optimized for this business by offering fast-food wages, exploiting high turnover, specializing only in patient transport. This can't scale to an organization whose charter is to "protect the lives of our citizens, their property, and the environment".

We shan't be in the business of padding our budget, it compromises our values and fosters inappropriate decision-making. Consider one example: the aforementioned feverish child. EMTs find no critical medical issue, just worried first-time parents. The clinic is open tomorrow morning, and the parents have transportation. Should we coax them to accept a ride in our aid car to the emergency room, at a cost of $600 or more, with the expectation that the fire department makes a buck? Most guys wouldn't (largely for selfish reasons - time, paperwork), but there is a potential for compromising our values. I reject this idea absolutely. A fire department cannot be a revenue generator, it cannot taint it's mission statement with the footnote of "*and make a few bucks!" There is no nobility in seeking a reward for service, it should strive to operate simply: you call, we come, we help.

All of which leads me to a digression, perking in my brain for years. It is impossible to not be familiar with, what I'll call, the Comic Book Mythos. The media has fully inoculated us with stories of Spiderman, Superman, Batman, and a pantheon of other superheroes, their struggles with Evil, personal conflict. For every Hero, there is a mob of anti-heroes, bent on selfish goals of world domination and financial gain. Just when Batman defeats the Dr. Octopus, the Joker arrives on the scene, spreading his mayhem. A superhero can't get a break, there's always another crisis! To boil it down, the Superhero is focused on the welfare of society, the greater good, the Villain on power and his bank account. Good vs. Evil, Love vs. Hate, altruism vs. self interest.

Further, it's been explored in legend, books, and movies that Good cannot exist in a vacuum. How can you know Good without the manifestation of Bad? Life on this blue planet wavers between two extremes, with happiness and contentment on one side, bankruptcy, death, and extinction across the way. It's called the drunkard's walk, made famous by the paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, and, to paraphrase, the goal of game is to maximize the amount of time you stagger down the sidewalk, before you eventually stumble into the street and are hit by the cosmic bus. Heavy stuff, and I wouldn't bring it up if I didn't believe that we can influence the duration and quality of our sojourn around our sun. We can, by voting for the ideals that further civilization, by electing candidates that will make things better.

This is fully my opinion, and I equate the Democratic ethos with Superman, the Republican's with Lex Luthor. I know it's a broad stroke with which I paint this landscape, and I'm speaking here of collective values, not the exceptional individual who crosses party lines (and maybe that's an argument for the unelectable Independent). Of course, it's not the perfect analogy, but I think it's fairly solid. So please consider carefully this November, when you make your choice.

Be a hero, vote.

Apropos Of Nothing

Written for an informal essay/literature contest:

In the days of my disdain for Lima beans, pumpkin pie, and tuna salad, recently relocated from the relative wilds of the Big Sky, the one constant in my short life was the family's biannual migrations to Fromberg, MT. Summer and Christmas, roughly coincident with the solstices, we would pile in the Beetle and pilgramate to the hometown of my parents. After two days on Interstate 90 (the overnight in Missoula) we'd unfold from the small car and stagger into Grandma's house. The realities of a working farm necessitated the mud room at the front door, where filthy boots and clothing were shed to hang on hooks by a chalkboard. A faint but honest grit floated in the air, shaming me for not being in the field, or the huge garden, but I lingered at the chalkboard, practicing my letters. I'd hear my name from the kitchen and drop the chalk, running in for a hug and a kiss. She seemed so big, in her apron, so old, but she was younger than I am now, and a foot shorter. In the heat of July, bright vegetables, maybe tomatoes, peas, or cucumbers, waited, stacked on the counter next to the sink, for assembly at supper. If snow draped the yard, jars of peaches, beans or tomato sauce might stand at the ready, dusty from the cellar's shelves. A bowl of my Grandpa's honey sat in the center of the table every meal, where, four times a day during planting and harvest, the family and hired men would bow in prayer and stoke their collective fire. Despite being the carpeted hub of culinary industry, (and despite the tuna sandwich vomiting incident - not my fault, by the way), the floor was always clean, the sweeper hanging in the corner, ever ready. My dad's family didn't believe in watching television, and the kitchen perpetually reeked of the nightly family entertainment: popcorn. When the sun was down and the day's work finished, other relatives would arrive in Buicks and pickups, flop on the couch or lounge at the kitchen table, catching up with mom and dad. My cousins and I would sneak in and grab a handful from the bowl.

On the rare occasion that dirt and grease both meet my nose, I am transported forty years back, I salivate, and I remember to call my Grandma.

Hop To It !

The vine, technically a bine, winds and twists on the bamboo support, climbing ever up. I planted four hop rhizomes this summer and this single plant is the champion. I had visions of pounds of fresh aromatic hops, with which I'd brew a true local ale, but not this summer evidently. Which is just as well, the plant only reaches about three feet in height, and I still need to construct some manner of support for the promised harvest. One rhizome failed to sprout, one was eaten by the snails, presumably. The last is a dwarf still, just a few inches in height, a hop bonsai. Farming, gardening, so optimistic, so heartbreaking.

Last year, after nearly eighteen years, I decided to brew beer again. I envisioned a beer party at the end of the summer, friends and fellowship, and so procured the equipment and ingredients from the same brew supply house I used so long ago. I asked about recipes that wouldn't take too long, lighter ales appropriate for quaffing in the heat. Hefeweizen, I was told, was a good beginner's choice, a golden, yeasty brew, popular in the Northwest, revived locally by the Pyramid Brewery, often served with lemon.

"But, what do you like to drink," I was sagely asked.

"Me? I like hoppy beer." This was my public declaration that I was a Hop-Head. Hops are the flowers of the hop bine, a bittering agent, with astringent and preservative properties, they balance the sweet of the malt, complimenting the tang of the chosen ale yeast. There is a resurgence, in craft brewing, of brewing very hoppy beers, and a distinctly American-style IPA has erupted on the scene, with a very pronounced hop essence, striving to recreate the ales exported from Britain to India or the Baltic provinces, in the days before refrigeration. Long transit times necessitated a beer that wouldn't spoil, and IPA was developed, with a higher alcohol content and a very pronounced, exaggerated bitter hoppiness. Or so I have read. The truth is somewhat murky, lost in the centuries, probably discarded with the payroll records and receipts.

I was directed to a recipe for "Round the Horn IPA", named after the long voyage south, along Africa, and then east to the colonies of the Indian subcontinent. Memories of my previous brewing endeavors consist of an amazement that I didn't die, or worse, someone else, drinking my suspicious homebrew, and encouragement that "It tasted pretty good". Brewing is an old art, the details handed down from trial and error, science later explaining the fermentation and chemistry inherent in the process. With optimistic daring-do, I tried my hand at "Round the Horn".

Hops lend various qualities to a brew, depending on variety, the point at which they are added to the wort, their bitterness, measured in various ways: IBUs, AAUs and HBUs. There is much scholarly material that explain the bittering elements of hops, and I refer the interested to a BYO website for further information: Alpha-Hop Soup: Figuring Bitterness (IBUs, AAUs and HBUs)

Great Gods Above. Nectar. Ambrosia. Paradise. I could wax rhapsodic all day long. I have always favored IPA above other beer, lesser beer. "Round the Horn" has ruined me for life. It is the IPA by which I have come to judge all IPAs. I have since tried many, many IPAs, hoping for the same tender combination of floral hoppy fragrance and flavor, round, mellow malty tones, and the eight per cent kick. Only one brew has come close: Racer 5, from the alchemists at Bear Republic Brewery, in Cloverdale, California, and I compel you urgently to seek it out.

And so, I am now a nascent hop farmer, hoping my Columbus thrive and render their delicate fruit for my brewing efforts. They should do well on the south face of the house, soaking in the Seattle sunshine. Stay tuned.

The neophyte brewer may find this book helpful (I certainly did): The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition

Below is the (extract) recipe from the Cellar for "Round the Horn IPA" for your indulgence and delight.

6 lbs. British Malt Syrup
2 lbs. Munton & Fison Light Dry Malt
1/4 lb. German Light Crystal
1/4 lb. Dextrin (Carapils) Malt
1 3/4 oz. Galena Hops (Boiling)
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing)
1 3/4 oz. Columbus Hops (Dry Hops)
3/4 cup Priming Sugar
1 pkg. Edme Dry Ale Yeast or
London Ale Wyeast
O.G. 1.060 - 1.065

"Relax - Have a homebrew!"