Monthly Archives: July 2000

Madeira

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By Ed Masciana

“The very existence of Madeira has been touch and go for a century. No famous wine region has suffered so much the combined onslaught of pests, diseases, disillusioned growers and public neglect.  It is doubtful whether any other would have survived as more than a footnote.”

Hugh Johnson, The Modern Encyclopedia of Wine, 1983

What happened to Madeira? At one time this wine was the darling beverage of the Colonies (That’s what they called the United States before 1776.) It is now hardly ever discussed, let alone consumed. This is primarily because of it’s being thought of as a cooking wine. While it is used quite effectively in this role, it seems to have lost its dominance as a favored aperitif.

Madeira is, without question, the longest-lived wine made on Earth. It offers a myriad of flavors from medium-dry to very sweet and everything in between.  Many lovers of sherry and port are missing a wonderful experience that only Madeira could bring if they knew what it was and where to get it. Glad you asked.

Madeira is one of the great mistakes of wine history. It was discovered by mistake, made by mistake and often mistaken for something else. It is named after an island discovered by a British navigator in the early 15th Century who was eloping with the daughter of a nobleman above his position. They settled on the island and lived their lives there.  His crew sailed on, was captured, told of the island to a Portuguese explorer who set sail for it once again. The island (barely 30 miles long and 18 miles wide) was so thickly wooded he ordered it burned. The fires reportedly lasted seven years, depositing layers of ash to mingle with the already fertile soil. The Portuguese settled the island and named it after those woods, “Madeira.”

Sugar cane and grape vines from Greece were planted and flourished. Sugar was the principle commodity, but Brazil soon captured the lion’s share of the business in the middle 1500′s because of that country’s cheap land and labor. Wine became the only product left to sell.

As the new world was being colonized, ships would set sail to America and be steered southward to Madeira because of the prevailing tradewinds. It was logical to load up on the local wine which was first used as ballast for the ship. The wines were coarse and rough when they left the island after being strengthened with brandy for the long voyage. After months at sea, in often very hot weather, the wines landed in America tasting better than when they left.

The producers reasoned that if one trip was good, two was better. So, they actually shipped the wines back and forth for years, keeping track of the age of the barrels and thus made what is regarded today as one of the richest and longest lived wines produced.

When the American Revolution took place, less ships were going back and forth, so less Madeira could be “made” on board. The Portuguese took to duplicating the experience in stoves called “estufas”  and continued to supply the thirsty needs of the new world. Then, as suddenly as it began, it suddenly ended.

The combination of a leaf fungus called odium and the most devastating louse known to the wine world, phyloxera, practically ended all Maderia from being made again. By the late 1800′s, all the vines had to be replaced (as they did all over Europe) with phyloxera-resistant American rootstocks. This pause in shipments of Madeira coupled with America’s new found interest in French wines practically left them without a market. In 1925 a trade organization was formed called the Madeira Wine Company. It was formed by the larger producers, Blandy’s, Cossarsts, Miles, Leacock and Lomelina Lda to help foster the enjoyment of Madeira wordldwide.  Four independents exist and are also worth seeking out; Barbieto, H. M. Borges, Companha Vinicola de Madeira and Henriques & Henriques. All of these producers make exceptional wine.

The Wines

Madeira’s finest wines were made from four grape varieties.  The one considered the best is made from the Malmsey grape.  This is a luscious sweet wine whose aging potential is legendary.  Even today, 200 year old Malmseys are available for sale and are one of wine’s most pleasurable experiences.  I was fortunate enough to come upon a bottle of 1806.  The original cork had completely disintegrated and the wine was held in the bottle by the wax covering.  It still had the creamy richness and tangy finish that no other wine could possibly have had, especially after nearly 180 years!!!

Most often Madeira is made, like Sherry, for which it is most commonly confused, by the Solera system.  Wines are cooked for up to a year in the estufas and aged in a pyramid of connected barrels for years.  As the wine is drawn off the bottom barrels, it is replaced with new wine on top.  The new wine gives the old it’s vigor; the old wines add complexity and the vanilla flavors from the oak.

Bottles simply labeled Malmsey are an average of two to three years old.  Wines with older designations have a minimum age of whatever appears on the label, 10 years and 15 years are most common.  Occasionally, in a particularly superb year, single vintages will be aged separately and released as a vintage Madeira.  Unlike vintage Port, which by law must be bottled within 26 months after harvest, vintage Madeira can be aged in the bottle or barrel and retain the vintage designation.  In most cases, however, the bottling date is given on the label.

Bual is the next driest designation.  This grape has the weight and body of an olorosso sherry but also exhibits what the British call a characteristic “tang.”  It, too, can be aged for many years and can also be vintage dated.

Verdehlo is a medium dry offering that is lighter than Bual, but still authoritive in flavor. It is very seldom see today.

The tangiest and most unique is the Sercial.  A grape that is supposed to be an offspring of Riesling, it shows some of the same properties of the others, but with a more crispness and a unique mineral component.  All varieties, no matter how sweet, finish with a clean sharpness that never seems to age out, even after over 100 years. . . a remarkable occurrence in the world of wine.  A recent tasting of an 1895 Bual, considered one of the finest vintages of all time, lived up to its reputation and was easily an incredible wine for even the most annoying wine geek.  If these wines are beyond your’s, and most other’s budget, the five, ten and 15 year old Madeira’s are superb experiences as well.

These four grapes sadly make up less than 10% of all the grapes now grown on the island of Madeira.  Unless the label specifically names the grape, the wine is probably made from the Tinta Negra Mole, an obligingly pleasant, but still inferior grape when compared to the others.

For all its wonderful history and enticing flavors, Madeira is a relative bargain.  Twenty or even thirty-year-old wines can cost less than $100.00 (as compared to three or four times that much for Port, Sauternes, or Bordeaux).  Finding them is a different matter.  Because of their obscurity and misunderstanding, very few are seen even in the best, most-prestegious wine shops.  A very fine selection is available, however, from a variety of local wholesalers.  A stern request from you to your local merchant will easily produce a few bottles.  I strongly suggest you put him or her on the spot.  I have yet to turn people on to Madeira and not get a glowing response in return.  A glass of Bual in front of the fire with a good book is probably not too far removed from a similar scene in Benjamin Franklin’s or Thomas Jefferson’s home.

Ed Masciana is the author of “Short Cuts on Wine.” published by Capra Press, Santa Barbara and contributing author of “Millennium Guide to Champagne.”  He has taught food and wine classes for 15 years.

Caviar for Connoisseurs

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By Raymond J G Wells

Caviar-often described as “Black Gold” and regarded by many epicurean experts as the world’s finest culinary delicacy is today mostly obtained from the Caspian Sea. This sea is where the bulk of the world’s sturgeon are to be found and Caviar is a Persian word meaning “bearing eggs.” This luxury product, devoured by the rich and famous, is the eggs of sturgeon.

Traditionally caviar has been gotten from three main species. These are the Beluga, Oscieta and Sevruga, all of which are found in the Caspian Sea. The two big producers are Iran and Russia. Iranian caviar enjoys a premium over the Russian variety because the Russians add more salt to preserve the eggs.

Historically Italy was the main western supplier and the early records, which had references to caviar were from medieval Farrara. It seems Italian Jews fished for sturgeon in the River Po to collect the prized eggs. In Great Britain during the Middle Ages, the bizarre looking sturgeon was held in such high esteem that it was proclaimed a royal fish. What that meant was that any sturgeon caught in British territorial waters became the property of the crown.

Sturgeon reputedly can live for a hundred years or more. This means that their pre-puberty stage can last anywhere between eight and twenty years, depending on the genus.

Epicureans generally reckon that the best companions to caviar are the finest dry Champagnes and “Stolichnaya” crystal frozen vodka. Caviar is also often served on ice or on its own with a selection of items like fresh blinis, croutons, butter, chopped onions, egg, peppers and capers.

The 21st century is witnessing caviar from the good ole US of A making a long overdue comeback. In the latter part of the 19th century, the US was actually the world’s largest producer of caviar. At that time caviar was so plentiful it  was not at all unusual for bars to give it away with beer; at 10 US cents a pound it was a darn sight cheaper than salted peanuts. That wonderful situation all changed as gradually water pollution helped kill off the sensitive sturgeon.

Now there is sturgeon being reared in the rivers of the Ozarks and the Pacific North West. American produced caviar sells at between US$4 to US$16 per ounce. Expensive though that may seem its a real bargain compared to the Iranian or Russian varieties. And to let you into a secret – to most people it seems it doesn’t appear to taste any different to the hugely more expensive caviar from the Caspian.

Copyright 2000 Raymond Wells

Raymond Wells is a British born economist and writer currently living and working in Malaysia. He has numerous writing credits in both print and electronic magazines. Among the former are articles in Day and Night, Trail finder, Southern Scribe, Writer’s Forum, International Living, Changi, Far East Traveler and Home and Country. He has written for e-zines such as Tempo, Worldwide Freelance Writer, Zinos, Writers Mirror, BootsnAllcom and now for the-vu.

Scoot Electric

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The electric scooter could one day become as common a sight as the bicycle, if only there were better batteries.

By Jeffrey the Barak in Los Angeles.
Originally published in the-vu in July 2000
Revised December 2000 and again in August 2003


2000 Phat Flyer by Currie Technologies

Bad gas

We live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable for a free adult to go wherever he or she wants to go, at any time that suits them. That’s a good thing! Unfortunately, more often than not, an individual will do this in a large passenger vehicle such as a car.

In the seventies, Americans drove big American cars that used gallons of fuel, just to drive a few miles. When the fuel crisis began the evolution to smaller cars, there began a latent urge to get back into the giant beasts of yore. The same people who said terrible things about the land yachts of the seventies are now driving solo to the local coffee house in giant fuel-thirsty Sport Utility Vehicles. So what’s the difference Suburban Drivers? Enjoy it while you can, planet killers, because the human race is reproducing at an ever-increasing rate, and the elderly are living, and driving longer.

In the not too distant future, there will have to be restrictions on car driving in order to avoid total gridlock and air toxicity. Enter the concept of the small electric car. In the early days of automobiles, electric cars outnumbered gasoline powered cars. Sure, they were terrible, but so were the fuel cars! When battery development hit the technological wall that it’s still pressed against today, the internal combustion engine became the champion of the highways, the railroads, the oceans and later the skies.

General Motors, Honda, Toyota and other manufacturers have brought electric power back into focus, but the fact remains, it’s impossible to equal the convenience and range of the fuel car. With gasoline, you can drive hundreds of miles in one direction; refuel in three minutes, and then keep on going without delay. Electric cars go a little way, and then they’re useless until re-charged.

But where are you going? Are you going from Saint Louis to New Orleans, or are you going from the beach in Los Angeles to your apartment near the beach? Do you really need four tires, four doors, six seats, a roof, a trunk, a windshield and an engine? Or are you just trying to avoid that slow process known as walking?

You might not know it yet, but in the future you are going to be one of the millions of people in the world who rides an electric scooter on a daily basis!

Why a scooter?

If you have ever tried using a bicycle as your means of conveyance, you know what the main problem is. What do you do with it when you get to your destination. It requires parking. Making matters worse, you arrive tired and sweaty and with a sore or numb butt. I’m all for exercise and fitness, but a man in a suit and tie, or a lady in make-up and hose is better off without that bicycle ride. They can always work up a sweat later at the gym. Lets maintain the separation of transportation and exercise here!

Picture this, you unfold your scooter, step on, push off once and hold the switch and steer. You say good morning to the people and dogs as you glide almost silently past them at a reasonable speed. You arrive, step off and fold it down.

Electric scooters are clean, quiet, small, light and fun. They’re a lot of fun. Like the electric car, the range is disappointing to some, but it’s getting better. Oddly enough, the acceptance of electric scooters got a boost from the phenomenal success of the toy known as an in-line scooter in 1999. The original was the Razor, but there are as many knock-offs as there are bumps in the sidewalk. The main advantage of the in-line scooter is it’s ultra light weight and portability. You can stuff it in your shoulder bag and forget it’s there when you finish your ride. These vehicles are made of aluminum and the wheels are like the wheels on your in-line skates. You can steer with the handlebars and the skill required is minimal. Unlike skateboards, they are not difficult to master.

Human Power

Riding any human powered scooter might seem at first glance to require a large input of energy, and compared to bicycle riding, this is true. But if you pass a pedestrian at the start of your journey, you will shortly glance back and see that pedestrian as a mere dot in the distance. That is the key to human-powered scooting, 4X walking speed and zero input on the downhill sections.

I have known about this for years. I’ve ridden a human powered scooter in England, Hawaii and Los Angeles. Scooting at low speed is effortless enough to make walking seem like an exhausting chore. But electric scooting is heaven. On a hot day you don’t get any hotter when you ride, because you are not using your own energy to propel yourself.

Electric power

Our disabled friends sit upon a subset of electric scooters. These are basically electric wheelchairs and they cost up to $3,000. The principle is the same though; batteries, a motor, a switch or potentiometer to go, and brakes to stop. With the modern explosion of electric scooters, the variety has been astounding. Just as in the early days of cars and airplanes, individual manufacturers have launched wildly different designs, and the consumers have steered the evolution of the class with their buying choices. The undisputed winner in the electric scooter in the early days was the Zappy. A similar design is still a popular seller today in the guise of the Tomb Raider.

My first electric scooter was a blue Zappy which I rode for over one year. I loved it. Bicycles passed me and I didn’t care because I wasn’t in a hurry. I just stood there and held the switch as I silently got where I wanted to go. I went fast enough to feel the wind in my face on a windless day, and slow enough to notice every little thing on my route. At first I wore a bicycle helmet, but soon abandoned it. At 7MPH I could step off and run if I ever had to. It was safer than a bicycle. I got to my destination and plugged it in to top up the charge.

I only ran out of charge once, even though my range was less than four miles. It was always enough. However battery technology has endured one of the slowest rates of development in the industrial age. Our batteries today aren’t much more efficient than the batteries which powered the electric cars before the gasoline era!

For a long time I never saw anyone else riding an electric scooter, then actor Kevin Spacey rode a Zappy to the 2000 Academy Award Nominations, and then they began popping up all over the place.

Then in November 2000 I upgraded to a Phat Flyer. Made by Currie Technologies in California, this was a truly practical electric scooter. Based on inaccurate specifications at the time, I imagined I was going 15MPH with a range of 15 miles.

The larger wheels meant you didn’t have to scan the road ahead for every stick, stone and crack. The wide handlebars, low center of gravity and general strength of the tube frame provided a ride that felt stable, safe and completely controllable. It was wobble-fee.

I got one of the first Phat Flyers released, courtesy of Scott at EVdeals.com. Following some bicycle-style safety checks with a wrench set and a delay of 40 hours owing to work and darkness, I finally planted the yellow monster on the pavement at daybreak and pushed down my right thumb.

My first generation Phat Flyer photographed in 2000

This is what electric scooters were meant to be! Okay, so the chain drive was a little noisy in all of that silence, but believe me, all you can hear after a second or two is wind blasting against your helmet. (At these speeds, you’d better get out your old helmet again!)

Motorcycles have hydraulic brakes, as do cars, so you have to remember that the Phat Flyer has bicycle style brakes, because those stop signs loom up pretty fast. When it comes to lower speeds, this type of scooter beats the Zappy simply because it can free-wheel. Okay, it doesn’t have the minimal resistance of a Xootr kick scooter or even a Razor, but there are times when you don’t want to be blasting past everything at 10MPH and it’s nice to put your foot down and scoot now and again. As with a kick scooter, downhill gradients are a free ride on the Flyer.

The Law

Laws pertaining to electric scooters vary from city to state to country. In some places in the world you are free to do anything you like on your electric scooter. Usually however, the electric scooter rider is subject to the same laws as the bicycle rider. This means keeping off the sidewalk, dismounting on a crosswalk, and obeying the rules of the road, including stop signs. Almost every policeman in the world has no idea what is legal for an electric scooter, so most will leave you alone unless you are naked and covered in strawberry ice cream.

However, some law enforcement officials will stop you and attempt to think of ways to punish you for having so much fun. The punishments do not include ice-cream and nudity, and some e-scoot riders have wound up arguing over tickets in the courtroom. Insight and advice pertaining to such legal situations can be found on-line at the Zappy eGroup.

The Future?

It’s still another three days until my permit to drive my old gasoline car is active again. I only get one day every two weeks now. Telecommuting from my home office in my bedroom has made me stir crazy, so I’m off to the local café for some good coffee. I smile and wave at a hundred or so fellow electric scooter riders as I glide over the cracks in the boulevard. Plugging in at the café, I remember with amusement how it used to require a seven-seater four-wheel-drive sport-utility-vehicle with air conditioning and mud tires for my ninety pound girlfriend to acquire a cappuccino from the café three blocks from her house. A young mother on skates glides by behind her self-propelled electric baby carriage. The restaurant next door receives a delivery from an electric road barge. The streets are so quiet, you would have been able to hear chirping and birdsong, if only the birds had survived the gasoline era.

Buy one

Links to electric scooter related web-sites have been removed from this article because they keep changing! I suggest a Google search for the latest choices.

Truth in Advertising

EVdeals.com is just about the only scooter-dealer website that has been honest enough to conduct performance tests and publish the results. Every scooter you see for sale in the stores, or online seems to have the range and speed of an imaginary twin, but EVdeals has published the truth. The following figures are from EVdeals in August 2003.

Taking a dozen of the most widely available electric scooters, they have revealed that average speed on level asphalt is between 9.8MPH and 12.7MPH. Duration or run time, in my view the most important figure, is between 28.6 minutes and 37.5 minutes. Hardly enough for an afternoon out and about!

Maximum speed is between 13.3MPH and 22MPH, the latter being attained by a heavier class of vehicle similar to a road-going moped, and range is between 5.7 and 8.6 miles. How many of us have bought scooters and then imagined we had ridden for 15 miles because the box said we could?

True, there are other scooters out there that look like Vespas and claim to go for 35 miles, but these have not been tested in the same honest and true fashion, so buyer beware. Let’s face it, those electric cars of the early 20th century had the same battery technology that we are using a century later. Is there anything else so important in our technological world that has evolved as little as the battery in over 100 years? No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories about various oil companies suppressing battery breakthroughs.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu

Ok, So I’m Addicted To Chocolate

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By Betty Pine

Look, I’ve already taken three Excedrine today. But if I have some chocolate, I know my headache will go away.

What’s that you say? Chocolate hits the same pleasure center of my brain as sex does?

Hmmmm, well I do hear myself speaking out loud sometimes, barely audible, during the imbibing of that rich, and sweet confectionery. First bite, and I’m saying, “oh yeah, that’s good”. Some more bites, and I go “hmmm, yes, hmmm, more please”. Towards the end, I’m murmuring, “Oh, yes! Yes! Yes!” It’s been awhile, but my memory does stir at some remembrance of another exercise to hit home of my pleasure center.

I could give up most anything else that would be considered an addiction. I don’t have many and tend to want to keep the few I do have. I have given things up in the past, I considered addictions that were unhealthy for me. I gave up smoking when I was pregnant with my first child; I haven’t had any cola products for about 10 years. Don’t ask me, and I hope I will never ask myself to give up chocolate. Even when my pleasure center was getting quite a workout, and I had (you note “had”) a fulfilling sexual life, I still needed chocolate. Oh, yes. After a wonderful session of lovemaking, I sometimes would have that first cup of coffee (if it was morning) and a piece of chocolate, I would think to myself, I’m a lucky girl. I get sex and chocolate.

Just let me say this to the guys, if any of you are interested. Although the past generations didn’t have scientific data to go on, and articles detailing “what stimulates our pleasure centers” the men knew what to bring their lady loves during the mating game. Flowers and chocolate. They might not have known why flowers and chocolate was the preference of the fair sex, but they didn’t fight it. I pity the poor guy who brought flowers and candy, and the candy wasn’t chocolate. He probably was that favorite uncle of ours that never married, and we could never figure out how come. So, guys remember, flowers, and real chocolate for your intended.

Hmmmm, my headache is all gone, and it wasn’t just because I wrote about chocolate, as my empty ice cream bowl attests to. Well, hot fudge sundaes work just as well as a piece of Symphony chocolate bar. Now, if could just find a man.

(c) 2000 Betty Pine

Artist and writer Betty Pine is the editor of The Whimsical Review, a tickle your funny bone e-zine, and a columnist at suite101.com. Her column Passions Defined can be found in their Humanities topic area.

Hair-B-Gone!

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By Margarita Dominguez, In Los Angeles

They don’t teach you about hair removal in school. What works best in each area of the human body? For the sake of all women and men, we attempt to find out.

This article received so many thousands of hits, we gave it a sister article on hair replacement called Hair-B-Back!

From the tops of our heads to the tops of our toes, we are literally covered with hair follicles. A lot of men wish that the follicles on top of their heads were a little more active, but for the most part, our ancestral link to early man produces body hair that we regard as unwanted.

But hair removal is complicated. What works in one area of the body can be a terrible thing to do to another part of the body. Some methods are very painful, some are very expensive, some have side effects, and some are permanent. Why didn’t we get instructions with our bodies?

There are differing opinions out there regarding the method of choice for the area in question, but we hope that this article will guide some readers away from mistakes, and towards the right path to smoothness.

But before we get into hair removal, let’s examine one strange alternative, bleaching. Some women use special bleach to make their facial or body hair lighter, so that it stands out less. They somehow convince themselves that if their mustaches and beards change from brunette to platinum blond, no one will see the hair. While they are performing this operation, they are looking at the hair in the mirror. When it’s over, they admire their handiwork in the same mirror. Somehow they don’t realize that if they can observe the result, so can everyone else in their world who isn’t blind. Bleach ladies take note; you have little white beards and mustaches! We can see them! When you get a tan you look like Santa Claus. You really need to read this article. Don’t bleach ever again, okay?

Some people would prefer not to remove their body hair. This is quite socially acceptable for men. Even Gorilla like men can look pretty macho when naturally hairy. Bodybuilders, however, often choose to remove all of their body hair so that it is possible to see the definition that they have worked so hard for. What’s the point of having six-pack abs if all you can see is the same hairy tummy carpet as before you began training?

Even some women prefer not to shave their underarms or legs. However, whether we like it or not, world beauty standards dictate that we should admire a smooth, hairless female body more than a natural hairy one. Therefore, the hair removal industry exists.

In ancient times, women would get thread and roll it up their legs and over their chin and upper lip. The twine would catch their hair and pluck it out. This natural approach, known as threading, is still offered by some modern beauty salons, and it’s very effective for older people with very loose skin, but science has provided the rest of us with many superior alternatives.

There is hot waxing, cold or Persian waxing (also called Sugaring), shaving, clipping, tweezing, electrolysis, laser treatment, depilatory creaming, and hormone inhibiting. Even the threading has electric versions featuring rubber wheels, (remember Epilady in the Eighties?)

We will address each area of the female and male bodies, starting at the eyebrows and ending at the toes. But first, let’s take a brief look at each method of hair removal.

Methods.

Hot wax could be done at home, but it really should be left to the professionals. If it’s a little too hot it can burn you, and if it’s too thick, it can pull off too many layers of skin and cause serious injury that way. It’s safe enough in the hands of a beautician though. Basically, the lady in the white coat spreads a thin layer of wax over the area and immediately presses a strip of cotton cloth onto the wax, then pulls it off. The hair comes out at the root and the area is left smooth. There is always a little redness and irritation and there is a chance that hair on the next growth cycle, which is below the skin surface, will become ingrown.

Some beauticians will prepare the area with a mild topical anesthetic, but most won’t bother. Usually a sprinkling of talc is enough to degrease the skin and prepare the hairs for maximum wax adhesion. The cotton strips are pressed on in the general direction of hair growth and pulled off in the other direction. Some areas of the body, for example the shins, are fairly tolerant to this kind of pain. Other areas are not, as we shall see when we discuss bikini waxing.

Persian Wax, so-called because Persian women have been doing it for years, is a variation of waxing that involves no heat. Instead of melted wax, the solution is a sticky mixture of sugar, lemon juice and water. In fact the process is now more widely known as Sugaring. The solution can be made in a saucepan for pennies, and you can eat it. Most professionals feel that it fails to remove all of the hair in an area and repetition is required. It’s also a little messy and you’d better make sure there are no ants around.

Shaving costs the price of a razor and a little soap and it doesn’t hurt at all. It has to be done regularly unless you are weird enough to find dark, sharp stubble beautiful. The ends of the shaved hairs are sharp enough to pierce fabric. Certain areas of the body should never be shaved. If a man with thick curly hair on his chest shaves his chest, the thick, curly sharp-ended re-growth will irritate his chest in an unbearable manner, and he will have to keep it shaved bald to avoid the nasty ensuing rash. The only way out of the loop is to tolerate one painful re-growth and then get a chest wax. Hair clippers will cause the same problem.

Tweezers painfully pluck out one hair at a time from the root. A beautician will often use tweezers to pluck out a few stray hairs that were missed by the wax. Tweezers are most often used for eyebrow shaping, but eyebrows can be quickly waxed or sugared into shape also.

Electrolysis should be done professionally, even though some home kits of questionable quality are available. When an electric current is sent through a body hair, the root is destroyed and the hair can then be removed. The pain level varies from person to person and as with all methods, it hurts more in places of the body where there are more nerve endings. Sometimes the results can be permanent or close to permanent.

Laser technology is used for all kinds of things these days. Instead of an electrolysis needle in your follicle you can have a zap of laser light with the same result. It’s not painless, there is an after burn, it’s expensive, and sometimes the hair will just grow back.

Depilatories such as Nair have been around for years, and these days they don’t smell quite as bad as they used to. These creams dissolve the hair chemically so they can be gently wiped away with a wet cloth. Course hair is very resistant to the formula, and many areas of the body react to these creams with a red rash and even welts. Use with care in a well-ventilated bathroom, and remember, whatever chemicals touch your skin will be absorbed by your blood stream. Be nice to your organs and steer clear of harsh chemicals.

Hormonal growth inhibitors are liquids that are sprayed onto the skin. They mimic the effect of baldness to cause hair to cease to grow. Some people find they work, others don’t. They have not yet become a commonly used option, partly because there is no instant gratification. You have to wait and see if the hair will stop growing. Usually, when a person wants the hair off, they want it gone as soon as possible.

The male or female human body.

Working down towards the center of the earth we will discuss options for eyebrows, nostrils, upper lip, chin, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, back, underarms, chest or breasts, tummy, pubis, genitals (male and female), perineum, anus, buttocks, bikini area, legs, feet and toes.

Eyebrows

Waxing or sugaring by a professional is good. It hurts for an instant.

Tweezers hurt and it’s a long job.

Electrolysis and laser treatment can be permanent. It hurts, its pricey and if you remove too much, it’s gone forever.

Nostrils

Short round-ended scissors are safe unless you are in a moving vehicle or in danger of being shoved around in your bathroom!

Battery powered nasal hair-trimmers are excellent.

Upper Lip or Mustache

Men: shave daily with a razor or a shaver.

Ladies: wax or sugar or endure the laser or electrolysis. Never bleach (as discussed earlier.)

Chin or beard

Same as above.

Neck (back of)

Men: Use clippers every three weeks or when your hair is cut. Sharp ends are okay here.

Women: Get it waxed. Don’t forget your ear lobes.

Shoulders

Never shave your shoulders. The hair is course and curly and the re-growth will irritate the skin.

Use wax, sugar, laser or electrolysis.

Arms and hands

The entire arms, hands and fingers are best dealt with using wax or sugar.

Back

Did you know that your back was in back of you? Have someone else do it for you! No shaving here, get waxed.

Underarms

Shaving is safe here but you’ll grow stubble, which looks awful. Be brave and strong during that waxing. Keep the depilatory away from this sensitive skin or your armpits may suffer chemical burns.

Chest or breasts

See above for the horrible consequences of chest shaving. Have your chest waxed or sugared. Be careful around those sensitive nipples.

Tummy

It’s like your chest, only lower, and hopefully flatter.

Pubic Area

Fans of amateur porn might like a big scary bush. Pubic hair probably evolved to trap pheromones, but these days we bathe those away. Men should shape their pubic hair just like the ladies do. A “landing strip” is a desirable shape. Also, if the hair is long, take it between two fingers and cut it down with scissors. Women can experiment with a bald look, because it grows back soon enough. A bikini wax will deal with the perimeter of this area. Women who don’t have at least a bikini wax will get some negative responses when first observed without their panties.

Bikini area

Imagine you are wearing the bottom half of a very brief bikini and there is thick black hair sticking out of the sides! A bikini wax addresses the issue of hair outside of that garment. If you plan on being seen naked, see Brazilian Wax below for the solution!

Genitals (male)

Men who have hair on the shaft of the penis can carefully shave it. Testicles can be carefully shaved. Hot wax is not recommended for your balls, guys. Shaving the inch just above the point where the penis meets the body will give you a longer look. Clippers will cut you, a new wet razor probably won’t.

Genitals (female)

The dancers in the nude strip clubs have no hair at all down there. Shaving will result in stubble and you’ll need to do it every day. Razor bumps will be unpleasant, and using a loofah to prevent bumps would really hurt!

See Brazilian Wax below for the solution!

Perineum and anus

The anus is a mucous membrane. Depilatory cream here will injure you. Shaving stubble will cause irritation as one side of your butt touches the other. Ingrown hairs will be a pain in the butt too. See Brazilian Wax below for the solution!

Legs, feet and toes

Most women deal with leg hair by shaving. Waxing gets a better result and the re-growth is fine and un-stubble like. However, you’ll need almost a quarter of an inch of that baby-fine hair before the next wax, and many women don’t want to be seen with that hair, so they shave every other day instead. You can’t win! The tops of the legs are more sensitive, but you’ll survive. Sugaring may be more effective on shorter re-growth than waxing.

The table above seems to favor waxing in many instances, but waxing is unbearable for many people. By all means experiment, but heed the warnings above.

Brazilian Wax

This has been alluded to throughout this article, and for the uninitiated, it deserves its own paragraph. Certain salons offer this service, but many refuse to do it for fear of unhygienic consequences. Suffice to say, a beautician will ask you to lie down and remove your panties and then raise your legs. She will sprinkle talc all over your butt, perineum and vagina, including the anus and within the labia. Hot wax will be spread over these areas and cotton strips will rip out your hair down to the roots. You will experience intense pain and the pain will continue afterwards. However, the result looks amazingly beautiful and feels even better. If you’re a nude dancer, you will get bigger tips.

Conclusion.

Removing hair from the root by waxing or plucking eventually causes re-growth to slow down or even stop entirely. Shaving never does. If the growth inhibitors become more established, they may eventually replace all of this torture, but until then, be brave, be smooth and don’t cuss and swear when you scream.

Margarita Dominguez is writing a screenplay about road rage in modern America. She maintains a hairless body and owns eight saxophones.

Everyone’s talking about anal

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By Sharissa Washington


Controversial

As you begin to read this article, you have to realize that there are two opposing camps when it comes to anal sex. One group regards the practice as unnecessary, and downright evil, while the other group regards the practice as a source of good healthy pleasure. Between the camps are the varying degrees of acceptance and millions of people who have a very limited understanding of this subject which has been taboo until recent times.

Any mainstream newsstand these days is packed with magazines which contain articles that blatantly promote anal sex as a normal and acceptable practice. True, it’s usually men’s health, and culture related magazines or adult magazines featuring stimulating pictures of undressed female models, but there it is, anal sex at the mainstream newsstands of America.

Illegal

There was a time when a woman’s husband could be imprisoned for having anal sex with her in their own bedroom, even if she invited him to. Anal sex was illegal and there are many places where it still is. When traveling out of town or abroad, it’s always a good idea to walk into the local police station, clear your throat and shout, ” Excuse me, I’m new in town and I was wondering if it’s legal to have anal sex here.” I’m kidding of course. The police are just like everyone else. Some of them will be regular anal fans, and some will want to hurt you for even thinking about such an evil deed.

Generally, although not universally, these days it’s no longer against the law to have anal sex. Discretion is advisable, however.

Immoral

So what if the priests find out? Is hell full of butt-bandits and shirt-lifters? Even after the legal issues are disregarded, there are still many people who wonder if a little back door work might get them into trouble on judgement day. If you think God has more important issues to consider than where things were placed during your sex life, or if you don’t even think about God, period, then the moral issues involved shouldn’t bother you. Anal sex is as moral or immoral as you decide it should be. It’s up to you. As with everything else, moralists generally decide what is okay or not according to their own particular needs and desires. If they have no desire to experiment with anal, they may be inclined to imagine that anyone who does may be regarded as being very bad and due for some kind of punishment.

Homosexual

It should come as no surprise that both partners in a male, same-sex relationship are lacking a vagina! Possessors of penises have a tendency to want to put them somewhere that can provide a pleasurable thrusting environment, so for millions of years, males have been entering other males from behind. Consequently, anal sex is regarded as being a mainly homosexual practice my many people.

Surprise! Women have anuses too. Not only do they have them, but more and more female people are discovering that it can be a pleasure to be on the receiving end of this practice. It’s not only fun for the visitor, but also for the gracious host.

The shift in mainstream public opinion about anal sex is not only towards acceptance of the issue, but also towards the image of the practice being both homosexual and heterosexual.

Discouraged

A lot changed when the AIDS pandemic began to take so many lives in the eighties. The acceptance of gay men in society suffered a setback. They were doing quite well before the deaths started, and then suddenly they were back in the fifties as far as their social standing was concerned.

It seemed as if the free, loving lifestyles of many promiscuous gay men had contributed to the rapid spread of the killer condition. Anal sex in particular re-acquired it’s evil status almost overnight. The cross contamination of body fluids between the giver and the recipient, who can get tiny bleeding lesions seemed to be spreading the disease after every new union.

Our featured practice seemed all of a sudden to be as dangerous as Russian Roulette.

Accepted but barely understood

With the rapid spread of safe-sex practices, however, anal sex crept it’s way out of the dark shady corners of society and onto the pages of trendy magazines. At last, for it’s fans, anal was okay. It’s practically on tee-shirts and bumper stickers now. Everyone seems to be doing it and talking about doing it.

Encouraged, with informative guidelines

So here we are, society’s sheep, obediently preparing to try the latest hot trend. Some of us have experienced nothing more than our doctor’s gloved finger in there once a year, and some of us have been taking it forever.

What is a good way to go about experiencing this new thing for the first time? What about the dreaded substance? What about smell? What about pain or discomfort? What about AIDS?

Be willing and clean

First and foremost, anal sex should never be a surprise! The receiver has to be willing! Some forward planning is advisable. When adult movie actors prepare to indulge in anal for the cameras, as they often do because anal movies are a hugely popular category in that business, they frequently administer an enema before commencing to perform the scene. This is so that no matter what happens, the audience won’t see any distasteful color on the star object following it’s withdrawal.

For the none performer, a bath or shower will usually suffice. Evacuation of the bowels should have taken place, and the application of soap and water is usually enough to prevent the horrors. We hear stories about food poisoning from restaurants where the chef didn’t wash his hands after visiting the bathroom. True, the bacteria present in the anus are dangerous when ingested. But a good wash renders the area fairly safe, if not completely without risk.

Aside from penile penetration, the sensitive nerve endings around and just inside the orifice respond very favorably to stimulation from the tongue. Now some people will have gagged after reading this. Surely this is the last place anyone would want to place their tongue?

No! Analingus is a common practice which has been known to produce as much pleasure for some recipients as any other act possible. There is a product available called an oral dam which is a sheet of latex that forms a barrier between the tongue and the object being licked. Use of such a device is the only sure fire way of being protected here, but human saliva does a fairly good job of forming the necessary barrier. So do some of the edible lubricants.

The key to the door

The sphincter muscle is designed to control what leaves the anus. It also controls what is admitted! Patience and care may be needed to get by here. Of course protection is highly recommended for the sake of both partners, but just as important as the condom is the water based lubricant. The back door doesn’t have the same properties as the vagina when it comes to self lubrication. Unlike the vagina, however it is self cleaning to a certain extent. What goes up, must come down.

The vagina can stretch considerably. I know because I once gave birth to my daughter! The anus, on the other hand is much less elastic. Go easy the first time. Start with one, and then two well lubricated fingers before bringing the horse to the stable door.

But why bother?

Because it’s there. Because it feels naughty and forbidden. Because it can be intensely physically pleasurable for many people.

What the recipient feels depends to large extent upon their gender. A female experiences heightened arousal and a connection to the clitoris. A male experiences unique sensations connected to the prostate gland. People of either gender can orgasm as a result of anal penetration alone. The male who has entered the door experiences something quite different from the vagina that his appendage evolved to fill. Many men prefer the back door to the front door.

Even during vaginal penetration, or male or female oral sex, the insertion of a vibrator into the anus can heighten the sensations considerably. Some prefer to have it switched on at the point of climax, others like it on earlier.

But I don’t want to!

You don’t want to try it? Then don’t. It’s not necessary to try something because your friends do it, or because some woman in an E-zine says it’s great. If you get old and die without experiencing anal sex, your life will not suffer for it. There are plenty of other things in the universe that can make you feel good. I’m a strange woman, and I know that my tastes differ from those of most people. You can be a different as you like.

But if you do indulge, be safe, be clean, be patient and be considerate of your partner. If one of you is having a lousy time, stop! Because that means there’s something terribly wrong going on.

Sharissa Washington wrote this article in 2000

Is there such a word as Muralist?

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Is there such a word as Muralist? We talk to a man who does things to walls.
An interview with Michael Gullberg by Jeffrey the Barak

The wall featuring “…and Then The Goddess Began Conjuring Herself Up Out Of The Palm Of My Hand.” by Michael Gullberg.

What is the full title of the piece seen above?

…and Then The Goddess Began Conjuring Herself Up Out Of The Palm Of My Hand.

Where is this mural located?

2317 Lakeshore Avenue in Echo Park, just west of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. It’s on the side of a house.

There’s a brick wall in the photograph which gives us some sense of scale, but exactly how big is it?

Fourteen feet high, eleven and a half feet wide. There’s actually some rocks and stuff down below which help to put in perspective.

How long did it take to paint this work?

I started at the end of October in 1996 and I had an unveiling party on May 18th 1997. That’s seven months.

While you were painting the mural, was the public passing by, watching you?

Yeah, people would come by and I would be in my own world. People would sit behind me for a while and I wouldn’t know they were there for a long time. Then I’d notice them and say “Hi.”

What kind of paint is it? What’s the medium?

Well it’s actually house paint. Behr exterior latex acrylic semi-gloss paint from The Home Depot. The background surface is Stucco, primed.

What is your current project?

It’s long one. Forty feet long and about seven and a half feet high.

It must be easier when you don’t have to climb up ladders all the time.

Yeah, it’s a little bit easier. I still need to get a stool to reach the top two feet. This one’s gonna take a while. I probably not going to be done with this one for another year or so.

Is there such a word as Muralist?

Yeah. Diego Rivera was a Muralist.

Upon who’s house is Goddess painted?

The current owner of the house is John Duffy, but when the work began, the owner of the house was a woman who owns about four of my smaller painting, Carol Sherman. It was her wall and originally she was thinking about simple silhouettes or something like that. And then we started kicking around some ideas. There was some Indian imagery that she liked and I think that’s where the Goddess came from. Carol was very much into the Goddess aspect of the feminist movement also.

So the Goddess was more of a symbol of empowerment than an actual God-like potent being?

It’s not a specific, it’s an all encompassing universal female/feminine energy.

What’s the difference between painting a large mural and painting something two feet wide?

It depends on the artist! For me, what I have found is that with smaller canvases I was cramming a lot. I was putting a lot into one small painting. Somebody said to me once, you’ve got to start painting bigger. This was after I had painted Goddess, and I started to notice the difference. There’s a lot of emotion and energy in my work and I pour that emotion into it. A lot of big emotion, and I think the extra space affords you more freedom with that. I express myself more fully on a large space. So it’s not just a case of it being larger so you can see it from further away, there’s something more to see if you are close to the piece. From every perspective, from far away, from up close from the sides, from the top. That’s the whole thing, I’m creating other worlds.

Have you ever thought about camouflaging a building and making it blend into its background?

Even though this mural sticks out, it’s colors blend into the hillside. The painting is affected by all of its surroundings. This is more apparent in my current work. I’m affected by all the surroundings, even the insects. One of the things that I started to understand when I first started painting this mural, is I’m actually painting landscapes, other worlds, on top of the ants’, insects’ and spiders’ world. They’ve actually visited while I was painting. This one spider which looked almost futuristic and robotic, with things like wipers on it’s eyes, came into my field of vision and looked up right at me, and I realized at that point that in creating something like a mural, you are also destroying something. On my current piece, the lizards come out of the drain. I disrupt the ants many times. Ants are crazy, they get right in the line of the brush, they’ll come right up to the brush and sacrifice themselves for the beauty of art. I’m in touch with the animals and the insects too. Murals have brought me back to that kind of stuff. I was raised in the woods in the rural areas of Pennsylvania.

What about decay and maintenance?

That’s one of the reasons I use Behr house paint. It has a fifteen-year guarantee. I also use a clear coat, a graffiti coat I’ve been watching this mural for the past three years. With the amount of paint I’m putting on, I could literally peel that thing right off the wall.

So it’s like a big latex skin on the wall.

Yes.

Like a condom.

It’s like an art condom.

Do you have to keep stepping back to have a look at the piece?

I walk all the way up the street, walking backwards, holding my paintbrush. There are a lot of varying perspectives.

Do you use an outline first, or a slide projector?

No, no, no. This mural was strictly out of my head. The planning and design elements were as I was going. I used tape for certain perspective lines. At an early stage in this piece, carol said, “You know what, I like what you paint, I like your style, so just go ahead and paint whatever comes to you.” And I did. A lot of my work evolves as the paint is being moved around. All of a sudden things reveal themselves in the paint. I let go enough to allow the paint to kind of show me what to paint, basically.

You sign your work “Michael”. Is that your artist name?

It was, now I’m thinking of using my whole name, Michael Gullberg, but the single name Michael looks better as a signature on the paintings.

What would you like to say about being a Muralist?

Buy more murals! No reasonable offer refused.

See more of Michael Gullberg’s art at http://michaelgullberg.com/

Article/interview by Jeffrey the Barak

The Wonders of Southern California’s Historic Ridge Route.

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It’s still there!
The Wonders of Southern California’s Historic Ridge Route.

By Jeffrey the Barak

Horseshoe bend

Horseshoe bend

It began with an intriguing map tumbling out of the Los Angeles Times in October 1997. Like a map to hidden pirate treasure, it showed the way to an adventure that would become one of my most memorable days.

It took until April 2000 for me to finally set my wheels upon the route, but after two and a half years of procrastination and planning, I can finally say, “I drove the Ridge Route.” But it’s more than that, I drove it sixty seven-years after it was effectively abandoned.

So what’s so special about a narrow road tracing the mountain ridges between Castaic in the South, and Gorman in the North? The Interstate 5 can cover the distance in a matter of minutes, why would anyone want to average eight miles-per-hour and twist around in circles for half a day, just to cover the same distance?

The fact that it’s a road that’s hardly been used since the days of wooden wheels and solid tires is enough. But the unexpected solitude and beauty to be found up there in the twenty-first century, as history unravels beneath your tires makes the route really magic.

I will refer to reference sources later in this article, which contain expertise that I cannot hope to rival. But it is my own experience up on the ridges that will always stay in my memory.

A Very Brief History.

In the early part of the twentieth century, there was a lot of talk about dividing California into two states. The division would have been North of Los Angeles. It was extremely time consuming to travel from the Antelope Valley in the North, to Newhall and then to San Fernando in the South. Detours had to be made way out to the East. Western California was essentially two worlds.

Because of the swift rise of the numbers of cars and trucks, it was decided that a shorter vehicle route between the North and South should be built. Technology at the time really wasn’t up to blasting and tunneling too much earth away, so roads had to do what horses and wagons did, they followed the contour of the land in order to avoid extreme gradients. This meant twists and turns and narrow ridges atop steep cliffs.

What finally resulted was a wild low-speed ride as thrilling as any roller coaster of the day. Oiled and graded in 1915, and later surfaced with reinforced concrete in 1919, a narrow strip of concrete twisting across the mountaintops. And, mostly because of the existence of this new road, California remained as one State, from Oregon to Mexico.

I cannot do justice to the fascinating history of this road, but I will provide links at the end of this article that, if followed, will haunt your imagination until you finally get yourself up there and experience this magical road.

The Expedition.

Only one of my friends shared my interest in tackling the route, and after a couple of years we finally did it. We wanted to wait until after a long dry spell, because we knew that rain could make the road extremely dangerous, and that any kind of car problem could lead to a life-threatening situation. My friend Michael (seen in my pictures) called the Ridge Route Museum in early April 2000, and a helpful ‘Ridgerouter’ explained that the recent rain had deposited snow up on the route, but within a few days, the high temperatures had melted it all away. This un-named man re-assured us that he drove the route often, in a Saturn sedan, so we wouldn’t have to go and rent that four-wheel-drive truck after all. I drove my 1995 Neon.

A Neon, an Englishman and a New Yorker. With temperatures in the nineties, we pulled off the 5 North, armed with print outs from Mike Ballard’s web-site and Ridgeroute.com (links to follow.) Passing through Castaic, the road signs proclaimed that we were on Ridge Route Road, our pathway to Avalon. We crossed Lake Hughes Road and wound through the brand new houses, aware that those very houses had diverted us from the authentic alignment of the old road. The detour took us up a hill so steep that the front drive wheels of the Neon began to slip, and we were barely out of town! Straight away, though, the views began to present themselves. This was Southern California, wild and beautiful. So far, the old concrete we had longed to see for so long was well buried beneath the asphalt, and there was not a sign in sight to re-assure us we were actually on the Ridge Route.

And then suddenly we passed the boundary of County road maintenance. Here, just an inch underneath the crumbling asphalt was the winding strip of narrow concrete we had so longed to see, with the insides of the curves filled in for safer views around the bends. Up we climbed with Castaic Lake making an appearance far below off the right side of the road. It was hot and silent. When I turned off the engine for a photo stop, there was no sound in my ears except for my own bloodstream and the occasional flying insect. And then the concrete reappeared. A surface poured by roadway pioneers. The Neon bounced along admirably in low gear at speeds ranging from three to ten miles per hour.

Crossing Templin Highway, the signs ahead proclaimed ‘No Through Road.’ We considered that we might not be able to complete the mission. We might get almost all the way through and have to turn around and come all the way back! Onward stout Neon.

We knew we were passing the foundations of places that no longer existed without a hope of noticing them, but it was easy not to miss the steps to an old gas station called the National Forest Inn. How excited we were so see these steps. Ordinary concrete steps in the middle of nowhere! But we could feel something, they were significant because we had seen them in the pictures from the web sites, and now we could climb up them. Man made historical features in the wilderness. If not for the Ridge Route, humans might never have placed a foot on this spot, but thousands did between 1915 and 1933. They bought gasoline and coffee here. They even spent the night in clapboard cabins on this spot.

We failed to identify any more foundations for miles, but we did spot a few we could not attach names to. There were a handful of people around in trucks, working on gas pipelines and power cables and transmission towers, but for the most part we were just driving alone through ancient postcard vistas. The only ugliness in all of this beauty was due to gas and power. Pipes stretch over and under the twisting road with no consideration for their appearance. Colored painted symbols desecrated the very historic concrete, pointing technicians to various piles and wires. But the sheer natural beauty of the place and the sculpture of the road itself easily overwhelmed this ugliness.

I had to swerve in slow motion past boulders that traveled 2 miles per hour slower than my car, (they weren’t moving, and I drove at 2MPH.) At one stage a huge landslide had almost completely blocked the road and I had to put my right wheels up it and crawl past at snail speed and a thirty-degree list. Forces of nature are powerful, especially the force of water over long period of time. In places where water naturally crossed the road, the original concrete and the subsequent repairs had succumbed and the Neon had to gingerly stumble over the resulting gaps. It brought to mind the clichéd rope bridge over the Amazon gorge. Fedora wearing explorers falling through the planks and almost slipping away into thin air.

When we reached the section nicknamed Serpentine Drive we found the smoothest remaining concrete on the route. The concrete was banked into the curves, which meant that it had better drainage, which in turn meant that water had less chance to erode it. Here I allowed the car to speed up to 15MPH for a moment, and felt what it must have been like to use the road when it was in its prime. Climbing up to the next section and looking back down to Serpentine Drive, we were able to match the view with the image from one of the ancient postcards.


Photo Courtesy Mike Ballard.


Serpentine Postcard image from ridgeroute.com

The next treat was Swede’s Cut, a cutting through soft rock, which has always produced rockslides. Michael was a little nervous as we drove slowly through the debris field and stopped for photographs. At any moment, another man-sized rock could decide to join us down on the roadway.

In many places on the Ridge Route, I observed that the bumpiness, which makes it so difficult to drive on, is caused not by the state of the original 1919 concrete, but by the eroded softer asphalt, which had been used to improve it. Wherever it was visible, the original concrete surface was in better shape than the sections that had been re-surfaced.

We stopped at the easily recognizable foundations of the Tumble Inn and re-read the history of the establishment from our notes. Shotgun cartridges littered the foundation. The cartridges were in every color of the plastic rainbow. Winding down to Sandberg’s, we squinted to imagine the fine structure, which had once stood there.


Tumble Inn in April 2000


Sandberg’s Postcard image from ridgeroute.com

And then the concrete slid below smooth blacktop again as we re-entered the county maintained section of road. Spectacular views of the Antelope Valley lay ahead. Jumping west to the 5, we covered the same distance southbound in a few minutes that had taken hours northbound on the Ridge Route. We shot down the hill at eighty-five miles an hour and were passed by a giant cat doing a hundred. It was the Meow-Mix truck. We had done it. Thirty months and a few hours were all it took to change our outlook on Southern California.

Michael is seeking original postcards of the Ridge Route for his collection.

More about the Ridge Route:

The Admirable Historian.
Historian Mike Ballard created a web site that really is a virtual tour of the Ridge Route. If you are not able to experience the Ridge Route in person, this site is the next best thing.

Must-see Postcards.
The official site is equally excellent, and contains a stories link with three must-read articles. The article from The California Historian is particularly interesting. Pictures of many old postcards can be seen on the various pages on this site, and it is these postcards which offer us a glimpse of what it must have looked like when this road was the only direct way to get from North to South. http://www.ridgeroute.com/ Surf to every page!

Jeffrey the Barak is the founder and publisher of the-vu. This is the oldest article.