Commercial Returns A Memory.

I saw a commercial today where some city types were in a country diner and asked about how hot/spicy the meal was.  The waitress said they had to sign a waiver, and the guy in the next booth snickered.

I've been there...

During the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, a friend and I decided to camp in Canada for 2 weeks.  We had been at the place 3 years before in the regular campgrounds, but we had decided to try some "primitive camping".  There were 2 options for getting there.  You could be electric-motor powered to the sites by the camp with some weight limitations or they would just give you a canoe and you were on your own.

I am a good canoer and an experienced camper.  And I wanted to hike through the woods each day.  My friend said he was too and wanted to do the same.  Falser words were never spoken...

We loaded our backpacks full of dried food, tiny white gas stoves to heat the dried food with water, and tent etc into the canoe.  We struck out early in the morning.  I being the smaller guy in the front to guide the canoe and he being the bigger stronger guy in the back.

I immediately realized that my friend had the canoe-paddling skills of a cow.  I'll continue about that another day.

But the point is that on the way out of the US, we barely could gas up on the even/odd day on my license plate.  We  had 2 hours and stopped at the last Chinese retaurant before crossing the border.  And it was a real Chinese restaurant.  There were real Chinese people eating there.  The menu was in Chinese!

So we saw an old guy eating a dish of chicken and red bell peppers and that looked safe so we said we would have that.  They weren't bell peppers.  They were some hot pepper that would peel paint off walls.

We utterly died!  I'm a real wimp when it comes to hot spicy things.  "Mild" makes my scalp drip sweat.  My friend likes "hot chili" and even he was sweating.  The old guy laughed and ate 3 superhot peppers while we watched.   But we were  very hungry and poor, so we ate as much of the chicken as we could.  We still remember the 100 Megaton Chicken...

We got into Canada just before midnight with a full tank of gas.

Chicken was not a success on the trip.  More about "special chicken" tomorrow...