Bobcat Visits, Part II
17 January 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
More eating, more lifting, dam climbing, arcane German Opera references, peasant food and meeting ms irrepressibly irreverent for Peking duck.
Tags:Our Harrys
Come morning, Stacy was already downstairs with coffee a-brewing. I need coffee in the morning. Back in 1966, I started 7th grade. Two “intermediate schools,” as Fairfax County Virginia called them at the time, met in the same building–an artefact of the baby boom. My school, whose building it was, started at something like 7:10 A.M. The interlopers started in the early afternoon. People in early adolescence have no intellectual functions at 7:10 A.M. absent chemical help. My mother fed me coffee. I loved it. I still do. But in the morning, it’s like hemoglobin to me. A couple of years ago, there was a dreadful ice storm in Lexington which deprived tens of thousands of people of electric power for days. Vondah took it upon herself to drag me out as early as possible and get coffee somewhere where they still had electricity. I’m grateful. The point of this sojourn in the past: I got what I needed to unfog and be reasonable and reasonably pleasant. Good thing. Stacy and Marty could have set their squad of four-legged cats upon me. Those critters got sharp claws!
But, in fact, Marty invited me to cook breakfast. So I did. I had brought the This Cat’s a Cookin’ apron Anne bought me for Father’s Day a few years ago. (It’s University of Kentucky blue and white, it has the Kentucky Wildcat on it, and I love it.) Anyway, it takes a secure cook to yield control of his kitchen to another cook. I’m not sure I could do it, but Marty could. Therefore, left-over flank steak went into a pan with sauteed onion and various vegetables. We consumed. On the morning’s agenda were bench presses and a walk. This would require eating!
The walk was quite something. We rode in Marty’s jeep out to a lake. We rode up a possibly unpaved road–I find I can’t remember whether it was paved because it was covered with snow and ice! We got out and walked across a dam, and we walked a way up the other side of the lake. The snow crunched crisply underfoot. We reversed direction and walked below the dam and the large earthen embankment that adjoined it. We watched–and listened to–the frigid water rush from the bottom of the dam and down the rocky streambed. Marty remarked that he and his friend Chuck have run up the embankment multiple times upon several occasions. Now, we were going to charge to the top. Two rules, Marty explained. The first was to fall forward if you were going to fall. The second? “See Rule One.” I got into it. The very steep embankment yielded to leg positions reminiscent of wide stance way-high squats and a hip swivel reminiscent of racewalking. Waterproof ankle boots with Vibram lug soles helped, too. I arrived at the top breathing hard, and turned to watch Marty and Vondah arrive soon after me. The charge up the embankment warmed me up and woke me up and sharpened my senses a bit. It really was beautiful out there, it really was cold, and the air really was a lot fresher than your typical urban air. We walked back to the jeep. Marty drove back into Waynesboro, put some gasoline in the Jeep, and proceeded on to the compound. It was time to change, go back to garage gym and bench press.
The bench press session was fruitful. We had bought our Primitive t-shirts. Marty had assured me in writing that they had magical powers. Vondah worked up to several quite respectable benches. Marty had instructed me, as handoff man and spotter, to hold my hands above her where the bar was supposed to go–that is, to provide a target. Good target equals good bar path. I got to work on my thumbless grip. We put down a plastic step to accommodate my short legs; in Lexington, I use a pair of 35-pound plates. I adjusted my foot placement through warm-up and lighter sets, and found what allowed me to plant my feet hard. I worked up to a double with 205 pounds. Not too terrible given that I hadn’t done barbell benches for about a month and I’m coming back from an injury. Perhaps there was a bit of magic in my new shirt.
. We changed and after not too long headed out to lunch at the 1912 Hoover House. It’s a genteel sort of place. Tables fill the rooms of an old house. The floors are polished. There was a fireplace in the room where we sat. We all had the fried haddock. (That’s right–fried. This is holiday eating we’re talking about.) It was great fish and there was plenty of it. Power food.
Well-fed, we headed back to the compound, packed our car, and said our good-byes to Marty. We were heading on to northern Virginia. My parents and my sister still live in Annandale. My parents have lived there since 1951, when Annandale was almost a rural outpost and the neighborhood actually used the Falls Church post office. The one item on our agenda that was not all about a family visit? Meeting ms_irreverent for lunch at Duck Chang’s the next day.
When I was a boy growing up in Annandale, we went to Chinese restaurants around the Washington area. I recall seeing Peking Duck on some of the menus. There was always a line on the menu in which the restaurant insisted on 24 hours’ advance notice in order to serve Peking Duck. It must be strange and wonderful stuff, I thought. In the 1970’s Mr. Chang set up his restaurant in Annandale with a then novel idea. Peking Duck was the specialty of the house, and you could always order it–even if you just walk in off the street. “Duck” Chang had cooked Peking Duck for the likes of Richard Nixon. (I never held that against him.) The story of how he got to the U.S.A. has left my memory. But I ate at Duck Chang’s in the 1970’s. It was usually a matter of coming up to Annandale from U.Va. It was a small storefront restaurant in a strip style shopping center. I thought it had passed out of existence. Not so. You can even view the menu online.
ms_irreverent had already arrived. Her unquestionably cool-looking car–cool and red enough to make an Ohio State Trooper forget what probable cause is–was parked in front of Duck Chang’s. It was not difficult to spot her when we walked in: she bears much more than a passing resemblance to her avatar. She and I are the same height. I outweigh her by approximately 60 pounds! She’s been following Marty’s advice for some time now, and looks quite fit and trim. Throughout the course of lunch, I was amazed by her energy. We’re not only the same height, but we’re approximate contemporaries. She’s got the energy I had half my life ago. Nobody should be surprised that she can negotiate a 4.5 mile lakefront hike in 67 minutes after a sizeable layoff. So we talked, swapped stories and generally had a good time.
Everybody ordered–what else?–Peking duck! Peking duck is eaten on moo shu pancakes–as is moo shu pork. You lay the little pancake out flat on your plate. You apply some hoisin sauce. Then, you add a couple of pieces of spring onion. Finally, you add the duck. You roll up the whole affair and you have great Chinese finger food. If you want to be really authentic, you spread the hoisin sauce, arrange the spring onion and add the duck all with chopsticks. You’re offered a demonstration before being turned loose with your meal. It’s a nice, instructional little show.
Now the traffic in Annandale is far, far more vile and life-threatening than it was 30 years ago. The little strip shopping center shows its age. The rest rooms at Duck Chang’s were always kind of shabby. The whole mise en scene bespoke faded glory. But the duck show and the duck itself were as good as I remembered. Particularly tasty was the nice crisp, beautiful, brown duck skin. You hear a satisfying crunch as you bite into it and it releases its excellent flavor. This stuff is not lean; however, remember that we’re still talking about holiday eating. I can’t recommend a steady diet of duck skin. But for a now and then kind of meal . . . don’t let Peking Duck pass you by.
You were wondering about the title of this piece. I know you were. It’s from the title of one of ms_irreverent’s posts: “The Compound is Our Harry’s.” Her point: eventually, everybody who hangs around this website is likely to pass through the compound. I was lucky enough to pass through when the Cat Herd worked out.
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