Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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RV coffee John's way
Some time back I wrote a page in my Food section on How I Brew My Coffee. Traveling with LD I've been brewing my coffee a little differently.
I still brew coffee in my trusty Thermos Nissan 1.0 L /34 oz. Vacuum Insulated Stainless Steel Gourmet Coffee Press but I've modified the press to drip instead of press.
French press modified to drip
At home I always rinsed the used coffee grounds from the french press into the kitchen sink and flushed them down the drain where they were never heard from again. Now that I have a more intimate relationship with my waste products I've been reluctant to do that. I'm still new at this RVing thing and I'm not sure coffee grounds are a problem but I understand food scraps in the grey tank can be a smelly mess to deal with.
Cleaning coffee grounds out of the bottom of the french press and capturing them so they don't escape down the drain is awkward and messy so I modified my french press into a simple insulated pot - I took the plunger and screen guts out of the lid and stored them. At Wal-Mart I found a knockoff of this Swiss Gold Cone-Shape Coffee Filter meant to replace paper filters. The screen sits nicely atop the press but I don't put my coffee in it directly. I line it with the paper filter it is meant to replace and put my coffee in that. Voila! No mess, no fuss disposal.
All purpose cup
My favorite all purpose drinking cup, the Nissan 11-Ounce Stainless Steel Coffee and Tea Traveler, is still serving me well. I have yet to see anything on the market that would work better. It keeps drinks hot or cold for a couple of hours, has a driver's drinking lip, and best of all has a reliable sealing lid. It goes everywhere with me. Now it is sold, at least at Amazon.com, as the Nissan 12-Ounce Stainless-Steel Tea Tumbler with Infuser, but, really, it's still ok to put coffee in it.
Night camp
Site 8 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
Over Fifty
Some of this has been painful for me, but it's all been wildly instructive. And it convinced me that nearly every person over fifty should try to find a time to sit down and engage in the same exercise, even if you never intend to publish anything. You need to think about what really meant something to you. Who did you really love. Who really made you what you are. What the seminal events did. And also it's an incredible discipline. Because I found it shocking to me what I remember and what I don't. It's shocking to me what I can remember factually and how hard it is for me to be absolutely sure about how I felt at the time. You know, how did I feel when I was 16? I don't really know.
Bill Clinton, on writing his memoir, in an interview with James Fallows, the Atlantic Monthly