Pizza & Sullying Our Land

So Friday was Associate Appreciation day whereupon we were shown appreciation with greasy pizza and jugs of soda. Naturally, I declined the gratuity. However, pizza continued to loom large on my mind and when dinner time rolled around I was victim to a real hankering for a pie. As I typically don’t keep flour on hand I had to decide if I was going to scrap the idea, go out and obtain flour, or figure out something else. I was frankly too lazy to go out and get flour but not so lazy that I wanted to scrap the idea, so I started flipping through my cookbooks and recipes for inspiration.

I found a recipe for oat bread using flour milled from oatmeal and, along with a pizza crust recipe, was able to cobble something together to form an oat crust. Basically I milled the oatmeal in a blender and using some salt, yeast, and honey came up with a nice formula for a crust. I made a rich tomato sauce from scratch and topped the pizza with fresh mozzarella, uncured apple wood smoked bacon, asparagus, onion, green pepper, and broccoli. It ended up being quite delicious and, even in my own self-castigating sort of way, congratulated myself on the creation. I actually found the denser crust created by the oat flour to be far more tart-like than anything, but really enjoyed it that way. It still was very moist, chewy, and extremely resilient to the rigors of heavily topping laden pizza consumption.

Having had a pleasant sleep filled with visions of pizza and bacon, I woke to find the sun shining in, what was, apparently a beautiful day. Both my patio doors and window face the east side of my building, however, which sometimes can impart a false sense of warmth that is easily deceiving. That being said, I broke out my mountain bike and departed on what would become one of the worst rides of my mountain biking ‘career’. First, as I have already alluded to, I set the stage for my ride by being totally underdressed – a fact I realized immediately after stepping out of the car at the shaded trailhead.

My goal was to explore a matrix of fire roads that crisscross over this large plot of land in Southington – part of the Crescent Lake property for those of you who are familiar. Well, not too far in I began to realize that they had started logging the area and were using the other end of the property as their point of entry. Because they were using an alternative entrance their operation wasn’t immediately conspicuous to me, for if it had been I probably would have reconsidered my venture altogether.

Anyhow, the roads, I learned, had been torn up by large logging machinery and were a combination of deep icy muddy ruts overlaid with a bunch of dead fall. Only twenty minutes into the ride I was covered head to toe in freezing mud, trying with all my might to keep my momentum as I pedaled uphill, as the road revealed itself to be a gradual but unrelenting climb in hub-deep arctic mud. The rutting was so deep that the roads were essentially acting as small rivers and thick brush on either side made it impossible to skirt the horrendous mess. However, stubbornness prevailed and I sallied forth instead of turning back. I can’t imagine I actually covered any significant amount of terrain, and yet I was still out for a good two hours. By the time I got back to the car I was fuming, rightfully blaming the loggers for such careless use of the land and for everyone’s eagerness to make a quick buck at the expense of Connecticut’s limited woodlands.

Upon riding back home with a mud packed hubs and an equally filthy visage, I contemplated just how sad the treatment of Connecticut’s land is. Human powered recreation seems to be a rarity around here, often leading to the limited amount of woodland set aside for its practitioners to be summarily overrun by OHV’s and loggers. This is far more commonplace than I care to admit and I continue to find more and more acreage fall victim to this sort of shabby and lowly treatment. As one can imagine, this is an issue that has long plagued me and my outrage only continues to grow with time. As such I am sure that you can expect future posts on this subject in my effort to begin combating the whoring out of our precious few woodlands.