COUNTING STARS ON THE CEILING

CHERRY SPRINGS STATE PARK

Growing up in Harrison, NJ, just across the Passaic River from Newark and less than 10 miles from the Holland Tunnel that leads to lower Manhattan, there were no opportunities for stargazing. The only stars we could see were the running lights of aircraft approaching nearby Newark Airport. There was always an orange glow in the night sky.

Turns out I am not alone.  Few people have ever seen a truly dark night sky. Light pollution from urban areas washes out the stars and the incredibly beautiful celestial display, the Milky Way. It may be there, but you can’t see it. The only Milky Way I ever saw was a candy bar.

 

Not what I'm looking for

Janet has!  When she was on her excursion through the Grand Canyon last summer she slept beneath the Milky Way nightly. I had expressed an interest in seeing the Milky Way for the first time and the Captain of this ship made it happen. She has arranged a trip to Cherry Springs State Park, just over 200 miles from our home here in Collegeville.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SWING FROM A STAR?

Cherry Springs State Park is a “Dark Sky Park” and is perhaps the best place for stargazing on the east coast. Depending on luck and cloud cover the full night’s array of lights will be on display; not only the Milky Way and constellations, but asteroids, meteor showers and perhaps the International Space Station! I am truly excited for this opportunity. Park stats say that per year there are anywhere from 60 to 84 optimum stargazing nights. On such great nights the Milky Way is so brilliant it can cast a shadow.  

 CHERRY SPRINGS STATE PARK

Cherry Springs State Park

Cherry Springs is isolated, surrounded by thousands of acres of the Susquehannock Forest and at 2,300 feet above sea level the air is clearer. It is dark here, with no light pollution or sky glow from buildings and since 1999, active steps have been taken by the DCNR, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, to preserve this dark. Flashlights used by nighttime visitors are required to have a red filter, which has the least effect on night vision, and they are only to be pointed at the ground. The nearby Cherry Springs airport was purchased and shut down in 2006 and several “star parties” are held at the park a couple of times per year. At Cherry Springs it is possible to see up to 10,000 stars with the naked eye. I’m “looking forward” to this trip… pun intended.

Pennsylvania DCNR 

 

YOU ARE HERE

FLY ME TO THE MOON

For those of you who have only seen the Milky Way as a candy bar, the Milky Way is actually where we live.  It is a barred spiral galaxy where our solar system is located. It’s called “milky” because under optimum conditions it appears as a band of light so thick at times individual stars cannot be seen by the naked eye. In case you’re trying to get directions, our solar system is about 26,000 light-years from the galactic center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, a spiral-shaped concentration of gas and dust. What we are trying to see when we go to Cherry Springs is the galactic plane where the majority of the galaxy's mass will lie.

Light pollution greatly affects one’s ability to see the Milky Way. The sky needs to be quite dark and the moon below the horizon. We leave for Cherry Springs Monday, July 23rd, and the moon should set around 3:30 am that evening.

I KNOW YOU’RE THERE…

An interesting resource is STELLARIUM. It’s a planetarium for the computer that shows a realistic sky in 3D. Set your coordinates and you will see the stars as they should appear with no sky glow. One night I found the Milky Way on Stellarium, but outside in the streets there was nothing but the planet that was also listed. The program also shows asteroids, meteorites and satellites passing overhead at the time!

Thanks for reading! Wish us luck in our search for the Milky Way while eating a Snickers bar.

RUN DON’T WALK

IT EATS YOU ALIVE

Phoenixville celebrates its role in the 1958 B-Horror classic The Blob this weekend with BLOBFEST. In the movie the oozing critter from outer space dissolves and absorbs people, getting larger and redder as it preys on the good citizens of Phoenixville. Locations for the shooting of the film include several in Downingtown and Royersford, but it is Phoenixville’s Colonial Theater that gets top billing. Even though the star of the film, Steve McQueen (in his first role) has warned people of this terror from outer space people have ignored him and are attending a film at the Colonial. The Blob gets into the theater devours the projectionist and oozes through the camera holes and attacks the audience.

Mayhem ensues and the film’s most iconic scene of people fleeing the theater occurs.

TEAM VFH ABSORBS THE MAYHEM

Tonight the Run Out, as it is called today, is reenacted in kicking off the BLOBFEST Antics. Tickets to actually be part of the theater fleeing the “Blob” were sold out a long time ago, but people gather on the street to watch the revelry. For the first time since your lovable Blobs first started absorbing and mooching in 2009 we plan on fighting the crowds and going to BLOBFEST. It’s free and should be fun.

On Saturday there is a whole ledger of street fair events in Phoenixville including a costume contest and a fire extinguisher parade (fire extinguishers were integral in the film) and several viewings of The Blob and other similarly-themed films throughout the weekend. Phoenixville is already a great town to visit with its vibrant nightlife, and the BLOBFEST is just another reason to visit.

BLOBFEST 2018 

LIFE AFTER BLOB

Like the Blob the Colonial Theatre has absorbed the building next to it and expanded. Once a bank, the mini complex offers two more screening rooms as well as the main auditorium.  They show first run and classics there for a very reasonable cost as well as concerts. I recently saw the original The Producers there and Hot Tuna in concert. If you want to simply visit the theater and see the plaque that commemorates the film and there is nothing going on the volunteer staff will allow you entry. I recommend strongly you take along a bag of ice though, in case you get some sticky red stuff on you.

THE ORIGINAL RUN OUT

DOING LAPS

Okay, summer is here and sadly the pool invites to your favorite adorable moochers so far have been light. Just want to point out that if you are interested in having this charismatic swim team grace you with a visit to your pool, then you MUST extend the invitation. Now your presence is not necessary when we visit but you must make arrangements for our entry beforehand. If pool passes or necessary keys or entry instructions are not left for us, you will miss out on the opportunity for Team VFH to visit.

Synchronizing your wishes to be so honored by our lithe bodies plying your cool waters on a hot day, we will happily document our presence and post on this blog. Of course If you wish to remain anonymous we will respect and just send you a picture of our lissome bodies relaxing at your pool via email. Now, if you plan on ALSO being there at your pool we WILL pose for pictures with you, but the limit is two (2) separate pictures.

We will do this all for you for free. We promise to provide our own towels, but expect leisure flotation devices to be available.

SIZE MATTERS

Now unfortunately in the past some invites were a bit sketchy. We once had to contend with a kiddie wading pool and these certain devious people, who will remain nameless here, ALSO had their kiddie in the pool! How unfair is that? We honor them with our presence and when we did a cannonball we displaced ALL the water in the pool and it took a while to fill it back up. So to make sure our valuable time is not wasted we must insist all future pool invites must include a photograph and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

SLIDING SCALE

Future kiddie pool invites are not to be automatically excluded though. There is a sliding scale of accoutrement available to you lucky hosts. Here is a small list:

POOL TYPE                                     EXTRA INCENTIVES REQUIRED

Kiddie:                                Fill the pool with beer/tequila. Steaks on the grill 

Standard Amoeba:            A six pack, or margaritas, sandwiches will be okay

Olympic sized:                  A couple of tepid PBRs and/or a warm bottle of water, chips

Working Hot Tub:             We’ll bring the wine

So, summer’s here. If you want the Mooch Mariners to swim at your pool, you’d better send that invitation.

Hope your summer is going swimmingly. Thanks for reading....Remember to send those pool pictures to: greg.dunaj@yahoo.com

PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION 5219

NATIONAL ICE CREAM MONTH

Lap this one up folks, since 1984 a Presidential Proclamation has deemed July as National Ice Cream month and the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream day. Signed by President Ronald Reagan the proclamation urges the good citizens of these United States to observe these events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

Oh Yeah.

Although the proclamation only mentioned specific dates in 1984, the celebrations have continued ever since, mostly by the ice cream manufacturers.

This year National Ice Cream day is July 15 and there are a lot of sweet deals out there. (pun intended).

Here’s a few:

CARVEL: Buy one get one free cone or cup soft serve ice cream on Sunday, July 15.

CARVEL 

BRUSTERS: They constantly offer promotions like free kid cones for those vertically challenged and doggie sundaes. Their Sweet Rewards program is a great cost savings and for National Ice Cream month they are even offering more giveaways to the loyalty club members as well as rolling out several new flavors like: “Espresso Yourself”

BRUSTERS

PLEASE TOUCH MUSEUM: This delightful Philadelphia museum is offering free ice cream all day on July 15 to everyone… not just the kiddies.

ICE CREAM AT THE PLEASE TOUCH MUSEUM 

BASKIN-ROBBINS: Download their loyalty app for savings on cones. Help BR in celebrating their 31 original flavors on July 31^st by getting $1.50 scoops all day!

 BASKIN-ROBBINS

DIPPIN’ DOTS:  They are celebrating their 30^th Anniversary by offering free Dippin’ Dots and prizes at participating locations on July 15.

 DIPPIN' DOTS

Despite this quick list there are many more I’m sure. Shops across the country will probably offer some sort of freebee. Show up July 15 and ask what they are offering.

It's your civic duty to eat ice cream
or... DON'T say "no" to ice cream

God Bless America…and Ice Cream.

COLLEGEVILLE ANTICS

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT

Team VFH is cheap, but at least we enjoy our lives. It’s not like we’re sitting in the dark and hoping for good luck to come our way…we strung out party lights along our back deck to help with its search. With all the plants and the lights our little deck is a green oasis and during the summer months we spend a lot of time lounging amid the pastoral scene. It makes the wait for that good luck all the more pleasant.

Friends and neighbors who stop by and visit also make the wait for good luck a bit easier. They always remark on how lovely our little party square looks. We tell them how fortunate we feel and if you can ignore the traffic chortling past on the nearby street you can readily imagine you are anywhere else in this wide beautiful world. But, as luck would have it we are in Collegeville in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

That may sound like I am making fun of our little burg, and I guess I am, but truthfully it really is very pleasant here. From our perch, peering between the ferns, we can see a pastoral expanse of green, the home of a ball field and playground. If you can ignore the cars barreling down the street one can imagine an undulating flow of pasture and serenity.

Also from our perch our bird feeder is the delight of goldfinches, chickadees and woodpeckers, the occasional crackle notwithstanding as well as a rather brazen chipmunk.  We sit out here and the world seems like it slows and we smile at our good fortune.

our dog likes EVERYONE

Summer concerts are held across the street sponsored by Collegeville and the good citizens bring their lawn chairs and the kids flounce about to the cover bands that bless us with their performances. Sometimes we sit on the deck to listen, we’re that close, sometimes we take the dog out for a spirited walk amongst the crowd. It is a good to see so many coming out for these shows. 
COLLEGEVILLE

DA BEARS
Collegeville is aptly named, as it is the home of the Ursinus Bears, a liberal arts school where J.D. Salinger attended, albeit for one semester in 1938. Often with towns that have colleges in or nearby there are many benefits. Although before she met me Janet had never explored the campus just up the street, Ursinus and her lovely grounds is dotted with sculptures and fountains and now we stroll the 170 acre campus with the dog yapping at everybody including the statuary.

The school sends out pamphlets announcing different events, like art shows at the Berman Museum or movie nights on the front lawn.  The other night we strolled onto the campus to see the crowd assembled for that evening’s viewing. Lots of kids were tumbling about. It was a good turnout and again we smiled at our good fortune to live here in Collegeville, and took our dinner at the food trucks gathered for the occasion..

 URSINUS COLLEGE

Team VFH’s home base is a good place and we offer to all our readers an open invitation to visit and to see what the fuss is all about.  

Just bring beer.

Love to all and hopefully you’ll find your own little oasis so close to home.

CHEF OF THE FUTURE

I’m a lucky guy. Not only do I have a wonderful traveling partner in Janet, but she also LOVES to cook and, most importantly, she cooks well. Of course she’ll be self-deprecating and tell you anyone can cook if you can read a recipe.

For Janet cooking is a hobby. She enjoys scouring the internet and cook books for unique recipes. Sometimes we cook together, but mostly she enjoys doing it all by herself. While eating we’ll critique the meals, i.e. is it a keeper, and what would we like to change if anything.

MEALS AS EVENTS

Yes, if you’re going to be cheap and a homebody that travels sporadically, like Team VFH, it’s best to make your meals an interactive event, rather than simply one for subsistence. If you need food, that’s why God created peanut butter. Or, you can go to the Wawa for a sub and some chips…Oops, showing my NJ roots. SUBS are called HOAGIES around here.

But, if you slow down and enjoy the whole process of deciding on recipes and shopping for ingredients and preparing and cooking you can have a great meal AND you call yourself a gourmand. You’ve instantly elevated yourself into foodie stratum!. Though you may be cheap and the whole thing may be time-consuming, you’ll not only impress friends, but you’ll have fun too. Janet impresses me every day and I count my blessings by the forkful.

FUNKY BUT CHIC

The latest trend in our household is the use of meal kits. The industry has exploded recently and there’s much competition for your dollars   Meal kit services deliver pre-portioned meals with all the ingredients and cooking instructions, taking roughly 30 minutes of prep and cooking for meals that we perhaps would not readily consider. Three meals are delivered to our doorstop which cost around $10 per person. Janet works her magic with the savings coupons offered by the various companies and suspends subscriptions when necessary so unwanted meals are not sent to the house. If you subscribe to a service and do not make a selection they have preordained menus that they feel will suit your tastes, so it’s important to monitor. Yeah, Janet is on top of this completely. Readers of this humble travel blog know that Janet is the true captain of the ship.

The savings also comes from not having to go to the market for that odd spice, all are provided in the kits and so there’s a time savings as well. What’s nice is that from the lists Janet can also select meals low in carbs or calories. At first I had thought this was just a fad but have come to appreciate the quality of the food and the choices of meals available to us.

Though this is a rather new cottage industry, in the early 2000s I received a similar kit for a Christmas present that also included a dessert. Though I don't remember the company now, and I was skeptical when it arrived, I remember being rather impressed with the result. This service really got started in the past few years with Blue Apron and now several companies offer the meal kit for delivery. All are good. Janet has said she prefers Home Chef because of the selections available.

Here are the three that we have selected from over the past number of months but there are many others.

HOME CHEF

BLUE APRON

HELLO FRESH 

Here's a history of this tasty industry.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MEAL KIT INDUSTRY

Bon appetit!

STEALING MEMORIES

MARKING TIME WITH BEER STEINS

Come on… admit it… you’ve stolen a glass or two from a bar. What citizen of Montgomery County Pennsylvania DOESN”T have a Trappe Tavern glass, or one from the Railroad Street Bar in Linfield? If they didn’t want you to steal it, then WHY would they put their logo on the pint? Why should you try to impress guests with fancy beer glasses purchased in some department store when you could pour a brew into a glass filched from Sly Fox or Crooked Hammock in Lewes, Delaware?

 RAILROAD STREET BAR

Afraid you’ll get caught? It’s a science and I’ll give you some tried and true tips later on.

THE TRAPPE TAVERN 

COLLECTING OVER THE YEARS

I’ve been a cheap S.O.B. for years and have traveled quite extensively around the world, for work and pleasure, stealing shit to take home. For a while it was actual beer cans, which proved unwieldy and though I once partied with a guy in Chicago with similar aspirations, the look of all those beer cans ringing his apartment displayed on little shelves, seemed like overkill. While admiring the fellow roadie’s collection he had nudged me with his elbow and proudly said, “I drank every one of those beers.”

As a young father with young children the collecting of beer cans was not plausible and the cans I had gathered from all over the world were collected in boxes and kept in the garage before I gave them all to the Appalachian Brewing Company in Collegeville to add to their collection mounted on the wall of their pub.

For a time it was beer labels too, but I kept tearing them when I tried to remove them from the bottles.

Then it was bottle caps. Consider the artwork on such a small space! Some bottle caps are the only identifying mark of the beer like the Westvleteren Trappist beers from the Saint Sixtus Abbey in Belgium. Some, like Ballantine Ale, had little puzzles to solve printed on the underside of the cap.

 

WESTYS

Beer caps proved to be easier to horde and I could drop them in a specially designated drawer in my office to open and admire whenever I got thirsty. For a while I tried to put them in plastic sheets usually used for slides or coins, but this soon proved ludicrous.

PRACTICAL STEALING

Stealing beer glasses seemed like the most natural progression. Heck, I didn’t just have to look at them, I could use them.  I have glasses from Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Australia, and from joints all across the U.S.

Also, I have a number of commemorative glasses from different events I’ve attended over the years. Before they got too big for their britches and moved out of Lambertville River Horse Brewery hosted a beer garden at the annual Shad Fest in Lambertville and sold glasses to go with their beer at this very well attended weekend excuse to party. When they pulled up stakes and moved to Ewing, the party left town and there were no more excuses to wade through the crowds of tourists that descend on Lambertville every last weekend in April..

River Horse also hosted Oktoberfest events at their brewery along the canal and a very well attended chili cook-off with area restaurants vying for your vote as the best chili. Plenty of beer to wash down the fiery concoctions served in commemorative glasses.

Stoudt’s in Adamstown outside of Reading also has glasses given out at their Oktoberfest and different charity events like, Pour For Pups held in Phoenixville wait patiently for us to fetch them from our shelves for a beer, and if you join the Iron Hill Brewery Mug Club you get a massive ceramic mug to take with you. Yeah, we got a bunch of those too.

Don’t let Janet’s prissy goody-too-shoes ways influence you. She loves to filch a glass as much as I do. We’re quite a pair.

Here’s the way to do it:

SLEIGHT OF HAND and A BIG POCKETBOOK

Make sure no one is watching! They probably won’t care.

GO TO THE BATHROOM WITH YOUR GLASS

Just make sure you leave the bathroom “without it”. From Paris to Lewes this works the best for me… Just make sure you zip up your fly.

TELL THE BARTENDER YOU’RE GOING TO STEAL THE GLASS

Make sure you leave them a good tip.

OUGHTEN DO IT

Seriously though, we’ve been to places in Belgium where they will NOT serve you a beer if they did not have the proper glass for it. The beer label must be prominently displayed on the glass and when poured both the bottle and the label on the glass must be placed so you can readily see them. The beer culture is so sophisticated in Belgium it would be sacrilegious to steal a glass where beer is ambrosia 

.

Now, it  you really want a Westmalle Tripel glass that badly, go to the store and buy one, or GO TO THE ABBEY and steal it there. There it is advertising just like the Trappe!

That’s what we did at the Halve Maan Brewery in Bruges…  It’s not a Trappist monastery but they make a great quad. 

Yeah, we snatched one from there too! 

HALVE MAAN BREWERY

Happy collecting.... Thanks for reading.