I’m falling down on my job of regular updating! I didn’t want to miss at least a Five Things for this week!!

Vanishing of Harry Pace
Radiolab
For me Radiolab is one of those podcasts where if you see there’s a new episode it’s going immediately to the top of the “Must Listen” list. Their stories are consistently diverse and fascinating and I know I’m going to learn something new in an interesting way. But this six part series called “The Vanishing of Harry Pace” deals with a black man who lived in the early twentieth century and had a profound effect on music and society in general and who just… disappeared. Within a generation even his grand kids had no idea who he was or even that he (and they) were black. 
In piecing together Harry Pace’s history they also get into questions of race identity and representation, and delve into issues as pertinent today as they were a hundred years ago. 
Seriously, this is a must listen of a must-listen series.

McCartney 3 2 1 and the Broken Record podcast
I know last week I had a Beatles thing and now it might just seem like I’m obsessed. But, come on, two Beatles related things in two weeks?
Last week I linked to an article on the upcoming “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary that’s airing this fall. Well, it looks like we won’t have to wait that long for some deep Beatles information. 
On July 16th Hulu is dropping all six episodes of Rick Rubin interviewing Paul McCartney. There’s a trailer for it here and I’m stoked that I only have to wait a week! 
If you don’t know who Rick Rubin is I’d start by saying he’s a producer, but that’s kind of like saying Paul McCartney is a bass player. Rubin started producing the Beastie Boys back in the 80’s before becoming the go-to producer in the 90’s and 00’s. His work with Johnny Cash at the end of his life is enough to get him into musical heaven, but there’s so much more. 
One of his projects these days is a podcast with fellow luminaries Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond. In fact, I’d recommend starting with Episode 1 that focuses on… Rick Rubin himself. From there check out Episode 51 where Rubin talks with the remaining members of the Beastie Boys, Mike D and Ad-Rock, as well as Spike Jonze who directed the Beastie Boys documentary, “Beastie Boys Story.” Rubin is a fascinating interviewer and I can’t wait to see what comes out of this extended conversation with McCartney.

Aeropress Coffee Maker (Revisited)
My love for the Aeropress is not new. In fact it made one of my Five Things list back in 2018. But even then I mentioned I have a lot of other ways of making coffee and I genuinely like mixing it up. I love the unparalleled richness that comes from a French press or the crisp clarity from a pour over. And I don’t necessarily have coffee every day – I’ve gone a week or more without having coffee. For me it’s about enjoyment and not fulfilling a habit. On my trip – which you’ll read about next week! – I did end up having coffee every day as part of my getting on the road ritual. Almost every day I relied on the Aeropress. Whether on picnic benches, or the top of one of my panniers, or once on a chair outside a motel room in Utah, the simplicity and consistency of brewing with the Aeropress endeared the device to me anew. The ease of clean up, too, made its use on the road really pleasant.
If you are interested on an Aeropress I recommend watching this YouTube video by James Hoffman about a recommended technique. From the video you can see it’s number three in a series and Hoffman is exhaustive in his testing that gets him to that technique. The other videos are fascinating, but… it’s a lot.

Three “perfect” recipes
Okay, these absolutely are not perfect recipes. Well, to me they’re really, really close. I mean, that’s the thing, right? It’s about personal taste – what constitutes a “perfect” deviled egg to someone could be blasphemy to someone else. I like a mayo-based potato salad and you may not, in which case my recipe is the opposite of “perfect.” 
But over the Fourth of July weekend I made these three recipes that I’ve made and worked on for some time and when it came time to eat I was legitimately torn. On one hand, they were delicious. But on the other hand, I felt bad that I didn’t have any meaningful way to improve on what I’d already done. 
So that’s my rationale for offering these three recipes up here: to capture in amber these three recipes in a state of “perfection,” because if I want to change them up they might get worse from here… or achieve transcendence!
There’s another reason for putting these here and that’s because they all three have very distinct origins and the style of the recipe reflects that. The ribs I put together out of years of trial and error and working with notes I took from Smitty; of the three, this is the most distinctly my recipe. The basis for the potato salad comes from my ex mother in law and the recipe reflects the sort of never-written-down style of recipe I think we’re all familiar with (“Oh, I don’t make [insert favorite dish] from a recipe. You know, a little of this, a little of that…”). I find that maddening because, well, when that person is gone, so is their recipe. I started by just writing down the recipe as recited to me and refined it from there. Finally, the deviled eggs started from an AllRecipes recipe. For the longest time I didn’t like deviled eggs. I think Jennifer Youngberg’s were the first I had that made me say, “Hey, I might be missing out on something!” The base of this recipe strayed just far enough from traditional that it piqued my taste buds. A little twist here and there and these are some perfect bites!
Here you go: 
Jordy’s Trippin’ Ribs
Jordy’s Potato Salad
B’Deviled Eggs

Flash flood at Zion
YouTube
I keep watching this video…
Okay, June 22 we ride in through the south entrance to Zion national park, make an immediate right and find a generous motorcycle parking area alongside RV parking. Terry went to the bathrooms to change into shorts while I slathered on sun block. I sent a selfie to Akilah – you can see I missed rubbing in a spot:

What a difference a week makes.This YouTube video was EXACTLY one week later! In the same lot!
Man… so lucky…