Some of you may have experienced The Case of Pain.

From The Brand Fuel Expedition 2006

You know it when you see it: a standard briefcase with non-standard flames painted on it, holding an assortment of very aggressive hot sauces. It comes out on enchilada night on the river and it’s wise to use caution.

“Dave’s Ultimate Insanity” so far has the gold medal for excessive heat. I’ve seen beads of sweat appear on a brow after consuming a wee droplet of the stuff. I’ve witnessed tears. The chugging of milk to make it go away.

But there’s a new contender in town. A friend of mine came back from Louisiana with the gift of a tiny 1.5 fluid ounce bottle with the label, “The Hottest [censored] Sauce.” And they may be right.

Morgan made curry for dinner recently and we thought we’d try out this new condiment. He put a drop on his plate and gave it a go. Seemed fine for a while, then he pushed himself back from the table and said, and I quote: “Oh-oh.”

I offered milk. No, he said. He’d ride it out. The beads of sweat showed up. He drank water. Did some deep breathing exercises.

Hot sauce and spicy peppers seem to override common sense. For reasons I don’t understand, many people will watch another person suffer through discomfort and want to join in. So we did.

As Morgan fought through the burn, I dabbed some of this substance onto a piece of bread and our other friend Dave dripped some on the back of his hand, then licked it off.

Dave was in the early stages of his mouth being on fire when he reported that what was worse was the burning on his hand where the hot sauce had contacted his skin.

I went for milk to alleviate my own crisis while Dave washed his hands and we all sat there cringing and sucking air to knock back the singe.

From The Brand Fuel Expedition 2006

Look for this small bottle next time The Case of Pain comes out. I will be donating it to the cause. Help yourself. Please. I don’t mind a bit how much of these 1.5 ounces you consume.

It does help that we have fresh mango salsa to combat the hot stuff. And there’s always Riveritas – a very special blend of cocktail fixings that doesn’t involve many ingredients, but makes up for it by using a lot of the few things that do go in there. Like tequila. And a few other things, but the recipe is a closely guarded secret and I can’t divulge anything more.

From 6-16-07 Hells Canyon Geology Expedition

The sun can beat down on Hells Canyon in the summer, no surprise there. It gets to where you look forward to a good splashing in the next stretch of rapids. And swimming in the clear water of the Salmon River is one of the finest pleasures I know for escaping the heat. You almost welcome getting too hot because the cure is so enjoyable . . . a lot like the relationship between The Case of Pain and your tumbler of icy Riverita.

If you think you’ve got a hot sauce that can go up against Dave’s Ultimate Insanity or this new tiny bottle with the unprintable name, go ahead and bring it along. We’ll make an extra batch of antidote and have ourselves a taste test on the riverbank.

Near the top of my list of favorite things about Wallowa County is whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied – no, wrong list. Here it is: Ferguson Ridge Ski Area. The local ski hill populated by a bunch of ranchers and hippies and all sorts of different collars with kids and older folks acting like kids on telemark skis, downhill gear, snowboards . . . I’ve even witnessed one fella riding what appears to be a homemade monoski hewn from a two-by-six, sort of a thick wooden waterski for snow. You just don’t see that at the fancy ski resorts.

I was on Mount Hood with friends over the holidays and my buddies got on the subject of why I would ever choose to live in the boondocks of Wallowa Valley. We had just driven two hours, had to chain up, paid fifty-some bucks for a lift ticket and had to elbow through the clustered hordes at the lift line.

I described the twenty-minute drive to our little community ski hill, where lift tickets are fifteen bucks. And you can volunteer to help out to offset the cost. How it’s like an episode of Cheers. You know everybody there, or probably will by the end of the day. How there is no chairlift, but an old-school T-bar.

These pals of mine found this amusing and laughed and laughed. They asked when I was going to move to Portland. And I laughed and I laughed.

Penny Arentsen of Team Winding Waters is on the ski patrol at Fergi and has also been helping with their new website, skifergi.com. Give it a look. It’s terribly convenient to check conditions online instead of the old routine of waiting for a friend to call with a firsthand report.

The Eagle Cap Extreme sled dog races were in town this past weekend, with the start and finish line at Fergi, so there were lots of folks and a lot going on. Morgan and Todd, also of Team Winding Waters, played music in the lodge Friday night and didn’t disappoint.

I didn’t plan on going back up to the hill Saturday, but freezing fog sat down over the valley and it’s hard to be upbeat when you’re inside the belly of a gigantic frozen pile of fog.

Word got out that the ski hill was above it all, in the sunshine and blue skies, so I made a break for it just to confirm the sun was still with us. Breaking through that wall of fog was just like the shift from black-and-white to color when Dorothy gets set down by the tornado. Except for the Munchkins.

Penny was on patrol duty, but had some down time and showed me the new video camera she’d been breaking in with shots of sled teams and skiers.

She discovered she’d pushed the wrong button and not recorded something she thought she had, which I found very, very interesting, having had a similar problem recently. I’m sorry to say that made my day.

The freezing fog is still here, and the only positive thing I’ve found about this weather pattern is that when you’re sitting in a hot tub, your hair freezes into wicked spikes. It’s entertaining.

As much as I enjoy snowboarding at Fergi and frozen hair, I put a pair of shorts on last night just to remember what it’s like not to be in long-johns. I glanced at my Chaco sandals in the corner collecting cobwebs and marked off one more day on the calendar until rafting season. I’m ready.

The Winding Waters movie label is taking YouTube by storm. A little storm, maybe . . . kind of a dust devil. But, still, our action-thriller, ‘Path of a Gearboatman’ had 150-some-odd views last time I checked. That’s some serious box office, baby.

I can’t help but think the response to this movie would be a full-blown hurricane by now if we still had the pirate-Darth Vader scene. This didn’t make it into the final cut of the movie, which is a real shame because I happen to have seen this extremely rare footage and it was pure movie gold.

You’re going to have to trust me on this because I was running the camera at the time and it turns out the ‘record’ and ‘pause’ buttons are close enough together that things get confusing.

It was a heartbreaker, sitting down to edit the tape, waiting for cinematic history to unfold and, instead, there’s a blurry shot of a coffee table, couch, and somebody’s knee while I was moving the camera around, thinking I’d just turned it off instead of on. What? Who’s knee is that? Run it back . . . where’s Darth? . . . but wait, that is rather an interesting shot of the coffee table. I seem to have a knack for this cameraman thing once I get it turned on.

The lost footage can never be recovered. I guess we could do it again, but that seems like a hassle. So for the sake of history, here is the script from the missing scene:

(note: Mike Baird had an operation on his eyeball recently and has been wearing a black eye patch while it heals. He claims to be growing weary of pirate jokes, but I can’t believe that’s true. My favorite one lately is to pretend to brush something off his shoulder on the side where the eye patch is and say, “What have you been feeding that parrot?”)

The scene opens with Mike and Patrick Baird hunched over a pile of maps. Mike is playing the part of Grey Baird, the grizzled buccaneer.

Grey Baird (pointing at map and talking in a pirate voice): “Patrick, This be Hells Canyon.”

Patrick: “I know, Dad.”

Grey Baird: “This be Wild Sheep Rapids, and here be Granite Rapids . . . a good captain is wise to use caution when passing these waters.”

Patrick: “Dad, I know.”

Grey Baird (shifting to Darth Vader voice): “Patrick, I am your father.”

Patrick: “I know, Dad.”

Yeah, well, it would probably make more sense if you saw it in context. But there’s only one person to blame for that, and that’s whoever designed the buttons on that video camera.

We’re into this video camera thing and looking forward to some helmet-cam action this season. Run the rapids, slide down over the lip of the Green Room when the Snake River is up and charging . . . it’ll be Hells Canyon adventure footage at its finest. But if you want a speaking part in any of those shots, you might want to ride in someone else’s boat. They’re not letting me near that camera.

From Specials Photos

Winding Waters doesn't fool around in the food department. I eat better on rafting trips than at home, so the river kitchen was just a little bit intimidating for me when I started floating with these guys. I had never braised anything before, couldn't make vinaigrette dressing from scratch and was a stranger to baking desserts in a dutch oven.

I've had a handful of friends over the years come out of culinary school fancying themselves chefs. But really they just rely on that thing where you make portions really tiny and then squiggle mango sauce or something on top to make it appear fancy. Not impressed. Sorry.

River menu discussions can get lively during river season. We've all got our favorites and it's important to gauge when the transition should happen from hearty meals for cooler weather in the spring, to lighter fare like Turkish breakfast in the summer, then back to pot roast and home cooking for fall Grande Ronde steelhead fishing trips.

I'm a strong advocate for Santa Fe corncakes, myself. But I try to defer to the folks who have been cooking on the river much longer. Paul, Morgan, Caitlin, Sam and Mike all earned their spatulas and aprons when I was still heating cans of chili at home.

I've found that you really don't want to meddle with someone's specialty. I caution you never to offer Baird any tips on grilling. Ever. He doesn't need pointers, and I fear it would not go well if you told him when it's time to flip a steak. Or a sourdough pancake for that matter.

Likewise, do not cause a commotion when Caitlin is preparing her melon salad. It's a mysterious process and best to just let her work.

Sam has turned fresh-fruit cobblers into a form of art. Also stuffed peppers.

Penny makes the finest salad dressing I've ever dressed a salad with.

Paul has an unusual gift for cooking eggs to order. I've seen him prepare a single farm fresh egg half-poached, a quarter over-easy and two-thirds scrambled. It's remarkable. And his barbecued pork chops have inspired love ballads.

I've tried to recreate Morgan's smoked salmon wraps in his presence, but either the caper distribution isn't right or the spinach isn't diced to his liking or the feng shui is off . . . always something. So I let him do it. I also stand back for the final touches on Hawaiian pork tenderloin night. He's touchy about that. But you can't argue with his results, so there's no reason to meddle.

I drove through Joseph the other day and saw the company rig parked at the Hydrant Bar. I guessed, correctly, that Paul, Morgan and Penny were in there for cheeseburgers. Do try a Hydrant cheeseburger next time you're in Joseph. I can vouch for them being the finest in the land. Morgan shares that opinion, and once defended it as a point of honor.

Another establishment had been advertising their burgers as the best in town, so Morgan gave them a shot at the title. The waitress came around to ask how everything was. Morgan said it was OK.

Just OK?

Morgan regretted to inform her that the claim of being the best burger in town was, sadly, not the case. That's how seriously this man takes his food.

The waitress invited Morgan to run that by the cook and owner of the place, so Morgan dabbed his chin with his napkin and said, Sure.

The town of Joseph has tamed down a good deal from its rootin-tootin cowboy and lumber days. But you could still likely stir up a fracas by walking into the kitchen of a restaurant and suggesting they take 'best burger' off the menus to avoid false advertising.
So do me a favor. Next time we're on the river, tell Morgan the smoked salmon wraps are good, but maybe not the best you've ever had. The spinach isn't diced quite right. I'll back you up. Promise.