Three States . . .

It went down to 30 here last night so I stayed in a warm bed until about 10:30. We really like our heated mattress pad and it makes all the difference on these cold nights.

And the hot coffee this morning just topped it all off.

After a nice quiet morning, we headed out about 1 pm to make the 40 mile drive into Cincinnati for the afternoon.

Our first was a place our friend Nick Russell had recommended, Jungle Jim’s Market.

It’s really hard to describe this place. It’s a restaurant, an convention center, a Starbuck’s, a Cici’s Pizza, a high end clothing store, a Chipolte Grill, a bank, a pub, a pet store, and a credit union. it even has a monorail.

But most of all, it’s 6 acres of grocery store, with 1 acre for just fresh produce.

This place probably has every grocery item you’ve ever heard, and a lot you’ve never heard of.

Thirty six different types of olives, 140 different types of honey, 1,600 different types of cheeses from all over the world, over 12,000 different wines, and 1,200 different beers.

Their meat department carries fresh ostrich, kangaroo, rattlesnake, elk, venison, game hens, wild boar, pheasant, and bison. WOW!

And, of course, foods that are organic, non-dairy, earth-friendly, vegetarian, vegan, allergy-free, gluten-free, anti-oxidant, low-carb, sugar-free, fat-free, wheat-free . . . etc., though probably not all at the same time.

And while many seafood shops have live Maine lobsters, how many carry live fish? Jungle Jim’s carries over a dozen different species, including Blue Gill, Tilapia, Largemouth Bass,

and Catfish.

Regular readers here know how much I like really, really hot foods. As I say, if my nose is not running and the top of my head isn’t sweating, then it’s not really hot enough.

I’ve even twice eaten HOT! wings made with Ghost Chiles, also known as the Naga Jolokia, until recently the hottest pepper in the world.

You can read about it here at the Cypress Creek Café in Wimberley, TX.

The hottest chili in the world is now acknowledged to be the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T chili.

But Jungle Jim’s is the first place I’ve found that actually sells them to the public. Besides the fresh ones, they have a salsa made with the Nagas which I bought some of, and a small package of dried Nagas, which I also bought.

The package says to wear eye protection and latex gloves before handling or preparing them.

Not sure what I’m going to use them for, maybe trick Nick into eating one so I can see steam coming out of his ears.

We spent almost two hours at Jungle Jim’s and still didn’t see everything, so hopefully we’ll be able to go back again sometime.

One strange thing happen after we parked at the Jungle Jim’s. Getting out and closing my door, I heard a metallic ‘clunk’. Thinking I had left the seatbelt buckle in the door, I turned around and noticed that I had left my window down, But I didn’t remember putting it down. Opening the door and trying to raise the window, I could hear the motor running but the window was not coming up.

I realized what happened was that when I closed the door, the window had come loose from its mechanism and fallen down inside the door.

Not wanting to ride home with the window down, I came up with a fix. I keep a small roll of Gorilla Tape in the truck console,

so using the pliers on the Swiss Army tool

my daughter gave me for Father’s Day years ago, I was able to pull the window up out of the door, and then use the Gorilla Tape to hold it in place, and then seal it up, ending up with this.

Gorilla Tape is perfect for this because it’s much stronger than duck tape, and twice as sticky. Even better is that the glue stays on the tape when you pull it off, and doesn’t mess up the paint job.

When I get home I’ll dig out my manual and see what it’s going to take to get the door panel off and see what happened. I suspect the window glass may have fallen out of its track. We’ll see.

Since my temporary fix seems to be holding, I may just wait until we get back to Texas in 3 weeks or so.

By now it was after 4 pm so we decided to head south to a Texas Roadhouse for dinner. My Ribeye was good, but not quite as good as the one I had in Elkhart last week. The taste was great but the texture was a little mealy.

After dinner we headed on south to the closest Wal-Mart for a few things. Coming home our route took us down through Kentucky for a few miles. Thus we had traveled through three states today, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.

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Thought for the Day:

“The older I get, the more convinced I am that God tailors most of our lifespans right to the breaking point of how long each of us can put up with all the idiots we’re surrounded by before we decide we just have to pick up a gun and start randomly shooting morons.”

“The way things are going, if I had a 150 year lifespan I’m pretty sure I’d be on death row by 70 or so.” – Unknown

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