The League of Culinary Gentlemen
Yes, boys and girls, it's time for another exciting episode of The League of Culinary Gentlemen! But first, meet the members of the League!
From left:
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J-Man. (everyday, mild mannered identity: Jake Harder) Struck by radioactive lightning while reading St. Athanasius, J-Man soon discovered that he had been given the ability of extraordinary mental control. With his yawn-like voice and soothing demeanor, J-Man can lull even the most energetic of evildoers into a tranquil stupor. Plus, he can, like, cut guns in half with his mind.
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Captain Plaid. (Andy Clifton) Operating under the guise of a mild mannered church pianist, the mere mention of Captain Plaid is enough to strike fear into the hearts of the foes of freedom. A loner by nature, Captain Plaid joined forces with the League to defeat that mutated mafia mobster, Tony "Butter Fingers" Gustavos (see issue #37, "The Perilous Peanut Butter of Pain").
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The Dave. (Dave Clifton) Not much is known about this brooding, shadowy figure. An ex-CIA, ex-FBI, ex-NSA, ex-Navy SEAL, ex-UNATCO agent, he joined the League after becoming disillusioned with the growing corruption in the government. Now he fights for justice and freedom for all.
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Gamer-Boy. (Matt Shaver) A loose cannon that could snap at any minute and boil over, Gamer-Boy terrifies all who dare oppress the oppressed with his unpredictable and uncontrollable hair. Only the strongest-willed villains can keep from quaking in fear when they hear his awe-inspiring battle cry: "What's the matter with you??!!"
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Volcanor. (Mark Shaver) The product of inhuman eugenics experiments, Volcanor spent the first decade of his life in solitude. Blessed or cursed from birth with the ability to produce massive eruptions of flaming lava, he was unable to control his powers and fled into the wilderness of Ohio, for fear of injuring innocents. Only after many years of arduous training was he able to learn to control the volcanic outbursts, using them in service to the cause of good.
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The Archon. (Scott Shaver, not shown) A terrible childhood accident involving the collapse of his home left the Archon paralyzed from the waist down. Miraculously, the same accident also gave him the ability to control building materials with his mind. Steel, wood, and concrete all bow to his command. Unfortunately, the Archon was on a secret solo mission, and unable to join the League this time.
In this exciting issue: the gentlemen of the League depart from their top secret headquarters atop Cambell Mountain to track down the nefarious Dr. Tropico. Yes, that vile mutant villain from the Aloha State was on the move again. The heroic members of The League of Culinary Gentlemen were preparing to blast off in the Flying Lab (see issue #12, "Terror Above Texas"), when suddenly, out of nowhere, without any warning, the narration style changed!
So, anyway, I wanted to do something over Easter vacation. The only problem was that my cousins Mark and Scott were away at school and had their "spring breaks" at different times. We lucked out, however; both Mark and Scott came home for Easter weekend. Scott wasn't feeling well, so we traded him for Jake, one of my brother's friends. Seeking something out of the ordinary, we decided not to go back to Pine Flat, but rather to try going west again. (I also wanted to avoid the insane traffic that flows along the roads to Pine Flat.) You can click here to see our previous adventure on the west side of the valley. That time was in February, when everything was cold. This time we were going in April, during a heat wave. We loaded all our snacks into the car and headed out.
After more than an hour of driving, we arrived at the Tumey Hills:
As you can see, everything was brown and dry. This would later prove to be an ill omen. Ignorant of the impending danger, we walked into the hills.
The Tumeys are small, but they're steep. The tallest are only about 1000 ft. above the general lay of the land. Still, the whole scale seemed wrong; it was difficult (for me, anyway) to figure out how big or how far away things were. Once we got up on top of the hills, the feeling was something like looking down out of an airplane. But I digress.
We hiked and climbed our way up onto a ridge, heading toward the hill in the center of the picture above. Then, as we crested a hill, we spotted them:
A massive herd of man-eating sheep was just ahead of us. These savage beasts can skeletonize a man in less that ten seconds. Luckily they hadn't caught our scent. We kept still until they moved out of sight. As we hiked on we found someone before us who hadn't been so lucky. Yes, Nature can be a harsh and merciless master.
Here's an example of the sense of scale I was talking about earlier:
Those hills in the background aren't more than a mile away, however, they look distant, and huge. Or is it just me?
After about two hours of walking and climbing, we reached that mound-thing in the center of the first Tumeys picture. It was further away than I thought. Here, my cousin Matt announced that he had to use the bathroom. Normally, a gentleman would search for a tree, or, preferably, a forest, in which to see a man about a dog. Here, you may have noticed, there were no trees. So, Matt had to make do (pun not intended) with hiding behind a bush on top of the hill.
We headed down the hill, back towards the car. Our socks were filled with dirt and stickers from the dry grass. Every step was agony. Our innocent hiking trip became a grueling fight for survival. With our water running out and the sun rising overhead, things began to look desperate. The heat played tricks on my mind. I saw shadows, forms of things and people. Do I hear running water? Mother? No, mustn't give in. I can't stop walking. What a horror this place is! this is the valley of death.
I must keep walking...
...can't stop...
...won't di
We made it back to the car. We helped ourselves to milk, soda, juice, and water. Then we ate cookies and semi-melted Butterfingers. Fully rehydrated, we piled into the car and drove further west. The drive from I-5 along Panoche Road is very interesting (and bumpy). We passed the second access point to the Tumey Hills, but stopped only for photos. We passed the San Benito-Fresno county line. We were headed towards...
The Griswold Hills. The further west we went, the greener things got; a pleasant surprise compared to the desert-like state of the Tumeys. (I should point out that there was a strong wind blowing everywhere we went, which kept us reasonable cool.) I wanted to hike around and explore but my teammates were tired. Instead, we just walked around, examined the (unbroken) clay pigeons and shotgun shells on the ground (how can you miss with a shotgun?), and generally did nothing.
Here, J-Man, Volcanor, and Gamer-Boy prepare to unleash a devastating combo attack on Dr. Tropico (center, in his palm tree form). I'm curious as to the history of the Griswold Hills. Here's this palm tree, which is clearly not native. Also note the other trees behind it to the right; these are foreign to the landscape, too. Off to the left in the distance you can see two more palm trees at what used to be a driveway entrance (that entrance and driveway are not on public land). And everywhere we went there were ancient rusted pipes sticking out of the ground at odd angles. What was this place?
The mystery only deepened when we saw this thing. It was about six feet up on the steep side of a hill; the thing itself was about five feet tall. It looks like a giant mailbox door. It also looks like the local gun enthusiasts, frustrated with their inability to hit a clay pigeons, have been practicing on this, instead. We climbed up and looked in the hole that someone had cut into it, and here's what we saw. The camera flash didn't do much to penetrate the darkness, and I had left the flashlight in the car. You can see the mound of white powder inside the entrance. What is this thing? It's probably mining related, but it's too small to be a mine entrance for people. Is this the entrance to the ancient home of the dwarves? Is it Cthulu's mailbox? Maybe the powder is cocaine; maybe this is a cocaine mine. (You didn't know cocaine was a mineral, did you?) Will we ever know?
We headed down the road a bit to find a spot for lunch.
The ravine in the foreground is Griswold Creek, which I suspect is dry 99% of the time. Here we broke open the major foodstuffs, not just the snacks. We had crackers and cheese (Irish Dubliner cheese, "with a hint of sweetness"), sheepherder bread from the Savemart bakery (which Jake and Mark agreed tasted like wine), and apples. My brother Dave wandered off for a few minutes and then came back carrying a burned, melted, stinky orange traffic cone. He found it in the bushes. Of course, we couldn't leave the poor thing out there alone, so we finished our snacks, loaded it and ourselves into the car, and headed back home. We stopped briefly at a place where a creek crosses the road so I could dunk my head (although my teammates protested that the local cows probably used the creek as a public toilet). It was a long drive back home, and the car was covered with dust from driving on unpaved roads, so we all washed it.
I think we had an excellent time.