So, a few years ago Dan Moore (muzikman03)and I are driving through the craters and valleys of, well, Death Valley. It is burning hot, as you might imagine. I think we had one or two 12 oz water bottle between us, or something totally un-wise like that. I don't remember whether or not the AC was working. We drove for an hour or two to see this giant crater. The wind was blowing like CRAZY! Dan and his 20 lb tripod + medium format camera were the only stable thing there, it was nuts.
So, we're in the middle of nowhere. (At the entrance to the racetrack, for those of you who know. I MEAN NOWHERE!!! The kind of place where you gotta remember to turn around when your gas tank is half empty. And you think not finding any radio on FM is far-out? Try nothing on AM, either! Zip. And the stars! You think you've seen stars in Joshua tree? Hah. (Not my picture. I wish!) But I digress. So, we're there in the middle of nowhere. At this big huge crater. Just a little hungry / thirsty. And we bump into these other photographers, from Irvine CA. (It was the year of the 100 yr bloom, El Nino. So anywhere there was a paved highway, we weren't TOO alone, I guess...) So these guys are shooting medium format too, which pretty much means they rock and they know what they're doing. I forget if they were shooting Hasselblad or Mamiya / Pentax. Anyways, so one of them is out of film, or out of B&W or something, and Dan gives them a roll of 120. Was it Fuji Acros or something? Either Fuji or Agfa, B&W I think. And then right as we're about to pull out, these (asian) guys from Irvine come up to our car, and hand us this large bottled drink. The label is all in Chinese, but they promise us it's good stuff. It's green with giant chunks of rubbery stuff floating in it. Like, radioactive OJ with mutated giant pulp. (Hmm, radioactive. Now there's another Dan story! Good times...)
THAT STUFF WAS AMAZING!!!! It was the most delicious drink I've ever tasted. Liquid sugar, and not in a bad, sweet tooth kinda way. It tasted like nectar, literally. (And I'm not talking about those gross fruit juices that have the word "nectar" falsely in their name. Have you ever drank the nectar straight from a honeysuckle flower?) ...Anyways, it was delicious. So we drive through the middle of nowhere again, except on the way back we cross over into Nevada because the map shows that the road is straight as an arrow "over there" instead of all crazy, the way we first came. Plus there's a ghost town we want to visit. In the dark, late at night. (More good times!)
So, I better wrap this up. The juice is Aloe juice with pulp, and it made our day.
I vowed to find this fantastic drink as soon as I returned home. I forgot however to ask those fellow travelers where they got it. But Irvine has two 99 Ranch markets, so I figured it couldn't be THAT difficult to hunt down... Ironically, the one 99 Ranch I looked in didn't seem to stock it. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I gave up because daily life was busy, monotonous, and morale-crushing at the time.
A year ago or so, my mother and I discovered that smaller bottles of the drink could be found at Trader Joes. Yay! Kinda pricey though. I must have only bought 3-4 bottles of the stuff before I forgot about it again.
Until today, now that we live within wifi (N range) distance of Irvine's other 99 Ranch! We found it yesterday, the exact same kind of bottle that those anonymous friends blessed us with so many years ago. And it was good. And the next day, ...we rested. Joy made dinner tonight, just threw some noodles / egg / shrimp / veggies in a pot and figured it all out on her own. Tasted delicious. Of course, we got the bottle(s) that have English labels, which were right next to the identical labels in Chinese. But anyways... That's my story...
Take care!
=Matt=
A few photos from that epic trip through Death Valley:
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