Posted by Ed Kiser on March 19, 2005 at 17:13:57 from 205.188.116.6 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: Swallowdale - bacon posted by Shawn on March 19, 2005 at 00:59:17:
Your concept of putting perishables in the water to keep it somewhat cool is very much like what Jackie suggested to the D's as they were in the Dogs' Home. Dot had kept the milk bottle at the far end of the house, away from the fire, but when she was prepared to put it on the cereal, Jackie told her to first smell it, and with good reason as it had spoiled. He then went to the beck and showed a flat stone on the bank. Lifting it, he showed them a water filled cavity beneath that stone "lid" and said to put the milk bottle in there to keep it cool.
Reminds me of my younger days as I used to go weekends with my buddies and go SCUBA diving. At a certain depth, we encountered a feature called the thermocline, a layer of different densities resulting from a sudden change in temperature. About 25 feet down, the water suddenly became very cold, regardless of the weather at the surface. One could swim just above it, with the body in relatively warm water, and dangle an arm down a bit into that cold water layer. Walking about in the shallows caused a bit of sediment to be stirred up in the water, clouding the visibility. That cloud would slowly spread out through tht upper layer, but because the cold lower layer was more dense, the particles seemed to "float" on that thermocline layer. Getting below that into the cold (using full WET SUITS for protection from the cold), the visibility suddenly became clear, having just swum down through that cloudy warmer upper layer. Look up at the thermocline from underneath, one could almost see "waves" with the layer acting just like the surface. The cloudy particles made that layer "visible", so we could see its wave-like motion. Now with all this background, let me get finally to the point, and that is, we would drop our six-packs into the deep, which would take them down to the cold water layer. When the diver session was about over, the final dive would be to go into that cold depth and recover the cans of drinks, and bring them back to the surface to enjoy while conversing about the joys of that day's dive. Of course, we could not DARE to drink this stuff BEFORE or DURING the diving, as the presence of the bubbles percolating out of the beverage expanding in the gut as a diver tries to ascend would be not only very painful but rather dangerous, so the cans were opened only after the diving for the day was complete. Then its coldness could be really appreciated, especially on a hot August afternoon.
Now for fun with the imagination, consider this: we had to wear total coverage wet suits made of heavy duty foam neoprene for protection from that cold. Now imagine the fun of trying to pull on those suits while standing on the shore in broiling Summer Sunshine. By the time we got them completely on, and our equipment all strapped on, those suits were definitely "wet" - and we had not gotten in the water yet. It made it very desirable to quickly go down and get thru that thermocline just to cool off.
The water was a large rock quarry, at about 120 feet at the deepest point, but with NO currents at all, so the thermocline layer could form and remain undisturbed from any movement of the water. The local inhabitants were Brim and Bass fish. Other people like to dive in the ocean, but the locals there can be quite a bit more formidable.
Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end...
Ed Kiser, South Florida