Yesterday Danica and I rented the mighty Piper Arrow from Freeway and took a morning/afternoon jaunt up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a delightful 45 minute flight (30 minutes back with the tailwind) that beats the socks off the drive, which I hear is about 2 hours each way. On the left, witness downtown Lancaster, which we flew over on our approach to the airport. That’s as close as we got, since we were so engrossed by the food at Fiorentino’s (Italian) Bar & Grill in the terminal, whose Web site has Italian soft rock music. Distant cousin to Florentyna’s at Walla Walla and Pasco? You decide.

But I digress from the title of this post. Flying back, Potomac Approach was in a good mood and gave us an unexpected Class Bravo clearance over Baltimore’s airport, so we got a good view of the city and all it has to offer. Like graveyards.
 
Lots of graveyards. Since I haven’t yet done a quantitative analysis of the dispersion of graveyards relative to population density across this fine land of ours, I’m speculating on a limb here when I say that Baltimore has an unusually high proportion of final resting places. Which naturally led me to the conclusion that “hanging out in Baltimore” could be a new euphemism for dying.

• “I’m afraid of hanging out in Baltimore.”
• “I hardly knew what to do with myself when Phil went to hang out in Baltimore. It was so unexpected.”
• “Beloved art teacher, 42, hanging out in Baltimore after encounter with hailstone”

You see, the possibilities are endless. It allows those who are uncomfortable with crossing over to discuss it more openly without making (too much) light of the situation. Kind of like how, according to West Wing, the President’s schedule says he’s “barbecuing” when he leaves the Oval Office for personal time in the residence.

Got my order form the other day and sent it out today, for 80 pounds of glorious Walla Walla Sweet Onions. If you already know what’s up and are interested in the prices, here’s what Arbini Farms is charging, including shipping:

Zone 1 is WA, OR, ID, Zone 2 is everything else west of the Rockies, Zone 3 is the Great Plains, and Zone 4 is everything east of the Mississippi River.

For those of you yet to be indoctrinated into this wonderous culinary cult, think Vidalias, except a bazillion times better. Seriously, these put those wannabe sweet onions to shame. That may look like a chunk of change for onions, but frankly it’s not. Most of what you’re paying for is shipping.

Generally there is a strong correlation between town population and quality of Web sites pointing to that town. But Yachats (YAH-hots), population 655-ish, completely bucks that trend, with a chamber of commerce site that reminds you of Monterey. Which leads me to my first conclusion: this town thrives on tourism. There is lots of fishing to be had, and the town takes pride in its annual smelt fry, during which time you can smell the scents of 300 pounds of smoking smelt across the town. Yachats is one of many scenic towns on the Oregon Coast, though with something shy of 400 miles of coastline, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who could agree on the most scenic locale. To start the debate, I’m going to come out and say that Yachats has the highest scenic-to-population ratio, not counting completely unpopulated areas where the limit of the ratio would approach infinity.