Just Like The Astronauts
Continued from prior post…
As I opened the small package of freeze-dried ice cream that had been riding in my friend’s backpack the last few days, something became painfully obvious to me that should have been clear long before I opened the package. Freeze-dried ice cream, unlike other freeze-dried products, is not reconstituted for consumption by adding water and mixing it in a little pouch. Instead, the dry chalky bits of Neapolitan ice cream, sans any trace of H20, are simply placed in the consumer’s mouth and reconstituted with saliva, before passing down the throat in a form that ever so vaguely reminds the taster of the named ice cream flavor. I guess this is what it is like to be an astronaut—eating freeze-dried food in the wilderness of space.
I cannot say the ice cream was unpleasant, but it was completely different than what we typically experience when consuming ice cream and was certainly different than what I had expected. When the bites first enter your mouth, they have the consistency of light-weight chalk. Not very appetizing. In fact, just picture a wad of Lucky Charms Cereal Dried Marshmallows without all the sugar and milk on them and you will get the picture. But, as your saliva slowly goes to work on the bite, it begins to taste more like gritty room temperature ice cream. This still does not sound too appealing. But when you are out in the wilderness living on trail mix and reconstituted lasagna bits, it is an interesting variable to the diet and menu of options. I expect it would be much the same for astronauts in the wilderness of outer space for days at a time.
As we sat there in the starlight enjoying this delicacy, a guy came stumbling up the trail and into Trail Camp. He was a backpacker who got a late start on the day. Now he was arriving after dark and would have to find a camp site and set-up his tent and gear for the cold evening in what was already becoming low temperatures. This was exactly the situation we tried to avoid by pushing hard up the mountain on our first day. It is no fun to try and set-up things in the dark and in the cold and have all the good sites already taken by those who had arrived earlier in the day. We pointed out the areas where we thought there were still some sites left as his buddy came up the trail behind him. I did not envy their position.
As for our group, we wrapped up our bonding conversation shortly thereafter, cleaned-up our dinner dishes, and retired for the night, where we would again get a lesson in cold mountain air wind currents.
To be continued…
