You’re hungry, you’re tired, and you want dinner pronto without driving out to pick up an infarct burger at the closest fast food joint. Nope, you’re in the mood for pasta, and why not? Pasta’s inexpensive, delicious, and filling. But tonight you just don’t want to bother steaming the place up by boiling a pot of water while you simmer sauce. What to do? Make a skillet pasta that comes together faster than it takes to read the instructions in this article. If you stock your pantry with sauces and sauce mixes, and a variety of dried pasta shapes, dinner can be on the table well inside half an hour. For this meal, I picked a packet of Knorr® Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto sauce mix and angel hair pasta.

 
The beauty of angel hair pasta is that it cooks quickly, and the Knorr sauce mixes cook up in a flash, too. Combine the two cooking processes and you’re well on your way to reducing cooking to as fast as it can be without a microwave. Fast food like this does come at a price, though. You can’t put it on the stove and walk away. You’ll have to stand by and keep an eye on the skillet or your pasta will burn and the sauce will stick.

My instructions couldn’t be easier, and they’re a take-off from those on the sauce packet’s combine-stir-cook-eat method. First, assemble your tools: a 10-inch wide skillet and lid, a fork and measuring cup. Now put together the ingredients: half a pound of angel hair (serves two hungry people or three with light appetites), one Knorr pasta sauce packet, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Don’t have olive oil? Leave it out, no problem. Put one cup of water into the skillet, then open the sauce packet and sprinkle the powder over the water. Pour in the olive oil if you’ve got it:

 
Don’t turn on the heat yet. Stir the mix until the powder and oil is blended with the water. Now break your pasta in half so it will fit inside the skillet. Do this by gathering the pasta strands into a tight log, grab the log in both fists near the center, and snapping the log in two. (Be careful not to be stabbed in the eye with flying pieces of pasta!) With the sauce blended, drop the pasta strands over it in the skillet. Using your fork, press the pasta into the sauce, then pour another cup of water over it all:

 
You should have enough water to almost cover all the pasta:

 
Now turn on the heat to high and bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer the sauce. Cover the pasta and begin assembling a salad. Stir the pasta frequently to prevent sticking of sauce or pasta. It won’t take long for the pasta to cook and the sauce to thicken, perhaps four to five minutes. Add more water if the pasta is still a little crunchy once the sauce thickens:

 
Stir to bring up any sauce sticking to the skillet. When you can twist strands of pasta around a fork, and the sauce is thick, the dish is cooked through:

 
Turn off the heat, set the pasta aside to keep warm as you finish putting together a salad, then lift pasta and sauce from the skillet with tongs and plate it. I sprinkled a little grated parmesan and some few pine nuts over the pasta, though that’s not necessary. With salad and maybe a few bread sticks, dinner’s served, inside 15 minutes!

 
From time to time I’ll suggest other fast meals that can be whipped up by anyone. After all, when you’d rather be bicycling, hiking, or paddling, who has the time to spend all day cooking dinner? Instead, try some fast food, my way!

 
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When I was a kid I had a bike, and like all my friends, I rode my bike everywhere. Fresh pavement was the most fun, especially if that meant riding circuits around the grocery store on Sunday mornings when the store was closed. But we also took our bikes onto dirt roads, across streams on farm tracks, and on forest roads. We rode the bike we had. I carried that philosophy along with me into adulthood, and took my road bike everywhere. I even rode it up some terribly steep jeep tracks by way of training my legs and lungs for a mountaineering trip to the Pacific Northwest. Today I still have that road bike, but I’ve also got a utility mountain bike and a Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike. The LHT is my bike of choice for going everywhere, in all seasons, because she fits me so well.

Whether it’s a road bike set up for rough riding, or a mountain bike, riding on unimproved roads has its rewards. My recent article, “Riding the Rough Stuff: Out My Back Door With My Long Haul Trucker,” pointed Brazilian Helton Moraes towards more rough-riding photos in our photo gallery. What he saw there encouraged him to write and share his collection of photos from a 90-day trip he made across south and southwest Brazil in 2006-2007, much of it over rugged terrain and terrible roads. His bike? Let him tell you:

 
My bike is actually a pure-breed mountain-bike, a circa ‘96 GT Karakoram, with chromoly tubes, 26-inch wheels, large tire clearance, and a somewhat aggressive and slightly uncomfortable riding position. What I did was put full fenders, a large rack, mounted a pair of Schwalbe Marathon XR 2.00 tires, and ride it with its original rigid fork. It is not much different from a LHT, and for practical purposes a brand new LHT does not differ much from what my bike has become, because of what I would call “adaptive convergence”.

 
And a beautiful bike the Karakoram is, too. It’s surely a capable steed. Take a look at this photo to see why I say that:

 
And if you think that’s bad, look at the boulders in this roadside turn-off:

 
They’re only a little larger than the ones on the road. But what about taking your road bike on an amphibious adventure?

 
The reduced images here don’t do justice to Helton’s original photos. Visit Helton’s Picasaweb gallery for nearly 80 excellent photos of his exciting bicycle tour in Brazil.

 
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A Note to the Reader With one near disaster behind them, Pete and Karin Neary now wish that they’d never come to the Misehkow. They want out. Could this be the end for Ed and Brenna’s trip of a lifetime?

 
Our story continues…

 
Chapter Twenty-Three

 
Brenna woke suddenly to the murky half-light of a gray dawn. Whispers filtered through the thin nylon walls of the tent. She strained to make out the words but had no luck. All she could hear was the muted buzz of earnest conversation.

Curious, she rolled onto her stomach and rose up on her elbows to look out through the half-open door. Nothing. By her side, Ed stirred and threw his arm over the small of her back. Still asleep, he grunted affectionately. Then the voices stopped, only to be replaced by quiet footfalls. Talk had apparently given way to purposeful action. An acrid smell of wood smoke filtered into the tent. Brenna heard someone unzip the door of the Nearys’ tent. The hushed whispers resumed.

By now she was wide awake, and her bladder was sending messages that couldn’t be ignored for long. Without waking Ed, she slid out of their paired bags and began to dress, standing as nearly erect as the five-foot headroom would permit. Not a day passed when she wasn’t glad that they’d brought the 4-man Timberline rather than something like the Nearys’ little coffin-shaped tent. What was that line of Nessmuk’s? She racked her memory. “We don’t go to the woods to rough it; we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home.” That was it. “Right on!” Brenna thought.

Dressed now, Brenna unzipped the door slowly and stepped out into a damp, dim world of stunted spruce and mossy rock. She didn’t see the Nearys. She didn’t see Billy Swamp, either. For the moment, at least, she was the only soul moving about the camp.

Brenna walked over to the fire, catching a glimpse of the Misehkow now and again through gaps in the trees. The rocky island she stood on was the only bit of solid ground in a vast expanse of swamp. She kept walking, and was rewarded by a sweeping view up and down the river when she squatted to tend to business. A moose browsed in the shallows across the channel, its head periodically disappearing below the surface of the water.

The mosquitoes were as aggressive as ever, but Brenna didn’t notice them much now. She felt good about that. “I’m starting to become part of this country,” she thought. “I’m not a tourist any more…. Or maybe it’s the dirt!”

Walking back toward the fire, Brenna picked up the covered pot of water she’d set aside the night before and put it on the grill. As she straightened up, she saw Karin crawling out of the Nearys’ tent. Karin’s expression was a confused amalgam of chagrin and determination. “Uh, oh,” Brenna murmured to herself, wondering what was coming next. She nodded to Karin and then stood quietly, waiting.

“Morning,” Karin said. She joined Brenna by the fire. “Hope we didn’t wake you,” she added.

“Don’t think so,” Brenna replied, still waiting. Then she caught sight of movement down at the landing. It was Billy Swamp. He was tugging faded canvas sacks around in his big freighter, his pipe belching smoke. It looked like he was getting ready to go.

Karin spoke again: “Ah, listen Brenna,” she began, kicking at a small pile of cones at her feet. Close by, the fire spat and hissed. “Got to talk to you. We’ve…I mean Pete and I…we’ve hired Billy Swamp to take us out.” She stopped abruptly, waiting for a reaction. When Brenna said nothing, she continued. “We’ve…ah…about had it with this wilderness stuff, you know? And we…we’ve been thinking that we would fly out at Fort Hope when we got there. But then we ran into Billy, and we…ah…we decided that since he’s a guide and since he’s heading out anyway, then maybe we should take this chance now, rather than waiting.” Her voice broke. She stopped.

Brenna said nothing. She looked away, staring into the fire. She crossed her arms. She was angry. Not surprised. Just angry. No, thinking back over the last few days, she wasn’t at all surprised. Still, Karin’s news certainly wasn’t welcome. “Trip of a lifetime!” The words rang mockingly in her head. And what to do now? Continue on? Risky. She and Ed, alone on a big river. A little trouble could become big trouble in no time. “Trip of a lifetime!” It could be the last trip of their lifetimes… Read more…

 
Hooked? A new chapter in our serial adventure novel, Trip of a Lifetime, will appear every Sunday. If you’ve missed a chapter, or if you’re coming aboard for the first time and want to catch up, just use the hot-linked title to go to the archives.

 
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A REMINDER This is a work of fiction. All the characters are figments of the imaginations. It’s NOT a paddling guide. If you’re planning a trip on the Albany River—or any other body of water, come to that—consult the most recent edition of a good guidebook and be sure you’re thoroughly familiar with all applicable regulations. While maps of Ontario show some of the waterways mentioned here, the places depicted in our story exist only in our minds—and in yours.