Shrimp Horror, Bike/Hike and the Eternal Quest

Gather around, maties, and I'll tell you a horror story.  I picked up a Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in the laundry room and read this article.  It's a fairly long piece, but I'll give you the highlights.
In China, pigs are raised using antibiotics.  Two of those drugs are carbapenems and colistin, which are antibiotics of last resort, used for drug resistant superbugs.  The pigs are raised in proximity to shrimp farms.  Workers hose out the pig pens and the water runs into the shrimp lagoons.  Since 95% of the antibiotics pass through the pigs unmetabolized, they now enter the shrimp.  Originally it was believed that people were picking up drug resistant bacteria through international travel.  Canadian researchers found that seafood from China is also a vector for these drug resistant bacteria.  So you think to yourself, well ok then, no Chinese shrimp for me!
Unfortunately there is a practice call trans-shipping.  Chinese seafood goes to other countries, where it's labelled as "Product of Malaysia" or "Product of Indonesia".  Sometimes Chinese seafood is labelled as being a product of a company called American Fisheries.  Lately, Chinese shrimp has been trans-shipped to Ecuador, where it's now labelled as being from there.
Inspection is inadequate, bad shrimp is still entering the country.
We have been buying frozen shrimp labelled as wild caught in the US, but who knows where it actually came from.  Since so much shrimp is processed by people held in slavery we've been buying it with just the heads cut off, doing the peeling and de-veining ourselves.  That has cut down on consumption for us.  I hate peeling shrimp!
So, that's my food horror story for you.

In other news, the weather has just been stellar lately.

Yesterday we rode up the trail through Christoper Columbus park and up to the top of Ironwood Hill.  We've made it into an out and back ride, since all of the roads one could take home from that side of the city are just in terrible condition.  The pain in one's hands from the pounding is non-trivial.

The search for new hiking shoes continues.  I always swore I would not wear Keens because they are less than attractive.  However, I'm desperate, so I ordered two pairs from Zappos.  The ones on the left foot will go back.  The sole is so stiff that I can't flex it, which causes a lot of heel slippage.  Plus they're waterproof and they're hot.  The ones on the right might be keepers.  The sole is slightly less stiff and they're not waterproof.  My initial wearing suggests that they might be ok.  I've ordered up a pair from REI, due to their one year no questions asked return policy.  One never knows until one has hiked in the shoes.

Today we went back out to the Tortolitas,  and hiked Lower Javelina.  I think this saguaro skeleton has sort of a Mad Max vibe to it.

How cool is it to be here and not in the GPNW?