Let’s Dine Out --Way, Way Out

Wilderness, shmilderness. Could you survive in the San Gabriel Valley?

Christopher Nyerges wonders. In the event of emergency, he could survive--”I’ve actually done that for a while; I can find food, shelter, make weapons. . . .”--but could the rest of us?

Nyerges, author and practical survivalist, leads weekly outings in the Pasadena area, sessions that teach survival skills with the emphasis on identifying common local wild plants as “edible, useful or poisonous.”

“We gather a variety of plants--weeds, if you will. Then I serve everyone a little salad, some cooked wild greens, a tea.”

At the same time, Nyerges demonstrates fire-starting, orienteering, “how to make hard decisions in an urban survival situation: What about marauders? Would you modify your moral codes just to live?”

Nyerges is the antithesis of the stereotypical brute who hunkers in a hole with a year’s supply of Spam and four shotguns. He believes in social contracts, in sharing, “though it’s foolhardy not to have some means of protection.”

Most important, perhaps, is food, in which the L.A. area is rich if only one knows where to look: “Carob trees are everywhere; just wipe the pods clean and eat ‘em. Lamb’s-quarters--related to spinach--is rich in vitamins and minerals and grows in everybody’s back yard. The list is endless. Medicinally, eucalyptus leaves are good for bronchial problems; so is horehound. Don’t mistake poison hemlock for edible parsley, though. That’s what did Socrates in. Eat a small bit and you’ll die in an hour.”

As for what a wasteful society calls “garbage,” Nyerges finds a use for just about everything, egg shells to tin cans. So how big is his garbage can? “I don’t have one.”

On the Road to Westlake Village

Possibly the worst thing one can say about a proud if pint-sized community is, “It isn’t even on the map.” A few days ago, Westlake Village made it to the Big Time --along with Yturria, Tex.; Vermillion, Kan., and 49 other crossroads of distinction.

Rand McNally, the road-atlas people, finally conferred the trafficular Seal of Approval on the lovely, low-key West Valley hamlet, an inclusion for which City Manager Larry Bagley is justly proud. “We have a beautiful community,” Bagley said, “and we deserve our dot. I like it. It shows people where we are; it’ll make it easier for people who want to come here and do business.”

Bagley reckons that Westlake Village has been overlooked partly because of the sheer congestion of place names in and around Los Angeles, as opposed to “the wide-open spaces of Montana or North Dakota”; partly because the village wasn’t incorporated until 1981.

Indeed, Rand McNally has added a lot smaller places to this year’s up-date, including Come By Chance, Newfoundland; Bar Nunn, Wyo., and French Settlement, a Louisiana outpost of about 761 souls.

So what’s the population of Westlake Village? “Uh, we don’t know for sure,” Bagley confessed. “When they did the last census in 1980, we didn’t exist.”

Ski-Daddling Down the Mountainside

He is the once and future fastest man on skis, and he owes it all to a pair of bum knees.

“I was a downhill racer,” says C. J. Mueller, 37, “but my knees started to go bad about 10 years ago. I couldn’t turn much, but I could go down, straight down. I went to France for one last fling and a girl persuaded me to take a run at this superfast new track at Les Arcs. My first run was 103 m.p.h., and that was with normal skis and a motorcycle helmet. I was hooked.”

Indeed he was. Mueller--who will appear at Ski Dazzle, America’s biggest ski show, at the L.A. Convention Center on Thursday through next Sunday--was first to break the 130 m.p.h. “barrier.” Then last April, again at Les Arcs, Mueller virtually flew down the slope at 136.3 m.p.h.--and finished fifth to Frenchman Michael Prufer’s 139.

“I was kind of struggling; then one year it all came together,” Coloradan Mueller says. “I started doing biofeedback, got one of those little gadgets that measures stress. A little hum lowers in pitch when you relax and your body temperature increases, so you can actually hear your mood, and control it.

“It was the final step into the top echelon. Skiing that fast, you want to be kind of empty-headed, just concentrating on tightening your muscles into the ideal aerodynamic tuck.” Aside from being 2 1/2 times the freeway speed limit, just how fast does 135+ m.p.h. feel? “It’s the speed that planes take off at,” says Mueller, “and the skis want to fly too. You don’t really make contact with the snow; you just sort of skip, like a flat rock over a pond.”

So what about the new barrier of 140 m.p.h.? “It’s mine,” he says. “I’m stronger now, which is all that was lacking. My body shape is very aerodynamic. I feel that I have the fastest body in the world.”