Monthly Archive for July, 2007

Bay Circuit Trail

Published
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on July 26, 2007
in Bikes, Commuting, Dirt and Road
. 6 Comments

Yesterday was a fun day. Did my normal commute and after work had a little mini photo shoot. The newsletter people at my work were doing an article on alternate commuting and they wanted to get some photos of the bike commuters. I was the only one who showed up, although I know there are several people who ride in. Oh well, my thought was with the shoot at 4:00 PM, I might as well leave work a little early and get some exploring in. It turned out to be a good decision with a little bit of road, a little bit of paved path, and some newly discovered dirt trails. We’ve got a month before we move again, which is just enough time to explore the area and get familiar with it, so when we finally move I’ll know where all the singletrack is hidden.

Click the photo below for the gallery of pictures from yesterday’s ride.
Just Riding Along

I did around 30 miles on the day and was able to really see the area. I hit a bunch of side streets near my work, then over to Shawsheen Cemetery where we’ll likely be taking the dog for some walks. After that I headed over to where the Minuteman Bikeway ends and started searching for trails there. You gotta figure that even though the paved Bikeway ends, there’s probably some dirt trails that have popped up on the rest of the abandoned rail bed. About 3 blocks from the end of pavement I hit jackpot, the Bay Circuit Trail. It turned out to be a little of everything, some smooth singletrack, rocky gravelly dirt path, wider doubletrack, and a little service road action, but never paved. There was one section that even had tiny rollercoaster hills, almost like a mini pump track. It’s hard not to smile when you hit something like that!

I’ll definitely be back, as I didn’t finish the trail. There was still some trail up ahead and a ton of side trails to check out…all in due time. But it’s just great to know that there are dirt trails within a 5 minute ride from the house…killer!

HopHead ThrowDown

Published
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on July 24, 2007
in Beer and Life
. 1 Comment

Well I guess I know where I’ll be on Saturday…the 4th Annual HopHead ThrowDown. So far they’ve posted a pretty incredible list of hoppy beers and it looks like this:

Bear Republic Apex
Bear Republic Racer X
Bear Republic Racer 5
Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
Avery Maharajah
Great Divide Hercules
Founders Devil Dancer
Oskar Blues Gordon
Mojo Risin’
Southern Tier Unearthly
Rogue I2PA
Smutty Big A
Portsmouth Imperial IPA
Berkshire Really Lost Sailor
Piraat
Houblon Chouffe
Urthel Hop It
Allagash Hugh Malone
Offshore Stonewall Double IPA

I’m particularly looking forward to the Bear Republic Racer X. Just thinking about it has me reminiscing back to the old TNS rides when Dremo’s had the X on draft. Remember the X boys?

BrewSession

Published
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on July 23, 2007
in Brewing
. 3 Comments

Thanks for all the recipe suggestions, ha. We decided last minute to throw together a regular old blended hop IPA recipe, based loosely on my last couple of SAC blend (Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial) IPAs. The recipe, like the brew session was literally put together last minute. There were no measurements taken, no records kept, and hops were dolled out a handful of pellets at a time.

One thing is for sure, ingredients are a lot more expensive up here than they were back in VA at Derek’s joint. We’re talking over $30 for just two cans of pale malt extract and an additional $30 in hops and yeast! I’m pretty sure the only recipe that ended up being that expensive was my extract Russian Imperial Stout, which used 4 cans of extract, 4 pounds of grain, and a hell of a lot of hops.

Anyway, we fired up the turkey fryer around 4:30 PM and started to bring our 4 gallons of Princeton, MA water up to temperature in our 5 gallon pot. Added our pound of Crystal 40L and a pound of Honey Malt for about 20 minutes at 160 degrees and dropping. Brought the concoction to a boil and started adding our hops. 6 ounces in total would be used of the SAC blend. It should be in the range of 65-70 IBUs, with a 6.5-7% ABV. We managed to pull off a little over 3 gallons of sweet wort after we filtered out the hop sludge. Topped off to around 5 gallons with more Princeton water (hopefully it’s good water!) and pitched a tube of White Labs California Ale yeast. Being an off the cuff brew session, we didn’t make a starter or even a pint activator. As of today, there is no activity in the air lock. We’re going to give it 72 hours to see if we get anything, then I’m going to pick up a couple packs of dry yeast and let her rip. My first time using White Labs, let’s hope they don’t disappoint.

We also managed to get a Dark Munich Lager in a bucket for fermentation. This was super easy as it was a going away gift from Derek. The BrewHouse Kit is a brewing kit, much like the boxed extract recipes one can get at most homebrew shops, except instead of being extract you are given a box with a plastic bag filled with almost 4 gallons of all grain wort. So there is no boiling, the grain has already been mashed and boiled with the appropriate amount of hops. Then they package it up for you with a packet of dry yeast and some pH balancer. You simply dump the wort into a bucket, add your pH balancer powder, add a little extra water, and then pitch your yeast. We went ahead and rehydrated the yeast with a pint of warm water and it was bubbling and required an air lock cleaning within 12 hours. The site describes the Munich Dark Lager like this:

Munich Dark Lager

Colour: dark brown (Deg.Lovibond) - 25.0
Bitterness: 20 IBU
O.G.: 1.055
Malts: Munich malt, Crystal 120L, Wheat and Chocolate
Hops: Perle (bittering and aroma)

Let’s hope it’s an easy drinking and delicious brew! With a little luck, both of these brews will be bottled and ready to drink come mid-August. I’ll be sure to let you know how it all turns out.

Next Recipe?

Published
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on July 20, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

Ok, so here’s what I’ve got in the freezer for hops:

1 lb. Warrior, 1 lb. Amarillo, 3 oz. Palisade, 3 oz. Glacier, 2 oz. UK Fuggles, and a new variation of my SAC blend (Styrian Golding, Amarillo, Czech Saaz). All the hops are fair game, although I’ll probably hold off on the SAC blend for the Saison I’m planning.

Now I don’t have any extract or grains on hand, so that’s totally up in the air. I’m going to start making a couple of recipes up now, so I can swing by tomorrow (Saturday) morning to pick up the goods. If any of you readers get a chance to read this, leave a comment for the beer you’d like to see made tomorrow.

1) Single Hop Brew: Palisade
2) Single Hop Brew: Glacier
3) Rye Pale Ale
4) Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA Clone (which would use Warrior, Amarillo, Palisade, Glacier, and Simcoe)
5) Saison (Styrian Golding, Amarillo, Czech Saaz)
6) Munich Dunkle (which I actually already have the wort ready to go in a sealed bag)

Bueller, Bueller?

Harry Potter Dies!

Published
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on July 20, 2007
in Life
. 3 Comments

According to my magic set of 18 shided dice, Harry Potter dies by candlestick in the old library by the hand of none other than Frodo Baggins!

Haha, just kidding. Scared you didn’t I? If it means that much to you, you should think about doing a media blackout until your done reading the book like my boy Gary.

Peace and lot’s of book grease!

Clubbing

Published
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on July 19, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

Tuesday night I met up with M&M at his place in Princeton for a quick pre-game Wachusett IPA. After he was done yelling at the Red Sox, we drove down to Shrewksbury (no idea how you pronounce that). There’s a cool little place called Deja Brew, a BOP much like Shenandoah Brewing only they don’t have a side brewery or bar/restaurant action going on. We weren’t there to brew anything, but they did have a nice 6 kettle copper clad system, buckets of grain and barrels of malt extract. The grounds were super clean and I wouldn’t hesitate to brew on their system.

No, we showed up to attend a homebrew club meeting for the WIZARDS (Worchester Incorporated Zymurgists Advancing Real Draughts). It’s not super close or convenient for me, but it is fairly close to Mike. I’ve always been a big proponent of homebrew clubs, so I felt it important to introduce Mike to the club atmosphere. Every club is different, but there’s almost always something you can learn and take away from the other members. The meeting had about 15 in attendance and there was a really great presentation by JoAnne who is the Sales and Marketing manager for White Labs. With only 15 people, there wasn’t a whole lot of homebrew around, but JoAnne brought several big boy bottles of Avery (Salvation, The Reverend, and Hog Heaven) and then another 4 bottles of Smuttynose Big A IPA…delicious. The homebrewers contributed a couple of milds, a brown ale, something I assume was a cider (but the guy was a little off and didn’t want to explain what it was), a Belgian Golden (good, but not as good as the Salvation, ha), and a really great fresh hop pale ale. I brought a bomber of my Imperial Stout, but I seriously have no idea which batch it was from or how old it is (it’s probably my second or third batch would make it less than a year old, but you never know).

Beers were consumed a couple ounces at a time and fun was had by all. Big bonus that the club has a shoe box full of small tasting glassware, no plastic cups! Anyway, they seemed like a pretty cool club and I don’t think Mike will mind going back for more of their meetings. At the very least, it got us both back on the brewing tip. It’s hard for me to brew since I don’t have a pot that can hold a gallon of liquid or more. Mike however has a full size pot and is going to borrow a turkey fryer from a friend so we can brew something up this weekend. I looked in the freezer and I’ve got 3 ounces of Palisade and 3 ounces of Glacier hops. Both are hops I’ve never used, so it might be fun to try and pull of a single hop beer. We’ll see…I gotta come up with a recipe before Saturday so we can still get the ingredients. Pale Ale, IPA, RyePA (all single hopped) or maybe go another route and do some continuous hopping with the Palisades, Glacier, and the pound of Warrior or Amarillo I have? Damn, I should set up a poll, ha.

Minuteman Bikeway

Published
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on July 16, 2007
in Bikes and Road
. 2 Comments

Finally, this weekend I made the effort to get out and actually ride part of the Minuteman Bikeway. It’s a rail-trail, much the same as the W&OD back in DC, only not nearly as long. Coming from the W&OD, I sort of expected this thing to be pretty long, but it only clocks in around 10 miles. No worries though, plenty of roads to spin off on when the paved path ends. It should be noted that in the month of living in the Boston area, this is my first “for fun” road ride. All my other riding has been commuting or mountain biking (mostly commuting, ha).

I started around noon from the apartment and headed like I normally commute to work. This way I can pick up the paved path as it crosses through Lexington Center. Hit the path and take a left out towards Bedford. The path is nice and wide, no pot holes and very few root cracks (the cracks that are there have all been spray painted yellow to alert cyclists). A few miles later I found myself at the end of the paved path at the Bedford Depot, where a lone train sits on a set of tracks. Across the street is a bike shop, so I amble into the store to have a look around. The place looks huge on the outside, but very small on the inside. Maybe there was another door that I didn’t see. Back out and jump on the bike and head up one of the random streets that intersects the end of the path. It dumps me out in the center of downtown Bedford. I actually know where I am for the moment and decide to head farther out into the country. I find Route 4/225 and head towards Carlisle. Once I pass over a river and into Carlisle I pull a quick u-turn and head back the way I came. A quick side stop into a conservation area to see where a dirt trail lead, but the ground was a little soft, so I backtracked to the road. Back on the bike again I took a little break at Bedford Farms Ice Cream for a quick sugar fix. Back through Bedford, which eventually brought me within a couple of blocks from Hanscom Air Force Base. At this point I have no clue where I am, but I keep riding and eventually end up right back at the end of the path, only coming in from a different direction on a different road.

Back on the paved path and I’m cruising. It’s fairly easy to push over 20 mph when the path is flat or not giving you the invisible uphill that rail-trails are famous for throwing at you. Before I know it I’ve cruised all the way down into Arlington and the path appears to end. I’m not nearly done riding yet, so I just jump onto Mass Ave. and head towards Boston proper. I head through Harvard Square (I guess it was Harvard Square), then push on past Boston University and into Cambridge near MIT. I’ve ridden about 26 miles so far and not carrying any water I decided to stop in at the Miracle of Science Bar for a thirst quenching pint of Victory Hop Devil. The bar only had a few people there, so service was quick. I grabbed a seat that faced Mass Ave., so I could do some people watching and make sure my bike wasn’t lifted as I didn’t bother to bring a lock.

Boston has a lot of cyclists! There was a ton of classic bikes, a few fixies, and a surprising amount of singlespeed bikes. The majority of cyclists seem to be riding errands, which is a big difference from the DC area where the majority of cyclists I used to see were recreational riders. Pretty cool is you ask me. I guess it helps that there are so many schools/universities in the area…

After my quick pint I decided to head back and pick up the path again, back up Mass Ave. and into Arlington. All was going well and I felt surprisingly fresh and snappy. That all changed at about mile 36ish. I hit one of those invisible hills and immediately saw a drop in speed. It was tough just to sit and spin at 13 mph. No worries, it’s the weekend, just sit back and relax, spin it out and enjoy a beautiful 90 degree day. Finally back at Lexington Center I decided to stop by Dunkin Donuts for a cold coffee, man did that hit the spot! It gave me that extra little boost I needed before riding back to the apartment and climbing the hill to the top.

All in all I covered Waltham, Lexington, Bedford, Carlisle, Arlington, and Cambridge. So 45 miles in about 4 hours including all my stops, so probably about 3 hours of actual riding time. Next time I’m going to try and find the other two rail-trails that connect to the Minuteman Bikeway, as seen here. Looks like theres actually a few miles off dirt stuff that would be perfect on a 35c tired fixie, haha. I’ll even try and remember to take the camera or GPS next time, although they were on vacation in NY this weekend.

Parts in the Pile

Published
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on July 3, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 3 Comments

So add Chris King to the growing number of parts I’ve been able to break with my sheer Optimus Prime leg power. Yesterday I took off part of the day and decided to do the long loop at Leominster State Park, a 10-15 mile loop depending on how you put it together. I took the time to put the track files into the GPS so I’d be able to see what options were available when I’m out there. The plan was to get in a nice 2-3 hours of riding and explore the far side of the park that I haven’t been to yet.

Now this park takes about an hour to get to from my place, which isn’t so bad, because my boy Mike lives so close to it. So I make the drive, get the bike off the rack, get all dolled up, and head out on some familiar trails out the parking lot to get warmed up. Not far from the lot I notice a lot of rear tire rub. A quick glance back and yea, my tire is all wobbly and hitting one of the chainstays. Damn, I must have really thrown it out of true the last time I rode and not noticed it. No worries, I’ve got a spoke tool in the car, I’ll just ride back and fix it up. Get back to the car and go to tighten a spoke and it visibly moves in my hand…WTF? Look down at the hub and wouldn’t you know, there’s two spots where spokes are pulling out of the hub, cracked like a mofo.

I am Jack's failed hub

Normally this wouldn’t be a big issue. Drop the wheel off at City Bikes and let them deal with Chris King to get it all squared away. Load up another wheel from the shed…oh wait…I can no longer just stop by City Bikes and any and all extra bike parts I have are in storage in some warehouse in Jersey. Damn! Looks like I’m going to have to get friendly with a new bike shop and quick. So at the very least I’m out of the dirt game until I get a new hub and can rebuild the wheel, which crap, all my wheelbuilding tools (stand) is also in storage. Guess a shop is going to have to build it. Ugg, this is going to be a pain in the ass…

Lucky?

Published
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on July 3, 2007
in Bikes and Commuting
. 0 Comments

Spearman has often described me as lucky or maybe it was damn lucky, ha. Me, I just think it’s more about keeping one’s head in a not so ideal situation. Panic only causes you to make a quick decision with no idea of the outcome and cooler heads will prevail.

My commuting has been going well, but I’ve had a few mechanical issues that have popped up along the way. First it was my ghettotastic zip ties breaking and letting my rack fall backwards…my own fault really. The real clamps that are supposed to be used came in the mail last week and I got everything reinstalled. The latest incident was having my cog come off the hub. The hub is a LeVel hub I won a few years ago for being the only one to ride the ECNASSCU fixed. The cool thing about the hub is the cog slides on and sits on what they call “knuckles”, which take all the pressure. Then 3 bolts simply hold the cog onto the hub. It works great and I’ve never had an issue with the hub since I built it up. That was until last week when somehow a couple of the bolts must have worked their way out and the third bolt sheered right off. With nothing left to hold the cog in place it quickly pulled off the hub, leaving me with no brakes on the steepest decline of my commute.

Now some people will go with the standard “well you’re an ass anyway for not at least having an emergency brake up front”, but hey, then I wouldn’t have any fun stories to tell. Now normally in this situation you can just stick your foot around to the back wheel and wedge it between the frame and tire, slowing you down. You could also do that same trick between the front wheel and the fork. Then there’s always the grabbing the wheel with a gloved hand trick (make sure you know what you’re doing on this one, otherwise you’ll end up with a hand stuck between the frame and tire). Finally, you can take your chances and ride it out until there’s a place to stop. I took the final option, hoping my chain wouldn’t fly into the wheel and cause me to pull a nice long skid. So the cog and chain go freewheeling and I’m doing about 20 mph and gaining. Over a speedbump and around the left side of the car going over said speedbump into a right turn with another speed bump, avoid the oncoming traffic coming up the hill (boy were they surprised)…down low and up front on the top tube, left foot stretched out next to the front wheel to navigate (Sidi’s hard plastic bottom not the best for stopping traction), eventually grinding to a halt at the nearest flat section. Thankfully I was able to stop before the next downward pitch which ends at a stop light with a mandatory left/right turn.

The worst part was having to hike the bike back up the hill to the apt. It’s steep enough that it’s hard to walk uphill in those Sidi shoes, ah, but I do like the shoes. So no harm, no foul. The bike is back up and running with a few water bottle bolts…that’s what I’m talking about! At some point here I’ll get all tech savvy and figure out how to copy the elevation profile to post here so you can see that the hill is actually steep.