• Destination: Listmania!

    Posted on by Don

    I sat down last night and, jonesing for rides as I do every year about this time, I wrote up a list of places I’d like to ride this year. All are in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey (with a few MD/DE outliers) , and within two or three hours of home. I’ve biked all of them before, some many times, but somehow very few of them happened in 2017. Anyway, here goes:

    New Jersey:

    • Allamuchy (also Stevens & Deer Park)
    • Ringwood SP
    • Wawayonda SP
    • Kittatinny SP
    • Mahlon Dickerson Reservation
    • Chimney Rock
    • Round Valley
    • Six Mile Run
    • Huber & Hartshorne Parks
    • Allaire SP

    Pennsylvania:

    • Jim Thorpe
    • Tamaqua/Burma Road
    • Raystown Lake
    • State College/Rothrock SF
    • R.B. Winter SP
    • Camelback
    • French Creek SP
    • Blue Marsh Lake
    • Nockamixon SP (I know, I know, but I don’t go as much as I like…)
    • Michaux SF
    • Merli-Sarnoski Park
    • Prompton
    • Lackawanna SP
    • Wissahickon

    Maryland:

    • Frederick Watershed
    • Gambrill SP
    • Patapsco Valley SP

    Delaware:

    • Iron Hill
    • White Clay

    This is to say nothing of “destination” places like Kingdom Trails in VT, or Slatyfork WV, or Moab, or Downieville…


    📂This entry was posted in day by day the sporting life

  • Some Real Resolutions

    Posted on by Don

    I was rushing through that last post, and though (in discussion with others) I noticed that New Years resolutions seem to have become a bit passé, I still like to think about where I am at this time of year, and where I want to be in the coming year. So here are some more, more realistic resolutions:

    • Ride More: It’s a bit surprising to me how much I fell off my cycling, especially considering how much I really like it. So, definitely I plan on riding more.
    • Ride MTB A Lot More: I’ve got time, and I have a great bike that barely sees any of the riding that it was meant for; I should be doing a lot more mountain biking. Meantime, the few times I got out this year (and last year) I had so much fun it was almost a religious experience. So OK, there will be a lot more mountain biking this year.
    • Start Every Morning With Yoga/Exercise: I started this morning. Again, I don’t know why I don’t do this more, it feels so good when I do it. Well, now it’s a resolution…
    • Get Serious About The Cello: I see a lot of fun happening that I could be a part of, but I take it up half-heartedly over and over again, never get past square zero, and then I drop it, losing whatever I might have gained. I think I might look into going back for lessons again, as well as just, you know, practicing…
    • Step Away From The Computer: Say what? Not really, but I think I can do with a lot less of that listless browsing that eats time and just makes me feel like I just wasted an afternoon watching television.
    • Blog More: I think I’d like to be able to say I write something every day. We’ll see how that goes, but I’ll make the attempt.

    Anyway, that’s all I have for now. My next list will probably be “places I want to ride this year.” For now, I am off to do my belated annual New Year’s Day hike.

     


    📂This entry was posted in day by day

  • Happy 2018!

    Posted on by Don

    Happy New Year to all my readers! Not much revelry last night: we stayed in with Emmi and Kyle, baked some Chicago-style deep dish pizzas, and only braved the five degree outdoors to bang on a pot when the new year arrived. (They left for Durham this morning.) Unfortunately, our new year is starting on a somber note: we’re leaving in a few minutes to go to upstate New York, near Ringwood, for the wake of a friend’s brother. So no hike, no bike ride… Tomorrow will be our traditional New Year’s.

    Some resolutions:

    • Blog more.
    • Ride more.
    • Ride MTB way more.
    • Uh…

     


    📂This entry was posted in day by day

  • A Little Deeper Into The Process

    Posted on by Don

    We just kegged our latest batch of beer, a rye IPA recipe called “Denny’s Favorite.”  It’s also one of mine…

    Listening: “Matty Groves” by Fairport Convention

    Anne and I have both become more interested in our brewing, and we broke out the hydrometer for this batch. This measures the specific gravity (density as compared to the density of water): you measure the specific gravity before and after fermenting, and the difference between original gravity (OG) and final gravity (FG) corresponds to the difference in density between the sugary pre-ferment wort, and the beer after the sugars have been converted to alcohol. Plug these into a formula to get the amount of alcohol in the beer: we got an OG of 1.040 when we brewed a few weeks ago, and today our FG was 1.006, so our new batch is about 6.5% alcohol by volume. It should be carbonated and ready to drink in about a week, but other than a taste test we’ll probably save it for Sarah’s birthday party.

    Listening: “Cello Song” by Nick Drake

    But that sent me on a voyage of Internet discovery, which led me to issues like calculated vs measured beer gravities — and how do you calculate the gravity? You do it by looking at the potential sugar supply of the malt in your recipe, adjusted for the efficiency of your brewing process, and the “attenuation,” or sugar-converting power of your yeast, and how do you do all those things?

    Listening: “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls

    Well, now I know how, but these all come more into play when you are trying to create a beer recipe; since we usually just follow recipes we don’t really need to know these things — measuredOG and FG are fine for our purposes, and that’s our one step deeper into the process.

    We are now waiting for Emmi & Kyle, and Ben (with possibly Candace) to arrive for our Christmas visit — we’ll be having the chili I made the other day, and tonight is the CAT Christmas Lights night ride, which had been rained out on Saturday.

    Listening: “Watershed” by Vienna Teng


    📂This entry was posted in pioneer arts

  • Boxing Day

    Posted on by Don

    Merry Christmas!

    I’m just sitting here, working on a few chores, bills etc, and watching the chili cook itself in the crock pot. It should be ready tonight, but we’re not going to eat it until Thursday night, when Emmi & Kyle, and Ben, all arrive for our Christmas gathering. I am almost caught up with my Christmas shopping…

    On Friday we went into Philly (by way of REI, where I finally got new boots), for a birthday lunch with Ben and his girlfriend Candace. We went into Port Richmond, a part if the city I’d never seen before, and apparently a heavily Polish neighborhood of long standing. Storefronts in Polish: funeral parlors, travel agents, even a BYO strip club (we joked that they played Polka stripper music), but most important: many Polish restaurants. Candace knew the area, and she knew of a place with “the best Polish food in town,” which is where we had our lunch. Much delicious, heavy food, then we went to the hipster coffee shop up the street before our trip home.

    Saturday was rainy, so that “Christmas Lights” night ride did not happen, but we did get together with Liz H-D for our annual “fancy dress cocktails” at the Hotel Bethlehem. We also ran into Erin and Todd out with some of their friends, so the party went a bit later than expected…

    Christmas Eve morning started a corresponding bit later than expected, but in the afternoon we went to Jeff and Crista’s farm for their annual bonfire, then we went with Anne’s mom to the Christmas pageant/service at the meeting house. That was followed by a rather subdued night out — a lot of places closed early — but we got our annual post-pageant Christmas Eve beer with Will & Martha and Peter and Anna, and Rick with Liz and Joey. Good to see everybody, and on the way home it started to snow.

    Yesterday we laid low, with another late morning and another big breakfast, and an afternoon bike ride along the towpath north of Jim Thorpe. They got a bit more snow, maybe two inches or so, than the dusting we got back home. It was a bit of work in the snow, but the ride and the day were beautiful.


    📂This entry was posted in day by day

  • Spanked!

    Posted on by Don

    Another day, another awesome MTB ride… I rode again with Greg H, but we hit Sals this time. I think I did a but better in the rocky stuff than the other day, but even if I think [redacted] is a bit tougher, with more difficult trail challenges sprinkled here and there, Sals is relentless — it never stops being rocky, or uphill, or both…

    Tomorrow is a rest day, going in to Philly to see Ben, and Saturday, if the weather holds, we’ll be doing the “tour of Christmas lights” ride.


    📂This entry was posted in the sporting life

  • Rest Day

    Posted on by Don

    I had an awesome ride yesterday, with Greg H at a local place that shall not be named — and if you’re in the know you already know where I mean — where, in contrast to Monday’s slop fest, the ground was snow-free and fairly dry. Chalk it up to good drainage, and maybe hilltop exposure to sun and wind, but conditions there were almost as good as it gets.

    My riding, however, displayed a certain lack of courage…

    On the way up the hill I was in front, and thinking to myself “enjoy it while you can,” because I knew the rough stuff would remove any fitness advantage I might have.  My recent riding follows the same old pattern: my fitness is the first to return (and the last to fade even when I’m slacking), but technical skills, and confidence, atrophy quickly and take forever to return. (I also got skunked by the fact that there were more technical features there that are just above my usual ability; I can clear them sometimes but am frequently knocked off my game. I used to call this my over/under. If things were just a little easier I would have been a lot better/faster/whatever, I swear…)

    Anyway, we had a good time, and I am getting better even if he has to wait for me after the difficult sections. We were supposed to go again today but Greg couldn’t make it, so it’s on for tomorrow.


    📂This entry was posted in the sporting life

  • Back Out In The Muck

    Posted on by Don

    Yesterday’s ride along the canal was a slopfest, clothes and bike gray & gritty from the gravel/cinder surface, and I was whooped by a 14 mile ride over soft paths. So today, I’m heading out again — this time with Greg H to some actual trails, which stay dryer and more solid, hopefully. I’m heading out in a few minutes, just after blogging and a little lunch.

    A quick aside on the mapping front: I took a long time dithering about it, but I wrote my own chainage routine, and my own ascent/descent calculation function, both in PL/pgSQL, and both — especially the ascent routine, where there was a lot of room for improvement over my PyQGIS script — worked perfectly. (The ascent routine took about 20 minutes to run everything, as opposed to 4-8 hours for QGIS.) I still have to zero out the data at bridges, but I am now back to where I can wait for outside data (recommended routes, etc) to continue.


    📂This entry was posted in tech talk the sporting life

  • Motion

    Posted on by Don

    Getting ready for a towpath ride; I’ll be out on the singlespeed which needed a little bit of work, tires pumped etc before it was ride-worthy, but looks to be in good shape — there are not a lot of moving parts. Not much to say otherwise..


    📂This entry was posted in the sporting life