Not much to say: we stayed in last night, and I did my morning yoga both yesterday and today. Breakfast was oatmeal with apples and cottage cheese, lunch was a reuben at Syb’s Deli — we did a major food-shopping day today, including an epic visit to the Allentown Farmer’s Market. I like the drop in weight, but I think it’s really just noise.
We have that party tomorrow, and it’s so cold I really don’t want to leave the house, so I suspect that we’ll be staying in tonight as well.
It remains to be see whether I’m “back to that” or not, but I weighed myself this morning. It’s my blog, I can do what I want…
I came across this photo the other day, taken by my friend Brian H on our trip out to Moab in 2008. It’s one of my favorite photos of myself, in fact one of the few I actually like:
Me Riding In Fruita, Colorado
It presents me as I liked to see myself, and wanted to present myself to others as, at that time in my life. Maybe I still do want that, in some ways… Note the muscles! Those are why I’m posting the picture, actually: I am using this photo as motivation to get back in shape. (As a counterpoint, note the non-gray beard: some things are not entirely going to return ever, at least not without some Grecian Formula, or Photoshop or something.)
Anyway, I didn’t get in touch with Greg yesterday, so I went out on a nice towpath ride. It was freezing at first, but I was dressed right and working hard, and warmed up soon enough. There were a few runners out, and some hikers, but it seemed like I was the only cyclist. I did run into Sarah A’s parents (I know Bob because we both volunteer at the Museum), who were out for a walk, and we talked some party logistics — we are hosting Sarah’s (no longer a surprise) birthday party this Saturday.
My turnaround was going to be the old boat launch, but for some reason I kept going to the new one, where I ran into a bunch of first responders, ambulances, rescue boats, and the Freemansburg Fire Department hovercraft. I asked if they were on a training run, but no: there was a report of someone jumping from the Rt 33 bridge, and they were searching the river. That’s a tough job, and a bad day.
Eating: Today’s lunch is canned mackerel in tomato sauce, with crème fraîche and pickled vegetables, over Danish seed bread. Yesterday’s lunch was smoked trout on Danish seed bread, with more pickled vegetables. We’ve been getting pretty Nordic with this recent cold weather.
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…
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.
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.
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.
Running around, doing Christmas and post-Christmas chores, cleaning the house for guests etc, and I just thought I’d link to what I wrote about this time ten years ago.
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.
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.
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.
