January 2009 Archives

i prepped the recipe for "thunder thighs" tonight. marinating my chicken thighs (and legs, my own addition) overnight in "thunder paste". got the recipe from "smoke and spice", picked it because 1) it's relatively quick and 2) awesome name.

unfortunately, i'm not sure i like the smell of the marinade/paste. it's mostly peanut butter and aniseed.

recipe called for ground anise, i had whole aniseed, ground them. them's the same thing, right?

i passed the stoners in hallway. actually, i dont know for sure that tehy're the stoners, but i know for sure there are stoners on my floor (not just occasional users, but honest to god stoners), and knowing that, these guys had to be the ones.

anyhow, i opened my door, looked at my place, and thought: i bet the stoners' apt is cleaner than this one.

i saw a memorial on steven's canyon road today, which i forgot about until moments ago. it was an elaborate one, the kind that people set up on the spot where someone dies in a car accident. this one had pictures of a cyclist, arms raised in triumph, with medals around his neck.

ugh.

even more ugh. i think i remember reading this when it happened.

and: fuck you kcbs:

allegedly.

RIGHT NEXT to the picture of the patrol car PLOWED INTO THE HILL on top of mangled bicycles, and the spineless news retards think they need to say "allegedly"?

no reports anywhere of how the trial went, except that the deputy pled "not guilty" and the DA said "all we have to do is prove he crossed the double yellow".

also, the entire ride, i was singing, whistling, or loudly humming:
on the road again
i just cant wait to get on the road again
the life i love is making music with my rims
and i just cant wait to get on the road again
on the ROAAAAD AGAIN
like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
dum de DUM DE DUM
doo de dum de dum de doo de dum de doo dum

i considered multiple times pulling over and asking someone the rest of the lyrics. i sure didn't know them.

this morning's espresso was awful, its only redeeming quality was that it was not thin bodied.

i drank it anyway, hoping that, like Darth Vader, there was some good within it.

Maybe I should let George Lucas make my espresso, it might turn out better.

81.33, actually.

my behindus is sore. i'm not sure if it's just all the mileage, these particular pants, the fact that my saddle/"zertz" junk is now a year old, or all of the above. but the arse started hurting around mile 50 and didn't get better.

the last 10 miles were easy. the 20 before that were really hard.

right from the start i was dooming myself to a difficult finish: i raced some dude up crystal springs/polhemus. i had several meters on him, and shouted (jokingly) at him that he was cheating as he cut through the parking lot to get to ralston trail. i've been turning at the light ever since i've been able to make it up without dismounting. it's an ego thing ;)

which, as it happens, got a lot of exercise this ride. i hit the ralston trail before this dude did, and i made it over horseshit bridge before him, but he passed me coming down. oh well.

lots of big pelotons out today, and i got passed by most of them. actually, i got passed by one on canada and was stuck behind it, but fortunately they turned right at woodside, while i turned left.

not much happened between then and the next informal race. heading up alpine (the first time) a pair of women roadies (i could tell they were roadies because i had to dodge their field blows) passed me. i kept up with them easily, letting them block my wind all the way to arastradero, going about 5mph faster than i would have gone by myself. i could have passed, but i didn't want to show off (at that point :D)

i had to go all the way down foothill past stevens creek blvd. to get my mileage. i didn't want to go too far into the park because it gets hilly and cold. the hills didn't bother me so much as the cold. i turned back 1 mile short of my intended turnaround mileage.

somewhere a couple of stoplights before page mill, i was waiting for my green and a small paceline of women roadies pulled up behind me and started talking about women roadie paceline topics. for some reason, i decided i wasn't going to let them get ahead of me. for how long, i knew not. i looked down at my gear. i was in a really big gear for starting. i don't know how to change gears while stopped, so when it turned green, i got out of my seat and used the old deadlifting muscles. before i knew it was pushing 23mph and the ladies were out of earshot. i kept a really hard pace (for me), with my HR bumping against LT territory (whereas normally on my weekend long ride, i keep it on the easy end of aerobic) from that point to alpine, and up to portola. the paceline never made it past me, nor did they make it close enough to draft me, but they were really close a bunch of times -- enough to keep me rather exercised.

i pulled over on portola right after the stop sign, to have a snack, and i was going to thank them for setting the pace (:D) but they continued up alpine to the "hard core" section. wow!

actually, i ought to try that some time -- it seemed hard core in the car, but i bet it's no worse than KMR.

then, i was putzing around on whiskey hill, taking my time, and a guy with carbon cupholders zips past me right before the hill. i woke up out of my stupor and got on his tail. i had to coast up the hill (!) to avoid hitting or passing him. i drafted him to the incline part before the stop sign, then engaged those deadlift muscles again to blast to the top. then he passed me on canada, but the point is that i passed a guy with carbon cupholders.

someone pointed out that maybe he was on mile 110 of his recovery ride. no, i'm positive he was time trialing and had just finished his warmup. sucker!

canada the second time was a drag, especially with the sore arse. sawyer camp was a drag too, on the "out" leg. on the "back" portion, i reached some zen state where i was taking the curves at 20mph instead of my usual 15mph, and felt like i was going in slo-mo.

someone screeched their brakes behind my right before the obstacle course, at about mile 79. i thought that i wasn't going to make 80, but it was some kids going to fast in mom's car, or whatever. anyhow, they didn't hit me.

my bike's about a year old now. i should check the records to see how long i've had it. so far we've done well for each other.

now they're Designer Jeans.

Helooooo resale value!

in the saturday-saturday span of 2 weeks ago, where i ate a whole chicken in one sitting, then two days later barbecued 20 pounds of pork and spent the whole week eating the leftovers, i gained weight.

then, during the same length of time last week when i did not do those things, i lost weight.

there's got to be some kind of lesson to be learned here, but i'm just not seeing it.

in the mornings, if i sleep without a band in my hair, i wake up looking like a younger this-guy:

bad guy from out for justice.

i keep looking over my shoulder to see if steven is there.

but i can't easily reach the volume control on my headamp.

A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., last fall ruled that a U.S. marshal and a New York City police officer lied when they testified that a defendant dropped two bags of drugs in front of them and then invited the officers to his apartment, where he revealed a large cache of cocaine..

Really? You mean that didn't happen? Nooooooooooooooo.

Also:

Immediately after the decision, Mapp v. Ohio, studies showed that the number of annual drug arrests in the U.S. -- most cases are prosecuted in state court -- didn't change much but there was a sharp increase in officers claiming that suspects dropped drugs on the ground. "Either drug users were suddenly dropping bags all over the place or the cops were still frisking but saying the guy dropped the drugs," says John Kleinig, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Court decision => criminal butterfingers. Yep.

it should be noted that my exclamation of "Jesus Christ!!!" was identical in accent and intonation to the vocalization of identical content exclaimed by King Arthur upon witnessing the work of the vicious Rabbit of Caerbannog. Had I had a holy handgrenade of Antioch, the stupid old bat might not be around any longer.

It should also be noted that the quick and life-saving response of the driver behind me could possibly be attributed to my exclamation, if it was, coincidentally, also the name of the driver.

Which it could have been.

okay, it's technically mostly aluminium and carbon fiber.

today i wore a pair of ski gloves, courtesy of The Captain. i wore them over my regular long fingered bike gloves. i couldn't manipulate the bike computer, and had trouble shifting, but they were warm! my fingers got a little chill from ambient temp, even though it was 10-15F warmer today than tuesday. but as far as wind-blocking, these things did the job. i took them off at the halfway point, but after 10 feet of pedaling decided that my then soggy regular gloves weren't doing the job. plus, my fingers felt small ;)

i took off the regular gloves, put on the ski gloves, and had toasty fingers the entire ride, even with some 26+mph shaded descents. great!

i almost got killified on this ride, and though i don't remember how many times i've nearly been killified on my bike, this one surely makes the top 2 for closest call. i was pedaling along flea street, in the bike lane, approaching an intersection where i had no stop sign. the stupid old bat (heh) in the car in front of me decided to make a right turn in front of me, no signal, and then slammed on her brakes when she saw a woman standing on the corner, talking on her cel phone, facing away from any and all crosswalks. i had about 5 feet of reaction space. brakes were out of the question. i shouted "jesus christ!!", swerved to left of the stupid old bat's car, keeping as little distance between me and her car as i could, since i didn't want to get hit by the guy behind me.

the guy behind me, fortunately, was an attentive driver. he was driving a very large pickup truck that would have made short work out of me, but he swerved a little. after i'd finished giving the stupid old bat an italian "fuck you", i switched hands and gave the pickup truck a very grateful wave. he pulled over (having arrived at his destination) on hte next block, and i gave him another thankful wave.

i'm off the glucosamine and my joints seem slightly worse but not worrisomely so. on the other hand, the stomach is much, much better -- which is good, because i'm back on the espresso which irritates the hell out of my guts.

yay. picking my poisons.

every time i looked at my speedometer whilst on flat ground today, i was going between 16 and 20mph. this is good news for my flat century.

daily show just ran a clip of prominent republicans griping about how much pork was in obama's package. complaint after complaint about the details of where the money will go -- wait now, we know what's in the stimulus package? we know where the money's going?

that's funny, when paulson had a stimulus package, nobody knew what was in it. do we know now? where'd that 700 billion go?

my local premium grocery store has a "bring your own bag" 5c refund, as well as a weekly drawing for which you get an entry if you bring your own grocery bag.

today, i bought one item and asked if i'd get a ticket for not using any bag. checker said no.

the bag man and i both agreed this was a travesty. but i wasn't going to check the drawing winner anyhow so i let the travesty slide.

all that is required for evil to triumph is for good shoppers to do nothing. i feel bad.

it wasn't a god shot, but after an initial veil of bitterness (a defect, in my opinion), creamy chocolate gave way to berryliciousness, which slid down leaving a peppery trail.

a slightly short pull, not quite a ristretto but not a full shot. had to dump a shot because i'd ground it too fine. but my temperature setting now seems right, my grind is about on, and apparently my tamp hasn't totally degraded.

as you can see: the insanity has returned.

this batch of beans will only last me a couple more days. i've got another roast on deck, aging a little, slightly less roasted -- but then the fun begins anew, with grinder adjustments, temperature tweaks, and pounds of grinds on my kitchen floor. so it goes.

just had a vac-pot brewed cup of a panama. it was a little watery -- i think i didn't grind enough beans (argh, and had a bean receptacle malfunction, too, so lost some beans there), i think they may have been a tad underroasted (city instead of city+), but most importantly, not a hint of a trace of a whisper of the alluring flavor that i desire so much and find so abundant in the guat.

one more try tomorrow with more grinds, for science, then it's time to stockpile some guat.

i hit the road today around 7:45. the sun was still down for most of my ride. in the shade, my thermometer read 31F. ugh.

first my fingertips froze. i seriously considered turning back but they seemed to thaw out a little on the approach to ralston trail.

then, the sun was in my eyes. i was blind most of the way up polhemus, and totally blind on the approach to horseshit bridge. along canada, there was frost on the ground -- lots of it. i don't think i've ever seen frost in san mateo, and it was quite nice. i'd appreciate it more if i wasn't freezing cold.

actually, even though i was dressed only for medium warmth, my body and limbs were plenty warm. it was only my fingers and eartips that bothered me.

when i hit edgewood i took my u-turn and cranked it up to max effort. this brought the wind chill down to arctic levels, and my thumbs began to freeze. from that point on my ride is basically an all-out effort, straight into the freezing wind. when i got home i had to take my gloves off with my teeth and run my thumbs under warm water for a couple of minutes -- very painful.

riding early sucks, and it's going to get even worse next week, when i head out at 7. bleh. maybe i'll get some better gloves.

while hops is away, i've been brewing with my yama vac pot.

i had a moment of tragedy yesterday when i tried to brew with my bodum vac pot, only to discover that i can't brew a single serving in it -- i had to dump my ruined beans. argh!

the yama takes the guat and greatly accentuates that special something -- that nutty/nutella flavor that i value so highly in coffee, and am usually unable to achieve. tomorrow perhaps i'll try some panama and find out whether this flavor comes from the vacpot or maybe the roast, or if it's specific to teh guat. if it's the guat, i sense a big time coffee order in my near future.

hops is a wizard on the chemex (which we found for $2 at a church basement sale -- SCORE) and i likes me some chemex coffee, but if only the vacpot can bring out my cherished coffee flavor, i'm there. plus, it's fun to watch. yay, physics!

i had to dump 4 sink shots before i got the grinder dialed in to the point where the shot even looked right, and afterwards, i got an overly bitter, flat-tasting cup of coffee.

still, it was espresso. thick and creamy and chocolatey -- underneath the ick.

by the time i get these beans dialed in, i'll be out of them. hello thrice a week roasting routine.

actually, i might not get these beans dialed in -- i think they may be overroasted. upon grinding i smelt a huge dose of blueberries, none of which made it to the cup.

tomorrow: more tweaking. and by tweaking, i mean tweaking.

twitch

saturday afternoon, at the fish waffle place, i got to see this movie: king of kong.

it was riveting. honestly! as soon as i saw the bearded guy, i was unsure whether i was watching a documentary or a fake-documentary-comedy. it is the former, but this brilliant movie shows a corner of the world that i never knew existed, and shows that even in such a corner (or perhaps especially in such a corner) the human element thrives, at both extremes.

MILD SPOILERS:

the movie plays almost like a real life rocky, and when "eye of the tiger" made its appearance, i wasn't the least bit surprised. the way the bearded character behaves, i'd swear this whole thing was scripted. it's really great storytelling, too great to be real life.

har har har!

some dude on the radio yesterday said that Dick Dale is half Lebanese.

I don't know many Lebanese people, but the ones I do know are among the friendliest, most generous people I've ever met. Also, there's Shakira.

So, dick dale, shakira, friendly people, awesome food: Lebanon is pretty swell.

the question is: what do i do with my mornings?

apparently the answer is not "go to work early", as my work-arrival time has not changed significantly. moreover, i've become even more effective at working from home and the boss does not seem to mind. i'm getting a lot done between 6am and 7am.

the coffee modifications will only occupy me for so long; in fact, they are winding down.

tomorrow, it's easy: i'll ride. but if i leave at 7:30 i'll be done by 9. then what?

the upside is that i don't have to ask what to do with my evenings now. the answer: bed before 9. bleh.

i sent an email last night to chris coffee to find out if i could put the rocky doserless replacement spout on my now doserless rocky doser. his reply: "to be honest, i have no idea".

maybe not as helpful as "i looked and the nubs on the spout won't fit in the chute on your rocky", but it did save me $18 plus shipping. i looked on the internets and found a dude who placed a nice chrome funnel-like object in his doser (he kept the doser bottom, which i can't do without keeping many of the doser's problems). i have a funnel like object: a funnel! i took one of my brewing funnels and chopped off (rather poorly, i might add. this mod definitely lacks polish) the bottom. this i electrical taped to the already-electrical-taped doser top. coffee grinds still shot out the bottom, so i tried using a different receptacle. this worked much better, in my test, no grounds were lost -- as long as i held the little cup in place. rocky's torquey motor caused the cup to move to the left (redshift, as it were) during the grind. one toothpick and some more electrical tape, and that problem was solved.

now i have a very clean rocky that can grind unattended and not lose grinds to the doser, and not worry about fixing that damned piece of stupid metal (which i now seem to have lost) that makes the doser work. it's a bit ugly with all that electrical tape, but it sure has more character, and who said coffee was pretty?

i intend to re-begin drinking espresso. for that, i need rocky. which is to say, i need rocky so i can grind my non-espresso coffee, using the macap for its god-intended purpose: grinding espresso.

rocky was stashed away in a cupboard. i took him out, cleaned him off a bit, and plugged him in. he still worked. i cleaned out the doser and decided i may as well disassemble the doser and rejigger the doser fin mod.

you see, rocky is a pretty darn good grinder, but he comes with a number of design flaws. one is the finger guard in the bean hopper. i removed that ages ago. another problem is the doser fins: they don't really contact the bottom of the doser, and thus leave lots of grinds in the doser. most grinders with dosers have this problem to some degree or another, it seems. 2 out of 2 for me. but rocky is particularly bad.

so i disassembled the doser, only to remember: there's that god damned piece of little metal that is pivotal to the operation of the doser, but falls out when you disassemble the doser, and you can't put it back in, and it sure looks like mine was slightly defective and too short anyway. i got frustrated while trying to put the doser back together and realized: the doser sucks anyhow. if i were to get another rocky, i'd surely get the doserless model. so 10 minutes of unscrewing later, i had the doser completely off, and i re-wired the power switch for good measure.

rocky has the power switch on the side, but there's a slot with a placeholder thingy in it right in front. i swapped the switch and the placeholder and now rocky can be turned on from a convenient location.

while taking off the doser, i found that the chassis ground wire was connected to the doser. now, 6 months ago i wouldn't have known what a chassis ground wire was or how to rewire it, but tonight i did it with confidence (and plenty of multimeter testing). i'm sure i'd pass UL muster.

the doser was off, but, once rocky was put back together, i faced a new problem: the grounds would shoot out the recessed grinder chute and all over the place in every direction. i tried a number of tricks with tin foil, fashioning crude chute extenders and side-shields -- none of which worked. finally, i put the top half of the doser back on (the see-thru plastic bit) and electrical-taped it to rocky (the top half screwed into the bottom half which screwed into rocky. the bottom half was the business part and putting it back on was not only a pain, but would defeat the purpose of removing the doser).

the taped-on doser-top looks pretty lame and will become jiggly with a hard knock, or probably even just with age. but it removes the mess of the exposed doserless chute, and it also removes the mess of the doser itself. i see on the internet that for 18 bucks i can get the little chute that goes on the real rocky doserless, and i've got a pending email to tell me whether that will work for me.

now all i have to do is clean up the grinds that are all over my kitchen now.

all over.

man what a mess.

last week i held a party. about 10 people attended. i smoked 3 st. louis cuts of spareribs, plus the trimmings, plus a 3 lb pork shoulder.

despite the ravages of the sun (keeping my temps 50F too high no matter what i did), despite pathetically bad operator error (top vent closed for first 3 hours of smoking, just when the vent needed most to be open), despite this being only my second use of the smoker, and despite doing far, far more meat at once than i've ever cooked by any method: everything came out awesome.

frustratingly, the pork shoulder wasn't tender enough to pull, so i chopped it, and took quite a lot of guff from my guests. it wasn't as crispy as i'd have liked, either. this may have been because it was on the bottom rack and spent 7 hours being dripped on by the ribs.

the ribs, eh? they came out incredibly well, the best ribs i've made to-date. smokey but not too smokey (due to operator error, the smoke escaped through the door for the first 3 hours, mostly bypassing the ribs), tender but chewy, juicy but not watery. close to perfect.

i got some accolades from the only admitted southerner of the bunch. he's taste-tested most of my ribs and i think these were his favorite so far.

now, i've brought myself up to speed on theory during my grilled rib attempts, so i am not entirely a newbie. i trimmed those three racks like i was a certified butcher. but mostly, it was the WSM making me look good. the next day, i spent 30 minutes cleaning up and that was that. it's really an incredible smoker.

they say water smokers don't make crispy pulled pork. they also said a grill makes a poor smoker and they were right. but maybe they're wrong about my water smoker. we'll see.

i am both trendy and popular.

also, young.

a little over a week ago i started taking "triple flex", a glucosamine+chondroiton+msm supplement. reasons: i am getting old, and between running (which i've put on hold to train for cycling), cycling, and maintaining a beer/bbq gut, i put a lot of stress on my joints. this particular supplement is one that's supposedly got some reality behind it.

around thursday/friday, i began having an upset stomach all day and a general bleh feeling. on saturday, i rode 71 miles and had joints that felt just shy of Great. but i had a rip roaring upset stomach the whole way and felt bleh.

now, part of my training routine is training myself to get up early enough to start the ride on time. last week i was up at 6 every day, and today i was up at 5:30 (argh!!!). that could definitely be causing the bleh.

i took only half a dose of hte supplement today and experienced less of the upset stomach, but i still have a-plenty of it.

so now i get to choose: upset stomach or happy joints? now, my happy joints may be from acclimation to the new routine, or better form, or a dozen other things unrelated to the pills. and for that matter, the stomach upset could be from a dozen things besides the pills. but i think i'm going to lay off the pills next week and see what happens with my stomach and my knees. i've got enough to worry about without feeling bleaugh all the time, and i was really taking them mostly preventatively anyhow.

we're screwed!

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/01/ucsf_study_finds_possible_link.php

"Our interpretation for these finding is that police agencies are recognizing these events," Tseng told SF Weekly.

But... do they recognize them to the extent that official statements are issued?  No?  Huh, I wonder why?

 The largest 10 cities in the United States were unwilling to release their statistics, and the data from the 50 participating cities did not include any detailed information about the sudden or firearm-related deaths.

Another big "wonder why", yeah?

People are dying because police are too lazy, aggressive, and empowered to use traditional non-harmful methods on people and opt instead for electro-torture..

That kid that was shot by BART cops (motto: we've got your back) last month may have died because the BART cop thought he was drawing his taser instead of his pistol.  At the time I thought this was a stupid excuse, suggesting an even stupider policeman.  The study above suggests it may have been true, but also, it raises the same old question that comes into play whenever I see any of the dozens of "cop tasers dude for mouthing off" videos I see: why did this person need to be shocked?  How on earth did police keep order and civility in the time before portable electrotorture devices?  And why were those methods so quickly abandoned in favor of the stun gun?

Because the stun gun is just so much easier, and won't leave messy bruises or marks.

The other day on the radio I heard an interview with a designer for "smart" weaponry, and it made me ill.  There's an episode of the original Star Trek which I think is possibly the best episode of the series, where the crew lands on one of two planets which are at war.  They've been at war for hundreds or thousands of years.  They've evolved their warmaking capacities so fully that their continuous war is fully automated: computers make the decisions about which cities were "hit" by "bombs" and how many people were "killed".  The requisite number of people then walk into disintigration chambers.  Infrastructure is left entirely intact because all the bombs are entirely virtual.

That's where our own military is headed, and the military hardware guy seemed a little squeamish about it as he danced around the issue.  Terry Gross, bless her intellect, asked him directly whether he thought that all the "smart" technology removed the human impact of and emotional barriers to blowing the fuck out of a village full of children.  I don't know what the guy said, and it matters little what he said: if it bothered him, there are thousands more whom it doesn't bother that will continue his work.  To be able to inflict damage on fellow humans, without the risk of damage to self is one of the driving forces of all human history.

So when a lazy, aggressive, brutish police force gets hold of neat new toys like tasers, it comes as no surprise to me that they'd use them whenever possible, at the slightest justification, even when they're in no danger.  It's much easier than developing a commanding, authoritative presence.

Note: cleared of wrongdoing by a bunch of other policemen, but with the issue pending before a civil court, the same policemen paid cash to make the problem go away.  I wonder why.

another one.

3 cops versus a 78 year old unarmed man in a police station.  thank god they had tasers.  can you imagine what damage the 78 year old could have done without the quick intervention of these heroes?
        

i got a new coffee roaster, the gene cafe. i've been using a stir-crazy/turbo-oven for several years, and while it's a fine roaster setup, and quite cheap (especially compared to the gene cafe), it had some shortcomings, particularly the fact that it had a meltable plastic driveshaft. I replaced the driveshaft with a metal one but didn't do a great job, and ever since, the roasts have been uneven.

i'm drinking my third roast on the gene cafe, and it's one of the best roasts i've ever personally done. it's a guatemalan bean taken to about city+. the aroma is syrupy with a hint of roast character. full bodied, chocolatey with a good amount of brightness, a surprisingly dry finish. nuttiness, roast, and chocolate in the finish.

delightfully complex!

in a related note, i got the new relay for the espresso machine, and it seems to be fixed now. i'll reassemble it soon, get some beans roasted up, and then descend into the madness that espresso brings to me. something to look forward to.

this is the change he brings? in two days he's solved global warming, and now i can't ride outside because it's pouring rain.

when bush was in office, it was an endless summer of warm january rides. now i have to go dust off my trainer and bore myself to death. thanks a lot, obama.

listening now to the bbc call-in show where people all over hte world call in and share their opinions. the topic today is, of course, barack obama, and whether he should solve all the world's problems.

i was with a group of friends, last night, many of whom voted republican, and many of whom voted obama as registered republicans. why were they registered republicans? because they really wanted ron paul to be elected. why choose obama, then, when ron paul lost the nomination?

because once the Small Government candidate was out of the running, it was then a matter of choosing your poison. which kind of big government would you like? do you want the Expand The Military And Executive Powers party, or the Expand Entitlements and Give My Money to the Poor party?

The US has had its fill of the expand the military party. And staring into the maw of another Depression, one that might take the Great out of the Great Depression the same way WWII took the Great out of WWI, we the people figured that "expanding entitlements" sounded an awful lot like "saving us from doom".

Ultimately, though, the next four years will likely see a further expansion of government power: just not the same government powers that saw expansion the last 8 years. With the worldwide outpouring of "thank god it's not bush", I'm guessing we'll see the hugely popular (outside the US) obama push through greater globalization of government. Yeah, real black helicopter stuff, but the other way around: I see obama being invited to Save Our Country all over the world, and a re-expansion of American hegemony coupled with an expansion of internal government powers.

I realized this morning that Obama's first act of president, for me, was to restore my cynicism. It's good to have a Democrat back in the oval office. At least he'll play well on TV.

i altered my facial hair with the express purpose of looking goofy/unattractive. once again, epic fail.

i'm just too good lookin'.

i saw a deer shatnering in a field today.

i guess that's the sort of thing you see when you go for an earlier-morning ride.

after giving my weber gas grill ample and generous opportunity to prove itself barbecue worthy, i admitted, regretfully, that it wasn't going to happen.

now, the website that jolted me back into outdoor cooking bliss contends that it is possible to get smoked meats in a gas grill that will rival any purpose-built smoker. i believed him, and tried my best. i tried this, and that, and the other. and then i mixed it all up and tried it again. i filled my apartment with smoke and burned through tons of wood chips. for my effort, i got really tasty barbecued ribs (yes, barbecued. indirect heat, low temperature, slow cooking). but i could not get any noticeable smoke flavor on my meat. guests with better palettes than i said they could taste hints of smoke -- but i was going for loads! if i wanted loads of smoke, i was SOL.

my dad and my hetero life partner, spu, both got cheap-o (in comparison to the WSM) bullet smokers, and both produce great smoked pork shoulder, with lots of effort . but i'm the sort of guy who will pay more for convenience and quality -- my time is worth it to me. so i shelled out for the new-for-2009 weber smokey mountain cooker. it has several advantages over the cheap bullet smokers:

1) it's made by weber. i called weber before i bought my weber grill and was impressed with their customer service. heck, i wasn't even a customer at the time! they're also produced with supposedly quality parts. after owning a weber grill for some months, i am pleased with its quality.

2) the WSM has bottom vents which can be used to control the smoker temperature. controlling the temp on the cheap bullet smokers is a real pain, involving adding charcoal or propping the door open. the WSM has an enclosed bottom. the cheap ones spill ash and charcoal all over the floor.

3) the WSM has a fan website to help me get up to speed. many of the tips/hints/recipes are equally applicable to the cheap bullet smokers.

anyhow, the smoker arrived on friday. i cooked up a batch of baby back ribs last night (sunday). i followed operating procedures on the virtual weber bullet site, though i used a different rub/sauce recipe. i used 2 half-racks of baby backs, one with mustard and one without, same rub on both. unfortunately, the half-racks were substantially different (from different parts of the full rack, i think, or maybe a slightly different cut of the rack to begin with, before they got sliced in half. it's all part of my butcher frustration) so the science of "does mustard make a difference?" is inconclusive.

i used 4 large chunks of hickory. the internets say 4 chunks of hickory is probably too smokey for most people. good. my gripe with the grill was that i could only achieve "hints of smoke" even if i wanted to produce "too smokey for most people". i wanted to test the WSM for its ability to make "too smokey for most people", since the opposite is already well within my grasp.

i used one 9lb bag of charcoal, plus the 4 chunks of hickory. i lit the charcoal all at once using The Minion Method and put the hickory on top of the pile. i assembled the cooker and Did Other Things for 4 and a half hours, occasionally adjusting the vents to keep the temperature in line. that was it. no opening of the door, no adding charcoal, no making a big mess all over my deck. the smoker was not entirely temperature stable, but it's my understanding that this is expected the first couple sessions, until i get a nice interior coating of smoke/grease.

around 7:30 (having started at 3:15) the meat still did not seem Done (using meathead's bend test, or using the virtual weber bullet's "tear test", or using the "pulled back 1/4 inch from the bone" test). but it was dinner time and i'd be okay with substandard results on my first cook. so i pulled them off and ate them.

oddly, they were acceptably finished. tender, but not overly tender. some of them seemed a little over-done and dry, and i've cooked much more juicy ribs on my grill (not necessarily better! also, those were spareribs). but these were perfectly good, in fact, quite good. but best of all: they were heavily smokey. so smokey, in fact, that the smoke drowned out the brown sugar flavor of the rub. on the grill, the same rub on baby backs last week was plenty sweet, and quite tasty. but i think in this case there was just so much smoke flavor that the rub could not assert itself.

i savored the smoke flavor but could see how it could be perceived as "too much". fortunately, my sauce (my own recipe! hooray!) complemented the oversmokiness quite well, and balanced the ribs out.

overall, i am extremely pleased. i still don't like cooking with charcoal -- i'm really a big fan of the convenience of gas cooking. but sometimes Ya Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do. realistically, if i want smoked meat, i'm going to have to combust some wood. and as far as charcoal cooking goes, the WSM makes it as painless as it could possibly be.

they say that the election/inauguration of barack obama may represent the realization of MLK's dreams.

but wouldn't the realization of MLK's dream be more like the election/inauguration of barack obama, without anyone mentioning MLK's dreams?

ya know, since that would truly be judging the guy by his character and not noticing at all his skin color.

obviously, america's first not entirely white president is a huge step towards MLK's dream, but the nature of his dream demands that to realize it, we not mention it.

i need to find a new source for meat in san mateo. there are two grocery stores that i frequent. both are excellent for produce, rare stuff, imported stuff, fancy beers, and good yogurt.

but neither one of them seems to stand alone as a good butcher shop. one of them sells whole slabs of spareribs, and about these ribs i have only compliments. i can't get a full slab of baby backs there (at least, not without asking, which i haven't tried yet). i can get a full rack at the other place, but they cost 2 times per pound what they cost at place #1. that "2 times" figure probably tells you who place #2 is, if you know anything about san mateo grocery stores.

place #2 only rarely has spare ribs, and they're usually packaged half slabs. neither one regularly has a boston butt, nor do they seem to have staff that know what it is.

there used to be a really great butcher shop on 25th, but it closed years ago (and the owner went to work at store #2!). i need to find a real butcher shop around here.

so, i turned on silvia this morning for the first time in ages, i thought i'd get back into espresso now that i have a fancy new roaster. as soon as i turned it on, there was a spark from the PID and the PID went blank.

oh crap.

so i fiddled with some of the wires -- the wires into the PID never did stay in place -- and got the PID to power on finally. it said: UUUU.

after a whole lot of research, i discovered that this meant that the thermocouple input was out of range, on the high side. i checked the range, and it was getting a reading of 1000F or greater, otherwise it wouldnt say UUUU.

fortunately, i have a thermocouple-probed thermometer. i removed the probe, plugged in the leads from silvia, and got a reading of 68F, quite believable. so the thermocouple was okay.

during a call to spu (the EE) regarding how to test the inputs on the PID, i noticed a burnt out lead on the PCB of the PID. i'd fried it!

so later in the afternoon, i soldered a piece of wire to onto the PCB to fix the blown lead, and... it worked! the PID showed the correct temp reading. so i put everything back together, plugged silvia in, turned it on, and waited for the boiler to come up to temp...

nothing. it didn't budge. argh?

more disassembly, and close inspection of the PID, multimeter readings of all sorts all over the place. silvia's circuitry wasn't exactly fresh in my mind, but schematics and multimeter probes put it back in perspective -- better perspective than when i'd made the mod, since i've been learning electronics since then. well whoopdie do.

the current suspect is my solid state relay. it reads VDC on its input, and i see VAC on its VAC input terminal, but when it's "on" (and it has an LED to note the fact) i see no VAC on the output -- and the boiler doesn't heat up neither. there's continuity between the boiler and the SSR, and the boiler will heat up if i use the steam function (which uses the factory thermostat instead of PID). so the boiler is fine, the heating element is fine, everything seems to be fine but the relay, which i thought isn't a thing to break, but since it's solid state, maybe it could break if it got 120VAC on its VDC input, which could have happened when i fried it this morning.

once i get a new relay and get it all working again, i might make the PID wiring permanent (it's attached by screw terminals now) with hot glue or solder. i really dont want to go through this again, fun though it may be.

stayed up "late" last night, drank beer, didn't sleep too well, started out rather tired from the week's stresses and activities.

by mile 35 i was feeling like death. that's nothing new, so i pushed on through. around mile 55, i got into a little informal race up the stretch of 35 leading to bunker hill. from who-knows-where i summoned energy to go racing speed and made it to the top long before my "competitors". i ended up doing 62 miles instead of 60, and i'm fairly sure i did the second half faster than the first half.

i finished the ride feeling way better than when i started it. Weather is great, I feel great (but tired, no doubt) and an early start leaves me with plenty-o-time for napping and eating. Yay.

i just said to a coworker:

would you kindly verify that when you get a chance?

i dunno if he's played through bioshock. i wonder if he'll spot the joke?

at lunch today, i went to a chinese restaurant by myself. i ordered the house special shredded pancake (so chewy and good!) and asked for a 1/2 order of the cumin beef (also delicious, but even though i was hungry, i didn't want to eat two full plates).

the waitress said they they could do a half plate, but they'd have to charge me for a full plate, because the cost is really for the cook's labor, which is the same whether he makes a half plate or a full plate.

she went and talked to the cook and they charged me $6 for half of an $8 plate, so I guess i got a real bargain as far as labor is concerned.

i was eating lunch today in a place that had a TV. the TV showed the plane that crashed/landed in the Hudson river. I watched the coverage for nearly 30 minutes before a message scrolled by:

Federal Security Expert says terrorism unlikely.

It was at that moment I realized that terrorism was the furthest thing from my mind when wondering about the cause of this incident. I think that says something about me: I'm someone who understands the odds.

At the same time, I'm incredulous that the prime suspect is actually a flock of geese. Come on, it's the space age. Can't we protect our planes from birds?

ever since i moved up to the bay area, i've had difficulty finding a dentist. i don't think i went to the dentist at all when i was in college. before that, i had Dr. Strathdee, the family dentist who looked after my teeth for a good 16 years. Whether he did a good job or not, he was nearly a member of the family and I had no reason to go elsewhere.

But one day on the job I decided it was time to see a dentist. So I asked around but none of my coworkers used a dentist in my area, so I couldn't get a personal recommendation. Off to the insurance company website, then, to pick a dentist who... what? How do I pick a dentist from an insurance website? The best I could do was pick one who I thought might speak English and who had been practicing for a while. I got an old, jewish white guy. He worked out pretty well for a while. After a while, though, we had some sort of falling-out. I'm not sure why -- I think maybe he was too old school, with a small office that was a little dirty. I got a look at Hillsdale Dental -- right in the mall! -- with its spacious, sparkling, hi-tech office. For whatever reason, I switched to them. And they took my insurance. Yay.

I stuck with them for several years. After a while, it dawned on me how they operated: they took young dentists fresh out of school, ground them up for a little while, and spit them out into private practice, or better, bigger doc-in-a-boxes. I never had the same dentist more than twice. Heck of a way to get continuity of care.

I had a crown put in. The dentist who did it seemed competent enough, but after he moved on, each of my new dentists told me I needed it replaced. I brushed off their suggestions becuase it wasn't hurting. Then, it started hurting. Finally I took their suggestions seriously.

So I went home and took to the internet. I used a variety of methods to find "the best dentist in San Mateo", and with that criteria, all signs pointed to Dr. Wong. He's got a crappy website. I like that. He's too busy fixing teeth to work on his HTML.

So I went to see Dr. Wong, and asked him to look at my crown and tell me if it sucked. He looked at it for a couple of minutes and confirmed, no charge, that it did indeed suck. It needed to be replaced all right.

So I went back to Hillsdale Dental and said I wanted a refund for my crown, since it had been in for less than 2.5 years, and my insurance would not pay to replace a crown younger than 5 years. They offered to replace the crown for free. I snorted and asked for a refund. That was in September. Since then, it's been a drama of nearly weekly calls to Hillsdale Dental (aka Gentle Dental), which the office manager rarely returned. I'm not used to being avoided. So I called corporate office, and dealt with them. They weren't much more useful but at least they returned my phone calls. And the accounts payable woman has an awesome accent. Jes, it is very nice.

Meanwhile, I went ahead and had the crown replaced by Dr. Wong. The temporary crown was giving me a lot of hurt and I was skeptical that he'd done a good job with it. He put on the permanent crown with temporary glue and told me the pain would probably go away -- it was leftover from the old crummy crown. He said to call him when it went away and he'd permanently cement the new one on.

It turned out he was right: the pain went away after a couple of weeks with the permanent crown. I scheduled an appointment, and made another call to Gentle Dental: Where's my fucking money, lebobski?

The weirdest thing about the refund experience (which is still ongoing) is that whenever the office manager calls me, she gives me all kinds of excuses about how difficult it is to get the refund for my insurance company processed. They're (supposedly) refunding the entire amount, the part i paid plus the part the insurance co. paid (based on the amount they tell me they're sending me, this is a lie, but it's close enough to not be worth my time (yup, they win)). Tell me: why the hell do i care whether the insurance company gets their money?

Speaking of insurance companies, Dr. Wong does not take insurance. I paid with my credit card up front and his office staff filled out the insurance paperwork for me. Speaking of the office staff: they're fantastic. They always greet me by name (i don't have to "sign in"), they're competent, friendly, and laugh at my jokes. It's a real departure from what i'm used to. Anyhow, because he's not "in network" for any insurance plan, I get to pay more. The coverage for an in network crown is 60% on my crappy plan, and 50% with out of network. I figure that it's worth the extra 10% to get it done right.

The insurance thing turned out to really be a non-issue. They sent me a check within a week of my payment. It was not significantly more difficult than dealing with an in-network dentist.

Right after I'd made the appointment to have the crown permanented, and after I'd called and asked (again) for my refund, Hillsdale Dental called me up: they'd looked at their records and saw that I had a free crown replacement, when did I want to come in and do that?

I was speechless. I told them I'm not their patient anymore and I had a real dentist do the work. They replied: but it's free!

I laughed on the phone and told them thanks, but no thanks.

You get what you pay for. The real joke of all this is that a Real Dentist isn't especially more expensive out-of-pocket than a crappy doc-in-the-box dentist.

Finally, this morning, the day after the crown was put in, Dr. Wong sent me an email and asked me how the tooth was feeling.

And that's why I felt the urge to write this blog post. I don't know whether he actually cares about me as a person, and I don't care if he does. He cares about his work and his reputation, and one of the greatest (rare, sadly) pleasures in my life is dealing with competent people who care about their work. I'm happy i found such a person to work on my teeth.

in english, ' and " are not interchangeable.

i should write it 10 times on the blackboard.

for i in xrange(0, 10) :
blackboard.write("""' and " are not interchangeable""")

i pushed rather hard on yesterday's ride. yesterday was sprint/tempo training, whereby i did a shortish ride at above-normal speed, with a 3-or-so mile sprint along canada road. it was great fun and i felt great during and after.

but by the time i found myself in the climbing gym at 8, i had a monster headache, a severe lack of energy, and no motivation to climb.

on the one hand, that's a bummer on account of i like climbing.

on the other hand, i reckon it means i put some measurable effort into my ride. yay, focused training!

on sunday, my buddy Rick came over and brought some dinner rolls. they were tasty, but what with the huge pile of ribs and greens, there were plenty of leftovers. what will i do with all these Rick rolls?

it's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x37!

as i was getting the haircut (#1/2 on the non-mohawk part of the head. it's a good thing i've got such an attractive skull) i thought about time and time-keeping. one of the creepiest ideas in the otherwise crummy movie "The Matrix" was the notion that nobody knew what year it was. It's unnerving to consider that it might not actually be when we think it is -- our timekeeping could be off. In real life, this is probably the case anyhow, by at least a couple of days. But to not know whether it's 1900 or 2700 -- and the loss of knowledge and history that uncertainty implies -- is creepy.

Likewise, I'm not sure if it's 0x37 or 0x38 -- I think one year went unrecorded. But I'm not sure.

Spooky.

The drum is inserted by holding it at an acute angle to the machine which places the extensions on the ends of the drum parallel to the driving plates of the roaster's base.

wait wait wait, are you saying i'd have to learn geometry to use this roaster? deal's off!

There is an old joke among some competition cooks about how to tell if the ribs are ready. Take one slab of spare ribs and one slab of baby back ribs and put them both in the smoker. When the baby backs are dry, the spare ribs are done.

somehow, pink floyd came to be discussed at work last week between a friend and me.

(i tried, but could not formulate that sentence any more awkwardly without breaking some serious grammatical rules.)

anyhow, i've been listening to their CDs. yep, i own PF's entire catalog on CD, bought them all up back in the college days. that's one thing i did right in college. anyhow, the floyd has aged poorly in some senses (hey, "the final cut" is a total ripoff of "the wall"!) as i've become a more attentive, discerning person. it's also aged extremely well in some cases (atom heart mother still rocks). some of the lyrics are laughably bad, and some of the themes seem silly and dated -- perhaps because they have now become cliche instead of fresh and original -- but many of the lyrics rock on: now it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around. and by the way, which one's pink?

i grilled/barbecued some baby back ribs last night. also, i made version 2.0 of my greens recipe. first: the greens. in 1.0, i used two dried chipotles and my notes said that the greens came out not spicy enough. this time i chopped those two chipotles into bits, and the greens came out inedible. one of our dinner guests was from mexico and likes really spicy food (she's made salsa that i couldn't eat) and even she said the greens were way too spicy. oops.

i've never prepared baby back ribs by any method. last night, i had 3 half-racks, two of which i prepared using one recipe, the last of which i prepared using a different recipe. the two got a sauce glaze during the last 10 minutes, the lonely one had only a rub, in which it had marinated for about an hour.

i took them all off at the same time, which was my second mistake. my first mistake occurred during selection of the racks: one of the racks (one of the sauced ones) was from a different section of the rack than the others, it had a ton of collagen-y meat on it and was much thicker than the other two. i should have gone for uniform racks. even properly cooked, i dont think i would have cared for that part of the rack: too difficult to eat.

the second mistake was to take them off all at once, instead of testing individually for doneness. now, i can't be too harsh on meself since i've only ever cooked these buggers once, i can't be expected to be a doneness expert yet. but i still shoulda known.

the sauced, non-thick rack came out okay. the too-thick rack wasn't that great. the rub-marinated rack was supoib. the endpieces of the rub-marinated dry-ribs was extra-duper-supoib. in fact, that rack of ribs may be my best ribs so far. a curious but unanimously verified fact: the endpieces of that rack were even more extra-duper-supoib than the rest of the rack. this produces a goal: to make the entire rack as tasty as the endpieces. difficult? i dunno.

a curiousity: i have two grilling books published by weber. they're also by the same author (he collaborates on one of them). in one of them, he cooks all his ribs on "indirect low", in the other book, all his rib recipes call for "indirect medium". i've had better success with spareribs on IM, but last night's kickass baby backs were cooked IL.

one last bit of who-cares trivia: apparently i prefer my ribs dry. my favorite sparerib recipe is dry, and my now-favorite baby back recipe is dry. there are them's that say that sauce is only good for covering up the mistakes you've made cooking your meat. for ribs, with thems i so far agree.

"echoes" is 23 minutes and 29 seconds of masterpiece. AIR GUITAR!

okay, air guitar doesn't really work on this album.

hm, now that i've typed that title, i realize i should have had a porter with dinner last night. as it was, i had a tripel instead. oh well, coulda been worse ;)

i showed up at the grocery past 6pm, starving outta my mind. hops went to gather the veggies while i went to the meat counter. gadzooks: it was crowded. and worse than that, i couldn't see any porterhouses. i'd been planning this meal for a week, and i was seriously underfed, and i really didn't want to try another grocery, which also might not have had my steak.

but you see, i go to a good grocery. they had a whole tray of porterhouse steaks in the back, and were all too happy to fetch me one. dinner: saved.

when we got home, hops prepped the baby artichokes and i made some guacamole. like the last time i made guacamole, it seemed that the green stuff is a salt black hole. no matter how much salt i added, we both agreed it needed more. eventually i just gave up and we ate slightly undersalted guacamole. still delicious.

the steak came out perfectly, and deliciously. i dunno if i've ever had a porterhouse before, but it really is two different steaks. the texture of the two parts is very different.

i created and used version 2.0 of my steak rub. i made a 1.0 back-a-yard-style jamaican jerk sauce the other day, and it was an abject failure. which, i suppose, is acceptable for a 1.0. my steak rub 2.0, on the other hand, was an abject success. well, there was one oddity: it seemed too salty for the first half of the steak, but not so bad for the second half. three explanations for this: poor mixing of the rub, absorption by the steak while i was eating it, or acclimitization. in any case, i've got a tasty steak rub and i made it up myself. pride!

tonight is porterhouse night. i've got fancy tortillas and everything. i even swapped out my empty propane tank. whoopie.

today's ride was to be 50 miles. when i got to alpine/foothill, i decided to modify my route (as always) and take foothill-arastradero-alpine instead of alpine-arastradero-foothill-alpine and eliminate some backtracking from my route.

i was punished for my route modification by the fact that my original route was a downhiller and thus my modified route was uphill. then later, i did penance for my poor choice by rounding my ride up to 50 on sawyer camp trail. ugh. i hate sawyer camp trail on a weekday, it was much worse on a weekend.

anyhow, part of today's plan was to eat a pbj sandwich during my ride. i figure it's almost guaranteed that the SAG stops on the century will have pbjs, so i should find out how a pbj treats me on a ride. now i know: bleaugh. i suppose the alternative is worse, but i felt full the whole way back after my sangwich break. next time, i'll try a half sandwich.

i got a 45 minute late start, and dragged most of my route. i was slow and tired, although curiously at the end of it (and now) i feel like i could have kept on going for much more. i battled a headwind on the way out and a crosswind on the way back, and did way too many hills for my flat day, but i feel pretty good.

the plan calls for an hour of gnarly steep hills tomorrow, but i dunno if that's really going to happen. we'll see.

near the beginning of hte ride, i saw a huge peloton approaching on canada road. at least 100 strong, it was the biggest group of riders i've ever seen. later, they passed me on my left, which was rather unnerving for me. it wasn't any old thing to them, they were used to riding in a group. me, not so much. in the span of 30 seconds i got passed by more people than have ever passed me since i started riding a bike, and i'm talking about when i was 8. when i saw the tail, i tried to keep up, but they were going about 5mph faster than my pace, so i got dropped on the hill up to edgewood.

the weather was lovely, and still is. probably a good approximation of the tdps weather.

i know xslt.

i learned it in about the same amount of time neo learned kung-fu.

it's handy dandy. whoopie for separation of data and presentation.

i don't care if they stink after just two uses.

i don't care if they gave me a blister.

i don't care if it's not a blister, and they gave me a toe infection.

i don't care if they aren't too durable.

my vibram fivefingers are the best shoes i've ever owned.

i <3 them bigtime, despite their flaws. other shoes just don't feel right anymore, and i've only had these for a couple of weeks.

i'm working on getting up early (and earlier) so i can be ready for a 5am wakeup on the TDPS day.

so far i'm at a 7am wakeup, +/- 10 minutes, every day this week. and so far i have more morning energy than usual. afternoon, maybe less -- but who cares? i do my important work in the morning.

yesterday at work, a friend said to me: "don't you think you should find a different sport, one to which your body type is more suited?"

eight hours later, i came up with a witty retort to this unexpected offering of discouragement: "i bet they said the same thing to barack obama about running for president."

anyhow, if you've read much of this blog you know that i enjoy cycling because it is hard for me. a different guy said to me at work on monday: "it's pretty easy to go 20-25 mph on a mountain bike." maybe for you, buddy. i go 15mph on my road bike, and i'm pretty proud of it.

anyhow, the new year brought a new training plan, and a new focus. a focus so sharp that although i am sad that the TDPS conflicts with san francisco beer week, and specifically, my beloved Toronado barleywine festival, i'm not too broken up about. cycling is fun and doesn't give me a hangover, not to mention a beer gut.

speaking of beer guts, i put one on over the holidays. i'm up over 10lbs past my november weight. not a huge big deal, but i hope to lose it by 2/14. that's 1000 lb miles i'd rather not worry about.

so today's ride was out to KMR, up it, down it, and home. on the way home i stopped at the site of saturday's tip-over and searched for my missing bar-end. no luck. oh well, i have a spare.

speaking of the tip-over, my ride gave me a chance to think about it some more. i think it was caused (well, exacerbated) by some crossed wires in the brain: the body position for stopping is very similar to the body position for a countersteering left turn -- except in the latter, i lean right. whoops.

i attacked KMR with confidence, if not vigor. one guy passed me on the way up, he rode the whole thing (i'll bet) out of his saddle. not me. then, on the way down, i swear i saw the same guy going up again. KMR hill repeats? maybe someday i'll get to that level. not today.

from the store to the top took me 41 minutes. the descent took me nearly half as long as that, i braked much of the way due to road conditions. though i was plenty warm for most of the ride, the KMR descent was a bone chiller. brr. brrrrr.

i was surprisingly energized on the canada return trip. maybe it was the energy goo i ate. i dunno, but my speed on the flats today was around 17mph. if i can keep that speed on the TDPS i'll be done in time for dinner.

no sun, overcast, bike thermometer says 49F -- and i wasn't uncomfortable.

arriving at edgewood, though, i decided i didn't want to do a full 2 hour ride, so i turned around and did a little time trial back to 92. i think i've pretty much ditched my book-based training plan in favor of a self-guided plan.

now i just need some plan for thursday rides. saturday is distance, sunday is hills, tuesday is tempo/time-trial... i suppose thursday could be KMR day. you know, in preparation for 100 miles of flat.

a big new years fuck you to Road Runner Sports.

they automatically charged me a "club renewal fee" for their stupid "pay less for our crap" club.

i hate the "pay less for our crap" clubs. that's one reason i try not to shop at any grocery store that has them.

Road Runner Sports didn't tell me they'd auto-renew. i don't remember signing any membership form, either, so I can't say there was some fine print I missed.

slimy. another fun thing for me to deal with in the new year.

those assholes send me my registration form 6 months in advance.

so i set it aside, and forget about it, to remember it just in time to pay a late fee.

happened two years in a row, now. why the hell do they need to send it out months in advance?

yesterday, when i got in the shower after my ride, there was a dime between my cheeks, covering my GIGO chute like a manhole cover. in fact, "manhole cover" is an especially apt term for the placement of the dime.

i have no idea how it got there. yes, i sat on my couch after the ride, before the shower. yes, there are tons of dimes and pennies and nickels all over my couch. but i had bike shorts and underpants on.

that was the funniest moment of the entire day. har har har har har!

i had possibly one of the best xmas breaks ever. xmas itself was great, with a good haul and a pretty high success rate on the giving, too, and lots of great family interactions.

but the day after xmas, we chucked ourselves in the hybraxi and took off for escondido. we arrived at Stone Brewery around 2pm and inquired about the 4pm tour. We were too late -- by 2 minutes after 2 all the tickets for the 4pm tour had been distributed, and our entire party needed to be present to get tickets for the next tour. spudnutz and his gang were still en route.

oh darn, i probably said, here we are stuck at stone brewery/pub/beer gardens and we have to wait around another hour for another chance at tour tickets. whatever shall we do? this problem was solved by the bartender.

but first, a LOST-style flashback. a while back i'd told the folks and chef jeff that i'd like bear paws for pulling barbecued pork. well, i opened up a gift from my dad, and it was a set of big, three-tonged, dull-pointed plastic salad tosser thingies. he said he'd been to the kitchen store and they didn't have the bear paws so he got these which should also work. i had my doubts but kept them to myself. the next round of gifts, i opened up a set of real bear paws from chef jeff. ha! he'd been to the same store and then just ordered them on the internets.

now, a LOST-style flash-forward from the flashback, but not a full flash-forward to the present, or a goofy season-four-style flash-forward to the ever-impending future. no, a plain old season-two-style flash-forward to slightly later than the current flashback, but not all the way to the present. how about: last saturday, at spu's barbecue. i took the bear paws to pull apart his smoked pork, and they worked quite well. but before the barbecue, i made some cole slaw, and for that i used the salad tosser thingies, and they worked quite well for their intended purpose. so now i have two highly functional plastic dinguses for tossing salad and pulling pork. i don't know how i lived without them.

okay, now flash back to the stone brewery. people came and went -- spu's party arrived, hops and chef jeff went to the hotel to check in. only one thing remained constant: i stayed at the brewery and drank. eventually we went on the tour but i was a bit tipsy by then and really didn't get much out of it. anyhow, by now, anyone who's not doing something interesting or innovating in their brewery has, to me, a boring brewery. stone makes really great beers, but they do it through pretty standard means -- so nothing out of the ordinary piqued my interest on the tour.

that's okay, though, we used the tour to bond with the guide, in order to obtain extra free beer samples at the end. we have an easy time bonding with brewery tour guides, because we're friendly and we know about brewing and drinking beer. the more a guide knows about brewing, the easier it is for us to bond with them. the guide at stone wasn't a brewer but was quite knowledgeable (unlike the guide at green flash -- more on that later). everyone at stone was tremendously friendly, and usually quite knowledgeable about beer.

after 6pm tour, we had a 7:30 dinner. the food was disappointing, though the soup was really good. the menu was promising, and hops liked her vegetarian shepherd's pie, but i got some mediocre mac and cheese, which i was too full of beer to eat anyhow.

after dinner we went to the gift shop where i, in my inebriated and uninhibited state, purchased a boatload of branded crap and bottled beer. i ended up, i discovered yesterday, with a big red long-sleeved shirt that says "i am an arrogant bastard". i wonder what i'll do with that one?

i also got a "levitation ale" long-sleeved bike jersey, which is warm -- just what i need in this crummy weather. i dig it!

aside from the pale ale, every beer i had that night was excellent. here's what i tried and what i barely remember about them:

stone pale ale: weak, might have even been poured through dirty lines. seemed better when i had it as a sample after the tour, but that could have been alcohol-induced-fondness.

super-cali-belgi-listic ale: possibly my new favorite stone ale. fruity, hoppy but not too hoppy, toasty, and delicious.

cali-belgique ale: not as good for me as the other stone belgian ale. similar but much hoppier. normally i like "much hoppier" but the hops drown out the belgian.

bitter chocolate oatmeal stout: so chocolicious! i dig it. i dug it. i bought bottles of it.

oaked arrogant bastard: the only thing better than arrogant bastard.

arrogant bastard: hey, they're using my name for their beer! the other day at spu's house i pointed out that i'm dr. house and that spu is my wilson. hops and wilson/spu seemed like i'd laid some big revelation on them. i though it was obvious. idiots.

stone ipa: i like the stone ipa. i'd drink it if you gave it to me. but i'd be thinking: man, this isn't quite as good as green flash's west coast ipa.

levitation ale: EPIC WIN. i bought a sixer. amarillo in tha hizzouse! also, it's 4.5% alcohol, so it's got that budweiser stuff. you know, drinkability.

i think i had more than that but i can't recall. i didn't have a barleywine, though -- not until the next day.

THE NEXT DAY:

this was a good one. we got up, i went for a nice little run up the rolling hills of escondido, and we headed out to "santana's", which had been recommended by our stone tour guide.

well, santana's was an epic fail. it sucked thoroughly. it's a local chain, fast-foody, flavorless. demoralizing. i'll reveal this now: we tried two days in a row to get good mexican food in san diego county, and failed both times. cathedral city: excellent mexican food. san mateo: good mexican food. san diego: crap. i'm talking on average, too. you can pick a mexican restaurant at random in the 760 and it'll be excellent. pick one at random in the 650 and it will be good. we picked two semi-randomly in 619 and both sucked.

anyhow, our bellies full of mediocre guacamole, we headed to green flash.

green flash is tiny. and boy-howdy is it dirty! and the tour guide has been working there as a tour guide for 6 years, but knows nothing about brewing beer. she was friendly and quirky and not irritating, but hardly knowledgeable. who cares? i was working my way through a flight of green flash beers.

green flash is not as nice a brewery to visit as is stone: no restaurant, no garden, no warm seating, no bar. but they had better beer, and that's what it's all about, right?

my flight of green flash beer:

some anniversary pale ale of some sort. it was a 30th anniversary for something, certainly not the brewery, which is 6 or 9 years old or something. it was excellent. everything the stone pale ale wasn't.

west coast ipa: the best ipa you'll ever have.

hop head red: not available up here, as far as i know, even though it took gold at the world mo-fuggin beer cup! anyhow, it's amarillo dry-hopped, and it's malty, and i bought a sixer. you think i liked it?

le freak: i've had this in a bottle. it's basically the same idea as stone's belgiany beers: fruity but hoppy. i think it was better than stone's lesser belgian, but not as good as their better belgian. i liked it much better at the brewery than out of a bottle. go figure!

saison: i don't remember whether i liked this one. i think i did but i was getting pretty tanked, despite the small serving sizes. the lame carnitas i had for lunch was malfunctioning as an alcohol buffer, and the beers at green flash are all high alcohol.

double stout: this one i do remember. man was it good! chocolaty, thick, hint of bitterness. winner!

trippel: green flash's trippel was fantastic. i'm not a trippel fanatic. i have a buddy who is. i'll drink one and like it but it's not my favorite style. this one was really quite good, though, enough to make me want to buy a bottle. just not a 22-ouncer. oh well.

barleywine: best beer of the morning. it was on cask. it was chocolatey, it was oaky, it was rich, caramelly, and delicious. i made chef jeff, the wine guy, buy a bottle to lay down and age. he balked at the price until he realized he was buying a 22-ounce bottle and not a 12. heh.

After parting ways with spu, who returned home at this point, hop, chef jeff, and i headed over to lost abbey/port brewing in san marcos. when we got there, the SD brewery tourbus that had joined us at green flash was already at lost abbey.

i couldn't get people to take my order at lost abbey. sure, they were busy, but i've seen busy bars where one bartender can handle it well. they had two bartenders handling a small crowd poorly. oh well. i guess it's more of a taproom than a bar. whatever.

i sampled four beers. the beers:

avant garde: i know the type that likes this kinda stuff. the type isn't me. i'm sure it's good for those people, but if i wanted to lick a sweaty horse, i'd lick a sweaty horse. make my beer taste like beer, please. bleh.

red barn ale: now that's more like it! i bought a bottle of this. fruity, raisiny, delicious. okay, you got me: i don't remember anything about this other than i liked it and bought a bottle.

judgement day: also great. i liked it a lot. fruity, clean, tasty, clear.

two others that aren't on the website: lost abbey does a lot of one-off beers. they had a huge room full of aging casks, which they use for blending or single-cask beers, apparently on a "when they feel like it" basis. most of their beers are thus one of a kind, you-missed-it releases. i think the other two beers i had there were like this. they were dubbel-style beers, thick, "contemplative", raisiny, and just my kind of beer.

this brewery had some serious brewery-ambience, on account of the casks all over the place. the staff was friendly enough, i guess, and the beer was excellent. if i lived there i'd go back often, but there was no tour and the tastings were a bit of a pain.

after this, we headed to the beach at carlsbad, my old childhood summer stomping grounds. we took a longish walk on the beach, had some fried zucchini, and engaged in some heavy nostalgia. i walked in my new vibram five-fingers, and got them all stinkified from sweat and seawater. ew.

after our walk on the beach, we headed to Pizza Port, in carlsbad. somehow we never went there when i was a kid. if we had, i might not have thought the pizza was excellent, i'd have been used to it. as it happens, though, imho, that was the best pizza i've ever had. pepperoni was heavily smoky, crust was beer-ful and wheaty. ambience was rockin, beer was awesome.

the beer:

by this point, i wasn't really wanting beer. i had a hop-suey, a whopping 10% monster with huge hop aroma. normally, my kind of beer. by this point, too much. i couldn't finish it, and i cried a little about that.

i also couldn't finish my pizza, which made for a tasty snack later on. yay!

right next to the restaurant is the Port bottle shop, where we got a bunch of local beers from breweries we hadn't visited, as well as some Port brewing beers. we got a tip from the shopkeep that stone was tapping some 7.7.7 vertical epic that night! i said it was sad that i was so finished with beer, i couldn't take any more that day.

so back to the hotel to catch another episode of house, finish off my pizza, and rest up for more beer on sunday.

but i couldn't leave it be: what would Bowdler say if he knew i'd turned down veritcal epic? we were only 2 miles from stone, there was no good excuse, not even "alcohol poisoning" would do. so back into the car, back to stone we went.

as soon as i got in the door one of the workers started shouting at me. he flagged me down and wanted to know all about my shoes. he'd seen them the day before and told his surfing buddy all about them, and wanted to know if they'd be good for surfing. i told him probably, they're grippy, though maybe not when salty/wet. we spoke for a bit then headed to the bar.

alas, no vertical epic in the bar -- it was for growler fills only, which was back in the sampling room. so we headed back to the sampling room. i had no room to consume a growler's-worth of vertical epic, but luck and stone's awesome staff saved the day: manning the growler taps was my shoe buddy, and he insisted that all three of us have a sample of the 7.7.7. well, now i've had it. i thought it was very good in all respects besides the aftertaste. it left an ick in the mouth after its fruity belgian goodness had vanished. we had a nice chat with the shoe guy, and i wrote down the name of my shoes for him.

then it was really time for bed.

next day, on the way out of town, we went back to carlsbad to try to get some mexican food. we stopped at "señor grubby's" and got mediocre food. argh. they had a delicious-looking shawerma-spit roasting some chicken, so i ordered a burrito full of that. they pulled some steamed crap chicken from a drawer and that's what i got! wtf?!?

anyhow, they were a walk from pizza port, where we went to top me off before leaving town. i ordered the cask knight rider -- of which i only got a tiny amount, because the cask emptied on us. doh!! what i got, though, was excellent. woodsy, chocolatey, silky, and thick. yum!

i consoled myself with a lost abbey/port quadrupel, which was frighteningly drinkable for such a huge beer. chef jeff liked it, too. in fact, aside from the one that tasted like a dirty goat, all the lost abbey beers were frighteningly drinkable. that's what the monks in belgium go for when they brew, and lost abbey has got it down.

after that, we stopped to visit some relatives on the way home to sleep off our weekend. the next day, we took chef jeff and the folks' golden lab puppy on a really great hike, but that's another story.

BREWERY RATING : Stone
beers: B+
staff: A+
ambience: A-
equipment mojo: B+
food: C
overall: A-

BREWERY RATING: Green Flash
beers: A
staff: C
ambience: D
equipment mojo: C
food: D- (they had pretzels)
overall: B-

BREWERY RATING: Lost Abbey/Port
beers: A
staff: C
ambience: B
equipment mojo: B+
food: F
overall: B+

BREWERY RATING: Pizza Port
beers: A
staff: A (the bartender remembered me the next day, even without my funky beard!)
ambience: A
equipment mojo: B+ (the brewery is split between the restaurant and the bottle shop)
food: A+
overall: A

REGION RATING: San Diego
mexican food: F
friendly people: C
ambience: C (F for escondido, but carlsbad is nice, if you stick to the beach. the Carlsbad visitors guide in our hotel featured a scenic picture of a quaint dutch windmill -- with a "TGI Friday's" sign on it)
beer: A+
mojo: B
weather: B+
accomodations: A (tasty biscuits!)
overall: B

REGION RATING: Coachella Valley
mexican food: A
friendly people: i don't talk to people in the Coachella Valley
ambience: A (snow capped mountains!)
beer: F- (BYOB)
mojo: C-
weather: A-
accomodations: B (too much dog hair)
overall: B

okay, i can't take it anymore, i must a-blog. so here it goes. forgive me if i've gotten rusty.

the tour de palm springs is less than 6 weeks away. it will be my first century. here's the route from 2007, according to Some Guy. as you can see, despite his moniker of "difficult", it's actually an easy century. the dude what lives across the street from my folks, who's ridden it before, says it's one of the easiest centuries out there. perfect for my first one.

so i got way out of shape over the last 2 months, as expected. three things conspired to make me flabby, out of breath, and slow: barbecue, beer, the gawdawful weather around here, and my ps3. yeah, that's four. deal with it.

i will blog about my beer tour of san diego county, i promise. just not right now.

so i dug up a training plan from a book on long distance cycling, you know the one, it's by a couple editors from a cycling magazine. problem one: all the training plans start 8 or ten weeks from the event. but i managed to find one that assumes i've never ridden a bike before, or something, and i chopped off the first half of it, and then set the weekly mileage increase at 15% instead of the recommended 10%, and figured that as long as i don't injure myself, as long as i make some progress, any progress, and burn off some of this beer and barbecue, i'll be in good enough shape to finish The Easiest Century Out There.

but there's another problem: the training plan calls for long, flat rides with a group. that's a good idea, because the tour itself is a long, flat ride with a group. but here's the rub: i don't have any friends or any flats. assuming i could make some biking buddies, there isn't any place in this county to do a long ride of any substantial distance, unless i want to drive somewhere, or do laps. bleh. so for the purposes of training, i'm designating any grade less than 7% as "flat". that means the 40 mile canada-to-alpine-and-back route is flat, even though it has a good 2600 feet of elevation gain.

2600 feet, that number seems close to something... oh right, it's a measly 400 feet less than the entire elevation gain of the entire century i plan to do. that's good!

the real worrisome part is the start time: 7am for me, mister century guy. that means i have to get up before 5am, since it takes me 2 hours to wake up and "get ready" on a good day. that day i'll have to deal with getting to the ride and all that. i suppose i could ride to it, i think the start is less than 15 miles from the folks' house -- but maybe i shouldn't push it that much. still, i have no training plan for waking up at 5am. i could do it, i guess, but it'd take longer than 6 weeks.

i rode yesterday and today, as per my plan. today was hills, and i did a whopping 13 miles, with one hour on the bike, for a total ele gain of 1600 feet. yay me. i found a route from crystal springs to parrot, via my old pal ascension drive, plus some additional heart pounding climbing. that was great fun, and put me in a good mood. yesterday's ride, not so much: it was colder, and longer, and demonstrated to me that i'm outta shape. i did ride in a couple impromptu groups, and that was swell, but i fell on the bike. yep, i've finally had my first fall, proving that dude right who said that falling wasn't a matter of if, but when.

i'd just finished the climb up the ralston trail, which is effectively the end of the ride, since it's 4 miles straight downhill from there to my digs. if you've been at the stoplight there, you know it's relatively tricky to stop and dismount, if you wish to stop and dismount right by the traffic light, so you can push the crosswalk button. all those ifs and so's apply to me, 'cause that's how i've always done it. the pavement is slopey, uneven, and riddled with shards of glass, hunks of sharp metal, and piles of other tire hazards. anyhow, i unclipped left, as always, but somehow managed to lean right. that's the recipe for a fall, and fall i did, though as hops says, it's more of a "going over" than a fall. i sustained no injuries that i'm presently aware of, which is good, though that makes fall #2 on my right knee, which is really bad. i think the side of my calf/shin and my hand took most of the fall, which is great because those parts of me are beefy and not bony. i finished the ride, cold, starving (took a late start, missed lunch, was miserly with my goo packs), pissed off, and a little grated on the leg. still, i finished the ride.

after some putzing around in the afternoons, hops and i went down to spudnutz's house for some smoked pulled pork. this time, he pretty much nailed it -- it was the best home-cooked pulled pork i've had, including my two failed attempts. it wasn't as smoky as my or his first attempts, though, which i told him and expect to be rectified next time (or else!).

i've got tons of beer in the fridge, the closet, the other closet, the kegerator, and probably elsewhere, as a result of my trip to san diego, and as a result of being me. i went to beltramo's the other day and was untempted by the whiskeys, but bought some beer. i'm in a beer cycle right now but until after the tdps i don't want to drink much -- need to be light on the bike! oh the torment.

anyhow, despite the fall, yesterday, i didn't have to use my AK. we'll see how today goes.