Fat Boy Deluxe

Vacation has come and gone. We had a blast putting something like 1500 miles or so on the car doing a tour of our east coast friends and family, from VA to MD to ME to MA to RI and back home. Got a couple of short bike rides in while up in Maine, but nothing much, the weather was so nice we ended up hanging out on the beach most of the day. Managed to get in a tour of Shipyard Brewing…twice…and then a tour of Allagash Brewing. The beers were good and the brewing operations were quite different, but both were awesome. Pipe dream…maybe…

We knew vacation was over when we got the pleasure of extending the trip home by 3 hours due to heavy stop and go traffic from RI all the way through NJ. A rude awakening coming from the “heavy” ME traffic. Got home and managed to put on the Wednesday night ride at Colt’s Neck for those that were missing it. Then flew out on Friday back up to MA, specifically the Berkshires for a friends wedding. Non stop action all weekend and then right back to work. Looking forward to leading the Wednesday night ride this week. Went out last night and stretched the legs on the fixie over to Whole Foods to check out their Pumpkin Ale selection. Seems only Smuttynose has theirs on the shelf, but I did notice Old Dominion already has their Oktoberfest on the shelves. Grabbed a sixer of the Pumpkin, a new Weyerbacher triple IPA, and Yeti Imperial Stout (the non oaked version). Now I’ve got something to share tonight after the ride.

Oh, so my latest brewing adventure is about to begin. I’ve been asked to brew up around 20 gallons of my IPA for a friends wedding reception and we’ve got around 3 weeks to go before the date. This means I need to get on the ball since I do 5 gallon batches…that’s 4 brewing sessions for all you math majors, although I might tweak the recipe a little to see if I can do two super strong batches and water them down to a regular batch. Should have done all this a little earlier, but time has been crunched lately.

This weekend is also Kristin’s and my 1 year Anniversary and being the great wife she is I’m racing the final Cranky Monkey the morning of our anniversary out at the Quantico Marine Base…which makes sense if you remember I races the Single Speed World Championships the weekend before my wedding.  DFL in the Worlds…wonder if there will be a repeat this weekend?
DT