Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Cantillon

Published
by
DT
on March 14, 2007
in Beer
. 1 Comment

My favorite part of our trip to the UK was taking a weekend trip to Brussels, Belgium and visiting the Cantillon brewery. If you’re ever in the area, it’s a must visit in my book. We spent half a day there, taking a self guided tour and tasting their brews. They are one of the very few breweries that practice spontaneous fermentation, meaning they don’t add yeast to their wort to make beer. They simply let it cool overnight under a roof with holes, then put it in barrels…amazing! My favorite was the Cantillon Iris. It’s a Belgian Pale ale, just as sour as their lambic, yet it’s been dry hopped. Seriously, one of the best beers I’ve ever tasted. I’m going to try and brew a few things like this once the mixed lambic/brett/who knows yeast comes out in April from Wyeast. In the meantime, you can check out the photos of our tour by clicking on the photo below.

Cantillon Brewery gallery

DT

In the words of Snoop Dogg

Published
by
DT
on March 14, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

80 degrees
when I tell that bitch please
get up off these n-u-tz
cause you gets none of these
at ease
-Snoop Dogg

It’s a beautiful day in the DC area and I’m in a damn good mood. It was over 80 degrees on the beltway around 2:00 PM. That’s the beauty of having a project that is ending soon…there’s not a whole lot that needs to be done other than transitional stuff. I’m home now, sitting outside with the Busterman, enjoying an adult beverage. Probably head out for a ride in about an hour, but waiting to see if the rain ever comes (hoping it doesn’t). After riding, I’ll be attending the WortHogs homebrew club meeting and entering my milk stout and imperial stout since this month’s competition is stouts.
Ended up getting a nice little ride in last night. I had a report of some rogue trails at the park I’m a liaison for MORE. Found them pretty easy…Tip #1: if you’re going to build illegal trails, don’t mark them with neon pink flagging tape. The trails themselves weren’t that bad. It wasn’t a lot of distance, but more of a spider network on top of a ridge. Tip #2: don’t leave your broken rake on the side of illegal trail. If whoever made it had stuck to a couple of paths instead of branching off every 30 feet, the trail would be a lot better. There’s also a section on a hillside that would make the perfect “how not to build trail” photo in the next IMBA book, ha. Props for trying to build some trail, but if you’re going to build on a 30 degree angle hillside and you’re not going straight down (which you don’t want to do anyway), you need to cut that trail into the side of the hill. Otherwise you get the 12 foot wide trail that just continually slides down the hill.

Anyway, I checked them out. Wish they had been built a little better, at least then I could talk to the park rangers to see about keeping them. Who knows, maybe if we let it sit under the radar long enough, whoever built them will make them better. Aight, gotta get the bike and beer stuff together.

DT

Camp Hilbert #1 Race Report

Published
by
DT
on March 13, 2007
in Bikes, Dirt and Races
. 3 Comments

First race of the season is in the books. If this was the Single Speed Worlds I’d have a nice DFL tattoo or brand, ha. Quick writeup: I raced in the Single Speed class, which had 12 entries. There were three DNF’s, so I ended up coming in 9th. I may not be the fastest (not by a long shot), but I usually finish, ha.

Longer writeup: I found myself waking up at what would normally be 8:20 AM, which would be plenty of time to pack up the bike stuff and make the two hour drive down to Oilville, VA, about 15 miles north of Richmond. But, due to the government seeing that our economy is in shambles and deciding to move DST up three weeks, my wakeup time was actually 9:20 AM. Just a quick side note, the last time DST was moved ahead, the golf industry pulled in something to the tune of an extra 400 million of income. Anyway, I quickly got up and started pulling my stuff together and packed the car, said goodbye to my wonderful wife who made sure I didn’t walk out the door without a piece of fruit and a cup of coffee. On the road by 10:00 AM, race starts at noon, so I start trucking down there. Got to the park with about 10 minutes to spare, quickly signed in (preregistered a couple days earlier), and changed and starting getting the bike ready. Turns out they must have been a little behind, as my race didn’t end up starting until probably 12:30 PM. Before the race I got a chance to see another DCMTB teammate Lorena (who I think did really well in the Pro/Expert class), who was warming up. Joel was supposed to show, but due to some last minute family stuff had to bow it, thus is the life of a family man playing a mountain biker.

So we roll up to the line, Single Speed class was the last class to get on the course. Not a big deal for me, but for any of the super fast guys, they probably had to pass a few people. The whistle (megaphone) blows and we’re off on some gravel roads to jump into the singletrack. Surprisingly, it wasn’t quite the super fast sprint I was expecting. I was near the back of the pack, but the line was tight and close, close enough I had to step off on one of the dirt mounds the singletrack weaves through in the first couple of minutes. After about 10 minutes we we’re pretty spread out and I didn’t see too many people from then on.

The course was in superb shape. Evidently they missed out on all the snow and rain that we received all week up north. The trail was dry and fast, totally classic east coast singletrack - rooty with tons of flow and a few hills to get the heart rate up. My only problem with the trail is it had a lot of small stubs ranging from the just above the ground to probably 4 inches high. Mid first lap I was railing a slight downhill and leaning into a curve when I clipped a stub, bam! It was a rude awakening and the opposite foot went flying from it’s peddle and swung around and under my frame. Somehow I managed to save it and not run over my foot and pull myself from the bike, but I was definitely dazed in a sort of “what the hell just happened” kind of moment. It didn’t seem to hurt too bad at the moment, so I just kept pushing on. Pulled into the end of the lap where the obviously built a new section of trail just for the race. It was really wet, but it was soft and loamy and just sucked all the power you could throw at it. I ended up jumping off the bike and running up. Back on the bike and through the starting line to start lap number two.

Lap number two was much like lap number one. I saw only a few people, passed a few peeps and only got passed by a few of the Pro/Expert (who technically were lapping me) and Enduro racers (who had been riding since 9:30 AM). No stub incidents this time, which was nice. I walked the same hill again before the end of the lap. Finished in a tad under 1:40. For a sunny 65 degree Sunday, it was a great day on the bike. My first time on real dirt in quite a while and it felt good to get the heart rate up. The course was awesome and I’ll definitely consider racing the rest of the series!

After the race I hung out for a few minutes, saw Lorena finish her race, and then I jumped back in the car and headed home. Got some stuff done around the house and even managed to do a late night racking of my Belgian Wit onto some strawberries. Monday came around and damn, wouldn’t you know it, one stiff and sore ankle, ha. It’s still tight, but I’m going to try and loosen it up tonight…

Bottom line, if you are looking for a well run race and want a trail you can go all out and just rail at top speed as long as you can hold it, then this is the race for you!

DT

Riding, riding, riding…rawhide!

Published
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DT
on March 12, 2007
in Bikes, Dirt, Life and Races
. 0 Comments

Well we’ve had a few weekends of good weather. Not enough to always get out on the dirt, but enough to get outside and enjoy the weather. Kristin and I finally got in our new years ride. We jumped on the W&OD where it crosses Great Falls Rd. and rode out to Vienna, visited the bread shop for some super tasty dense whole wheat bread. The ride back was nicer with a tail wind in full force and the ever so slight incline had turned into an ever so slight decline. Not a bad day to be outside!

The next week we got snow, not enough to shut down the city, although probably close enough. The trails were frozen and MORE got the go ahead to do a Wednesday Night ride if somebody was willing to lead. I took the chance of leading, although I mostly struggled to keep up in the back. After an 1.5 hours of riding I was pretty toasted. Lucky for me my light had started to fade at this point, so we all decided to head back and have some of my tasty Belgian Dark Strong.

Then this week came a flurry of activity. One on the list of good things that happened this week…I found out that my company is no longer needed on the current project I’m working on. Why is that good news, you might ask? Well, this means after the end of March I no longer have to drive to MD everyday for work. My real office is only a mile from my house, so while I have no idea what I’ll be doing at the end of the month, I do know I’ll be local again. This means better eating, less time spent in the car commuting, easier to go for rides after work, and getting to see my dog at lunch time. I’m in terrible shape for this time of year, but at least it’s going to get better.

Then this past weekend, Kristin and I helped Gary and Melinda move into their new house, super exciting! Of course I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much stuff come out of such a small space. Good luck getting through all those boxes! So lot’s of heavy lifting in the afternoon. Woke up early to help Derek out at his shop. He’s been getting slammed on Saturdays and needed an extra hand for a few hours. Sunday had me waking up early again, throwing all my bike stuff in the Subaru and driving down to Oilville, VA, just north of Richmond. I managed to get in my first mountain bike race of the season, race report to come soon. Once back from the race I was pretty tired. Still managed to rack the Belgian Wit into secondary on top of 10 lbs. of Strawberries. Checked it out this morning and there was a nice inch of krausen on the top, so hopefully it’ll be ready to rack to tertiary for clearing at the end of this week. Smelled good going in, hopefully it’s close to that coming out, ha.

DT

2007 Race Schedule

Published
by
DT
on March 7, 2007
in Bikes, Dirt and Races
. 0 Comments

Well here we are again…it’s the beginning of the 2007 mountain biking race season. The first race I know of is this weekend, just outside Richmond, VA at Camp Hilbert. I usually try to put together a list of all the area races, so that at anytime if I have a free day on a weekend I can pull up the races and see what’s happening that day. As an added bonus, I also make it available to all you lazy mofos, whether you want it or not, ha. Last year I did a wiki, great idea, but not a lot of help, oh well. Year before that was a spreadsheet, but it meant emailing out an updated spreadsheet to peeps. So this year we’ve got Google Docs, which allows you to do spreadsheets (among other things) and have people view or collaborate. I’ve done the bulk of the work already, but I’m sure there will be a few more races added, like the W@W series and any cyclocross races that are officially announced, but it’s complete enough to give to the public.

So, I give you a new page on the blog…look in the upper right hand corner…see that link that says “Races“…yea, click that and get the goods.

DT