Archive for the 'Road' Category

TNSSuccess

Published
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DT
on January 17, 2008
in Beer, Bikes and Road
. 2 Comments

Looks like they boys back home made it out to Dremos before closing time. Steve did a nice write-up on his blog. He gives a little history of the taphouse and links back to some older TNS blog posts, which were pretty funny to go back and reread.

Sounds like everyone had a good time, no road rash, no punches, and no car dodging. Seems like they ended a little early, quiting around 10:00 PM, but then again, those 2:00 AM nights made Wednesday work pretty hard. I think Gary may have had to call in sick before, ha.

TNS Crew :: photo by Butch

Anyway, here’s to you TNS Crew! Cheers, hope you keep it up, since we know the TNS spawned from the Winter blues and the need to put in some long cold miles with a burning reward in the middle…

I spent Tuesday preparing for my own future TNNS rides…Tuesday Night Northern Swill. I picked up a new hydration pack (non-riding review to come shortly) and also swapped my CO2 tank for a filled one. Less than $12 a fill is sweet! In homebrewing, just like bikes, there’s always an upgrade…and I’m eying that 20 pound CO2 tank, ha. One day…

So get outside, get active, and reward yourself. Your body and mind will thank you.

Bay Circuit Trail

Published
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DT
on July 26, 2007
in Bikes, Commuting, Dirt and Road
. 6 Comments

Yesterday was a fun day. Did my normal commute and after work had a little mini photo shoot. The newsletter people at my work were doing an article on alternate commuting and they wanted to get some photos of the bike commuters. I was the only one who showed up, although I know there are several people who ride in. Oh well, my thought was with the shoot at 4:00 PM, I might as well leave work a little early and get some exploring in. It turned out to be a good decision with a little bit of road, a little bit of paved path, and some newly discovered dirt trails. We’ve got a month before we move again, which is just enough time to explore the area and get familiar with it, so when we finally move I’ll know where all the singletrack is hidden.

Click the photo below for the gallery of pictures from yesterday’s ride.
Just Riding Along

I did around 30 miles on the day and was able to really see the area. I hit a bunch of side streets near my work, then over to Shawsheen Cemetery where we’ll likely be taking the dog for some walks. After that I headed over to where the Minuteman Bikeway ends and started searching for trails there. You gotta figure that even though the paved Bikeway ends, there’s probably some dirt trails that have popped up on the rest of the abandoned rail bed. About 3 blocks from the end of pavement I hit jackpot, the Bay Circuit Trail. It turned out to be a little of everything, some smooth singletrack, rocky gravelly dirt path, wider doubletrack, and a little service road action, but never paved. There was one section that even had tiny rollercoaster hills, almost like a mini pump track. It’s hard not to smile when you hit something like that!

I’ll definitely be back, as I didn’t finish the trail. There was still some trail up ahead and a ton of side trails to check out…all in due time. But it’s just great to know that there are dirt trails within a 5 minute ride from the house…killer!

Minuteman Bikeway

Published
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DT
on July 16, 2007
in Bikes and Road
. 2 Comments

Finally, this weekend I made the effort to get out and actually ride part of the Minuteman Bikeway. It’s a rail-trail, much the same as the W&OD back in DC, only not nearly as long. Coming from the W&OD, I sort of expected this thing to be pretty long, but it only clocks in around 10 miles. No worries though, plenty of roads to spin off on when the paved path ends. It should be noted that in the month of living in the Boston area, this is my first “for fun” road ride. All my other riding has been commuting or mountain biking (mostly commuting, ha).

I started around noon from the apartment and headed like I normally commute to work. This way I can pick up the paved path as it crosses through Lexington Center. Hit the path and take a left out towards Bedford. The path is nice and wide, no pot holes and very few root cracks (the cracks that are there have all been spray painted yellow to alert cyclists). A few miles later I found myself at the end of the paved path at the Bedford Depot, where a lone train sits on a set of tracks. Across the street is a bike shop, so I amble into the store to have a look around. The place looks huge on the outside, but very small on the inside. Maybe there was another door that I didn’t see. Back out and jump on the bike and head up one of the random streets that intersects the end of the path. It dumps me out in the center of downtown Bedford. I actually know where I am for the moment and decide to head farther out into the country. I find Route 4/225 and head towards Carlisle. Once I pass over a river and into Carlisle I pull a quick u-turn and head back the way I came. A quick side stop into a conservation area to see where a dirt trail lead, but the ground was a little soft, so I backtracked to the road. Back on the bike again I took a little break at Bedford Farms Ice Cream for a quick sugar fix. Back through Bedford, which eventually brought me within a couple of blocks from Hanscom Air Force Base. At this point I have no clue where I am, but I keep riding and eventually end up right back at the end of the path, only coming in from a different direction on a different road.

Back on the paved path and I’m cruising. It’s fairly easy to push over 20 mph when the path is flat or not giving you the invisible uphill that rail-trails are famous for throwing at you. Before I know it I’ve cruised all the way down into Arlington and the path appears to end. I’m not nearly done riding yet, so I just jump onto Mass Ave. and head towards Boston proper. I head through Harvard Square (I guess it was Harvard Square), then push on past Boston University and into Cambridge near MIT. I’ve ridden about 26 miles so far and not carrying any water I decided to stop in at the Miracle of Science Bar for a thirst quenching pint of Victory Hop Devil. The bar only had a few people there, so service was quick. I grabbed a seat that faced Mass Ave., so I could do some people watching and make sure my bike wasn’t lifted as I didn’t bother to bring a lock.

Boston has a lot of cyclists! There was a ton of classic bikes, a few fixies, and a surprising amount of singlespeed bikes. The majority of cyclists seem to be riding errands, which is a big difference from the DC area where the majority of cyclists I used to see were recreational riders. Pretty cool is you ask me. I guess it helps that there are so many schools/universities in the area…

After my quick pint I decided to head back and pick up the path again, back up Mass Ave. and into Arlington. All was going well and I felt surprisingly fresh and snappy. That all changed at about mile 36ish. I hit one of those invisible hills and immediately saw a drop in speed. It was tough just to sit and spin at 13 mph. No worries, it’s the weekend, just sit back and relax, spin it out and enjoy a beautiful 90 degree day. Finally back at Lexington Center I decided to stop by Dunkin Donuts for a cold coffee, man did that hit the spot! It gave me that extra little boost I needed before riding back to the apartment and climbing the hill to the top.

All in all I covered Waltham, Lexington, Bedford, Carlisle, Arlington, and Cambridge. So 45 miles in about 4 hours including all my stops, so probably about 3 hours of actual riding time. Next time I’m going to try and find the other two rail-trails that connect to the Minuteman Bikeway, as seen here. Looks like theres actually a few miles off dirt stuff that would be perfect on a 35c tired fixie, haha. I’ll even try and remember to take the camera or GPS next time, although they were on vacation in NY this weekend.

Stormin’ Norman

Published
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DT
on June 20, 2007
in Bikes, Commuting and Road
. 0 Comments

The sun is shining now, clearing the moisture from the streets. I was lucky this morning. The air was thick with water droplets waiting to burst, but I made it into the office with no more than a little light mist on my face. Wednesday’s seem to be my good commute day. Monday takes a little to get going after the weekend and Tuesday my legs are usually just tired, but Wednesday, oh yes, Wednesday my commute comes alive. The legs have recovered and they want to stretch out a little faster than usual, by all means stretch! It’s the rare chance I get to dance with heavy traffic at 25-30 mph on my route, but when I do I cherish it and use it to push myself, more so than even riding with other riders. I’ve finally reached the point where I know my route well enough in and out. I know where I absolutely have to let up or where I can go balls out. The more comfortable you are with your route, the more you can go without interruption. You hit the point where you can head full speed into intersections and have a plan for all the unknown situations. Power slide to right turn because traffic is too heavy, dip and dodge to avoid the car trying to sneak out, maybe you’ll get lucky with the straight through.

Hmm, gotta pull out the GPS and see what kind of tracks we can make tomorrow. Then you can see the occasional 25 mph uphill, but not the box truck thats pulling me, or maybe it’ll be the 7 mph hill that is soul crushing and liberating, all in the same moment. Maybe, if I can get on the ball tonight, I’ll sync the camera up with the GPS…should make for some extra fun.

DT

Bike To Work Day!

Published
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DT
on May 21, 2007
in Bikes, Life and Road
. 0 Comments

Ah, the highly anticipated BTWD! I managed to get up and out of the house by 6:50 AM with the idea of meeting Gary at the Vienna pitstop at 7:30 AM. I left a little extra time, because I hadn’t thought of which way I was going to try and ride there this year. As I rode away from my house I decided to take the quickest, yet most unsafe route. Out of the neighborhood, right on Rt.7, cross the beltway, pass Tysons, left on 123, and take the lane all the way to the Whole Foods. Traffic was fairly calm and everybody gave me my lane without a honk or even riding up on me. It was actually a very nice commute and only took 20 minutes, much less than expected. Nothing left to do, but hang out and help for a bit. Gary rolled in at our meeting time and we made the rounds to grab our free stuff (shirts, food, water, etc.) before rolling back out. On the way to work we stayed on the W&OD until we could hit the streets to get us back on Rt.7 where I would cut through Pimmit Hills and Gary would continue on up Rt.7. Everything was peachy until one block before getting out of the neighborhood.

So there is a car approaching the intersection and I turn left in front with plenty of time to turn and be out of the cars way. The car in turn floors it and starts laying on the horn and turns in after me. I hear the roar of the engine coming up behind me and the driver then swerved to pass me while giving fun hand gestures. It should be noted that the Saturn driver was well overweight and looked to be over 300 pounds. It should also be noted that back at the intersection there was paving underway and the whole intersection was a slowed down construction zone. Anyway, he floors it to pass me and then immediately has to slow down for the stop sign 20 yards away…cause you know, we’re still in a neighborhood!

Just as I start to pull up along side of him, he peels out and cuts off cars going in both directions…nice. Big fat man is real tough inside his ton of steel death machine, but the prospect of actually having to talk with somebody (that’s right, we were going to have words) scared him enough to put 2 other cars in jeopardy. Oh well, he was probably late for his second McDonald’s breakfast…after that theirs only time for two more.

A couple of minutes later I rode into work and placed the bike on the rack, happy to see a good handful of bikes already there. Feeling fit and refreshed I walked up to my office and sat in front of a computer for 8 hours before allowing the world to give me a nice wake up on the ride home. Hey, I might be a computer nerd desk jockey, but at least I’m not an overweight slave to my car. Heck, I can still see my toes and weeny…

Hope everyone else had a good BTWD, thanks WABA for the fresh shirts.

Slow Start

Published
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DT
on January 30, 2007
in Beer, Bikes, Dirt, Life, Road and Tech
. 2 Comments

Well it’s been a slow start to the new year on the blog. Some people blog religiously, several times a day, and well, I’m just not one of those people. There’s enough fluffy crap out there that you don’t need to read mine on top of it all…

The weather finally turned cold here. We still get the occasional 65 degree day, but for the most part we are sitting in the 20-30’s lately. We got our first snow a couple of weeks ago. There was about 1.5 inches of snow with 0.5 inches of ice on top. Virgin tracks were laid at Colt’s Neck with Gary, no pictures were taken…we had too much fun riding. The same weekend, our household survived the norovirus and put on a little wine tasting featuring VA wines.

I’ve been hitting the path again with Spearmint. We made a Wednesday night ride with Hatley out to the Brickskeller. There we listened to Rob Tod of Allagash Brewing in Portland, ME and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing in Sonoma, CA, talk about Belgian beers, professional brewing, and their travels together. We had the opportunity to taste 10 great Belgians, with a surprise tasting of J.W. Lees on cask at the end, not that anybody needed that by the end, ha. A good time was had by all. It really drove home how much I like the sour Brett character in Belgian beers. Let’s see…if I brew one now I could probably be drinking it by Fall.

I’m enjoying our new Subaru Outback that we bought just before the new year. It’s nice being able to put the whole bike right into the back without having to figure out how I’m going to fit it in. Need to get a hitch mount so I can have the bikes outside and have a little more room inside when traveling, but other than that the wagon is pretty much ready to go from stock. I always though I needed something a little bigger than the Passat, considering how much I do outside, but a big boxy SUV and it’s poor gas mileage and high price of ownership never sounded appealing. The wagon has all the room of an SUV, easily as much clearance as half of the SUVs out there, and still manages about 24-26 mpg - that’s what I’m actually getting, not what comes on the sticker… I’m probably getting about 40 miles or so less per tank than I did with the Passat, so I’m happy about that. Oh, and the dog freakin loves the thing. The wagon is also the first car my wife and I have had that came with leather and all the fancy pants climate control/heat seaters and whatnot…pretty cool. It performed flawlessly in the snow/ice, which is a lot more than I can say for half of the crackheads who were driving. Just a little tip…while your 18 ton 4 wheel drive behemoth will do just fine in the snow, it doesn’t matter how many wheel drive you have when you’re sliding down the ice. In other words, if you’re a crappy driver without 4 wheel drive, don’t think it’s going to make you any better…as evident by the 14 SUV pile ups off the Toll Road.

In the tech dept. we got some fun new stuff. Check out Portable Apps and grab the Firefox portable. They’ve tweaked Firefox to fit on a memory stick. I’m using it on a 128 MB stick and Firefox with all the extensions is only about 30 MB…java on the other hand was almost 60 MB and isn’t exactly portable. The nice thing about portable Firefox is that nothing gets written to the computer…at all. So no logs, cache, cookies, etc. When you pull the stick out of the computer, there’s pretty much zero trace. Not to mention it also makes keeping track of your newsreading super easy, since it can always be with you, no matter what computer you’re on.

Aight, back to paying the bills and dreaming of a brewery with singletrack out the back door…

DT

007…2

Published
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DT
on January 5, 2007
in Beer, Bikes, Life and Road
. 0 Comments

So it’s a new year, not real exciting.  Life is still busy, work is still work, and the weather around here is still completely wack.  I haven’t managed to get on the bike too much lately with the holidays and all.  We spent Christmas up in Maine and the following weekend down at Ocean City, MD.   But this weekend I’ll be able to get out for a ride, a road ride due to the weather, but a ride all the same.  Kristin is up in NYC this weekend (Happy Birthday Kim!) and I have a rare nothing planned weekend.  So a bike ride is in order, as well as brewing up my first attempt at a Belgian Dark Strong Ale.  I made a yeast starter Thursday night, stepped it up again tonight, and if all goes well it should more than double the amount of yeast cells I pitch.

Finished off the Damn Devil Double IPA already.  That was the highest alcohol beer I’ve ever brewed (13%), yet it was the fastest keg to blow.  My Centennial IPA will probably be next to kick, but I don’t expect the Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter to last much longer either.  Fortunately, I have a few things that are ready to be kegged.  A second rendition of my Imperial Stout, this time I added a little more hops in the boil, twice the amount of dry hops, and it’s sitting in the secondary right now on oak chips!  Can’t wait to see what an Old Rasputin would taste like if it were oaked.  I’ve also got a Milk Stout that’s done fermenting, also known as a sweet stout.  It’s kind of like Guinness, only you add lactose, which is an unfermentable sugar to sweeten it up a little.

The only other beer I have in mind, other than the Belgian Dark Strong, is a little joint IPA project with some of the local hopheads.  Right now the plan is to do a Pliny the Elder clone, which I just have a feeling is going to turn out great.

In other news, tomorrow I’m meeting with some people from MORE.  I’ll be stepping down from the Trail Boss position to let somebody with a little more fire and passion have a go.  Liz Notter will be taking over the position, the same Liz Notter that got the Ride Like A Girl rides underway in addition to taking over the Cabin John trail liaison position…yea she is one busy woman.  Good luck Liz!

DT

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes

Published
by
DT
on December 13, 2006
in Beer, Bikes and Road
. 1 Comment

This is about two weeks late, but we started up the TNS rides again. To kick it off, Steve and I headed out from the spot to meet up with Butch at Dremos. Then a quick ride over to the Arlington Cinema Draft House to see the movie Six Day Bicycle Race. Good thing Steve saw that this movie was playing, because it was great! It was by far the most interesting cycling film I’ve ever seen.

Six Day Bicycle Race Gallery

After the film, in true TNS fashion we headed right over to Cap City in Shirlington for a final beer before making the ride back home. I’m guessing roundtrip mileage was around 18 miles. The ride was a lot of fun, but I think the pictures tell a better story…

12/05/2006 TNS Gallery

DT

Busy Bee

Published
by
DT
on May 2, 2006
in Bikes, Dirt, Life and Road
. 4 Comments

The past week or so has been a complete whirlwind.  I’m just now starting to catch up on sleep and get some energy back in my step.  I managed to put in 5 days of riding in the past week.  Monday was Colt’s Neck with Gary.  Tuesday was the TNS ride to Paradiso with Steve and Gary, with Stoner making a celebrity appearance and then leaving to brave the rain.  Wednesday was the MORE/City Bikes Colt’s Neck ride.  Only had one other person show up, Corey, but we had a good paced ride.  Must have been a slow night as I when I ran into Nick from Pedalshop, it was only him and one other rider.  Last week they had something like 6+ people.  Thursday had me taking the full day off (civic time baby) to attend a meeting between the FCPA and MORE on the 495 dirt jumps.  It went super good and the jumps are here to stay, at least for now.  You may not care for MORE, but without MORE’s lines of communicaton with land managers and a few key players (Rich Edwards from IMBA, Corey from DCStreet.com, and Adam Ward - MORE trail liaison) the dirt jumps would probably have been plowed as soon as the land came under the FCPA.  After the meeting I showed the IMBA Trail Care Crew the Colt’s Neck loop and possible work sites.  We had a great ride!  Nat and Rachel were great.  Rachel ended up blowing the shock on her brand new Gary Fisher, new enough that the area bike shops wouldn’t have a replacement.  Nat needed to tighten all his rear spokes - that was one strong ass rim.  Bender lost a spoke along the way and had some rubbing issues.  Me…I only stepped off into the creek.  Nat managed to be the first person I think to succesfully ride the boulder crossing thanks to his mad skills and full suspension Stinky.  Scud took pics with his new camera, while Randy pointed out sections of the CCT and spit trail history like it was his job.  A ride that took much longer than expected, but definitely worth it.  Here’s where things start to go downhill a little…

The next 24 hours would prove a test of my patience.  I had to skip the Schaeffer Farms night ride with the TCC thanks to needing to catch up on some work.  A late night of database work ensued.  Friday came early and I was strapped to find the time to coordinate the TCC visit.  I’ll just say it’s a lot of work!  More work than one can imagine.  We had close to 50 participants for the weekend, learning to build sustainable trails, and our biggest day on Friday was packed full of land managers…that rocks in my book.  Anyway, I ended up blowing a full on hole in my car tire as I pulled into the class area on Friday, which makes getting around a little tough…like when you have to go pick up lunch AND participate in a conference call for work.  Like I said, time was at a premium.  I ended up picking up Kristin’s car only to have a rock nail the windshield 5 minutes later, leaving a nice crescent mark.  After the class, I headed back to pickup Kristin and drop off my wheel to have it replaced.  Dropped of the wheel first, then picked up Kristin and we headed back to the tire place.  Still not done…headed over to the pub for a pint of SNPA…tire still not done…wait around a bit and tire is finally done.  Then it’s a mad dash back to my car to put the wheel back on while Kristin heads home to Buster.  Finally get home and it’s back out for dinner with the TCC and some other MORE peeps.  Then home and more database work before Saturday morning.

Whew, done…not quite.  BuKit biked over to my place and we carpooled it over to the TCC class.  Once the class kicked off we dropped the car off to have the rest of the tires replaced…blah blah blah.  Saturday’s class was super cool.  I got to meet a lot of our Richmond dirt brothers.   We took the whole class to Wakefield to point out trail building techniques and then made a special trip to the dirt jumps.  I got the chance to ride Nat’s full suspension rig and it was a blast.  The confidence you have when landing stuff is amazing…it almost gives you too much confidence!  Back home and a visit with some friends that night, you’re looking at one tired DT.

Sunday was Kristin’s birthday.  Mani/pedi in the morning, homemade ice cream for lunch, and steak and lobster for dinner.  She already got her big gift of a wine making kit, but I had to show up to the party with something…a croquet set seemed like a nice touch on a beautiful day.

Finally an early night, only to be followed up by a late night at the DCMTB team meeting.  Turned out to be a good meeting though.  Ended up getting some sponsorship stuff.  Helmets, tools, pumps, sunglasses.  We’re still figuring out how to split the other stuff  - tires, wheelset, lights, etc.  Looks like a lot of City Bikers will be at 12 Hours of Lodi this coming weekend.

I had planned to really hook you all with some Pearl Jam, before the new album came out, but I just couldn’t get on top of things.  I received the album on Thursday, a few days before the Tuesday release.  I also ended up getting a couple of their other discs I didn’t have and gotta say I’m liking what I’m hearing.  I’ll get on it and put together something this week to share.

DT

TNS 03.21.06

Published
by
DT
on March 28, 2006
in Beer, Bikes and Road
. 1 Comment

So I don’t have a whole lot of words for last Tuesday’s ride. We rode, we swilled, and we didn’t fall down…We managed to hit both Rustico (a new place in Alexandria) and new old time stomping ground - Paradiso. With so few words, I’ll leave you with the photo gallery.

DT