I can’t believe I forgot to add a map of my mountain bike ride in Hawaii! Shame! Shame! Okay, well here’s a ride report, too. This trail was quite a departure from my local rides. The biggest difference is going to be elevation, of course. This trail starts at around 2800ft and goes up to almost 3500ft, whereas my local trails only have 100ft of change between the lowest and highest points.
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Today was the day I decided to ramp up my mileage for my weekly rides. I’ve felt good the past couple of weeks, and ready to increase my mileage. Both my legs and my lungs felt ready for it. In addition, it was a nice day, and I decided to ride from home to the trails. To get a longer ride in without being out later, I had to start earlier. Since it was nice out, I could do that easily enough. I set out from home and picked up the Lanana Creek Trail at its Main St. trailhead. I headed north and saw a number of other folks enjoying the trail on their bikes or on foot. Unfortunately, I flatted my rear tire after not long on the dirt. I had just inflated my tire, so I thought I may have burped some air. I reinflated it and checked for trouble. Sure enough, I heard a loud hissing sound. I looked around for the source of the escaping air and found a puncture. That’s odd…I’ve got sealant in there, it should have sealed this little hole. It looked about the size you’d expect from a piece of broken glass, but the hole was clear. Well, that’s why I carry a spare tube. So I had to pull the tire off and insert a tube. While I had the tire off, I double-checked that a piece of glass wasn’t poking through the tire. Fixing that would have killed the evening. When I got the tire off, I saw why I got a puncture…my sealant was dried up. There were no boogers of any sort, so it appears as though I just didn’t put enough sealant in to start with. I’ll have to remedy that. The tire was clear, however, so I tossed in a tube, inflated to a comfortable pressure, and continued on my ride. Okay, I feel I can finally write about this because it’s finally been resolved. Just before my Hawaii vacation, my Edge 705 crapped out on me. I wanted to load maps for the area I planned on riding on my vacation, and the GPS just died when I plugged it in. I had recently updated to firmware 3.2. I plugged my GPS in, got the “bleep” and then a few seconds later, I got a second “bleep”. The drive for the GPS never came up. Just a quick update on the Joe’s Ancient Orange mead I’ve got brewing. It’s no longer bubbling away, and it’s begun to clear. Let the aging begin!
Forgive the fuzzy picture. Poor lighting. So I’m slacking off by now on my brewlog, and that’s because fermentation is slowing down. I’ve been seeing sediment continue to build on the bottom of my carboy. I doubt it’ll be terribly long before fermentation stops completely. When that happens, it’ll be time to wait for it to clarify and age for a couple months. Right now, I’m figuring I’m going to “bulk age” it right up until I decide to drink it. I think it’ll be ready to drink on my birthday in November. Mmmmm! First week of brewing has come to a close, and fermentation is starting to wind down. It’s still going steadily, but decidedly less than once per second. Temperature is about 77F.
That is all. It’s just been sitting in the closet with daily checks all week. I recently returned from a weeklong vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii to celebrate surviving acute myeloid leukemia. The day I learned of my diagnosis, I told my wife that when I got better, we’d go to Hawaii. She thought I was joking at the time (or perhaps delusional) but I showed her! We made it happen, and had an amazing trip. I’ve had the ingredients sitting around for what seems like eons. While in active chemotherapy treatment, I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol, and I’m sure my docs would have been extremely displeased with me playing with active yeast cultures while immunocompromised. With those restrictions lifted, I decided to brew my first batch of post-cancer mead. I haven’t liked any of the cheap commercial stuff available in my local liquor store, but I’ve liked all of the homebrewed recipes I’ve tasted, and I’ve tried one or two expensive meads I’ve liked. |
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