January is gone already??

Friday night; time for a Stout!! This week’s offering is; Pike Stout (“Extra Stout”), from the Seattle Brewing Company.
It boasted a healthy 7% ABV, and relied on a very simple ingredient listing; Water, Malt, Hops and Yeast.
Not much head, which is good. A healthy sip, savored on the tongue and then swallowed for the after-flavors. Very light “smoke” flavor, no hint of chocolate whatsoever, very bland. Disappointing. Really not much else needs to be said about this one, other than I won’t buy it again.


The only decent thing that came out of this was that I got another decent cap.
Saturday!
The weather really hasn’t been giving us a break at all. All I was asking for was a nice stretch where the roads could melt off a bit and provide me with a safe means of riding the bike to the shop. Well, considering we’ve been getting a new snowstorm every week, it seemed I would need to pounce on any opportunity I had. And just such an opportunity presented itself on Saturday morning. We hadn’t had snow for a few days to the roads were somewhat clear, so I said screw it, I’m gonna ride.

Even though the skies weren’t dumping any white stuff onto us, that didn’t mean the temps were doing me any favors.

Yep; 21 degrees. Oh, and see that little word in the lower right corner? Yeah, that wasn’t a lie. There was lots of it.

I rolled the bike out and parked it next to where my front lawn is supposed to be, when it’s not covered in feet of winter’s wrath. You know you’ve got a rough winter going on when the snowbank is higher than the bike…
Potsy (that’s the nickname we’ve assigned our Florida mascot) took this opportunity to come out and meet Snoop for the first time. He managed to persuade Snoop that it would be safer to just go inside and enjoy warmer temps, than to accompany me on my ice-trek.
Anyway, it was time to get this party started, so I bundled up and got set to head out.
I’m happy to say that despite many encounters with black ice, I managed to finally arrive at the dealership. The bike is now in their hands and undergoing the rebuilding/repairing process. With any luck, I should have it back in time to trade in…er…I mean “ride” soon.

A quick return to the house, where McCarthy and I had set auspicious goals for ourselves; we were going to cook up 3 batches of homemade Kahlua!

Here is my set of ingredients, lined up and ready (McCarthy showed up with his own set, too.)
But before you think that our day was all simple fun and foolishness, I want to let you know that we were also conducting an experiment. That’s right! We were doing science!

Specifically, we wanted to know if high-priced vodka (Smirnoff 100) wound up making better tasting Kahlua than if we just used a basement brand (in this case; Cossack 100). The end result? The Kahlua flavorings are strong enough to mask any flavor imperfections the vodka may have, and we didn’t taste any noticeable difference between the two end results. So in the future, you can bet that I’ll be saving myself some hard earned greenery and going with the cheap stuff.

Making Kahlua is hard, thirsty work. Good thing we had plenty of refreshments on hand to help us get through the day.

You can probably guess how the rest of the day went, what with friends stopping by and getting caught up in the goings-on...

Sunday!

The crew was meeting at my house @ 9:30am and then we were heading off to Boston to catch this year’s Motorcycle Expo.

It seems this show is getting smaller and smaller each year, but maybe that’s just a temporary reflection of the economy, and once that gets turned around, this event may return to a larger size.

I could have taken any number of pics that showed the usual circus wagon mentality. Monstrosities overflowing with lights, chrome, outrageous color schemes…but I’m sure you’ve seen enough of those, yourself. Instead, here are the kinds of bikes that I really like!
I loved the sissy bar and springer seat setup on this one. Still a bit too much chrome for my tastes, though.
An oil change would never be a problem on this bike! (The filter is under the taillight/plate assembly.) That’s a long run for the oil lines, though…
Here’s a sweet café racer! I like the whitewalls and fat tires, too.
I love the rear fender and seat height on this one (even though half of your forward visibility is going to be nothing but your handlebars).
Love the fat blackwalls on this bike.
Another bobber with big thick blackwalls. Oh yeah, Dave likes this look!
This was my favorite bike of the day – a nice stripped rigid bobber with a tall pointed sissy bar. Man, one of these days I’ll have something like this…
Ok, that’s it for the bikes. But this event had something else going on, too. Can you say Midget Wrestling!?!? That’s right, they had an authentic wrestling ring and a couple of midgets from an MTV show (I don’t watch MTV so I forget what the show is called). They were hard core! Throwing each other around, body-slamming, punches, hand-chops, etc. But wait…what’re these things in the corner???
What’s a wrestling match without a garbage can to smash over your opponent’s head? But what’s with the staple gun? Don’t tell me they’re going to… Oh no!!!
Ha! That’s right, they have the crowd throw dollar bills into the ring and then they staple them to each other! In that first pic, one wrestler was getting George Washington stapled to his cheek. And in this next one, the poor bastard’s forehead is being increased in value by 1 US dollar.
That’s right; they stapled it to his forehead!! And of course, during the remainder of the match, the dollar bills would get ripped out, causing streaks of blood to stream down their faces. Definitely not something you see every day!

It was more than we could handle – we had to split for quieter surroundings and comfort ourselves in the arms of familiar friends.
And that was pretty much it for the weekend. Hard to believe that January is already over. Ordinarily I might wax nostalgic about how fast time is flying by but as of right now, I can only hope it speeds up even more. Why? Because we have not one, but TWO snowstorms coming this week. Forecasters are saying we’ll be looking at another possible two feet by the end of the week. Unreal. We just need Summer to get here!!! Because then we can all get back to…

Riding Hard and Taking Chances!

Need to catch a brake

The scene is Wednesday, and I've just gotten out of work. I start my car and notice the brake pedal feels just a tad soft. Huh. Ok, maybe I just need to get moving and the brake booster will warm up and I'll be fine. (Hey, it could happen.)

Nope; I was without brakes within minutes. And driving home in a pretty good sized snowstorm, without brakes, is one way to increase your heart rate. But, between shifting back and forth between Drive and Neutral (plus a little E-brake now and then), I made it home safely. The one thing that was in my favor, was that everyone was going slowly, due to the storm.

Arriving home, I called up Danno, the Manno, to see what his schedule was like. His shop was busy, but it's good to know people in high places, and he squeezed me in, one day later (that would be yesterday). Had me back up and running by the end of the day. Sweet! (Oh; I'd blown one of the rear brake lines. The odd thing was that it drained the entire master cylinder, not even having the decency to leave me a little of the fronts to work with. Odd.)

They say bad things happen in 3's, right? Let's see...my pipes froze on Monday...I lost my brakes on Wednesday...I guess that means I'm due for #3 to happen sometime today?

Maybe I should go hide under my bed for the rest of the day...

Like a Broken Record

Hey Folks, guess what we have on tap again for today? No really, guess! For those of you that said "another whopper snowstorm", you win!


Let's go to the maps, shall we?

I think someone screwed up at Mother Nature's office because while my house is (yet again!!) right in the thick of things, I'm near the edge of the pretty purple this time, rather than right in the middle of it. But not to worry!! We still have a few hours before things start dropping out of the sky. Plenty of time for Mother Nature to adjust her settings and line those crosshairs right on top of 640 South St once again.

I'd wave a white flag to surrender, but it would just blend in with everything else around here. The question on everyone's lips is; where are we going to put this stuff? I feel badly for the short folks. It's getting harder and harder for them to shovel the snow up over the drifts. Yep, those short folks really do have it rough...hey, wait...at 5' 9", I fall into that category. Thanks ancestors! You shoulda picked taller candidates to mate with!

The Florida vaca cannot get here soon enough...

Freeze, Sucka!

So I got home last night and went to wash my hands. No water. Fcuk, I know what this means. Ok, down to the cellar to shut the water off to the house, and then walk around and open all the faucets so whatever water isn't frozen, will drain back out of the bathroom sink in the basement. Ok, now then, let's start the hide-and-seek game. Good thing I've got a number of access panels in my ceiling - let's start opening them up and try to find where the pipe froze.

The one thing working in my favor is that three years ago when I redid my basement, I tore out the copper lines and replaced them with pex tubing. That stuff has a bit of flex to it, so hopefully I won't have any breaks.

Checking the lines, I was able to trace things back almost to where the line comes into the house. But there was one last section above a coat closet that was inaccessible. And yep; that's where the freeze occurred. See, when I redid the lines, I made sure to run them above the (foreced hot water) heating pipes. That would ensure that I wouldn't have any freezing problems. Well unfortunately, the main water line comes into the house in the back corner, up the wall, and travels along the back wall for about a foot before I was able to meet it up with the heating pipes. And yep; that section is what froze. Damn.

McCarthy happened to text to see what I was up to, and when I replied what was going on, he offerred a high intensity heater for me to use. We met up halfway, he handed off the heater, and I was in business. I set things up and aimed the heat at the offending spot and let 'er rip.

Two hours later, I was down and reaching my hand into the cold spot as far as I could. Not bad, not bad, the temps feel pretty warm now. Let me try turning the water on and seeing what happens...

I was rewarded with the sound of water rushing through the lines and out the faucets. I ran around and shut all the faucets and then, with the main line still open, listened for the tell-tale sound of water... After several tense moments, I let out a long sigh. I hadn't heard anything!

I'm not out of the woods yet. It was late and I needed to hit the sack, so I shut the water off again and left the heat in place. I'll open the water up again tonight and check again. I also shot over to Home Depot at lunch and picked up a vent which I'm going to cut into the closet ceiling and that will let heat rise up to the 'bad' spot and hopefully prevent this from happening again. Also, when I cut that hole into the ceiling, I should be able to see the spot that was frozen, so with any luck, I'll be able to check to see if the pex stretched too much and needs replacing. (I hope not, because there ain't much wiggle room up in there!)

Wish me luck...

Dy-No-MIIIITE!!!

Saturday found us at the Pot Belly Pub for their annual dynamite cook-off contest. We were looking forward to knocking back a few beers and sampling some dynamites. (For those who don't know what a dynamite is, it's kind of a cross between chili and sloppy joe. Frikkin' yum!)

Anyway, as soon as we walked in, Slacka (the bar manager) asks me if I want to be one of the judges. Hell yeah! That means I get to eat sooner than everyone else! :-D

The contestants were lined up and waiting...

Slacka really had things thought out well; each judge had seven numbered styrofoam cups, and a notepad to take notes with. I almost look like I know what I'm doing in this pic...

After we'd tasted each one and ranked our favorites, the three judges (me, Big Ed and Bartender Chris) headed downstairs to discuss and come up with our final ranking. It was just about unanimous, and we were quickly back up and gave our standings to Slacka. At this point, everyone else was invited to dive in, and the place soon quieted down as folks began enjoying the offerings.

A short time later, Slacka announced the top two winners (they each received a gift basket) and there was much applause heard.

And then it was time to really do some damage to the Bud Light supply...
Another fun day, and as always; we walked out having made more friends than we had when we walked in. Each time is great at the PBP!

As a side note, Matt had a stroke of pure genius, and kidnapped one of the PBP's rubber ducks. (The same ducks that are used as drink chips.) This little fella is coming to Florida with us and he's gonna have some adventures to tell all his buddies when we get back.

IF we even come back, that is...

There's Snow Way Out

The insurance adjuster finally made it out to look at the bike, so now I need to get it to the dealership so they can start making repairs. I've been hoping to have clear roads so that I can just ride it there but all these snowstorms are really messing up that plan. I have Flex's trailer but it's in the back yard...somewhere (it's hard to tell which snow mound is the trailer). At this rate, I won't be able to get it out until the Spring.

And speaking of the weather, WTF is up with this winter? The weather folk have been talking about how we're already ahead of our average snowfall total for the season. It's only halfway through January!! (And there's another major storm going on right now as I'm typing this. Joy!)

Here's the projected totals for this current snowstorm - let's take a gander, shall we? Yep; just like the last one; the heaviest band of snow will fall RIGHT ON MY HOUSE AGAIN! (I'm pretty much underneath the "-" symbol between the 4 and the 7.) What's up wit dat chit?? Normally, you get more snow as you get further north. Unfortunately, the pattern this season seems to be hitting the same swath each time. Yay.

At least it's the weekend. A few of us are planning on heading to the PBP tomorrow for a cookoff they've got going on. I imagine we'll probably walk out of there having made even more new friends. Man, that place is awesome.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Just keep thinking; summer is coming...

Furry Friends to Play With

As I climbed out of my Jeep this morning and headed in to the gym, I heard the distinctive yipping of a pack of coyotes. They were close! I stopped and listened to them for a bit, and it was so cool to hear them chatting it up. Would have loved to head off in their direction and watch them.

The fact that they were making so much noise probably meant they had something treed, though. As such, I don't think they would have been interested in playing any reindeer games with me.

Eulogy

For anyone that caught the horrific massacre on live TV yesterday; I feel your pain. What we witnessed, was devastating and traumatic, and will surely (don't call me Shirley) leave scars.

I don't know what happened to our beloved team yesterday, but they certainly didn't show up to play. I won't bother going into details (like how Belichick's hubris led him to pull a very petty move and bench Welker. Actions that belie his lack of concern for the Jets' potential, and reflect a lack of concern that certainly flowed through to the rest of his team). But I won't get into things like that.

Yesterday's beat-down made it 3 straight playoff losses for us. WTF??

7 months to lick their wounds and try and get it right next time...

Carrying On

I keep seeing these ads for Southwest Airlines, saying how they don’t charge for carry-on luggage. Sweet! (Southwest is the airline we’re flying down to FLA with.) But it’s not just one bag that this applies to, they don’t even charge for the SECOND piece of carry-on! How cool is that!?!

Got my carry-ons already packed and ready, too. Here’s the first one…


And the second…

I wonder if Southwest charges anything to carry passengers off the plane…

31 Sleeps…

Holy Crap!

We got snow alright. We got the motherload. About two feet of the vile white stuff landed on my yard over the last two days. WTF?? There were two bright spots, though;

The first bright spot occurred just after my shovel experienced a blowout;
(Of course, the blowout happened first thing in the morning, when there were still hours of snowfall still on the way…)

What was the bright spot? Brother Bill showed up with something much better than a broken shovel!
The other bright spot was that my work closed for the day. This may not seem like much of a surprise, given that most of the state was pretty much shut down. But you gotta understand; this was only the 2nd time in my twelve years of working there, that they’ve closed due to snow. Sweet; a snow day!

‘Course, what to do with a free day? I’d figured I could knock off a couple of small projects at the house, maybe do some cleaning, that sort of thing. Nope; the texts started coming in; apparently I had company coming over! After showing off the basement progress, we found ourselves out and about, searching for a place that was open, served food, and had beer. (After several tries, we managed to find just such a place!)

As I was knocking back another beverage yesterday afternoon, I thought to myself; “You know what? No wonder kids always get so excited about snow days. I could get used to this!”

Maybe this white stuff isn’t so bad after all. Too bad we have to receive multiple feet of it at one time to garner any real benefit from it…

Oh, it's coming...

Everyone is freaking out about the coming Nor’Easter tonight. It’s supposed to begin really dumping on us sometime after midnight, lasting through tomorrow afternoon. Wonderful, I can only imagine how nice the commute in will be. But, I have a plan; I’m gonna be up and out the door insanely early, long before all the motards get out there and start F’ing things up royally.

On the way in this morning, the first advancement of the storm system had already progressed far ahead of me. Way, way off in the distance, I could see a thin sliver of clear morning sky. But slowly eroding that thin sliver, was the circular edge of the system that’s bringing all the mess with it. It was kinda cool to watch it swirling ever so slowly, but that was tempered by the knowledge of what is to come.

So how much snow are we supposed to get? I’m glad you asked. Let’s take a look at this little pic I just pulled up from one of the local weather stations, shall we?

Wow, I sure wouldn’t want to live in that red area. 15+ inches of snow? Man, that would really suck for anyone that lives in…hey, wait a sec…FCUK! That red circle is right over my house! (See the 15+ number, right in the middle of the red? Well if you were to fall out of a plane and land right above where that “+” symbol is, you’d land on my roof. Awesome.

Stupid snow.

Shovel Hard, Get Heart Attacks

Who's the little kid?

I decided to change things up, so I took the beard off. Not just back down to the usual goatee, but completely off. Folks keep telling me I look like a 12 year old now. Sweet - now I look as old as I act.
We've got another Nor'Easter coming on Tuesday night, lasting through Wednesday. Fan-frikkin'-tastic. The good news is that Bill's plow is back in working order, so hopefully there won't be any repeats of the last storm, where the plow (dead in the water) sat idle while the shovel worked overtime...
The Pats now know their opponent for this weekend's game; The Jets. As long as the team stays focused, we should be able to kick their arses again. We'll do our part to support our team by knocking back some brew-ha-ha's and getting out of hand.

'Fraid that's all I've got for you today. [shrug] It's a Monday...

Catch up already, will ya?

Ok, so I’ve fallen behind once again. I guess all I can do is try to get you caught up, right? Let’s see…

I think I mentioned a while back that I’d done another Stout review and had actually found my favorite-to-date. I’d written up some notes and had taken some pics, but that all got scrapped somewhere along the line. I did manage to salvage this one pic, though, and you can see the name/label. It’s “Black Chocolate Stout”, and it’s made by Brooklyn Brewery. If you’re into stouts, I highly recommend picking up some of this stuff.


What else is going on. Well, I’ve handed out a few of those bottles of Kahlua that I made back on Halloween, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. So I guess that means I gotta keep making it, right? Although, my neighbor did give me a bottle of Amaretto that she made…and I gotta say that it’s frikkin’ AWESOME! We’re going to trade recipes and I’ll definitely be making up a batch of that stuff. I’m sure there are tons of other things out there that I can make, too. And since it is wintertime (and there’s not much riding going on) I do tend to have a lot of free time… Hmmmm…

Speaking of alcoholic beverages, I dug out some old Saki that I’d made, YEARS ago. Check out these containers – they look like they were stored in a crypt or something.

With a little warm water and some scrubbing, I found that underneath all the Indiana Jones dust, there were some very nice, stone-capped bottles.

I even remembered that I’d labeled them on the bottom – man, this stuff is over 7 ½ years old!

Sweet! But what kind of condition would it be in? I poured off the good portion (using two glasses) and then dumped the dregs into a third.

Here’s a quick vid of the full glass. Look at all that action! This stuff is still good!

I heartily enjoyed the contents of the first two glasses. It still packed quite a kick…and you know what? I just realized I’ve got an alcohol hydrometer at home and I should test the alcohol content. (The last time I tested it, I believe it was coming in around 15%, but it would be interesting to see if that had increased at all.)

What else did I want to mention…oh yeah; we’ve had our first major snowfall of the season. It was a nasty little thing called a Nor’Easter – perhaps you’ve heard of these things before? Yeah, a beastly system that basically sits on top of us and dumps massive amounts of snow onto our roads and driveways. What fun that was. The one bright spot was that Brother Bill was storing his plow blade in my driveway, so things looked good for my driveway being plowed out. Well, at the height of the storm, when he went to hook it up to his truck, the hydraulic pump chit the bed and he was out of the race. Which meant I had to resort to the old-fashioned method; shovels. (Bill did help me with that, so that was good.)
What else…what else. Todd (aka; Margarita Man) was over to the house this past Sunday to watch some football and help with some projects. At one point, we realized we needed beer (and food). Cash in hand, he was off in search of sustenance. He returned with a pizza that was quite tasty…but he also returned with THIS!
This is why you don’t send Todd out for beer. Pizza? Yes, definitely. He can handle that. But he apparently cannot handle beer runs. He claimed that this vile liquid was quite tasty… I tried one, just because I’m a curious fellow. My curiosity was satisfied after one sip. Man, that stuff was horrid! Looking at the label, I saw it proudly claimed that they still use the same classic recipe from the 1960’s. I think that’s the one thing they got right, because this stuff tastes like it was MADE in the 60’s. (In his defense, Todd stood by his choice and happily quaffed all but two of these abominations.) As for me and mine, we think he should stick to margaritas.

Let’s see…anything else? Oh yeah! As some of you may remember, last summer, we were headed to Kentucky for a road trip. In preparation of said trip, I signed up as an ambassador for Maker’s Mark bourbon (a visit to their distillery was on tap for the trip). And get this; they sent me a Christmas present! An ice tray for making balls! (Ice balls, that is.)
Of course I had to try them out. Ta da! Ice Balls! They didn’t really come out of the mold very well, unfortunately. And while the mold contained the word’s Maker’s Mark (which I thought would look quite cool imprinted on the surface of an ice ball), the words didn’t transfer at all. (Having had to run some water over the mold to get it to release the balls in the first place, caused the surface to melt just enough to smooth out any word remnants that might have been there to begin with.) But at least I can now boast that I have balls of ice. (Is that a good thing??)

Whew. Ok, I think that just about brings you up to speed. What’s that? You’ve heard rumors of something else going on? Ok, ok – you pushy bastards. I’ll come clean;

A few of us have locked in a bike trip vaca for Feb! Matt, Rex and I are heading down to Florida for a week. We’re going to land in Orlando, pick up our (rented) bikes and ride to Miami for a night. From there, we’ve penciled in two days for riding the Keys and staying in Key West. From there, our return loop will bring us up a bit past Fort Myers to hang out with a new friend we haven’t met yet. (Huh?) Ya see, our good friend Lynda (from the Pot Belly Pub) has a good friend (Diane) that we’re going to hang with for a day or two, at her bar (oh, did I forget to mention Diane owns a TIKI BAR?!?!) After that, it’ll be back to Orlando for the long, sad trip back home…and to the harsh reality that winter will still be waiting for us.

But that’s something to be worried about at a later time! For now, all eyes are on the upcoming fun in the sun! Bring it!! ‘Cause you know we’re gonna be…

Riding Hard, Taking Chances!

Stop Following Me!!

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