Obesity in America?

No wonder we're in trouble. Battered bacon?? Who thinks of this stuff...and where is he so that I can shake his hand?

Stage II

We found the only Irish tavern in the middle of Chinatown. IRISH! So whadda we do? Had 'em make a GINORMOUS Scorpion Bowl. No bowls, so we got each got glasses!

Cherry Stout!

Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery (in Boston) - cherry stout! Cherry Stout!! And it's frikkin' YUM!!

American Pride?

Getting ready to head into town for the day - just noticed this on my Harley Davidson USA shirt: "Made In China". WTF??

Flaming 'Buca Shots!

Had to do some research for this one on-line, but it's wild! 'Buca, coffee beans, and fire...Wowie, not sure what is going on, but it goes right to the head!!

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving - a day of food, football, and friends...and beer..and Kahlua coffee...and red wine...and port...and lemon drops...

Swedish Fish Vodka!

Found a sweet biker bar to watch the Pats game at - I'll be bringing the crew here next summer for sure! Having a swedish fish vodka shot right now - Yum!!

Fatboy!

Big Bill came by - always awesome to see the old wheels out and about!

McCarthy's Turkey Day

The day starts @ 8, w/breakfast. We arrived early...what to do with the extra time...hmmm...

9th Annual Butterball Run

Rules are simple: the most drunk person gets their name on the trophy. Meet this year's winner (the guy in the center): George! Yay George!! LOL

Great Day For Riding!

Too bad I'm in the kitchen! Got beef stew going in the crock pot, gonna prep center-cut chops for tonight, then it's cheesey-taters for McCarthy's tomorrow!!

RIP Russell

How can it be 5 years already? Doesn't seem possible that you've been gone that long. Ride Free, Brother. Give Rosie a pat for me, too.

Senior Skip Day

Fall threw a damned Nor’easter at us a couple of weeks ago, but apparently now feels remorseful about it. Ever since that nasty surprise, we’ve been blessed with mild, rain-free days. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m stuck inside, working, while much of this good weather passes by outside my window. I do what I can, though; sometimes a quick putt during lunch, or, if I’m able to get out a little early, a few scenic miles before daylight-savings-deprived duskfall occurs. But overall; never as much riding as I’d like.

And that’s exactly why I love to hear of others that are getting out there and squeezing out as many miles as they can, while the weather is holding for us. Case in point; I received an email today from TEP. Seems he and a number of his coworkers pulled a ‘skip day’ last Friday and set out upon what I’m sure was a grand day. Dan Lowe did a write up on the day, and there was even a pic included with the article. Sweet! (In looking closely at the pic, TEP and King are just to the left of center, and their bikes can be seen over to the far left.)

Here’s TEP’s outline of the day;

"Beautiful day for riding ( 70's ) after it warmed up from 39.

Hit it right when the leaves were about perfect-------the rain knocked them all off the following weekend.

Had forty bikes from work------we all took Friday off-------about a 200 mile loop.

The Senior thing is the average age was over 55."

Now that sounds like a great day! Need I say that I’m jealous? Oh well, it’s nice to live vicariously through others from time to time, right?

So without further ado, here is Dan’s pic and write up (you'll have to click on the pic to expand/read it)…

Very nice!!

Pre-Game Part II

Not quite half-time yet, but we're trying to keep our energy levels up. It's tough being us tonight. O:-)

Gearing Up

We're in Newport for the night, checking out a band. Just checked into hotel room, coupla beers, 6-hr energy & Advil. Ready to Rock & Roll!!

Tasting Room Tuesday

Yes, this is supposed to be a riding blog, but with the weather winding down, I need to fill this space with other things from time to time. This latest post covers my trip to the Sam Adams brewery on Tuesday. Wait…Tuesday? But ‘Tuesday’ was a work day, Dave!” You are correct, which means I played hookey from work! (It’s already sounding like a good day, right?

Let’s back up a bit, though. Remember that certificate I won at the Shayne’s Run raffles, from Sam Adams? The one that entitled me to 12 cases of their beer? Well I’d called ahead and schedule a pickup of 3 cases for Tuesday, figuring that we could also do the tour while there. Kill two liver cells birds with one stone, right? Tours began @ 10am, meaning we had to be up early. And by “early”, I mean the ass-crack of 8am or so. (I love playing hookey!) Anywho, we were up and on the road with plenty of time to enjoy the tail end of rush hour traffic. Between the stops and starts of the heavy traffic, I occupied myself with looking at (hugging, staring at, and basically loving) the free beer certificate.
(Cindy was very patient and understanding toward my man-love of the certificate.) Before long, we arrived at the parking lot of the aforementioned brewery. Ta Da!
Inside the building, there’s a bit of a welcome center, where you can mill around and check out some history on the company and admire the numerous awards the beers have won. When it was time for the tour to start, our guide (Tom) called us together and introduced himself. Now Tom looked (and sounded) like he’d just rolled out of bed from a long stretch of tastings on the night before. He was glassy-eyed, seemed a bit out of focus with what was going on around him, and was nursing a large cup of coffee. However, all that aside, Tom was hysterical. He was extremely personable, joked incessantly, and had us all in stitches by the end of the tour.

The tour began with an overview of the safety topics (careful of slippery floors, etc.) and then we were off. The tour itself was rather small, limited of course by the confines of the building we were in – also quite small. They explained that this location is actually the smallest brewery location, but that there are several much larger ones spread around the country. One thing I found interesting is that, since the company boasts that they use Boston water in the brewing process, they have to come up with a method of getting that water to these other brewing locations. However, since it would be quite cost prohibitive to transport the water, they actually do periodic water sampling to determine the chemical content of the water (ph balance, etc.) and then send this info to their breweries, who then use the data to replicate the water used out here. A very interesting workaround to the water aspect.

The next step was to check out the various hops and barleys used for their various beers. We were allowed to take some of each, to smell, or even eat if we liked.

Some of them tasted very familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it, until someone else tossed out; Grape Nuts. That’s it! Grape Nuts! Tom explained that the reason for this is that Grape Nuts actually contain malted barley as one of it’s ingredients. (It was at this point that I made a mental note to pick up some Grape Nuts on my way home.)

After this, it was back to the large brewing chamber, full of the fermenting and filling tanks. Stacked alongside one wall, were these kegs of specialty beers. It turns out they sell bottles of this stuff for $130, make no profit on them at all, and then folks either collect them or sell them - sometimes for thousands per bottle!! What!?!?!? I love beer as much as (or more than) the next guy, but that kind of pricing is just nutty. Let's move on, shall we?
Here’s Tom, standing amongst said tanks.
Not entirely sure what these tanks contained, but they were actively being used, as we saw one of the master brewers taking some samples from one of them.
All this was well and good, but next up was the best part; the tasting! We followed Tom into this fantastic bar-like setup which any proud homeowner would love to have in their basement. The walls were adorned with various pictures of Sam Adams-related topicality, but the forefront of the room contained a mini bar setup, compete with taps and everything!

Tom proceeded to hand us small sampling glasses for us to use. I glanced despairingly at the miniature size of the glass, thinking “This is bad”…but my displeasure was short lived, as Tom began filling two full-sized pitchers for us. Yay for Tom!!

One pitcher went to the far end of the table, and the other pitcher went to me…er…I mean; my end of the table. The first thing I did was to fill my glass and take a big healthy quaff from it, savoring the delightful taste as it eased past my palate and on down to my eagerly awaiting stomach. Mmmm, that is good stuff! A second healthy sampling and my glass was fully depleted of its contents – hey, it’s a small glass, remember?

As I’m gazing at the bottom of the glass I now hold in front of me, Tom declared to the still-patiently-waiting group; “The first step in sampling the beer is to examine the color and shade of the beer.”

Whoops.

Can’t really make out much color or shading from an empty glass…only one thing to do; refill! Hey, this is taking too long…but I have a solution… (Who can blame me for wanting to trade my small glass for a nice full pitcher!?)

Ok, so moving on; after we’d sampled the regular Sam, we then received two more full pitchers, this time of Sam Light. Another fine offering, and again, the pitchers at our end of the table fared much worse than the pitchers at the other end of the table.

During all of this, Tom was tossing out informative bits about beer, the company, etc., as well as prodding us with beer-knowledge questions and tasting pointers. Many times, after offering guidance or suggestions on different tasting techniques (which involved taking a drink), Tom would say “I’ll now do this with you.” and then imbibe again with us. He was enjoying himself immensely, and who wouldn’t? At one point, after doing another taste, one of the people commented “It’s really good”, to which Tom took a large gulp, savored it while gazing longingly into the glass, and then slowly said (while still staring into the depths of the amber fluid) “It..is..good.” Also funny; a couple of times after Tom had taken a sip and savored it, he looked back at us blankly, paused and said “I completely lost my train of thought”. I’m not sure if some (all?) of this was an act, but it was very funny, and added to the whole jocularity of the event.

At one point, I commented that he seemed to like his job, and how good of a mood he was in. He replied; “Yep, it’s a great job, and I’m in a good mood! And (now staring at his glass again), by the end of the day, I’m in a GREAT mood!” (How could you not like this guy, he was a riot!)

Now it was time for our third beer. Wheee, more beer!! Tom announced our options, which included (I think) something like 4 or 5 other choices - the only one I remember was a pumpkin spiced one. The group was silent as folks mulled things over, so I said if it was going to be a vote, then I’d toss my chip in for the pumpkin spice. A few others voiced their agreement, so pumpkin spice it was. (Yay, more beer!!)

Now I like both Sam regular and Sam Light, but I’ll tell ya; this pumpkin spice stuff was excellent! I even had some competition from someone I never dreamed I’d have to worry about liking beer; Cindy! See how she’s smiling innocently here? Yeah, we almost got into a wrestling match when she wouldn’t let go of the pitcher. :-D
Overall; 6 pitchers for 9 people. Normally, I wouldn’t be so happy about those odds, but this group was well behaved and adhered to the tasting process guidelines (small sips, slow and deliberate sampling). Of course, this all meant more beer for the thirsty guy at the end of the table!! Yeah, more beer!!

After about 40 minutes or so, another guide came in and said that while she wasn’t kicking us out, there was another tour group on their way in (we were welcome to finish our beer out in the welcome center). Tom, ever the consummate host, got us laughing again with some more joking, as well as offering us directions to local liquor stores, as well as their phone numbers “In case you want to call them ahead of time and let them know you’re coming.”

And that was the tour. I highly recommend this to anyone that is looking for a great start to a fun day. (The tours run until 5:30, but I imagine the later you go, the more people you’ll have to fight over the beer with.)

Oh yeah, let’s not forget the beer certificate. Not only was the tour a blast and a half, but I also walked away with some awesome parting gifts; three cases of fresh, chilled Sam Adams; one case of Regular, one case of Light, and one case of Winter (seasonal).

Thanks for the laughs, Tom!

Hawg's Pen

Up in NH yesterday to get the house winter-ready. Stopped in at my fave biker bar up there for a couple of refreshers:

The BL's were frosty and the rum punches were excellent, too. A small crowd when we arrived, but then again, it was kinda early; 11am. In our defense, it was the first day after turning the clocks back - our bodies were still an hour ahead - which meant it was like noon. (See, I can rationalize anything.) :-D

I love the tap in this place. It's kinda tough to make out, but there's a Budweiser tap handle on the back of that Evo motor. It's a section of flared-end exhaust pipe. Sweet!


After a few rounds, more bikes were pulling in, seats were filling up, and the place was getting ready to rock. Sadly though, we had to make an early departure as there was still a lot of work to be done back at the house.

With an envious glance at all the bikes lined up (and even more pulling in), we climbed into the Jeep and slowly headed out. Damn. It would have been a great day to ride. Oh well, life can't all be BL's and bike runs...or can it?

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Two Fer

Danno's home from hospital - seems he had blood clots in his leg and in his lungs! He's on blood thinners. Me? I'm on BL's. Then Kris broke out this stuff: Sheridan's two-sided bottle! Tasty, tasty stuff!!

Temp Check II

Getting better: no frost on the seat tonight! Maybe 60's next week? Sweet!!

Two More Costume Pics

A buddy of mine here at work was snapping pics all day long and just sent me a couple that he'd taken of me.

In the first one, you can see a better look of the hand wound I was talking about, earlier.

Mmmmm....are those brains over there??

2011 Halloween Costume!

It was Halloween time once again, and that meant it was costume time. Time to come up with a good costume for my annual work party, where they give out sweet prizes like flat screen TV’s, laptops, iTouches, etc.

After the past few years, where I went all-out and made ridiculous, unwieldy costumes (only to come in behind the folks who did suck-up costumes that looked like products we sell - but at least I’m not bitter!!), it was time to hang up the nonsense and do something fun. Something easy. But more importantly; something that was easy to move around in! Mobility!...and comfort. Comfort was also something I was looking to achieve this year (but I only kinda half-succeeded) on that. Let’s see how I made out, shall we?

Ok, first off, the plan: I was going to be a zombie this year. I know, I know; not the most original idea, but I planned on really knocking it out of the park. Hopefully the judges would be impressed, but only time would tell on that.

Cindy has a lot of experience with makeup, and had actually done a Zombie walk last year. It might even have been the pics of her that inspired me to do the zombie costume in the first place, but I don’t remember exactly when I made that costume decision, so who knows. Anyway! I did a lot of research on-line…which basically consisted of Googling tons of zombie pics to get ideas on clothing and makeup. Something else I stumbled upon; face prosthetics!! These are things which you glue to your face to make it look like you’ve got horrible tears, or missing flesh, etc. I found one company that sold amazing prosthetics, but it was already Oct 4th, so I wasn’t sure if I’d receive it in time if I ordered one (they were in England). I emailed them to check, and they assured me that I’d have it long before Hallolween. Sweet! Let’s do this thing! I plunked down my money, and then turned my attention to other things.

Eye contacts! Nothing helps convey a creepy look like a good pair of costume eye contacts. I opted for a set of bright blues. Not the pretty “oh, what pretty blue eyes you have” kind of blue. Nah, I went with “what the hell is wrong with your eyeballs!?!?!?” kind of blue. Combine that with a nice flared stare, and you’re guaranteed to hold someone’s attention. (As an aside; these were ordered from a company, also in England, and I had these in a week. Why is this important? Stay tuned.)

Ok, so now I’ve got contacts and a face prosthetic on their way. Cindy and I made a couple trips to Halloween specialty stores to pick up specific makeup and costume accessories, and things were looking good. Oh yeah – I’d also ordered a few different kinds of theatre blood. This was the good stuff!

The only other thing needed would be clothing. I figured any self-respecting zombie would have come from a fresh grave. None of this “I was on my way to the store and got bitten by a passing infected person.” Nope, I was going to be authentic. I was dead to begin with, and when I became infected, I had to fight my way out of the coffin and then up through 6’ of dirt and soil. But that meant I’d been buried, right? And if I’d been buried, then I’d have been buried in a suit! So where to get a good suit that I wouldn’t mind then shredding? Luckily, Building 19 had a special on some (ahem) wonderful suits. $8.00!!! I tried finding a dark colored one, but the only size that fit, wound up being a tan color. After thinking about it for a bit, I realized this would probably work even better, as a lighter color would show the dirt and blood better. Sweet! Add to this a dirty shirt ($5) and a rather decent tie ($9), and I was off and running.

Back home, it was time to dirty things up. On-line suggestions said to use scissors to hack slices into the cloth, sandpaper to roughen up the overall outfit, and lighters to burn holes into the material, which could then be worried into bigger tears and such. That all sounded well and good, but when it came time to implement these ideas, I made an interesting discovery. My suit was made out of Kevlar. (No, not really. C’mon…Kevlar?!? I’m just making an exaggeration to prove a point!) I first tried hand sanding the material, but it had no effect. Which I found to be quite surprising. I’m holding large-grit sandpaper, and I’m scraping it across this material that feels quite soft in my hands. But it’s having no effect? What gives? Ok, let’s try the electric sander. Still nothing. How can this be? I even laid most of my weight (leave that alone, it’s too easy) onto the sander, to the point where it was slowing it down, but still no real scuffing was being achieved. What the hell?? Superman’s bulletproof skin has nothing on this stuff!

I then resorted to putting on the suitcoat and pressing backward into the brick wall in my porch. The result? A barely noticeable bit of pilling. Oy!! I even tried dragging it fiercely back and forth over the rough edges of the bricks, but still; nothing much. This was going to be impossible!!
And then it hit me…

I’d been cleaning out my garage the previous weekend and had found a 20-yr old electric hedge trimmer. I’d plugged it and found that it still worked. Hmmm…ok Mr. Suit, let’s see how you hold up against that!!Amazingly enough, we had success! Ok, so the suit put up a real fight and I literally had to run it back and forth through the teeth many, many times, before achieving the look I wanted. But come on – this is a hedge trimmer, and the suit is only cloth, right? Right??? (I’m still not sure…) Anyway, after many attempts, I did succeed in finally getting a nice, tattered look.

A funny side note; when I was doing the shredding with the trimmer, I got a bit carried away on the pants, dragging them through the slashing blades with such abandon that I didn’t pay attention to what I was cutting. Only afterward, when I was trying them on and went to zip up the fly…and the zipper came off in my hands…did I realize that I’d shredded a bunch of the teeth off the fly. Whoops! But some industrial adhesive Velcro saved the day, and I was back in business.

Ok, so the attire aspect is all set. Now I just need that prosthetic to get here. Actually, I’ll save the time and aggravation of the whole story. Suffice to say that while I’d been promised I’d have it in-hand with plenty of time to spare, I didn’t receive it until Thursday afternoon – the day before the party. Talk about sweating it out. Anyway, here you go (it's supposed to be turned sideways, but I can't get the pic to load that way - not sure why.)
Doesn’t look like much, does it? Ahh, but after you stay up late the night before the party and you paint it up to look like shredded flesh, it’s farkin’ awesome! (I should have taken a pic of how it looked afterward, but it was late, and I was tired.)

Which brings us to the morning of the party! First things first; put the contacts in, then worry about the makeup. Otherwise, you’re going to mess things up. Because for someone like me, who doesn’t wear things in their eyes…ever…it takes a bit of time to convince your eyeball that it’s ok for your finger to stick something foreign onto it.

Once that was done, it was time for makeup. “MAKEUP!!” I tell ya, it was quite difficult to get all the makeup done. A long, tedious process which, for the life of me, I don’t know if I could do again. To sit there, for almost two hours, while poor Cindy did all the work. Nothing less than sheer determination got me through it. :-D

Oh yeah – I’d also found (on-line) a method for creating open wounds that looks great. Basically, you pick a spot where you want a wound to go, then apply liquid latex, then a thin sheet of tissue paper. Let it dry, and repeat, for a total of 5 layers. Let the whole thing dry, then tear out some of the middle and push the sides outward to give the appearance of a gaping wound. Paint the inside, let dry, then cover with mineral oil to keep it looking ‘wet/bloody’, and color the outer edges to match your skin tone.

And with that; here’s the final product! (It’s tough to make out, but I did that open wound thing on my left hand - you can see it sticking out below the arm of the suit.)
Here’s a closeup of my face…
And here’s a closeup of me doing a shot of Capt’n in the afternoon, when I’d come back to pick Cindy up to go to the after-party.
Here’s a shot of Cindy’s costume. She was “Little Red Riding Wolf”, an awesome take on the old fable; Little Red Riding Hood killed the wolf when it attacked her (and she carries it’s head in her basket), but she suffered bites and deep scratches during the attack. Unfortunately, the wolf was actually a werewolf, and Red is now beginning to turn. How cool is that!
Here are some close-ups of Cindy’s makeup. You can see her werewolf teeth in the second one…
And here’s our trusty neighborhood zombie, taking the Jeep to a Halloween party. (Loved the looks we got from people as we drove by!!)
What a cute couple!
Hey look, here I am at the party. Kinda looks like the same pose I had when I was doing the shot of Capt’n. Oh yeah, ya see; the prosthetic looked awesome, but I really wasn’t able to open my mouth much at all (for fear of tearing the prosthetic off). Which made eating and drinking (all day long) nearly impossible. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. (Or should I say; where there’s a small necked bottle, there’s a way.)
The winners were announced and I wound up coming in 8th. Not too shabby. Most of the folks ahead of me were the usual product-themed costumes, but hey; good for them. I walked away with a 32-gig iTouch. I’m told it’s a pretty sweet prize, but I know nothing about them. (I’m such a tech neophyte!)

The next day, we had plans to attend a few big Halloween parties in RI, but with the storm that came in, we wound up staying local hitting a local party at the last minute. Instead of putting the face prosthetic on again, I just opted for dabbing a bunch of blood around my mouth, to look like I’d just left the brains buffet table. It still looked pretty good, and there was much revelry and laughter – which I could participate in this time, as I was able to move my mouth!
Here’s a shot from Saturday’s party;
And there you have it; 2011 Halloween costume. It was fun to do, and I enjoyed freaking people out. A number of people told me they couldn’t even look at me, I looked too gross. (Ha! That’s nothing I haven’t heard plenty of times before!) Although, I was also told I looked good with blue eyes. Maybe I should go for this look more often?

Happy Halloween!!!

Fright Hard, Get (scared) Glances!

Temp Check

You know it's cold out when there's a layer of frost waiting for you on your seat...

One more pic from Halloween Run

The costume I wear for the Halloween Run consists of a skull mask and skull gloves. The glue holding the 'finger bones' onto the glove material is starting to wear out on one of the fingers, so what happens is if I close my hand, the 'bones' on that finger stay straight.

I would love to say I did this on purpose, but I can't take credit for it. It happened on it's own. Which makes it all the funnier...