Oct 24 2008
TGIF
For a week that was supposed to be an off-week, it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. Lots of background noise going on that made it hard to feel settled and relaxed; rental property stuff, oodles of work, random family things like people being sick, etc.
Oh yeah, plus I had a non-existent birthday on Tuesday….more like a Happy Un-Birthday if you will. I hadn’t even had time to catch up on that.
Bought myself a nice treat of Patron Añejo Friday. That was dumb. That shit is so good. Reminds me of the time I talked a Peets barista out of a sample of 100% Kona coffee. Made everything else taste like Folders for a week after that.
Back to my birthday…like I said, it got a little glossed over. Rachel had her first neighborhood meeting as president that night. I had to check out a tenant at 10 pm too. So we made a quick dinner, I took care of the kids while Rach was out, talked to the fam on the east coast for a bit, and then enjoyed a riveting game of Indiana Jones Lego on the laptop until 10 pm. I was too busy to recognize it at the time but at the week wore on, I feel a little cheated.
Moving on to ‘cross.
Rest week before the final push to Crusade finals and USGP. Barton – PIR – Wash. Co. I’m a fan of Barton. I’ve always done relatively well there. I’m looking forward to that. I hope the run-up in the back of the course is still there.
Finally heard back from Schwalbe. They’re looking into my warrantly claim but did note that they’re out of the Racing Ralph tubulars until next spring. In some ways, I’m ok with that. At least I won’t wait around for it. I should get Fangos on Monday at the team meeting and can glue them up to the Eastons for the rest of the season.
My dad asked me on Tuesday if, at 38, I’m starting to feel a little old. Seeing as I regularly get my ass handed to me by 40+ year olds on the cross course, I’d have to say no. I still feel as excited and energetic about stuff as I did when I was 28. I just feel a little smarter about how to handle my body in terms of level of exertion and recovery. I told him to talk to me in 10 years and I may have a different answer. Seems like 50 is the new 40.
And then there’s beer.
Looking ahead, cross season isn’t all that far away from being done for the winter. I’m already thinking about the brewing I’ll do over the winter. I set up another page to put brewing related stuff there; recipes, brewing logs, and whatever else I can think of.
I’m going to order a new 14 gallon fermenter which will allow me to move back up to 10 gallon batches. It’s something I’ve wanted for years. Takes the same time as 5 gallons but I double the capacity. I’ve just never had a stable and sanitary fermenter for that batch size. So I finally saved enough allowance money to take the plunge. I’ll order it so I can hopefully get a brew in between Cross finals and USGP.