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Category: found things

There’s a Rock in my Hops!

Published February 12, 2012

After some fun bike riding I got to brewing another batch of beer; a slight variant on a blonde ale referred to by Cap N Cork as Vegas Gold. This was to have 2 oz of Sterling Leaf Hops in it (these are from LD Carlson), but while measuring them out into two mugs there was a bang of something hard falling into one of the containers.

Reaching into the hops I found this rock, which per my kitchen scale has a mass of ~10g. I thought that one of this bag of hops seemed a bit small, but I figured it was just a little more compact than usual. Since it constituted a bit more than one third of a bag the finishing and aroma additions were a bit short, but I’m sure the beer will be fine. And now I have a hop-encrusted rock!

(Thankfully this was in the bag that I’d been measuring out and not the one that got dumped right into the kettle. While I don’t think the rock is particularly dirty I’m glad it didn’t get boiled in case something odd might have come off or out of it.)

UPDATE: I’d emailed this post to LD Carlson, and a very friendly person there contacted me and ended up sending me some replacement hops which I used in my next batch of beer. Interestingly, they no longer stocked Sterling Leaf Hops, so the ones that I purchased must have been pretty old. Hopefully it won’t mess with the flavor of the beer. Maybe I should stick to pelletized stuff for now on…

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Found: Danielle’s Pink Mitten

Published February 9, 2012

Back at the end of January Danielle was hiking at Stony Creek, but lost her mitten while on the Roller Coaster. Despite a post to the MMBA Forum’s Lost and Found section it hadn’t been returned.

Then, last night while out riding Stony Creek in the dark something pink and sparkly caught my eye as I passed a tree. It was Danielle’s pink mitten! Someone had picked it up and set it in the crook of a tree along the side of the trail.

Now Danielle has a matching pair of mittens again. Yay!

UPDATE: Turns out that she’d declared the situation lost and thrown out the other mitten this past weekend. Oh well.

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Broken Rake, Fixed Rake

Published November 25, 2011

Know what’s exceedingly stupid on my part? Tossing a log down while collecting stuff for a log pile and having it land on the handle of my rake, snapping it in two. Whoops!

Thankfully a year or two back I found a rake handle in the woods and kept it sitting in the garage for whenever I needed a random pole to meet some need. It just happened to be from the same model of rake as I had (which I’d found curious), so I was able to swap it on to the rake head this evening after getting back home. Now, fixed rake!

This morning’s work was building a new log pile at River Bends. There was a corner that was a bit tight and thus it screwed up the trail’s flow a bit, so I wanted to straighten out one of the jogs in it. The straighter route looked perfect for a mid-trail log pile so we left the original trail route as a bypass and everything is looking good. The new trail segment, log pile, and bypass can be seen here.

The log pile has been skinned and grouted with dirt so it’s a bit hard to see in the photo, but it’s generally the same kind of obstacle as the one pictured here, built a couple months ago along another section of the trail.

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Plastic Bottles, Foil, Visine, and a Shoe

Published November 23, 2011

Oh, the things that one finds when looking for a route for some new trail. There were three or four of these, an empty bottle of Visine, and one shoe are all laying within 15′ of each other next to a hiker / game trail leading from some apartments to the main two track. If I’m able to route a trail as hoped then another piece of return trail will pass through this area and make for a small segment ending directly across from the current trail start.

I came across this while looking over a place for a new segment of trail after finishing up some tweaking of the newest segment of trail in the park. There were a few poorly designed corners to sort out, some overhanging brush to trim, and some weirdly rough/lumpy trail surface to smooth. It was a fun 3.5 hours of work on a very nice autumn afternoon. Now, to ride it and see what else needs adjusting.

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Code of Federal Regulations, Title 16, Chapter II, Part 1512: Requirements for Bicycles

Published October 30, 2011

In case you’ve wondered where to find the Consumer Product Safety Commission requirements for bicycles, here is a summary: regsumbicycles.pdf

While the previous PDF is a brief summary (described within as “…a simple unofficial description…”), the full regulations can be found here: TITLE 16–Commercial Practices, CHAPTER II–CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION, SUBCHAPTER C–FEDERAL HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES ACT REGULATIONS, PART 1512–REQUIREMENTS FOR BICYCLES

(I looked this up this morning because I’d remembered that bicycles and pedals are supposed to be sold with reflectors but I wanted to find a citation. It seems that this is required even if a bike is custom assembled, unless it is “…a bicycle that is uniquely constructed to the order of an individual consumer other than by assembly of stock or production parts.”.)

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World’s Largest 555 Timer?

Published September 15, 2011

This traffic control device (which is essentially a timer) may just be the world’s largest 555 timer.

This was seen at the corner of 22 Mile and Shelby Roads while on a bike ride this evening. I headed from home, up to River Bends, out the back part of it, over through Clinton River Park Trails (which were rather muddy), and then wound through neighborhoods back towards home. Total of 22.3 miles in 1:44:27.

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Aggregate Shadows

Published June 1, 2011

I’ve always liked the aggregate shadows formed by the four discreet bulbs in the light fixture in the hallway bathroom. For once I finally took a photo of them, here as shown being cast by the latch on the door knob / lock.

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Historic Case Badges

Published May 25, 2011

This evening while cleaning out an old tool bag I found these two old computer case badges for Data Premium and Pack In Tell brand computers. These were two house brands from Computer Warehouse, a retail computer outlet in Troy and Madison Heights where I worked from late 1996 until early 1999. These shops were later known as Thomas Computer Warehouse and then Computer Builders Warehouse. During this time the Computer Warehouse stores worked closely with Inca Computer Company; so much so that I essentially transfered from CW to Inca to work in their R&D department. Once Inca closed up shop (it was basically a brick and mortar chain with grandiose plans opening right in the middle of the dot-com bubble) under I returned to Computer Warehouse for a few months before moving on to the world of corporate IT.

I think I’ve got an Inca badge or two around here somewhere as well.

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Sixty-Three Gallons of Tomato Sauce

Published May 1, 2011

While riding along Wiloray Ave. this afternoon I saw this sitting in someone’s trash: cans from 63 gallons of Stanislaus’ Full Red-brand Tomato Sauce. I can’t help but wonder what someone was doing with that much tomato sauce.

For today’s ride I set out from home at ~4pm with the end goal of meeting Nick and Erik at Rochester Mills at 6pm. I took the more-difficult to Rochester, heading over to Mound then up 25 Mile to Letica and into Rochester. This route is essentially all paved, but it’s almost all up hill, with a bit of rolling hills along the neighborhoods just east of downtown Rochester. After getting to Rochester at around 5pm I headed north along the Paint Creek Trail knowing that Nick and Erik would be coming from that way. Twenty minutes later I ran into them and the three of us headed back towards Rochester. Erik and I then continued down the Clinton River Trail and just barely on to the Macomb Orchard Trail so he could say that he’d ridden on all four regional rail trails every day for two days straight.

After this we returned to Rochester Mills where Danielle was waiting for me with the car where I had a dry change of clothes waiting. This was a good day for riding, and I only wish I’d headed out with Nick and Erik for their full 60 mile route. After getting to the car I was ready to ride quite a bit more, so I guess the 26.1 miles that I did just wasn’t enough. The full 60 may have done me in, but it would at least have been worth trying. Oh well. At least I got to see the tomato sauce.

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