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Grimm Brothers Brewhouse Sooty Brother Grätzer Ale

Published January 10, 2013

After trying the Magic Mirror I had one bottle of Grimm Brothers Brewhouse beer from Erik and Kristi left, a bitter, smoked wheat beer of a style known as Grätzer (lots more history here).

This is pretty tasty, and has me thinking about trying to do some sort of smokey beer with wheat for my next beer. Maybe just something like a lighter wheat beer with a bunch of smoked grain for steeping… The two flavors go together much better than I’d expected. Not that I anticipated this beer being anything other than great (everything I’ve had from Grimm Brothers has been great), but this is really hitting the spot.

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Synergistic Combinations of Surfactants

Published January 6, 2013

Danielle and I recently got new glasses from SVS Vision Optical Centers‘ Mt. Clemens location. While we had a great experience there (would recommend, will return), along with her work safety glasses she received an eyeglass cleaning kit with some rather amusing wording on it. On the back of the kit the advertising text tries to use big words to sell the product:

SVS Lens Cleaner is unique in that it actually wets out the most hydrophobic of surfaces and then allows the synergistic combinations of surfactants to emulsify the soils or contaminants present, making the lens easier to clean. This is achieved without any detrimental effect on the expensive lens treatments such as antiglare coatings or easy to clean topcoats.

Yes. That’s exactly what I was looking for: synergistic combinations of surfactants.

If this didn’t read so well I’d think it was just Engrish, but instead I just think that some copywriter did it just to see what they could get away with. It’s great.

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FS1330 – Salsa Alternator Dropout Set 12×142 w/Maxle

Published January 4, 2013

In preparation for building up a new bike that I have on order I purchased QBP #FS1330, the Salsa Alternator Dropout Set 12×142 w/Maxle. This is a set of swing plates for Alternator dropouts which allows a 142mm x 12mm rear axle to be used instead of the standard 10mm quick release. While the wheel set coming with the bike won’t work with this, I hope to eventually get a through axle rear wheel so I wanted to order the plates and axle before I needed them.

I was not able to find photos of this item online before I ordered it, so now that I have the set I wanted to post some photos for others. So, here they are: FS1330 – Salsa Alternator Dropout Set 12×142 w/Maxle

Looking at this in person I can see why it’s so much more expensive than the normal replacement swing plates. Beyond the inclusion of the Rock Shox-branded Maxle these are machined instead of cast, with lots of small details. These probably aren’t produced in nearly the quantity that the normal swing plates are.

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Cold Ride with a Cold

Published January 4, 2013

This morning I woke to find myself with a cold, but Dominic convinced me to go anyway, saying that during his rides on days when he is sick the ride has made him feel better. I’m glad I did, as getting out for a full lap of River Bends (regular+seasonal+pavement+two track+newest segment) just before the sun set really felt nice. I only saw two other people during the whole ride; a couple who seems to be out there walking their dogs almost every day.

The photo above (or here, slightly larger) was taken after riding the S turn, a series of banked curves out in the Seasonal Loops that appear to have built (or formed) by some motorcycle riders in previous years. Due to the inches of powdery snow I wasn’t able to get up enough speed and actually ride the berms, but it was still fun. The trail leading off to the right is a good example of how nicely packed most of the other single track is now.

Here is another photo, this one showing powdery snow stuck to the Big Fat Larry. I love how riding in snow cleans all traces of dirt from one’s tires.

And yes, I did feel better after the ride.

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Pelican 1020 Case for Google Nexus 4

Published January 2, 2013

For the last few years I’ve been using a Pelican 1050 case to carry my Google Nexus One phone when biking, hiking, mapping, etc. This past Monday I received my new phone, a Google Nexus 4, and set about fitting it into a new case. The Pelican 1020 is the closest fit, but unfortunately it’s just slightly too tall to hold the phone flat inside the case.

Setting the phone at a slight angle allows it to fit nicely in the case, and with the addition of two block of neoprene foam rubber (layered and held into place with contact cement) the phone is soundly secured in the case. The block near the top of the phone holds it from rattling around, and the thicker block near the bottom keeps the phone from sliding around if dropped soundly on its face.

This is not the most elegant solution, but until I can find a better-fitting case it’ll do. I’d love one which allows the phone to nestle in as nicely as the Pelican 1050 did needing just a bit of extra foam, but that’ll take some digging, if they even exist…

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Stuff For Sale

Published January 1, 2013

I’ve posted some older things which I no longer use for sale on Craigslist:

I’ve also posted a practically-brand-new Shure SM57 microphone on eBay: 290838759540.

If any of you are interested, please let me know. Friends and family discounts will apply. This stuff is all in great shape, I just simply don’t need it so I’d like get rid of it and save space in the basement.

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2012 Outdoor Riding Statistics

Published January 1, 2013

Shown above (full size image here) are my outdoor cycling statistics for 2012, as compiled using a Garmin Edge 500 and Ascent. Due to aliasing issues on rides that were done without a wheel sensor and a small handful of rides where I didn’t have my GPS there’s likely a small bit of under recording here, but it’s probably pretty close. By wearing a heart rate monitor while riding the tools are also able to estimate the number of calories burned.

The big, most notable stats are as follows:

Total Distance: 4217.31 miles
Total Ride Duration (Clock Running): 462:09:23
Moving Time: 363:55:11
Distance Climbed (Elevation Gain): 133,326′
Calories Burned: 289,802

More interestingly my ride duration can be seen ramping up to May, which is right was the end of getting ready to attempt Lumberjack 100 (LJ). Things settled down in June likely as I ramped down for then was disappointed by LJ, but then the next three months had far more distance likely due to the great weather and my having half of each August and September off of work. November and December dropped off dramatically, likely due to the poor / wet weather we’ve had and drastically shortening days.

My average moving speed was also highest in March, which I attribute to that being a month of mostly dirt road riding as trails weren’t in good shape for riding. September was also fairly high with some long distances, likely attributable to more riding to and from trails. My cadence was also a good 10 RPM lower than what I see on the trainer (70s to 80s outdoors vs. 80-90), which I suspect to be a combination of outdoor riding for me being much more interrupted pedaling versus the trainer’s constant spinning. Most outdoor rides lasting longer than trainer sessions and on the trainer I don’t have to worry about bike handling, so I’m probably more willing to spin quickly when indoors.

Beyond these numbers I also spent 41:53:31 on the trainer, burning an additional 31,114 calories. (I don’t do anything with distance or speed on the trainer as it’s not really like riding on outdoor surfaces.) This was all done from January through May, then in November and December.

It’ll be interesting to see how 2013 compares to these numbers. I’d really like to give LJ a go again, but I’m on the fence about it. I really enjoyed the training rides leading up to it, but it did take a bit of time and effort. Registration doesn’t open for a couple more months so I’ve got time to decide and see if I really want to give it another go.

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Melting Snow on the Mukluk

Published December 30, 2012

Danielle was in the garage where I’d put the Mukluk to thaw after today’s ride and noticed that the melting snow on the front wheel looked pretty nifty, so I took a picture of it.

This comes after an afternoon ride at River Bends where Rodney and I set fatbike tracks through most of the trail and smoothed out the trail for other riders. Jeremy met up with us there as well, but with the 4-8″ of snow on the trail he split off from us a bit earlier and we went on to ride a bit more.

Most of our riding was through deep powder, with a couple of deep, partially-frozen puddles in the newest piece of trail. Trekking through the powder and adding the water from the puddles resulted in quite a bit of heavy buildup on the rims, resulting in buildup like this: 1 · 2.

This was really worth it, as Rodney and I making two passes through each bit of trail ridden was the equivalent of 8 bikes passing over, and this left a 12″-ish wide packed path ready for future riders. There’s still a bit of single track which we didn’t ride, but I’m hoping to get out there in the next day or so to finish the job.

Here’s the complete set of photos from today:

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Golden Ale, Red Ale

Published December 30, 2012

Today I was able to keg, chill, filter, and carbonate my latest two beers, a golden ale (left) and a red ale (right). I’d brewed these from Cap’N’Cork recipe kits over the last couple weeks by first fermenting the golden ale then brewing the red and racking it on to the trub (leftover hops, yeast, etc) from the golden. This resulted in the red fermenting extremely quickly and both beers being ready to keg this morning. I transfered each to kegs (pulling these samples in the process), put the kegs to chill on the porch, and around 10:30pm they’d reached 37°F and were ready to filter.

They’ve since been filtered with a 1μm water filter, force carbonated, and while they need a bit more CO2 they are generally ready to drink.

I’m happy with how both of these came out. They were simple to make, fast to brew, filtered to something fairly nice, and taste good. That’s about all I can hope for. I’ve now got four drinks on tap (Hard Cider, RyePA, Golden Ale, Red Ale) and should probably think about making something a little more special to age and put on tap once one of these run out.

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Repacking Cartridge Bearings

Published December 29, 2012

Not long after a recent bike wash I noticed a pedaling-related squeak when riding my Mukluk. I figured it to just be some seal noise, so after today’s wash I removed the cranks and set about investigating the snap-on seals that came with the crankset, figuring it to be one of those. Instead it turns out that the noise was coming from the non-drive side cartridge bearing, which was also feeling a bit rough.

I had two spare bearings from the last time I needed to do bearing work, so I figured I’d try and salvage these. Pulling the seals off I found that they had a bit of creamy (likely water-spoiled) grease inside, but seemed to be in otherwise good shape. I removed the grease and found them to be spinning very smoothly when clean, so I lubed them up with some ProGold EPX Cycling Grease. This is a nice, sticky grease that seems like it’d be good for bearings in harsher environments. (Disclaimer: I received a free tube of this as part of the large set of stuff donated to MMBA Metro North / CRAMBA in 2011.)

Everything went back together nicely, and now the cranks spin smoothly without any irritating squeak. I hope that this new grease will be a bit more weather resistant than whatever came in the eBay special bearings I’d purchased and these bearings will last for a while. They were nice and clean and spinning smooth once cleaned out, so I’m hoping I caught them before any damage was done.

Here is the general process I used for cleaning the bearings:

  1. Use a sharp T pin to carefully remove the seals from the bearings.
  2. Wipe out as much grease as possible with a paper towel.
  3. Soak the bearings in citrus-based degreaser. (I use ZEP, it works just as well as the bike specific stuff.)
  4. Alternate between rinsing the bearings in hot water, brushing them with a degreaser-soaked toothbrush, and swirling them around in the degreaser bath until they are clean.
  5. Once the bearings are very clean, rinse in as hot of water as possible, then shake dry.
  6. Blow dry with a blower or air compressor, if available.
  7. Submerge the bearings in 99% isopropyl alcohol and agitate to get any residual water off of the bearings and dissolved in the alcohol.
  8. Remove the bearings from the alcohol, shake them out, and set them upright to dry. Occasionally spin the bearings to help the process along. (This will only take a few minutes.)
  9. Liberally apply grease into the ball bearings and cage, then spin the bearing a few times to ensure it’s moving freely and grease is evenly distributed.
  10. Lightly grease the seals then snap them back in place with finger pressure. Spin the bearings a few more times to ensure the seals are properly seated.
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