Friday, September 19, 2008
Fixed Gear Biking
I just bought a new bike, for commuting. It is a Tommaso Agusta Track bike. It is really light and looks awesome (at least I think so). The only hitch is that it is a fixed gear which means that rather than having a freewheel hub like a normal bike (a freeweel makes it possible to not move your legs but still be going forward, in other words to just coast) it has a fixed gear. This makes riding it a little different than other bikes because A) your legs get no break from spinning B) there are no brakes, you slow by slowing the candace of your legs and C) it only has 1 gear. I am really looking forward to commuting with it and thereby saving some gas and also staying in shape but being only about 20 minutes out from my first actual ride, I am a bit nervous.... I cant wait. Hopefuly I will post a post ride report later today. Please, wish me luck :)
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Rugby
Yesterday I participated in my first rugby game of the season. This is about my 6th year playing, I started out playing on the WPI team in the Spring of my Freshmen year. When I went to interview for the job that I ended up getting in State College, my boss asked me about rugby, since it was on my resume. Turned out he played rugby growing up and played on a Mens team down here in State College. I played a couple of games with them last season but this year I am planning on playing more. Rugby is a great game, especially at the level I am playing at right now. Everyone is older graduate students and guys with careers. Twice a week we all get together to practice and then on Saturdays we get together on the pitch to test ourselves against another team just as slow and out of shape as we are.
Yesterdays game was a bit of a disappointment, we lost by 10 or so. I got to play about 30 minutes at scrumhalf, which is my favorite position... but one I am still pretty new at. I got a little banged up during the game so today is mostly about recovery. Below is a picture of me tackling a red dude!
Yesterdays game was a bit of a disappointment, we lost by 10 or so. I got to play about 30 minutes at scrumhalf, which is my favorite position... but one I am still pretty new at. I got a little banged up during the game so today is mostly about recovery. Below is a picture of me tackling a red dude!
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Spring time hiking
Yesterday mom blogged about an adventure that I had last year. She told it from her perspective (which is not quite as exciting as the real thing) so I will tell my side of the story... (this is a long post and I don't really want to proof read so hopefully everyone can stand to read it).
I have this one friend who I went to WPI with. His name is Ryan Starbuck but is only known by the name Starbuck. He is kind of a big soft guy, not real athletic or daring but always up for a good time. He always gets these hair-brained ideas that hardly ever come together. Well he decided that he wanted to go hiking up in Maine at the end of the school year last year. I thought that it sounded like a good idea because I have been hiking in Maine (although not nearly to the extent of my mother) and always enjoyed it, however, every time I go hiking in Maine we get terrible weather. At some point things actually came together and the trip looked like it was going to happen. We chose to do the ~30 mile section between Gorham NH to Grafton Nothch, ME. We broadcast an invitation to all of our friends to accompany us and one guy, dave Gagnon bit at the bait. When the day came for the big departure we left for Maine (at like 10 pm, because Dave was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert I think) We arrived at my moms house at around 1 or so in the morning and planned on leaving at around 5 am (we were still young so some how that small amount of sleep worked for us). It turned out that my little brother Archie was going to join us which was going to be cool because he is a cool kid and very at home in the woods. You probably know, if you read my moms blog, that he is a climber and part of being a climber is being prepared by never climbing yourself into a corner, protecting yourself from harm, and being prepared to battle the elements. These were all qualities that we could use a little more of so he fit into our group pretty easily. So at 5 am we set off in towards the trailhead in Gorham. There were a couple of supplies that we needed to get before we actually hit the trail, like white gas for our stove, trail mix and some other food stuff. Well we showed up in Gorham about 2 hours before anything opened up. So we drove around looking for white gas and food. Finally we found some but we were a little later hitting the trail than we had expected. So we finally took off with our backpacks, enthusiasm, and prepared to have a good time.
Being that we were 4 16-22 year olds we made awesome time. we cranked out about 3 miles in the first hour or so. Everything was awesome, it was a little cool in the mountains so we weren't sweating too bad but the sky was beautiful and we were feeling good. We wanted to do about 12 miles in the first day and it was looking like that was going to be easily doable. At about 5 miles in we hit our first road block. There were huge trees all over the trail, the winter had obviously reeked havoc on the trees and as a consequence our trail was totally obscured. I had Dave and Starbuck stand at the last point on the trail that we knew and me and Archie went ahead and tried to find where the trail reemerged. This turned out to be a pretty good way to navigate the blow downs but it was slow. At mile 8 we reached the first lean to on our hike. The plan was to go past this one to the next one and be just that much further down the trail. After climbing over blow downs for the past 4 or 5 hours we were all pretty beat so we decided to just stay at that lean too for the night and make up time the next day. It was a really pretty spot, we were on this little knoll and there was a small alpine lake just down the hill with an outlet that went right by our site so we were always hearing the stream noises. We got dinner cooking, made a fire to warm our socks by and the day ended nicely. As we were going to sleep Starbuck was reading in the trail guide book about the rest of our hike. There was a part about the next 15 miles being full of high alpine bogs which were supposed to be very nice. I think Starbuck had a feeling for how the rest of the trip was going to be because the life left his voice as he read about the high alpine bogs. We went to sleep laughing and thinking about a tall squishy kid sinking in the bogs on top of a mountain.
The next day we woke up and it was heavily misting. Not quite raining but sure as hell not dry. We packed up and hoped for the best as we set off. This hike was in early-mid May (about a year ago from today) we expected to see snow because of the altitude and shade of the trees. Not very long into this day we stared seeing more and more snow. On parts of the trail we were walking on top of 3 or 4 feet of snow, or Dave, Archie and I were walking on top of the snow. Starbucks extra weight caused him to "post hole" with every step. Post holing is where you step on an area of snow and it feels strong but then as you put your weight onto your foot you crash through the snow. Starbuck was wearing shorts and post holing 2-3 feet through the snow with every step. By this point in the hike we were starting to get kind of tired of it. The snow was cold and abrassive, the mountains were steep, the food was terrible, and we were cold. We managed to find a dryish rock to make lunch on and made soup to try and warm ourselves up. After lunch we started uphill again. When I am hiking with people I like to wait at key points in the trail so that we are never too far apart. Me and Archie were hiking about the same speed and dave and Starbuck were hiking at about the same speed. Me and Archie reached the summit of some mountain and I wanted to wait for the other guys. It was so rainy and windy at this point that we actually had to come down off the mountain a little bit to excape the wind. Archie and I were huddled between rocks waiting for the guys when Archie did something that I have never heard him do before that time... he complained. He said his feet were really cold and kind of numb. I looked down at his feet at this point and was shocked to find that he was wearing a pair of sneakers. "Where are your boots Archie" I yelled at him over the howl of the wind. He gave some response that I couldn't hear or don't remember. I told him, go ahead, the lean to for tonight is about 3 miles down the trail so just keep on going to keep your body warm. When you get to the lean to make a fire or just get in your sleeping bag and warm up. Cold feet are not something to play around with in the mountains. So he did, he took off to hopfuly get warm. At this point in the trip things were starting to look pretty bad so I whipped out my trusty cell phone, turned it on and called my mom. When I got her on the line I told her about Archie and his inappropriate foot wear and bout the weather and post holing and blow downs and everything else. I told her that we might have to figure something else out about how to get off the mountain and that I would let her know how things were shaping up the next morning. Finally the other guys got to the summit where I was and I told them about Archie and that I was going to hustle down to the shelter (3 miles away) and I would see them there. I took off at a pretty good clip, not a run because of the 50 lb pack on my back but I was cruising right along. The whole way to the lean to I expected Arch to be huddled up on the ground just around every corner. I made it to the lean to to find Archie in his sleeping bag with the reminents of a fire in the fire pit. He was alright besides cold feet so I was relieved. I stoked the fire and gathered some wood and took off down to the water source to get water for dinner. I assume during the summer there is actually a pretty nice spring from which you can get water at that camp site but during the spring melt there is no such thing. There is a raging Ice river careening down the rocks. I started off trying to use our filter pump to get the water but I was getting to cold submerging my hands in the water so finally I gave up and just dunked the water sack into the water to gather as much beaver poop water as I could. I got back to the campsite and got the stove out. I don't know exactly what happened to the stove between our lunch and when I was at the lean to but it didn't work. With already frozen fingers I totally stripped and rebuilt the stove trying to get it to work. I did this 2 times and nothing helped it. Dave and Starbuck showed up sometime around this time and immediately changed into dry clothes and jumped into their sleeping bags. Archie had a little stove that was more for warming water than for boiling it but we had to use that to make warm dinner. I was bouncing back and forth between making dinner and keeping the fire stoked still in my cold wet clothes and boots. I was doing my thing when I heard from the other side of the lean to "Ethan check the fire and make sure it is still going good" from Starbuck. This sent me off the handle... I wasn't about to get bossed around by some kid all tucked away in his sleeping bag while i was wet and miserable trying to take care of everyone. So I kind of flipped out on him and he shut up. I made everyone dinner and was finally able to declothe and get in my sleeping bag. Before we went to bed we talked about our options. We had 1/3 of a nights worth of food left and and everything we were carrying was 2x as heavy as it was when we started because of the rain. We read in the book about what laid ahead of us. Of course Mahoussic Notch was on the table for the next day. Mahoussic Notch is supposedly the hardest 1 mile of the whole AT and consists of climbing straight down a ravine, through boulders at the bottom and then straight back up the other side. Then things to mellow out because you have to climb I think Mt. Speck (correct me if I am wrong).
The next day we woke up and it was pouring, not raining but pouring. We made breakfast and decided that the best thing to do would be for me and Archie (the faster hikers) to blaze ahead and check out the notch and see if we wanted to commit to it, if we didn't we could just come back down the trail and abandon the hike at that side trail. Knowing this we packed up and started off. It very quickly became quite obvious that we were in a bit of trouble. We were hiking up cliffs against torrents of water that gravity was pulling down the hill. After about 1/2 a mile we decided that there was no way were in any position to take on the hardest mile of the AT. We didn't want to stop for more than a minute or two to wait for the others becasue we just lost body heat when being stopped so we would hike a couple hundred yards and then wait for a minute, maybe 2 and then repeat. Finally the other guys caught up to us and everyone was pretty happy to just call it. I called my mom and said we were ditching and that we would be coming out on this logging road at the bottom of this valley. She was in court or something so she called my granddad and he was up for the challenge of picking us up. We were relieved to have a plan but we sure weren't off the mountain yet. We still had a mile or 2 of hiking to get to the escape trail. There was one part that I remember where we had to hike down this rock, it was so steep that there was a wooden ladder on it to help people navigate the slick rock but in our case the ladder was under 2 feet of rushing melt water. Any ways, we go to our escape trail and were pumped. The trail looked flat and mostly consisted of logs that you walked across, basically a cake walk compared to the previous 2 days. The trail paralled a raging river full of melt water and rain water. At one point Starbuck joked about how were were going to have to cross the river, I laughed and told him that was unlikely. Much to my horror 100 yards later the trail disappeared into the raging river. Thankfully it was pretty narrow but there was no way to cross it without straight up walking in to the river. We decided to cross while holding hands or locking elbows so that everyone was pretty stable. I went in first, followed by Archie, followed by Starbuck and Dave took the caboose position. The crossing was narrow enough that only 2 people were in the water at a time, the other two were on dry ground. The water was so unbelievably cold, like real cold. We all made it across the river OK though and continued on, we had to because we were so cold. My heart nearly stopped when the trail disappeared into the river a second time. This time the crossing was much wider. The river looked pretty shallow even though it was wide and raging. We decided to employ the same technique to cross the second time. This time, however, everyone was in the water at the same time. At one point in the river the water came up to my belly button. To this day I am not sure how we were able to stand up right with all of that water hitting us, somehow we did it though and we all made it across safe. At this point I was starting to get numb all over, especially in my fingers and toes (water-proof boots are water proof it the water is over the cuffs). I was legitimately pissed off when the trail disappeared into the water a third time. The river at this point was so wide, deep and full of boulders that there was no way we could cross, we looked down the river hoping to see a bridge, or jumping rocks or something but only saw more of the same, we decided that it was too risky to cross there so we started bushwhacking down the river bed. After 5 or 10 minutes of bushwhacking we got tired of it and decided to commit to the safest looking option. That safest looking option was a circus high wire log jumping, rock hoping, rushing river option. It started with hoping to a rock and then balancing across a wet rotten log that was pinned against 2 rocks, jumping onto said rock, stepping to another rock and then jumping (with a 50 lb pack) 4' to the far bank. I guess I have some kind of care taker instinct because I had to be the first one across (maybe it is a bragging rights thing :) ), I was willing to guinea pig it. Thankfully everything went without a hitch, just a pounding heart. The river down stream of this crossing was full of rocks that were being assaulted by the raging river and just waiting to be the rock against which one of our heads was beaten. Dave was next and did fine Starbuck went and decided that he wanted to throw his pack across before he jumped so he threw it across to me, and I noticed that his boot lace was untied. There was so little room on that rock that he was perched on that I decide it would be best not to tell him about it and just let him jump. He did and he made it. And now Archie was up. I had duty to take care of him and to this point I felt like I had done a pretty poor job at it. Dave and Starbuck positioned themselves strategically downstream in case something happened and Archie started out. Archie is probably one of the best athletes that I have ever known so I wasn't worried that he couldn't do it but I was worried about something unexpected happening. He made his way across the log and got onto the rock and passed his pack to me. He jumped and I grabbed him and helped him up the bank. Dave and Archie immediately put on their packs and started running down the trail towards the logging road. I was seriously feeling the hypothermia at that point though and it was all I could do to just keep walking down the trail. We got all the way to the logging road without any more river crossings. I was pretty pooped and just wanted to wait for my granddad to come down the road to get us. Archie and Starbuck were feeling ambitious and wanted to go find him so they went down the road and me and Dave sat on the side of it. After Archie and Starbuck had gone around a bend a mommy and baby bear crossed the road. It was one of those things where I was too tired to even really care. After sitting on the road for 10 minutes Granddad, my savior, came around the corner with the 4x4's heat on full blast with thermoses of soup and hot chocolate, and blankets. We made it out alive and wow did we have a good story to tell. Those two guys are still 2 of my best friends and I can't wait for my next adventure with Archie but I sure am glad we were able to leave the mountains of Maine with our lives.
I have this one friend who I went to WPI with. His name is Ryan Starbuck but is only known by the name Starbuck. He is kind of a big soft guy, not real athletic or daring but always up for a good time. He always gets these hair-brained ideas that hardly ever come together. Well he decided that he wanted to go hiking up in Maine at the end of the school year last year. I thought that it sounded like a good idea because I have been hiking in Maine (although not nearly to the extent of my mother) and always enjoyed it, however, every time I go hiking in Maine we get terrible weather. At some point things actually came together and the trip looked like it was going to happen. We chose to do the ~30 mile section between Gorham NH to Grafton Nothch, ME. We broadcast an invitation to all of our friends to accompany us and one guy, dave Gagnon bit at the bait. When the day came for the big departure we left for Maine (at like 10 pm, because Dave was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert I think) We arrived at my moms house at around 1 or so in the morning and planned on leaving at around 5 am (we were still young so some how that small amount of sleep worked for us). It turned out that my little brother Archie was going to join us which was going to be cool because he is a cool kid and very at home in the woods. You probably know, if you read my moms blog, that he is a climber and part of being a climber is being prepared by never climbing yourself into a corner, protecting yourself from harm, and being prepared to battle the elements. These were all qualities that we could use a little more of so he fit into our group pretty easily. So at 5 am we set off in towards the trailhead in Gorham. There were a couple of supplies that we needed to get before we actually hit the trail, like white gas for our stove, trail mix and some other food stuff. Well we showed up in Gorham about 2 hours before anything opened up. So we drove around looking for white gas and food. Finally we found some but we were a little later hitting the trail than we had expected. So we finally took off with our backpacks, enthusiasm, and prepared to have a good time.
Being that we were 4 16-22 year olds we made awesome time. we cranked out about 3 miles in the first hour or so. Everything was awesome, it was a little cool in the mountains so we weren't sweating too bad but the sky was beautiful and we were feeling good. We wanted to do about 12 miles in the first day and it was looking like that was going to be easily doable. At about 5 miles in we hit our first road block. There were huge trees all over the trail, the winter had obviously reeked havoc on the trees and as a consequence our trail was totally obscured. I had Dave and Starbuck stand at the last point on the trail that we knew and me and Archie went ahead and tried to find where the trail reemerged. This turned out to be a pretty good way to navigate the blow downs but it was slow. At mile 8 we reached the first lean to on our hike. The plan was to go past this one to the next one and be just that much further down the trail. After climbing over blow downs for the past 4 or 5 hours we were all pretty beat so we decided to just stay at that lean too for the night and make up time the next day. It was a really pretty spot, we were on this little knoll and there was a small alpine lake just down the hill with an outlet that went right by our site so we were always hearing the stream noises. We got dinner cooking, made a fire to warm our socks by and the day ended nicely. As we were going to sleep Starbuck was reading in the trail guide book about the rest of our hike. There was a part about the next 15 miles being full of high alpine bogs which were supposed to be very nice. I think Starbuck had a feeling for how the rest of the trip was going to be because the life left his voice as he read about the high alpine bogs. We went to sleep laughing and thinking about a tall squishy kid sinking in the bogs on top of a mountain.
The next day we woke up and it was heavily misting. Not quite raining but sure as hell not dry. We packed up and hoped for the best as we set off. This hike was in early-mid May (about a year ago from today) we expected to see snow because of the altitude and shade of the trees. Not very long into this day we stared seeing more and more snow. On parts of the trail we were walking on top of 3 or 4 feet of snow, or Dave, Archie and I were walking on top of the snow. Starbucks extra weight caused him to "post hole" with every step. Post holing is where you step on an area of snow and it feels strong but then as you put your weight onto your foot you crash through the snow. Starbuck was wearing shorts and post holing 2-3 feet through the snow with every step. By this point in the hike we were starting to get kind of tired of it. The snow was cold and abrassive, the mountains were steep, the food was terrible, and we were cold. We managed to find a dryish rock to make lunch on and made soup to try and warm ourselves up. After lunch we started uphill again. When I am hiking with people I like to wait at key points in the trail so that we are never too far apart. Me and Archie were hiking about the same speed and dave and Starbuck were hiking at about the same speed. Me and Archie reached the summit of some mountain and I wanted to wait for the other guys. It was so rainy and windy at this point that we actually had to come down off the mountain a little bit to excape the wind. Archie and I were huddled between rocks waiting for the guys when Archie did something that I have never heard him do before that time... he complained. He said his feet were really cold and kind of numb. I looked down at his feet at this point and was shocked to find that he was wearing a pair of sneakers. "Where are your boots Archie" I yelled at him over the howl of the wind. He gave some response that I couldn't hear or don't remember. I told him, go ahead, the lean to for tonight is about 3 miles down the trail so just keep on going to keep your body warm. When you get to the lean to make a fire or just get in your sleeping bag and warm up. Cold feet are not something to play around with in the mountains. So he did, he took off to hopfuly get warm. At this point in the trip things were starting to look pretty bad so I whipped out my trusty cell phone, turned it on and called my mom. When I got her on the line I told her about Archie and his inappropriate foot wear and bout the weather and post holing and blow downs and everything else. I told her that we might have to figure something else out about how to get off the mountain and that I would let her know how things were shaping up the next morning. Finally the other guys got to the summit where I was and I told them about Archie and that I was going to hustle down to the shelter (3 miles away) and I would see them there. I took off at a pretty good clip, not a run because of the 50 lb pack on my back but I was cruising right along. The whole way to the lean to I expected Arch to be huddled up on the ground just around every corner. I made it to the lean to to find Archie in his sleeping bag with the reminents of a fire in the fire pit. He was alright besides cold feet so I was relieved. I stoked the fire and gathered some wood and took off down to the water source to get water for dinner. I assume during the summer there is actually a pretty nice spring from which you can get water at that camp site but during the spring melt there is no such thing. There is a raging Ice river careening down the rocks. I started off trying to use our filter pump to get the water but I was getting to cold submerging my hands in the water so finally I gave up and just dunked the water sack into the water to gather as much beaver poop water as I could. I got back to the campsite and got the stove out. I don't know exactly what happened to the stove between our lunch and when I was at the lean to but it didn't work. With already frozen fingers I totally stripped and rebuilt the stove trying to get it to work. I did this 2 times and nothing helped it. Dave and Starbuck showed up sometime around this time and immediately changed into dry clothes and jumped into their sleeping bags. Archie had a little stove that was more for warming water than for boiling it but we had to use that to make warm dinner. I was bouncing back and forth between making dinner and keeping the fire stoked still in my cold wet clothes and boots. I was doing my thing when I heard from the other side of the lean to "Ethan check the fire and make sure it is still going good" from Starbuck. This sent me off the handle... I wasn't about to get bossed around by some kid all tucked away in his sleeping bag while i was wet and miserable trying to take care of everyone. So I kind of flipped out on him and he shut up. I made everyone dinner and was finally able to declothe and get in my sleeping bag. Before we went to bed we talked about our options. We had 1/3 of a nights worth of food left and and everything we were carrying was 2x as heavy as it was when we started because of the rain. We read in the book about what laid ahead of us. Of course Mahoussic Notch was on the table for the next day. Mahoussic Notch is supposedly the hardest 1 mile of the whole AT and consists of climbing straight down a ravine, through boulders at the bottom and then straight back up the other side. Then things to mellow out because you have to climb I think Mt. Speck (correct me if I am wrong).
- Go on with the original plan and go through the notch
- Abandon the hike at a side trail 1 mile before the notch
- Abandon the hike at a side trail 1 mile back up the trail in the way we had come.
The next day we woke up and it was pouring, not raining but pouring. We made breakfast and decided that the best thing to do would be for me and Archie (the faster hikers) to blaze ahead and check out the notch and see if we wanted to commit to it, if we didn't we could just come back down the trail and abandon the hike at that side trail. Knowing this we packed up and started off. It very quickly became quite obvious that we were in a bit of trouble. We were hiking up cliffs against torrents of water that gravity was pulling down the hill. After about 1/2 a mile we decided that there was no way were in any position to take on the hardest mile of the AT. We didn't want to stop for more than a minute or two to wait for the others becasue we just lost body heat when being stopped so we would hike a couple hundred yards and then wait for a minute, maybe 2 and then repeat. Finally the other guys caught up to us and everyone was pretty happy to just call it. I called my mom and said we were ditching and that we would be coming out on this logging road at the bottom of this valley. She was in court or something so she called my granddad and he was up for the challenge of picking us up. We were relieved to have a plan but we sure weren't off the mountain yet. We still had a mile or 2 of hiking to get to the escape trail. There was one part that I remember where we had to hike down this rock, it was so steep that there was a wooden ladder on it to help people navigate the slick rock but in our case the ladder was under 2 feet of rushing melt water. Any ways, we go to our escape trail and were pumped. The trail looked flat and mostly consisted of logs that you walked across, basically a cake walk compared to the previous 2 days. The trail paralled a raging river full of melt water and rain water. At one point Starbuck joked about how were were going to have to cross the river, I laughed and told him that was unlikely. Much to my horror 100 yards later the trail disappeared into the raging river. Thankfully it was pretty narrow but there was no way to cross it without straight up walking in to the river. We decided to cross while holding hands or locking elbows so that everyone was pretty stable. I went in first, followed by Archie, followed by Starbuck and Dave took the caboose position. The crossing was narrow enough that only 2 people were in the water at a time, the other two were on dry ground. The water was so unbelievably cold, like real cold. We all made it across the river OK though and continued on, we had to because we were so cold. My heart nearly stopped when the trail disappeared into the river a second time. This time the crossing was much wider. The river looked pretty shallow even though it was wide and raging. We decided to employ the same technique to cross the second time. This time, however, everyone was in the water at the same time. At one point in the river the water came up to my belly button. To this day I am not sure how we were able to stand up right with all of that water hitting us, somehow we did it though and we all made it across safe. At this point I was starting to get numb all over, especially in my fingers and toes (water-proof boots are water proof it the water is over the cuffs). I was legitimately pissed off when the trail disappeared into the water a third time. The river at this point was so wide, deep and full of boulders that there was no way we could cross, we looked down the river hoping to see a bridge, or jumping rocks or something but only saw more of the same, we decided that it was too risky to cross there so we started bushwhacking down the river bed. After 5 or 10 minutes of bushwhacking we got tired of it and decided to commit to the safest looking option. That safest looking option was a circus high wire log jumping, rock hoping, rushing river option. It started with hoping to a rock and then balancing across a wet rotten log that was pinned against 2 rocks, jumping onto said rock, stepping to another rock and then jumping (with a 50 lb pack) 4' to the far bank. I guess I have some kind of care taker instinct because I had to be the first one across (maybe it is a bragging rights thing :) ), I was willing to guinea pig it. Thankfully everything went without a hitch, just a pounding heart. The river down stream of this crossing was full of rocks that were being assaulted by the raging river and just waiting to be the rock against which one of our heads was beaten. Dave was next and did fine Starbuck went and decided that he wanted to throw his pack across before he jumped so he threw it across to me, and I noticed that his boot lace was untied. There was so little room on that rock that he was perched on that I decide it would be best not to tell him about it and just let him jump. He did and he made it. And now Archie was up. I had duty to take care of him and to this point I felt like I had done a pretty poor job at it. Dave and Starbuck positioned themselves strategically downstream in case something happened and Archie started out. Archie is probably one of the best athletes that I have ever known so I wasn't worried that he couldn't do it but I was worried about something unexpected happening. He made his way across the log and got onto the rock and passed his pack to me. He jumped and I grabbed him and helped him up the bank. Dave and Archie immediately put on their packs and started running down the trail towards the logging road. I was seriously feeling the hypothermia at that point though and it was all I could do to just keep walking down the trail. We got all the way to the logging road without any more river crossings. I was pretty pooped and just wanted to wait for my granddad to come down the road to get us. Archie and Starbuck were feeling ambitious and wanted to go find him so they went down the road and me and Dave sat on the side of it. After Archie and Starbuck had gone around a bend a mommy and baby bear crossed the road. It was one of those things where I was too tired to even really care. After sitting on the road for 10 minutes Granddad, my savior, came around the corner with the 4x4's heat on full blast with thermoses of soup and hot chocolate, and blankets. We made it out alive and wow did we have a good story to tell. Those two guys are still 2 of my best friends and I can't wait for my next adventure with Archie but I sure am glad we were able to leave the mountains of Maine with our lives.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Biking in Lock Haven
Over the winter my wife went out to get her hair cut. Ann mentioned to her hairdresser that I was looking for a truck so that i could easily just throw my bikes in the back and get to some cool trails. Her hair dresser said "my brother just got a truck and he just throws his bikes in it and is really beating it up". Well like the good wife she is she gave my number to the hair dresser and the hair dresser did the same with her brothers number. Well Ann came back and told me the whole story and I was skeptical to say the least. I thought to myself, girls don't know the difference between types of biking, this guy is probably a roadie or something... Well a couple weeks later I get a call from this guy, Duffy is his name, and it turned out our interests were pretty much perfectly aligned. He lives in a town about 45 minutes away so I try to get out there and bike like once a week. They have a pretty good scene. A couple screamin fast and bumpy trails (my personal favorite) and they have some cool freeride (jumps, raised ladder work) stuff too, they even have some cool looking (i haven't hit them yet) dirt jumps. Well I have never been much of a jumper, there isn't anything around here that really qualifies as a real jump. So today Duffy took me to his jumps. I was pretty sketched out... the one tabletop has a 23' distance between the lip (take off) and tranny (landing). I watched him do it a couple times and then decided that I wasn't getting any younger and I should try it. All I have to say is props to Duffy (and all the guys who built back there) they make some smooth trails. The first jump I did I landed a bit short (but that is the nice thing about a table top (if you land short you just land on flat and then ride it out)). By the 4th or 5th jump I was getting better, going the whole way between lip and tranny. 
Then for some reason, I guess I was getting tired, I started sucking. I hit the lip once and my rear end got jacked up in the air and I kinda nose dived into the tranny, I was able to land on the bike (always good because it has 7" of give) but then I launched over the bars and did a pretty good dive straight in to the ground. Thank god for helmets. On a side note, I don't skimp on the helmet... I always wear one and it is pretty diesel. It is actually DOT approved for highway use and it is comfortable (although hot as heck sometimes). Well I did basically the same thing 2 more times, for some reason I just couldn't get level in the air. So we left the table and went and did some drops and a couple berms ( a banked corner). As we were getting ready to go I decided I needed to try the tabletop again. I didn't want to leave defeated. So I dropped in for one last time and did better. I didn't gap the whole thing but I also aired it out, landed and rode it out correctly so that was good. Anyways, it was a good weekend trip. Biking is a blast because it is so versatile, you can bike to just get places, you can bike to get a rush going down a hill, you can bike to do tricks that impress all your friends, you can bike to get in shape, but any biking you do is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face (and if it doesn't... then get off the bike :)
Then for some reason, I guess I was getting tired, I started sucking. I hit the lip once and my rear end got jacked up in the air and I kinda nose dived into the tranny, I was able to land on the bike (always good because it has 7" of give) but then I launched over the bars and did a pretty good dive straight in to the ground. Thank god for helmets. On a side note, I don't skimp on the helmet... I always wear one and it is pretty diesel. It is actually DOT approved for highway use and it is comfortable (although hot as heck sometimes). Well I did basically the same thing 2 more times, for some reason I just couldn't get level in the air. So we left the table and went and did some drops and a couple berms ( a banked corner). As we were getting ready to go I decided I needed to try the tabletop again. I didn't want to leave defeated. So I dropped in for one last time and did better. I didn't gap the whole thing but I also aired it out, landed and rode it out correctly so that was good. Anyways, it was a good weekend trip. Biking is a blast because it is so versatile, you can bike to just get places, you can bike to get a rush going down a hill, you can bike to do tricks that impress all your friends, you can bike to get in shape, but any biking you do is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face (and if it doesn't... then get off the bike :)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Homebrewing
About 2 months ago me and a friend decided to get a homebrew kit to brew our own beers. The first brew we made was a Stout. An example of a stout is Guinness. We have been getting extract kits which include all the ingredients and makes the process pretty simple for beginners. The basic steps that go in to brewing beer are as follows: you get a pot with about 2 gallons of water and put some specialty grains in a bag and basically seep the grains in the pot as you bring the temp up to a boil. Then you remove the grains, remove the pot from the heat and pour in the liquid malt. Malt is the fermentable part of the beer (in other words malt is what the yeast eats). When the malt is mixed in you return the pot to the heat and bring to a boil. When it wort begins to boil you add some hops. Hops are a flower that contributes a really delicious bitterness and crispness to beers. After the Hops are in you just let the wort boil for 1 hour (adding somethings at different points depending on the recipe). After your hour is up you put the pot into a sink or something with some ice and cold water in it. As the wort cools down you get the yeast ready. Yeast is complicated. There are different kinds that you can use for different brews or different ones you can use to get different tastes. Yeast comes in a dry version which requires rehydration before it is added to the wort or you can have liquid yeast which just needs to be activated before adding to the wort. When the wort is cool you pour into a big glass carboy (fermenter) and add the yeast. You have to shake the carboy for a couple of minutes to try and dissolve some air into the beer to give the yeast some oxygen. You then seal the carboy and add an air lock (a device that lets CO2 out and nothing in).
Now you have to wait for about 2 weeks while the beer ferments. To the right you can see our Stout in the fermenter. After the stuff ferments for a couple weeks you siphon it out of the carboy, add some sugar (for carbonation), and put them into standard bottles and cap them. The you let them age in the bottles for a couple of weeks depending on what you are making and then you can finally pop the top and try some.
We got our first tastes of the stout earlier this week and it was good. Not a great beer but deffinatley drink able, which is what i was hoping for. Yesterday we bottled an IPA, earlier this week we boiled the wort for a heffewisen and we have a red ale and another stout ready to be brewed once we free up a fermenter. It is a pretty fun hobby and a little less risky than biking I think :)
Now you have to wait for about 2 weeks while the beer ferments. To the right you can see our Stout in the fermenter. After the stuff ferments for a couple weeks you siphon it out of the carboy, add some sugar (for carbonation), and put them into standard bottles and cap them. The you let them age in the bottles for a couple of weeks depending on what you are making and then you can finally pop the top and try some.
We got our first tastes of the stout earlier this week and it was good. Not a great beer but deffinatley drink able, which is what i was hoping for. Yesterday we bottled an IPA, earlier this week we boiled the wort for a heffewisen and we have a red ale and another stout ready to be brewed once we free up a fermenter. It is a pretty fun hobby and a little less risky than biking I think :)
Friday, May 2, 2008
Back when I was in High School I ran cross-country and I did it for a year in college. After I was done with XC running I joined the rugby team at my school. I love rugby, it was the perfect sport for me. I managed to play a little rugby with a team out here in PA when I moved out here but it didn't feel like my college team so I had to search for a new sport. I had been doing a little XC biking (XC biking is just riding with a bike up and down trails. The bikes usually have a max of 3 inches of suspension travel in the front and back) but it seemed that I was always breaking the bike because I was riding it jus
t a little too hard. So last summer I started looking at bikes online. I finaly came across this full suspension (full squish :) ) bike for 50% off on an online bike store. Even though it was 50% off it was still over $1000 (which in the bike world is chump change but for non bikers it is confusing why someone would spend that much money on two wheels). My first real bike was a 2006 Iron Horse Yakuza Kumicho (to the left) (IH). My baby has 7" of travel in the front and in the back. This makes it super fun and easy to ride really rough stuff that either scared me or broke my bike before. The front tire is 2.7 inches across (yeah like 4 times wider than your bikes tire). Over the past year or so I have gotten so much more than $1000 worth of enjoyment and happiness from it. One down side of my bike is that it weighs 46 lbs. This is to make it strong but it makes it hard to ride around, if you aren't bombing down a hill. So last Fall I went on a search for a more pedalable/jumpable/street ridablebike. I will introduce you to my hardtail in a future post...
peace
t a little too hard. So last summer I started looking at bikes online. I finaly came across this full suspension (full squish :) ) bike for 50% off on an online bike store. Even though it was 50% off it was still over $1000 (which in the bike world is chump change but for non bikers it is confusing why someone would spend that much money on two wheels). My first real bike was a 2006 Iron Horse Yakuza Kumicho (to the left) (IH). My baby has 7" of travel in the front and in the back. This makes it super fun and easy to ride really rough stuff that either scared me or broke my bike before. The front tire is 2.7 inches across (yeah like 4 times wider than your bikes tire). Over the past year or so I have gotten so much more than $1000 worth of enjoyment and happiness from it. One down side of my bike is that it weighs 46 lbs. This is to make it strong but it makes it hard to ride around, if you aren't bombing down a hill. So last Fall I went on a search for a more pedalable/jumpable/street ridablebike. I will introduce you to my hardtail in a future post...peace
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Impressing dudes
So, last weekend I did some trail building out by my apartment. It wasnt too big a deal, you know I raked all of the leaves from the past fall and winter off of an already established trail and chopped dead fall that was hung up and too tall to hop over with a bike. I saw this cool rock on the side of the trail that was tallish on the up hill side and then just sloped into the hill it was on. You can see in in the picture to the left. Well I decided I needed to make a new trail that could utilize this cool natural feature. I spent all Saturday and most of Sunday building this trail that takes off from the already established trail. I made a jump out of fallen logs in a way that the landing was this cool rock. I dug other rocks out of the ground and made an "artificial" rock garden and then I chopped a large fallen tree into a 30 foot length and flattened the top and made a log ride/jump/drop.
The finished product turned into a decently fast run with some quick turns at the beginning and then this rock jump, the rock garden, a really quick fun turn that you can see to the right (it is fun doing it without braking, shows you what you are made of :) ), and ending with the log ride.
Well today I was out sessioning (just riding down and then walking up and riding down again) this trail. It was a nice day in State College so everyone was out biking. I saw these two guys riding XC and they seemed kinda curious about the guy in the full face helmet rippin down the trails. So the stopped by the rock jump to watch me hit it. Well I nailed it, I mean I really pinned it, probably the best set-up and landing I have made on that jump yet. I finished up the run and as I was walking back up they stopped to talk to me and said that I had a cool trail and that it was cool watching me hit that jump. Now I am mostly a solitary rider, I find that no one pushes me hard to do better than myself so I prefer to ride alone, which works since all my biking buddies are 45 minutes away (and I cant afford that much gas). So it was nice to get this validation from two fellow shredders. I hope you enjoyed my first post. I will probably post about my steeds (my bikes) later, they are # 2 and 3 in my life! Peace.
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