We got out for a three mile run yesterday and checked out part of the Volksweg trail that we haven't run on for a while. The weather was pretty much perfect for running and we even got to see a sunset.
Normally wouldn't break out the Everclear in the middle of a work-day but we ate lunch at West-Market park. I hadn't yet used the liquor/fuel we bought in Moab this past May. I'd almost forgotten where it came from actually, since the state of Iowa has decided that it's illegal to sell here. I'll have to drive to Nebraska or Missouri next time I need more fuel for the Trangia.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Long time with no post again, I'll go with "work has been a zoo and I didn't feel like it". There, I knew this picture would come in handy for something. This isn't a real big zoo though, we just have a giraffe, elephant (possibly goring something?), and a bean-stalk.
Brewing has been going well - this was the third batch and used up all remaining ingredients we had. I now have five gallons each of nut-brown ale, cream ale, and some sort of tarted Belgian ale. There are LOT more steps than wine-making but it all goes so much quicker (no waiting for months and years), plus it's fun to do some actual cooking with it too.
A handy by-product of brewing is the spent grains, which birds seem to be a big fan of. This pile is even bigger now and there definitely aren't enough birds around to eat it. It doesn't seem to be spoiling yet so hopefully it'll last a while.
Plus it just makes you feel good to know that these baby birds are being fed with only the freshest beer grains.
I have no idea what this fungus is. It's been on our garage for a little while now and if ever I might have seen a magic mushroom, this would seem to be it.
Got some video of the out-flow from Red-rock this past weekend. It's about 22k cfs here. Should be at 30k by tomorrow I believe. This is still low enough that none of the camp-grounds or roads get consumed. The forecast looks to be somewhat drier moving forward, so that should help.
Corrine and I had a picnic (Arby's) dinner on the beach Friday night. The weather was about perfect and the sun kept peaking out every now and then. It becomes more obvious to me all the time how much I need outdoors and open spaces. Just this short trip really filled me up and made everything feel great again. I need to make a point of getting out away from town more so I can get some photography inspiration going again.
Saturday morning was cool and cloudy. I left the house with long-sleeves and a coat on, never imagining I'd get sunburn like crazy. We went for a float on the Des Moines with friends and it wasn't far down river before the sun peeked out and temps warmed right up. It turned out to be a perfect day to do this. We definitely had a great time and after finding the tiniest little rapid near the end, the whitewater bug has certainly latched on and isn't going anywhere. First I think we'll find a vessel other than a Sears "Free Spirit" lake raft that I bought at an auction for $2.
Here I am powering the Free Spirit. It really didn't work too bad except that roughly 75% of energy expended goes into directional control and 25% is for forward motion. Do my sunglasses look messed up on my face? Yes, they do only have one temple. No they are not comfortable. I can't believe they made it to the end without falling off in the water.
Using the Free Spirit's cavernous space to take a break from direction control.
This is a retired rail bridge that has been a single-lane car bridge as long as I can remember. One end of it is still held up by wooden pylons. You can see its replacement in the background. The old bridge was still in service until just few years ago when this highway was redone.
The latter half of Saturday was the big day. Brewing time! I've got the new kettle heating up here. Everything was a success thus far and it's fermenting nicely in the house right now. There are a LOT more steps than making wine, but it's really not any harder. It definitely needs more equipment and a larger variety of ingredients though. This was a five gallon kit and I've got two more kits to go after this one. Anyone need lots of beer?
Monitoring a boil.
Storm after storm after storm it would seem. This one rolled through while I was at work yesterday and as I sit here typing this, another fairly severe one is passing over.
We usually have mourning doves hanging around our house but I've never seen them act this tame before. Corrine was working in the backyard and they just stayed right here while we walked around and talked about them. Perhaps they knew the storm was coming - I may have looked for better cover though.
Sunset from last week sometime I think? Saw it left over on the SD card and thought I'd post it.
In startling contrast to the extreme drought and fires out west, we've been having some pretty epic rain here. I'm not sure if the reported 24hr. total for Pella is correct, but the Des Moines area is reporting a pretty solid 5" all over. They even got some 1.75" hail. Fort Dodge got 4.5" which is an area that adds heavily to the river and lake levels here. The current forecast calls for the lake level to jump 7' over the next few days. I'm guessing it will end up being higher than that after the gauges up-river start reporting updated flows.
Imagery and weather data courtesy of Weather Underground and wunderground.com
I would have automatically assumed the 6.42" of rainfall was an error until I saw this on the way to work, and this is hours after the rain stopped falling.
We had a pretty sizable T-storm rolling through this morning. It produced the most thunder and lightning I've experienced in a long time. Had a few of the really good crashes where you're almost certain it happened right outside the window. In only a couple hours it was over, but managed to drop about 1.75" of rain on us.
Driving around a little bit, there wasn't much damage for the most part - just small/medium tree limbs here and there. A couple entire trees were down, but that may be due to heavy saturation of the ground over the last couple weeks. I'm not sure what made the shelter-house fall down but it's a good thing no one used it to wait out the rain showers.
I realized today that I really need to get some rafts. For the last few years, spring in IA = continuous rain and flooding. Dirt trails are almost completely forfeit for the near future, but water trails? They just get better when it rains and I even found a few small sections of rapids around here. This could work. Something has to - I miss the desert.
Almost over - radar courtesy of wunderground.com and Google.
A new indoor project we're starting soon. Brewing. Oh yes, that just happened. I've wanted to do this for a long time and Corrine just got me a 8 gallon brewing kettle for my birthday. Still need to order some additional supplies and ingredients but we're all set on bottles. I think I've washed/stripped over 150 now. It should be way easier next time around when there are no labels to deal with.
Wow, it's been almost two weeks since the last post. We've mostly just been running and I never intended for this to become a record of fitness training, so I probably won't update every single time we go out unless something interesting happens. We did run nine miles this past Saturday, then five Monday and five today. A break for a couple days and then ten? miles this weekend. I'm starting to notice that our base-fitness has really grown - these five mile runs are easy now and require no planning, just go and run it. It seems so strange thinking back, that at one time, a two mile run was doable but it was a huge obstacle to go over three. Now it takes me at least three miles to get warmed up.
Hoping to get the mountain-bikes out this weekend if the rain holds off. We've got a 50% or greater chance everyday from now through Sunday. I bought a new coil spring for Corrine's fork which hasn't even been used yet so I'm curious how that will work out. It feels pretty nice and I can't believe I didn't fix it before we went to Moab. For some reason Jamis Bikes decided to use the same spring rate across their entire line regardless of the bike size. So they expect a 100lb person buying an XS size and a 300lb person buying XL size to use the exact same spring? Good luck with that. I think the original rate was firm, which was about like having a rigid fork for Corrine even with the pre-load backed out as far as possible. It has the softest rate installed now, shiny.
I did actually stitch some panoramas together. They turned out pretty good for the most part. I usually have a problem with making them way too wide as I'm taking the pictures. For example, the one with a bike on the left side is a 180° turn. Some of these have originals that are over 9000 pixels wide even after cropping. Oh well, I can't help but try to take it all in. Maybe a full-frame camera body would help, running wider lenses. At least then I could pano in portrait orientation and get a result closer to a square aspect ratio. Then I remember I'd have to carry the full-frame body....
Not sure why this is all blotchy, will have to work on it some more.
Back for more punishment, we arrived at Elk Rock to run 8 miles. Yes, 8 miles. I started this one out slightly dehydrated and underfed. I totally bonked by mile 3 -sucked. Eating two Hammer gels helped, but I still probably only ran 5 miles total. Corrine on the other hand ran the whole thing with no problem, even after I drank all the water. Ah well, next time maybe I'll remember that if I brought a builder bar on the drive out, I should eat it.
Lots of horses out today, no doubt more people are around for Tulip Time. The trails have been dry long enough now that the horses are getting them pretty smooth in most places. We also saw lots of bright yellow flowers. I'm not sure what they are. It seems like they are way shorter than some we've seen last year.
Far enough from the trailheads, you can actually find some single track out here. I even saw some mountain-bike tracks.
We spooked a big group of deer that were hiding in a bunch of short trees. They took off smashing through everything in sight. I wonder what happens when a bunch of deer go shooting past a couple of horses.
I took a shortcut back on the all-weather trail while Corrine finished out her mileage. I ran across these very large mushrooms. They did not appear to be of the magic variety. The bigger one is about 8" across the widest part.
I've also got some parade pictures from last night. Only made it to one parade this year but that's alright, night ones are best anyway.
