Watching it rain...

A combination of slowly-dissipating lethargy and bad weather has been keeping me inside recently. Which has been bad for my ever-increasing waistline but good for my brewing - I get bored easily so need to keep doing things to keep myself busy, and beer is a gift that keeps on giving.

Last week I made a strong wheat beer, and after bottling off a few bottles this weekend to see what it would be like 'neat' I added a gallon of watermelon juice to the secondary.

How do you get a gallon of watermelon juice? With a blender, a sieve and lots of watermelon of course...fortunately sold over here at 69 cents per kg for seedless...


It does lead to a bit of a messy kitchen
but mopping it all up gives me something to do for the rest of the day. And of course is something that I feel is essential and not something I'm made to do because I made a mess. Honest.

What's the point? Well I'm hoping that the watermelon will add a fruity depth of flavour to the beer. Plus of course dumping a load more sugar gives the yeast something else to munch on, which will produce a stronger brew.

Unfortunately the temperatures up here are a bit high for good fermentation. Too high a temperature can lead to over-active yeast and the production of different types of alcohol molecule which can add strong flavours to the beer. So I have to use evaporative cooling (also known as 'a damp towel') to keep the beer as cool as possible. It's not ideal, but there's not much else I can do as installing aircon is a bit over the top for the garage. I'd want to put it in the flat first.

I also made an IPA a couple of weeks ago with so much hops in it that it wouldn't pass through the siphon tube. I've bottled about a quarter of this but you can see the three remaining demijohns awaiting bottling under the table. Not sure if I went over the top on this one - it tasted overly resiny during the bottling, so I think I'll need to let it sit for a few months to allow the hops to mellow out. That will also give me time to empty a few of my existing bottles...

Let's hope the rain keeps up.

Summer storms

Summer means storms in Queensland, and this summer looks to be a good one for bad weather. Today golf-ball sized hail stones fell across parts of SE Qld, and this is just the start of the season.
It also leads to some spectacular clouds
A zoom lens can lead to some great pictures
and a sunset setting on your camera accentuates the reds

I think this setting should be called 'sunset / post-apocalyptic', and marketed at people wanting to illustrate stories of the rapture.

Hug my fat sweaty body!!!

It's been incredibly wet over the last few weeks and I think that's dampened everyones spirits. The sun came out yesterday and Brisbane hit 30 degrees for the first time since April - it's been the coldest spring for a very long time. But now the clouds have come again, and in the tropics a cloudy sky just means more humidity. It may only be 28 degrees but that is everywhere - in the open, in the shade, in the flat, in bed. And the humidity is up at 70 - 80%, so it's like living in a sauna but without the Finnish chicks beating you with birch branches. With no air conditioning we have fans running constantly and shower three or four times a day to keep cool. It's not as bad as it will be though, because I'm still turning on the hot tap a little. In the middle of summer you only use the cold tap, and you let it run a little while first to let the warmed-up water in the pipes clear.

Sorry anyone in the UK reading this, I hope you're staying warm as best you can!

Lethargy

I've been very lethargic recently and it's been hard (read impossible) to drag myself out to do any exercise. Not sure if it's due to the very busy last few weeks, a bit of a bug, seasonal fluctuations, something completely random & unexplained like biorhythms or moon phase or a combination of the above.

Whatever the cause it's lead to a lot of sitting around reading books & watching TV. In some ways it's a release - it's nice to give up all pretences of a healthy lifestyle and revel in crappy television, fried foods & chocolate. I have a reasonable base fitness and I've never been that fit anyway so I know that however slovenly I get it won't take long to get back to my peak, such as it is, and so I can just sit back and enjoy the gradual decline. Most of my cycling friends would be shocked to hear an attitude like that - no matter how fit they are there's always another level to reach, another peak to aspire to, and that seems to be able to drive them to get up early, ride hard and suffer the consequent aches, breaks & pains. Sometimes I envy that driven approach to life, it would make things so much simpler.

I also have some friends who are recovering from illness & injury. They've been off bikes for a few months each and are both hanging out to ride, so sometimes I feel a little guilty admiring at the bikes in the garage and then wandering back upstairs. Maybe you need something to be taken away before you really want it, or maybe I'm just a lazy bugger.

Family

Been a bit quiet recently because my parents have been out to visit from the UK. It's always good when people copme to stay because you get to see the same old sites with fresh eyes.

We toured Brisbane on the the city cycles

Checked out some of the wildlife in the local fishponds

Visited the rainforest at Mt Tamborine

including its slightly unnerving 'Skywalk'

Took a trip out to Tangalooma, a resort on Moreton Island where you can feed wild dolphins,

go on boat tours,

snorkel the wrecks (not the remains of previous boat tours, but deliberately sunk to provide calmer water for boats to moor)

or just hang out, enjoy the sunsets & meet the locals
(this is a highly poisonous lionfish - pic taken in an open-topped aqaurium with a long zoom)

We also took a trip up to the heritage centre in Caboolture, which has over 70 traditional old Queenlsand building preserved for you to wander around

As well as some slightly bizarre collections such as vintage radios

antique chainsaws

and generators

Add visits to the Sunshine Coast, navigationally challenged bushwalks arond Mt Gravatt, various pubs & restaraunts, river cruises, walks and the odd cleansing ale at home and it turned out to be a busy week!

Thanks for coming over guys, and I'll see you again soon.

The race that stops a nation

Today is the first Tuesday in November and as such is Melbourne Cup day - the day of the most prestigious & best loved horse race in Australia. It's particularly loved by Victorians, who get a day off on Cup day! But it's a national institution and the rest of the nation also gets to take part. All over Australia there are Melbourne Cup parties, race courses nationwide will be filled to brimming with people watching the race on big screens and most offices will organise some kind of event along with several sweepstakes.

Our office has a 'luncheon' where we all bring in something to eat, project the race up on the wall and of course we all need to wear hats.

The race itself is on a flat course 2 miles long so after all the hype it's over in just a few minutes. And then it's just a case of handing out the winnings. Liz scored big this year, drawing the winning horse on the $5 sweep and the second place horse on the $2. I just about made my money back with a 3rd on the $2 sweep. Never mind, there's always next year...

Singlespeed Worlds day 6 - Shuttles

After the excitement of raceday we decided to take advantage of the shuttles that were available to explore some more of the higher-up trails. Shuttles use the same idea as a ski-lift - you get a lift up the mountain so you can enjoy coming down it. The only difference is that instead of a ski-lift or gondola you use a tightly packed minibus with a trailer

After 20 minutes or so of climbing the shuttle pulls into a clearing
There is an explosion of cyclists grabbing bikes, looking at maps, planning their next moves and nipping into the bushes before they start
and then they all disperse down the named, marked & graded trails leaving the clearing as peaceful as before Well, until the next one arrives

On our first run I found out that I was as unfit for riding down hills as I was for riding up them. It didn't take long before my calves were burning as I stood on the pedals and my forearms were pumping as I death-gripped the bars and attempted to manouvre myself around every obstacle on the trail. That's not how it works - like all sports you need to relax & stay loose, focus further ahead, let the bike do the work and look to where you want to go not where you're trying to avoid. I'm still not very good at this but found myself chanting almost a mantra to myself to relax and enjoy it.

This worked well until our third run. I think I might have been getting tired & careless, or maybe I was just having too much flow. I bounced smooth-ishly down a rutted descent and totally failed to make the corner below, my mantra disturbed by an internal cry of 'tree!'. The bars hit the tree and over I went, sprawled out on the trail still clipped in and sliding. It was then that I realised another great point about riding in Rotorua - the pine needles form a soft springy rock-free surface that doesn't hurt too much when you land on it. I've had much smaller crashes in Queenland that have lead to stones being tweezered out of my elbows by casualty staff.

We carried on riding and found a fine trail called 'Split Enz'. This is a fine flowing trail that is reputedly swept by the original trailmaker every day. It runs along the top of a ridge with some beautiful vistas over the forests

Unfortunately forest plantations mean forestation, and when the trees are harvested it doesn't look so pretty
Looking at that it makes you wonder about the thought processes behind the anti-mountain bike brigade that declare that a single mountain bike trail can ruin a forest.
The sad news is that some of the classic trails that we rode earlier in the week are due for the same treatment. But I guess that's part of the deal, and better this than the Australian model of logging thousand year old native forest for paper pulp.
By the time we got back to the motel we were all pretty exhausted so we quickly headed out to one of Rotoruas best cafes, the Fat Dog
The only problem was that the burgers weren't big enoughso that night we had to have a barbecue - for protein-rich recovery purposes only of course...

Thank you to everyone who went to Rotorua with me - it was an awesome holiday.

Singlespeed Worlds Day 5 - The Race

Race day dawned and it was apparent that some amongst us had peaked too early The apartment was also starting to showsigns of distressThose of us that were racing got our stuff together and prepared to head off. As you might have guessed by now, the SS worlds are not like your average bike race. For a start there's a fancy dress component. Cam put together a great ensemble

That turned heads on the way to the start
I dislike fancy dress like I dislike kareoke so hadn't worried about getting a costume together - if anyone asked I was planning to say I was dressed as a fat unfit bloke in a bike race. But I hadn't realised just how many of the 1000+ people in the race felt differently


The race was started witha yachting theme - we rode around in a tight circle for around 5 minutes until a buzzer blew and the start gate was opened. So those nearest the gate got a good start, those at the end had more work to do. This was a fun idea in theory, but in reality it meant that the fast & slow racers were bunched together getting in each others way. I'm not interested in a podium in a race like this, but get very self conscious when there are people who are stuck behind me. Not that it mattered, because we hit the first hill and everyone jumped off and walked

On the other side of this climb was a steep-ish rutted descent which turned into carnage. Less experienced riders would be riding down the racing line at a safe-ish pace whilst those in search of podiums hurtled past on the outside bouncing off passers-by and undergrowth. I saw a few nasty over-the-bars when things went wrong.
But soon we were spread out and in the singletrack. And then we'd bunch together again. It was a frustrating 15 minutes or so as there was no chance to get any flow in the your riding - you were constantly stopping & walking the bike both up and down. Some would say that's just a by-product of trying to fit 1000 people into one piece of singletrack but I think it was because we were riding with a bunch of muppets
Soon we hit the first beer-shortcut - the idea is that you can take a shorter section of track if you scull a beer on the way
I think these guys had the option of the beer shortcut by default, but seemed happy for a cold one on the way past

After this there was some serious riding to do, so I put the camera away and after another tiring hour or so I made my over the finish line on my first lap just a few minutes after the leaders. Ok, the leaders had finished their second lap at that point but that's just semantics.
We got to watch some of the other riders come in including Heather Logie, the winner of the womens race

and the disco-guy, who was riding with speakers on his forks blaring out disco. That's a real disco ball on his helmet
I'd had enough after one lap, so pulled the plug and just kicked back enjoying the atmosphere

We got back to the motel and the owner (also a mountain biker) had got into the spirit of thingsIt was one of the oddest races I've ever been in. Lots of fun and although the sheer wackiness felt over-the-top at first, after a while it started to somehow make sense. And the weather was cracking - so good that I'm still being scolded about my sun-burn one week later.....