Olympia, WA - Although it is easy to describe my recent posting pace as sluggish, my beer-specific reports have been downright glacial. I don't know if it is because I have been drinking less (nahhh) or if I just haven't experienced many new beers lately, but this horrible drought ends tonight.
I'm reporting live from the Fishbowl in Olympia tonight, two cask Hodgson's in, and probably no more to go. This is the first time I've seen Hodgson's on cask in ages, so I figured I would partake for two days straight. The Hodgon's translates pretty well to cask, though it does sit on the bitter side of the fence without the floral base to really make it a cask winner. Still, as any good cask, it goes down like water, only more magical.
Also wanted to give a shout out to the spruce and juniper infused Winterfish they had pouring this week. Neither flavor was enough to overpower the beer, instead they mixed in a way that almost made it seem like every other sip was earthy, alternating with a delightful gin overtone. Liked it so much I bought a growler. Three cheers!
Showing posts with label Hodgson's IPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hodgson's IPA. Show all posts
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Another run
Olympia, WA -
After four days off the wagon, I finally went for a run this morning right after I rolled off the couch at 12:30. I guess that's not morning, but coming on the heels of a night where I didn't even fall asleep until 12:30PM, I was willing to count it.
The loop was as usual, down to Eastbay Drive, around past the Farmer's Market, over to Capitol Lake, up the trails to the campus, down Capital Way, over to 4th Ave and back up Oly Street to Puget Street and back home.
This time, though, my pace was everywhere. Having just woken up, I creakily started off at 8 minute pace, including the downhill portion of SF Ave, before heating up once I hit downtown, rolling at nearly 7 flat through the streets and the campus until I hit the wall at East Bay.
Three blocks up Oly and I was ready to quit until I passed a woman in a black VW. She was applying lipstick with the aid of her rearview mirror to the sound of Jay-Z in a car that had seen more miles and cosmetic damage than even she. It was then that I knew I couldn't walk. So I pushed on, 8:40 pace and all, back to the house, hunched over on the back porch, wiped sweat onto my t-shirt, unlaced my shoes, drank some water and hit the showers with a banana and the remainder of last night's guava kombucha.
God, I remember the days when I only felt like that on every fifth twenty miler.
Old age, it is no joke. It is the truth.
Beers drunk so far
Hodgson's IPA
Fish Old Woody
PBR
After four days off the wagon, I finally went for a run this morning right after I rolled off the couch at 12:30. I guess that's not morning, but coming on the heels of a night where I didn't even fall asleep until 12:30PM, I was willing to count it.
The loop was as usual, down to Eastbay Drive, around past the Farmer's Market, over to Capitol Lake, up the trails to the campus, down Capital Way, over to 4th Ave and back up Oly Street to Puget Street and back home.
This time, though, my pace was everywhere. Having just woken up, I creakily started off at 8 minute pace, including the downhill portion of SF Ave, before heating up once I hit downtown, rolling at nearly 7 flat through the streets and the campus until I hit the wall at East Bay.
Three blocks up Oly and I was ready to quit until I passed a woman in a black VW. She was applying lipstick with the aid of her rearview mirror to the sound of Jay-Z in a car that had seen more miles and cosmetic damage than even she. It was then that I knew I couldn't walk. So I pushed on, 8:40 pace and all, back to the house, hunched over on the back porch, wiped sweat onto my t-shirt, unlaced my shoes, drank some water and hit the showers with a banana and the remainder of last night's guava kombucha.
God, I remember the days when I only felt like that on every fifth twenty miler.
Old age, it is no joke. It is the truth.
Beers drunk so far
Hodgson's IPA
Fish Old Woody
PBR
Friday, January 9, 2009
First Mile
Olympia, WA -
Ever impatient, I decided on a whim this afternoon to set up a baseline for my attempt to once again break five minutes in the mile, and mark how long it takes me to do it.
Three blocks into an afternoon run that was prompted by equal parts ennui and ambition, I turned around to grab my watch and head over to Reeves Middle School for a this-is-how-far-I've-come time trial that I can look back on in the spring and laugh at, and possibly feel a sliver of pride.
I arrived at the track after a mile plus warm up, did a few strides and attempted to psyche myself up for my first race-like behavior in two months, and my first one miler since 2007.
Mostly, I just wanted to be able to say that I didn't give up at 800m and start jogging the rest of the way.
Turns out, that was easier said than done.
I honestly had no basis for my current race fitness, but estimated (and told at least a dozen people in an e-mail) that I could run a 5:40 while hoping I could surprise myself with a 5:34 and worrying that I wouldn't even be able to break six.
The plan of attack, after a couple minutes of internal debate between busting out gung-ho style with an :80 or pushing for even-to-negative with an :85, was to go for the :85, which I almost did.
After an opening :40, I came through in :83 for the first quarter, and by the 500m mark I knew I had no prayer at a 5:40. It was then that, not only did running sub-6 pace become really fucking hard, but I also saw a crisp dollar bill in lane three and I developed the urge to stop and pick it up.
Lap two was an :88.
Lap three, no surprise, was a :92. I was running 6:10 pace and feeling that old third lap feeling, which is a mixture of helplessness, dread, frustration and despair. I knew I could close with at least a 20 for my last hundred, but what would precede that?
I rolled through my penultimate 200m in :45, all but assuring me a sub-6 performance, but I would need to drop it down to 5 flat pace to break 5:50, which, this late into the race, was nothing but icing.
Turns out I pushed through that grueling final half lap in :40, good enough for a 5:51.88.
Ladies and gentlemen, a baseline.
Guarantee I break 5:40 next week. Guar-an-fucking-tee.
BTB
Beers drunk so far
Leavenworth Hodgon's IPA
Fish Tale Old Woody (on cask)
Ever impatient, I decided on a whim this afternoon to set up a baseline for my attempt to once again break five minutes in the mile, and mark how long it takes me to do it.
Three blocks into an afternoon run that was prompted by equal parts ennui and ambition, I turned around to grab my watch and head over to Reeves Middle School for a this-is-how-far-I've-come time trial that I can look back on in the spring and laugh at, and possibly feel a sliver of pride.
I arrived at the track after a mile plus warm up, did a few strides and attempted to psyche myself up for my first race-like behavior in two months, and my first one miler since 2007.
Mostly, I just wanted to be able to say that I didn't give up at 800m and start jogging the rest of the way.
Turns out, that was easier said than done.
I honestly had no basis for my current race fitness, but estimated (and told at least a dozen people in an e-mail) that I could run a 5:40 while hoping I could surprise myself with a 5:34 and worrying that I wouldn't even be able to break six.
The plan of attack, after a couple minutes of internal debate between busting out gung-ho style with an :80 or pushing for even-to-negative with an :85, was to go for the :85, which I almost did.
After an opening :40, I came through in :83 for the first quarter, and by the 500m mark I knew I had no prayer at a 5:40. It was then that, not only did running sub-6 pace become really fucking hard, but I also saw a crisp dollar bill in lane three and I developed the urge to stop and pick it up.
Lap two was an :88.
Lap three, no surprise, was a :92. I was running 6:10 pace and feeling that old third lap feeling, which is a mixture of helplessness, dread, frustration and despair. I knew I could close with at least a 20 for my last hundred, but what would precede that?
I rolled through my penultimate 200m in :45, all but assuring me a sub-6 performance, but I would need to drop it down to 5 flat pace to break 5:50, which, this late into the race, was nothing but icing.
Turns out I pushed through that grueling final half lap in :40, good enough for a 5:51.88.
Ladies and gentlemen, a baseline.
Guarantee I break 5:40 next week. Guar-an-fucking-tee.
BTB
Beers drunk so far
Leavenworth Hodgon's IPA
Fish Tale Old Woody (on cask)
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Blogging
Olympia, WA -
Dare I say it? The B-word? Well, I guess it beats the C-word.
Keeping up with the new blog has been more difficult than I anticipated. Not having internet at home has certainly added to the roadblock, but coming off of eleven months of five posts a day, even if they were straight talk, and a false memory of a motormouth back at 3Q, the stagnation of BTB.com has been a bit perplexing for me.
The lack of political movement, Lord knows I have zero desire to dish the pre-inauguration scuttlebutt, plays a role, I'm sure, but I've also been stonewalled by normal communication.
An article in Slate from yesterday regarding the whereabouts of those Democrats for McCain reminded me of how fortunate pro reporters are for having the ability to follow up on stories from months back, and the authority to seek various movers-and-shakers for quotes.
But it also made me wonder if there were any Dems for J-Mac who renounced their decision after the Palin choice, or at least after the Kouric interview. I mean, seriously. I think if I ever gain some sort of notoriety, I will do just that - endorse the candidate I oppose, and then renounce said endorsement upon their selection of a running mate. Of course I would only do this if my "preferred" candidate was Milquetoast, but that still doesn't change the fact that I think it is a brilliant idea. Takers?
It also added to my recent Proustian turn in remembrance of things past. Running, blogging, cooking, loving, growing a beard, spending time with friends from college. None of these have been part of my life in the last year, and why not?
2009 is proving a fertile breeding ground for finding the old things that worked, and trying to shape them with respect to the future, and it was an eagle that clinched it. Two of them, actually.
Driving home from Tacoma today, where shit was ghetto as fuck as I sat in the Blackwater coffee shop and moseyed up to the TSD building to seek answers for my potentially temporary career as a substitute teacher, I saw two bald eagles perched on nearly consecutive trees overlooking the Nisqually Delta immediately adjacent to Interstate 5, whose southbound lanes were expected to be ten feet below the Chehalis River some thirty miles south.
The flooded out combination of shallow water fish and varmints running for cover must be a veritable goldmine for eagles, and I see why. Never having seen the damage firsthand, I have always romanticized floods, the beauty of water on land and swollen chocolate milk rivers conjure up visions of bounty and nature's dominance, even as they are nothing but farm killers and land rapists whose ears who no safe word.
Still I welcome the sight.
Even downtown Olympia wasn't safe. News reports stated that the city was worried about the tenability of Capitol Lake, a fact I was not aware of when I ran today, choosing to go backwards from my normal route by running up Capital Way and down the trails instead of the usual vice versa, where I found sand bags and man-made buffers everywhere as the water lapped at the cement borders that I run along in place of the trail. Usually these borders sit between three and eight feet above the water line, but today I worried about salt water on my shoes.
Alas, there was no damage, and I merely treated the buffers as hurdles, awkwardly leaping over the black tarp coverings en route back to the elevated safety of the Eastside.
Then, after a dinner of bison fettuccine and a decidedly shitty, if cheap, Barefoot Zinfandel, I spend 45 minutes reading The Education of Little Tree to a soundtrack of bluegrass on KAOS, before folding some laundry and heading into town to get some internet and hear the jovial tin of other people talking, even if they aren't talking to me.
Its the little things.
But for now, as I forgo any proofreading of this post and regret my lack of cover letter writing for the night, I feel it is time to close up shop and live like I used to even before I became the guy constantly at the bar with his computer. Can I even remember that life?
If the beard, the footsteps and the recipes can come back after a few repetitions, I guess I am willing to believe anything.
Ahoy,
BTB
Beers drunk so far tonight
Rogue Santa's Private Reserve
Leavenworth Hodgson's IPA
Dare I say it? The B-word? Well, I guess it beats the C-word.
Keeping up with the new blog has been more difficult than I anticipated. Not having internet at home has certainly added to the roadblock, but coming off of eleven months of five posts a day, even if they were straight talk, and a false memory of a motormouth back at 3Q, the stagnation of BTB.com has been a bit perplexing for me.
The lack of political movement, Lord knows I have zero desire to dish the pre-inauguration scuttlebutt, plays a role, I'm sure, but I've also been stonewalled by normal communication.
An article in Slate from yesterday regarding the whereabouts of those Democrats for McCain reminded me of how fortunate pro reporters are for having the ability to follow up on stories from months back, and the authority to seek various movers-and-shakers for quotes.
But it also made me wonder if there were any Dems for J-Mac who renounced their decision after the Palin choice, or at least after the Kouric interview. I mean, seriously. I think if I ever gain some sort of notoriety, I will do just that - endorse the candidate I oppose, and then renounce said endorsement upon their selection of a running mate. Of course I would only do this if my "preferred" candidate was Milquetoast, but that still doesn't change the fact that I think it is a brilliant idea. Takers?
It also added to my recent Proustian turn in remembrance of things past. Running, blogging, cooking, loving, growing a beard, spending time with friends from college. None of these have been part of my life in the last year, and why not?
2009 is proving a fertile breeding ground for finding the old things that worked, and trying to shape them with respect to the future, and it was an eagle that clinched it. Two of them, actually.
Driving home from Tacoma today, where shit was ghetto as fuck as I sat in the Blackwater coffee shop and moseyed up to the TSD building to seek answers for my potentially temporary career as a substitute teacher, I saw two bald eagles perched on nearly consecutive trees overlooking the Nisqually Delta immediately adjacent to Interstate 5, whose southbound lanes were expected to be ten feet below the Chehalis River some thirty miles south.
The flooded out combination of shallow water fish and varmints running for cover must be a veritable goldmine for eagles, and I see why. Never having seen the damage firsthand, I have always romanticized floods, the beauty of water on land and swollen chocolate milk rivers conjure up visions of bounty and nature's dominance, even as they are nothing but farm killers and land rapists whose ears who no safe word.
Still I welcome the sight.
Even downtown Olympia wasn't safe. News reports stated that the city was worried about the tenability of Capitol Lake, a fact I was not aware of when I ran today, choosing to go backwards from my normal route by running up Capital Way and down the trails instead of the usual vice versa, where I found sand bags and man-made buffers everywhere as the water lapped at the cement borders that I run along in place of the trail. Usually these borders sit between three and eight feet above the water line, but today I worried about salt water on my shoes.
Alas, there was no damage, and I merely treated the buffers as hurdles, awkwardly leaping over the black tarp coverings en route back to the elevated safety of the Eastside.
Then, after a dinner of bison fettuccine and a decidedly shitty, if cheap, Barefoot Zinfandel, I spend 45 minutes reading The Education of Little Tree to a soundtrack of bluegrass on KAOS, before folding some laundry and heading into town to get some internet and hear the jovial tin of other people talking, even if they aren't talking to me.
Its the little things.
But for now, as I forgo any proofreading of this post and regret my lack of cover letter writing for the night, I feel it is time to close up shop and live like I used to even before I became the guy constantly at the bar with his computer. Can I even remember that life?
If the beard, the footsteps and the recipes can come back after a few repetitions, I guess I am willing to believe anything.
Ahoy,
BTB
Beers drunk so far tonight
Rogue Santa's Private Reserve
Leavenworth Hodgson's IPA
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