beers 256, 257, & 258

Beer 256 was the Wilson IPA from Mr. Grumpy Pants, aka the Ourayle House.  One of my favorite breweries in Colorado.

Beer 257 was the Durango Wheat from Durango Brewing.

I think I tried about 1,000 new beers at Telluride Blues & Brews.  Such a fantastic time!  I'll get a post up about the music one of these days.

Beer 258 was one I almost missed, due to my truck being totaled and my sister being in the hospital.  But late in the evening I was able to sneak out to our porch for some quite time with a can of Valkyrie Double IPA from Southern Star Brewing in Conroe, TX.

I've run a half hour on back to back days now.  The comeback begins...

beer 254 & 255

254 was the Pumpkin Patch Ale from Eddyline, one of several breweries we stopped at on our way to Salida.  Took us six hours to go 100 miles from the Springs to Moonlight.

255 was during a stop for lunch in Montrose.  Colorado Boy has a pizza joint there now.  Which is great, since the Colorado Boy in Ridgeway never seems to be open whenever we drive through there.

Now a one car family!

I'm in the market for a new vehicle.

Neither $100 nor I were in the truck when this happened.  My sister had borrowed the truck and took a different way home from Telluride, ended up spinning out on some gravel on HWY 24 near Lake George and rolling a few times.  She and her boyfriend are fine.  I can't believe they lived, these pics don't do any justice to show how fucked up the truck was.

Vote for Hollydog!

My dog is jealous of all my recent media coverage.  She wants to be in the MHWR calendar.  If you have a buck to spare, vote for her here.

beer 253

Got the hook up from Wiley.  The Whip In, one of my old Austin hangouts, only brewed 14 cases of the stuff.  Tasted like wine to me, like something expensive you'd get at Trinity.

So to get some beer flavored beer, and to kick off Telluride weekend a bit early, we headed down to the Lounge.

beer 251 & 252

Rolling along on the beer challenge.  251 was the Hop Rush IPA from Four Horsemen Brewing Company.  Like everything else in South Bend, big expectations but fell short.  252 was a liquid lunch at local Phantom Canyon Brewing, the Workin' Man Blues Dortmunder Lager.  Worth trying.

Get a Texas shipment on Wednesday night.  Then it's off to Salida on Thursday, then Telluride on Friday.  Will have no issues trying new beers for the foreseeable future.

Weird clouds on Pikes Tuesday morning.

A side project of mine at work is trying to improve public transportation for our village.  That is going to take a while.  But I got to speak to city council about it on Tuesday.  A shot of me and two other transit supporters before the meeting:

Gazette (again)

Article on the 365 beer project over here.

Christian Murdock took this pic.  And he was just as drunk as any of us when he took it.  He named this photo, "jt and two slow runners."

Monarch Crest

Finally got my ass up to ride the Monarch Crest trail, something I've wanted to do for almost a decade now.  And even with how much I've built up the ride in my mind, it was so much better than I thought it would be.  Anyone, whether or not you ride a mountain bike, who isn't afraid of a hard four hour workout should do this.  I'm still a novice at the technical stuff, so I had to pay attention, but it wasn't super difficult.

The route I took was 33 miles and took me four hours.  I could probably take an hour off that since I had to stop and check the map quite a bit and also kept the watch running while I sat down on the continental divide to enjoy a brew.

The Vapor Trail 125 was going on, and I saw some of those guys as the final 40 miles of the race include the Monarch Crest trail.  Fucking animals.

As an added bonus, the trail ends at Elevation Beer Company!  They make beer there!  Hooray beer!

$100 and the dog used those four hours to explore the area.  She took a nice pic of my pooch.  Completely coincidental that the dog hasn't bit anyone since Colorado legalized weed.

beer 249 & 250

Went down to Front Range on Saturday night to catch the Blue Ribbon Healers.  Had me yet another pumpkin beer, Night Owl Pumpkin Ale from Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle.  Good stuff, though to stay in tune with the band I switched to PBR for the remainder of the night.

We were in the area so of course we stopped in at one of my favorite Colorado breweries, Elevation Beer Company.  They had a new beer on tap, the Fanboy Oak Aged Double IPA, so I tried it.  Decent, but I still had to have a few pints of First Cast IPA before leaving.

Shot from the Healers show on Sat night:

beer 246, 247, & 248

Still plugging away at the brews.  246 was a solid IPA from Marble Brewing down in blue meth country.  247 was a decent Farmhouse Red from local-ish Hall Brewing Company, the most famous thing to come out of Parker since Wyatt.  And then last night I dug into my Texas bag for the Ost Porter from Rogness Brewing Company in Pflugerville.  Good, but I was pretty drunk after hanging out at Red Leg to watch Pitt kick the crap out of Boston College.

Ran into Fixie Dave at Red Leg last night.

Slowly getting back into the whole exercise thing.  Running before work again, and biking to and from work.  As a test, I went and ran the Nielsen Challenge this morning.  5:59 first mile, then brought it home with a 6:15.  My watch had the course at 2.03 miles and my total time at 12:24.  Forgot all about that kind of pain as I've only been doing LSD stuff since January.  I've been over a minute faster on this course, and the "race" perfectly reflects where I am right now in terms of fitness and motivation.  I'll continue goofing off until Telluride Blues & Brews is over, then I'll sit down and figure out what I'm going to do next...

beer 245

Thanks to the friends group, this is as close to the Incline as I'll get for a while.  Super hoppy, real good, but a bit steep at $8 a can.  If I'm at Pikes Peak Brewing I'll stick to the Elephant Rock IPA.

handlebars

I have recently put my Tour de France dreams on hold as I put some Jones bars on the Surly.  Never felt comfortable with the original drop bars, which frequently caused lower back pain and trouble stopping for me.  So far the Jones bars have been just what I was looking for in terms of comfort and better access to the brake levers, but I've only been riding to work and pubs lately.  We'll see how they fare when I head out for a longer ride at the upcoming Bikes & Brews.

Note: just kidding about giving up on the TdF.  I've seen pics of folks who have aero-bars mounted to these, so I'd still be able to achieve high speeds when trying to get to happy hour or training to kick the crap out of all those drug infused foreign riders.

beer 244

Tues AM - Five mile road run in the Garden; PM - Easy hour on the mountain bike in Red Rock Canyon.

Wed AM - Five miles on the Garden roads.

You know you're having a bad day when you get this in your inbox:

beer 243

Ichabod Pumpkin Ale from New Holland Brewing.  Now on tap at Front Range BBQ.

Sunday was the Bristol Bike Pub Crawl celebrating twenty years of Bristol Brewing.  We started at the Pioneers Museum and headed to the four original Bristol accounts - Poor Richard's, Jose Muldoon's, Old Chicago, and the Ritz.  Tons of fun as we drank and rode bikes up and down Tejon Street.  Some of the highlights (some of these stolen from FB):

Just in case I wasn't drunk enough after all this, I headed over to Front Range for some tunes.  Love their regular Sunday evening band, Blue Frog, due to all the Dead and Phish covers, but tonight they had Grant Sabin sitting in with them.  Yes!

And just in case I hadn't had enough beer to drink, I closed down the Lounge.  Pretty sure there was some permanent damage to my liver after Sunday.

beer 242

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Having trouble remembering which day was which over the weekend, it was such a great time.

On Saturday $100 and I got up early and rode our bikes down to Buses At The Brewery, an annual showcase of vehicles you can live in down at Bristol Brewery.  Obviously Mass Transit was the main choice of brew, but I also had a pint of the seasonal Red Baron Octoberfest.

Some awesome vehicles at the show, but I'm still not sold on the idea of having one of these old vans.  Seems like most folks who own one of these spend more time working on them than driving them.

After Bristol we headed downtown for the Nickel Creek show.  Loves me some NC, but as an added bonus we got to see Nederland's own Elephant Revival open.  My first time seeing those guys, and they didn't disappoint.  As they were leaving the stage they mentioned they'd be back in town during the Christmas break.  Boom!

I've seen Nickel Creek quite a few times, including once at a record store in Austin, but this was definitely the best show I've seen them put on.  So glad they came to the Springs again.  And for once our village got a decent show that wasn't on a school night!

Gazette

For the second time in my life I was in a front page article in our local rag this morning.  Read it here.  Warning: it involves real life and some of the bad issues of alcohol not normally seen on this blog. 

For those who know where I live, the bridge this guy lives under is very close to my house.  The pizza joint mentioned is next to the Red Rock Lounge.