The last harvest

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We had a long weekend up north with our family.

This year I've been trying to grow vegs as late into the fall as possible. I made it all the way to december 1st with carrots, lettuce, beets, and peas. Today at lunch I ate the last of the homegrown lettuce, and I've been waiting for the ground to thaw to dig up the last of the potatoes. BTW, don't be a slacker and dig up your root vegetables before the ground freezes solid. Today it was warm enough so I dug these all up. Sweet.


-40.

Go Vote Tomorrow!

Happy Halloween

I just want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. And I want to assure everyone that I did not do anything to any pumpkin!

Changing seasons, Ramhadab V etc.

Ah...Fall is finally here... though it seems late to me. I thought it used to be alot colder by halloween, but I could be wrong. The maples have gone through their thing, peaking about a week ago, then dropping this past week.


Along with colder temperatures and the foliage, one clear sign of Fall around here is the emergence of douche-baggy dumping. I'm not talking about a Bud bottle or dunkin donuts cup here or there... This is the time when the real Dickheads come out in force. The dump stickers expire in October, and they give you a week or two at the transfer station for a grace period before you have to buy a new $ticker. This year I guess quite a few folks couldn't, or wouldn't, afford the sticker. Around mid month there was a brand new slew of illegal dumping around here. The used tires were too many to count, and up at the pond where dozens of people walk their dog every day, someone decided to dump a week's worth of trash for 2 weeks. here are four bags of trashbags strewn about in the woods. Makes you want to find out who dumped it, and dump it on their front porch or the hood of their mercedes. But I didn't.

Next up if one of my favorites, Oil Filters. Yup, this is about a dozen used filters dumped up the road at the next pond. About, Oh, six feet from the pond. I found these about a week of moderate rain. Ah.. the oily sheen on the surface of the pond was beautiful

The potatoes are all done for the year. Here is BBW and snoopy digging up some gems from the ground. I got to say, its almost as much fun after a few beers as clamming. Almost. If you have some room (like, 4 square feet will do), plant a potato or two.. its fantastic.


RAMHADAB Vol 5 was last weekend. Unfortunately my camera battery went dead on friday night so I missed taking any good pix, tho I think CTLP did. This is the only pic I took, of the pre-weekend shopping trip. Good times, You get the point:
Hopefully CTLP can post a few of the better pix.

$700 billion

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a house.....
Ok, this isn't going to be a praise to Bare Naked Ladies. I know you all want to just have a discussion on how great they are.

But if I had 700 billion dollars, I'd buy everyone a house....
Ok, this isn't going to be how good or bad the bailout is, even though the exec of AIG took a $400K spa trip after they got money from the feds. Hey, I would celebrate too. Or how NASCAR got a $120 million tax break.

But it looks like something good may have came out of the bailout. I'm not sure how good it is. I've never been good at interpreting these things. Or how easy or what to do to collect this. So anyway, here's a couple links. #1 and #2. It sounds like to me that you can get $20 a month for bike maintenance, tax free, for commuting to work from your employer. It sounds to me that it's only if the employer wants to give it to you. So it's a fringe benefit from work, if they want to give it to you, but it would be tax free. So I guess that's the big bonus, you can get $240 tax free a year. That's how I interpret it.

If I only drove a car in circles for hours, instead of riding a bike to work, then I would get millions of dollars. It is a good thing though, it's a step to maybe getting more people riding their bikes more.

See you at the NEMBA Fun Ride Sunday!

BYOB Bitches!

MOAB defeated and a beer review

Wow.. they did it. Not much to say about it online, but over a nice brew I would love to discuss today. btw, I didn't make up MOAB, i read it online a week ago or so, and thought it was perfect description since it was the same MLA(multi letter acronym) to describe the Mother Of All Bombs, another ridiculous device used in Iraq.

So, on the way home from work I picked up a new favorite brew... Magic Hat seasonal, Jinx. Holy crap, if you haven't tried this one please do. Pick one up immediately. Along the lines of Long Trail Double Bag, but a little more flavor and about the same @sskick of high % alcohol. Hmmmm Mmmm perfect. Who knows, if the economy really tanks like they're saying on the news, this could be the last expensive six pack I can afford for awhile....

In some more cheery news, today I scored big at work, I got the sole collection rights to all our coffee grounds. Coffee grounds make ridiculously good compost for the garden.

-40

New Look for Pandapas, and the MOAB (mother of all bailouts)

Whew... crazy stuff is going on in the world. Major banks are failing, the gov't is now the owner of 1/2 the country's mortgages through Freddie and Fannie, the talking head politicians are still going strong with their campaign messages... etc. Things are so nutty the treasury secretary kneeled before the speaker of the house to beg for a bailout (anyone else find it odd that the Secretary of the Treasury is the ex CEO of Goldman Sachs... one of the banks that will benefit from the bailout?). So, instead of fixing problems that caused the economic mess (median income falling below the median home price, and lending ridiculous amounts of money to people who can't afford it), the govt is just doing the same thing, borrowing money they can't hope to pay back to dump down an unsustainable black hole of debt feeding the cancerous suburban sprawl. Reality always wins in the end unfortunately... the world is running out of oil to feed anymore suburban buildout, and in a country without any real industry left (50% of our GDP is fed from military spending, everything is made in china, etc), we're in for fall from superpower status. If the sh*t that's going on down south post hurricane over lines at gas stations is any indication, all the gun toting Joe Six Pack in this country isn't going to take all this lightly. Watching those morons bitch and moan on CNN over not having gas and ice for a couple weeks is enough to dash any hopes I had that the US will pull out of this mess peacefully.

Anyhow, out here things are still moving along. We're finished the majority of the harvest from the garden. No more tomatos, beans or cucumbers, we're back to the tastless store bought crap. The potatos are still in the ground, and we've picked about 1/2 the butternut squash (37 pounds so far from 2 plants... kickass). I've planted more cold-weather stuff in pots on the deck. Peas, carrots, beans, beets, lettuce. Hopefully I can get more out of that before the icy weather sets in.

Check out the butternut squash plants back in august:

I put in a second raised bed in the front yard.. filled it with homemade compost.. check out this stuff... Black Gold:

Now where the two raised beds are i'm hoping to build a super rednecky greenhouse so we can start plants even earlier in the spring. next year we're hoping to have a much larger and productive garden.

I've finished the 2nd to last ibucket for the FlatTires, just one more to go for Kaptain Krunch. In other news, mark your calendar for next weekend, Oct5th, RINEMBA funride, then for the weekend of oct 18th, the 5th annual RAMHADAB!!

Time to head to the dump with Flattires, then I'm going surfing. Yeee Ha. -40.

Cinqo de Bike-O Non-Post

The bike weekend would traditionally been a couple weekends ago. Labor day weekend, or thereabout, is usually the last summer event. It started five years ago as a Serious Bike Ride, after which the clan and other folks consumed a keg of glorious Long Trail. The weekend was perfect, and every year only better from. Year Deuce saw the emergence of fireworks, disc golf, pseudo-nude crochet, and well, more beverage consumption. From then on, the years flew by. I could spend some time to recap year 3 and year 4 but well, search the blog for RAMHADAB and read the recaps yourself. (Sorry for lack of links, but I haven't been spending much time these days inside...even less on the computer to update the blog. ) Over the years, the ride has gotten somewhat easier and some riders complaining about parts of the ride. This year we'll probably be doing a ride around the CTLPs backyard, Arcadia, Pachaug and Beach Pond. Sweet. Hopefully it'll be easy enough that no one talks about dropping out, and we won't have to drop a vehicle down at the lake to get home.

Man.. the summer really flew by. I spent this summer in a mad rush of trying to get some gardens set up and grow potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, tomatos, squash, etc and generally messing around mtbiking, kayaking, surfing, walking around in the woods with Snoopy, going on a long vacation, and oh yeah... working too.

The garden.. I posted about it back in the spring after spending the day digging, filling, four new beds. Over the summer, I realized the beds I put in get too little sun until I clear some branches and maybe cut down a tree or two, so I put in a couple more in the back yard. Lots and Lots of digging out rocks, shovelling shit(horse to be exact), and even more of the legendary FlatTires leaf compost. There is something indescribable about eating food you grew yourself. Our potatoes pretty much rock, and digging them is a bit like digging clams, except without the muck.

So those are my excuses for not updating the blog. Sorry about that. Lately there's been just way too much fodder that have gone wasted... The DNC, RNC, and now, the (seriously...wtf!?!) Nationalizing (?!??!!) of more than 1/2 of the country's mortgages. All the chatter around the DNC and RNC about energy, the economy, Palin, etc, has been driving me absolutely insane. (I can't believe people aren't absolutely shitting themselves over the the Federal reserve taking over 5 trillion in housing debt. 5 Trillion. )

Anyhow... Mark your calendars for upcoming events:

Sept 13th- Burlingame Trail Work weekend (with the AMC)

Oct 5th (i think)- NEMBA Fun Ride, Arcadia, leaving from, and returning to CTLPs with some trails wandering through Pachaug.

Oct 18th- the 5th annual RAMHADAB weekend. This years theme is Cinquo-De-Bike-O. Stay tuned for details and the t-shirt design!

And now.. how about someone else post about something happy? :)

-40

Summer's Flying By

Hello, Sorry for the total lack of posts lately. I've been busy trying to pack as much fun stuff into the summer as humanly possible. With only about two months or so of true summer weather, and most of that being taken up with work or house work, the remainder gets jammed full quick.

Last weekend my little sister was in town with her 1yo baby, and my other siblings made the trek down to RI to see her. Kaptain Krunch and the Mrs made the trip down from Vermont for the week, and my sister in connecticut came down to stay with her kids at our place. Even BBW and Garden Girl made the trip down for kayaking and the saturday night bonfire. Since it ended up raining, I mean Absolutely Pouring, for two of the four days I took out of work, I was slightly annoyed until my annoyance was drowned in 16 gallons of beer. We said Screw-It and continued our plans of boating, rope swings, surfing, and general fuck-around-a-ry in the rain.

We had great surf for two days of the week, it was great to get out there. I used to spend all summer surfing until I switched over to mostly mtbiking and kayaking. I'll be trying to mix in some more surfing now that I've knocked the rust out.

Other than that, not much to write about. I was able to get out for the dawn-patrol mtbike rides this weekend. Saturday I took off on the usual PoDunk, Pardon Joslin loop. Felt great! Sunday morning I dragged Snoopy out of bed at 5:30 and made the trip down to Burlingame. Can you believe it was the FIRST ride around the lake since the winter NEMBA FunRide? Just haven't been staying at the lake that much with the change of family arrangements down there.. I've been missing the lake ride alot. This was Snoopy's first big loop. He did the entire off road loop. When I got to the inlaws at about mile 7, he stayed with them while I rode out on the road to get the car. I couldn't believe it... that is one tough little dog! Afterward, he and I went out for some father-dog fishing time on the lake. He was trying to eat my hand-dug worms from the compost pile (The compost is FULL of worms....sweet!), and when I caught something, would try to eat the perch. After a couple hours of that it was time to head back to shore to get Mrs 40.

Other than that, we need to pick a weekend for the 5th Annual RAMHADAB. I can't wait. many changes to biking portion were discussed...I'm sure we can figure out a decent compromise.

see ya.