Bikes in Copenhagen

If you've even been to Denmark you know there are three things that are very common there, and almost non-existent in the US. 1) Healthy Blonde Young Women 2) Utility Bikes and 3) Giant Windmills. All three can be seen in any village, town or city. They are everywhere. At some point everyone needs to spend at least a day in Copenhagen wandering around to know that a place like that exists. Hint: Go in the summer.

Until then, here's a blog that chronicles two of the three: Healthy Danish Ladies... Riding Bikes!
(Really.)

Back Yard Update-

The new fire pit is almost complete.

Went out and started digging after work today- this one is going to look good (thanks to a donation from 40 and transportation/carrying/nudging from Flat Tires and BBW). Seeing the old 1/2 55 gallon drum next to this one is night and day...

BRING ON THE PALLETS!

Better late than never...

We it appears that we finally have video capability. So I figured why not christen it with the much hyped (big overture, little show!) FARTAB video:






Hope you enjoyed. Been thinking of redoing the cuts so it flows a bit better, but I am far too lazy to revisit just yet...

Countdown...

The.


beer.


has.


been.


ordered.


Not for nothin', but bringing your own unique stein for imbibing is indeed encouraged. Saves on solo cups, less waste and easy to tell your beverage container from others (yeah- sharpies for ID purposes do work well). Besides, it helps get the creative juices flowing. I have successfully used modified empty 40's, vases, mega mugs, etc. for this purpose. Sleepy even once used an empty oil quart container to complete his Halloween costume when he went as the Dark Overlord. So- think about it...

End of Summer?

Whew... Just when I was thinking we were getting close to the end of the summer, the weekend weather kicked me in the ass. It was 90F saturday, and 90 percent humidity. Ick. So i stacked firewood and worked outside until 3 oclock when i was so soaked in sweat i had to collapse inside with the AC cranking.

Anyhow... Sorry there haven't been many posts lately. I've been trying to catch up on stuff around the house since vacation, and have been doing horrible at it. owell... it will all wait.

We're two weeks away from the biggest -ADAB of the year... RAMHADAB! So, get your bike ready to go (put some air in the tires), yourself in shape (skip a beer tonight, or.. drink an extra?) and head out to the CTLPs in two weeks. We're riding down to the beach, playing some disc golf, racing the go-cart, and burning stuff in the GIANT firepit. I can't wait!

Check out the CTLPs stomping some grapes! ... Mrs 40 found this pict at the Jonathan Edwards
website.

Cya!

The 40's Summer Vacation, more pix

The rest of the week went on like that. Get up wicked early, take Snoop-A-Loop for a walk, or go mtbiking, or kayaking, or fishing, then quahoggin'/fishing in the afternoon, or beer/fancy wine drinking at night or... well, you get the picture. Thats what makes summer vacation sweeeet.
There's something about getting up before, well, everyone, and seeing stuff no one else gets to see. Here is school house pond one Misty Morning, with no one else around but the mosquitos and other natives. I was digging the early morning riding so much that this past sunday I got up, filled up the camelbak, loaded up on rice crispy treats (Courtesy of Mrs. Flat Tires... They ROCKED!), and headed south from the homestead on the singlespeed vaguely towards the blue trail. I picked it up just south of arcadia, where we head in on Ramhadab on the power lines.
I checked out the campsite in Carolina to see how low the water was. Still WAY tooo low to try a river trip.

Coming out in the back of the corn/turf farms is one of my favorite parts of the ride. Here is the old barn.

Seeing as blogger's not going to let me add yet another picture, i'll end this post here. I just realized that this will be a record third post of the day.
Sleepy... OMG, I'm sorry to hear about the ibucket (pre-production serial number -0001) losing a nut... I had the same thing happen on the last prototype.. I've got a fix for it(loctite) and will be sure to hook you up over RAMHADAB weekend. Speaking of which, those of you who have been patiently waiting on the "I'll build ya one I swear" list for an ibucket will also be happy at RAMHADAB. I'm hoping to clear out all works-in-progress systems in the next three weeks. You can see I get real distracted by nice weather. As it gets cooler around here during the last days of summer conditions for project and/or garage building sessions will improve.

-40.

iBucket down! I repeat, iBucket down!

So I was enjoying a lovely day of disc golf at Bellamy Park in Dover, NH, which by most accounts is quite a ways to drive for disc. Everything was going swimmingly except for the occasional wind-up-with-clenched-teeth-and-white-knuckles-and-hurl-it-at-a-tree-10-yards-away shot. When my slightly accident-prone cousin gave my iBucket which he had been carrying for the last half a hole back to me, I realized the bottom screw of one of the speaker brackets had come out, causing one of the speakers to swing back and forth and thus cause the speaker wire to rip right out. After I looked left, right, and then left again for a disc golf course iBucket pit crew to provide me with a musical absolution and came up empty, I realized that the next few holes would suck just a little. So I'm going to do my best to alleviate my own situation, but barring success in that, I might be forced to call upon my friend 40 oz. to come to the rescue. Can anyone say RAMHADAB?!

The 40's Summer Vacation aka messin' around in the beermuda triangle and parts south.

Mrs 40 and I took a rare we-both-get-to-take-the-same-week-off vacation last week... the weather was still good enough to enjoy the last of the summer. Snoopy came with us down to Charlestown.
Snoopy's getting pretty good running around in the woods.

The first weekend I was at the salt pond my sister and her husband Kaptin Krunch were there. Here she is with her dog Zack on the back of my mom's new hobie outback utility kayak. This picture was hard to take with Snoopy perched on the front of my wooden kayak.
Mornings on the saltpond are incredible. Here is the back channel just as the sun is about to come up. The next day Mrs 40 and I went out in the kayaks. Here we are taking a beer and littlenecks on the half break on a sandbar. BTW... clamming down there these days is tough... half the pond is polluted, green hill pond is completely polluted. (see post on the other blog titled... "Where Clean Water Used to Be")
Mrs 40 taking a corona break.

More pix to come.. stay tuned.

This just in, 40oz spotted on BFB

Today I spotted 40oz westbound on 102 with the BFB, presumably returning from stop & shop with a full load of groceries. Evidently the rugged electric motor finally met it's match after 40 modified the rig with massive outriggers.

Cottrell: Beer of the Month part deux

I love Cottrell beer. It's so freaking perfect for just about everything. Unfortunately for me, it's an occasional treat as most package stores don't carry it. You have to be within, what seems, biking distance to the brewery . You can sometimes get it down at Rippy's, and always at the Charlestown package store. I hear you may be able to get it way down in Hope Valley too.

CTLP is pretty lucky, he's been admitted to their lair of malty hoppy goodness to help bottle it. He's dedicated long hours to the worship of the beverage. Kaptain Krunch and I have too, just more while out fishing and whatnot.

Cottrell is an ale, somewhere between Bass and Long Trail, but better cause it's soo fresh, so local that if you stood on the roof you could probably see the hazy happiness curling up from the brewery smoke stack down in Westerly/Pawcatuck. Try with with meat, potatoes, camping, hydration packs, and mtbiking.

I feel sorry for those of you who live way up in Mass and CT... They don't sell around there but call the distributors to find out for sure.

The End. -40

PBR -or- The First in an Impromtu yet Random Series of Beer Reviews

On a lighter note after that last post......

I was at the bar about a week ago for dinner with GardenGirl, her brother and his girlfriend. We were sitting outside and it wasn't cool out. I was awfully thirsty and instead of my usual Bass or microbrew, I decided to go for the Pabst Blue Ribbon (like I had to spell out what PBR stands for to yall). It was on tap and after some mixed reviews by myself, I wanted to try it draft. I got some odd looks from the other people at the table. But in the end, it tasted really good, went down easily and was an overall success.


Cheers
BBW.




------------------------------------------------------------------------
editor's note:


After being really happy someone posted about beer, I cracked open a Cottrell and thought... 'Damn, we could use more posts about beer!'. So, here it is, Bald Boy Wonder, you unknowingly kicked off a series of beer reviews. Ta Da!!!

-40

The Tour

The title of this post should say it all and bring everyone's feelings out about the Tour de France, which makes this post totally unnecessary, but hey, let me rant. Now, before I continue my little rant here, let me just clarify a few things.
1) I know some people didn't watch it because of the state of the tour in recent years.
2) I just finished watching the tour this past Saturday, a week late, thanks DVR.
3) I did read and hear in the news the daily reports on the doping and allegations and such, and expulsions.
4) I watched the tour keeping all those reports out of my mind and routing for whoever I wanted till the incident happened "in my world" which was when I finally watched it.
So, I liked Rasmussen. I was routing for him, he seemed superhuman, until he was kicked out for lying where he was. I know he lied which is awfully suspicious, but I like to think he's innocent (I feel the same about Landers). It's just my trusting nature that I like to think everyone is good and no one would lie.
Then there's Vinokourov. He also seemed superhuman, crashing like that, then winning the mountain stage and the time trial. Did he really think he was going to test negative? Was it running through his head on the podium that he will be tested and probably will get caught?
The tour made all the cyclists sign a pledge not to take drugs. WOW! They signed a pledge! Bid whoop. What is that really going to do? Like they didn't know the rules before. Like a smoker is going to read the side of a pack of cigarettes and say OMG these cause cancer, I'm going to quit now.
Professionals say that everyone in professional cycling uses drugs or transfusions or whatever. At what point do you give up on them? I like watching them, but I get so disgusted when they cheat. They know the rules, just play inside of them. Don't go out and try and find the new doping technique that they can't test for yet. Just race.
I could go on and on just b*tching, but it will just become repetitive and everyone knows what I mean by this point anyways. So here you go. Post your comments, your rants, your objections to the utopian world that I live in (in my head), if you want.
Anyways, just go out and ride and have a good time.