I kicked off my day by editing chapter 20, which is an effort of my tying up what I started yesterday. I had all day to get to it, but it slipped through the cracks and suddenly the day was over. By getting right to it, I find it easier to follow through. If I'm going to get this done I'll need to revert finding time to do this when I wake up. Counter to that is my not using an alarm. Lately, I've been sleeping (a bit) more and with daylight shrinking like a wool sweater in the dryer, I tend to wake up later on average. Maybe I need to go to sleep earlier.
@taylor185 - you're new around here so I will bore everyone else by dredging up my history. I have a long one with coffee. I still have many pounds of green beans in the basement, waiting to be roasted one future day. They are surely past their prime, and being realistic, I may or may not one day roast them. I currently have 2 roasters (formerly 3 but I loaned one out and it ended up broken). One is simple and the other complex. Right now, neither works very well. I believe this was the death of my home roasting. I bought a better roaster and it didn't live up to the hype. I decided then I wasn't throwing bad money after good, and the roasting habit died then & there. I occasionally break out the simple one, but I think the internals of it must be so clogged with bean casings that I don't get the airflow needed to get an even roast. Thus, I end up with some oily beans and some dry beans all mixed together. In a nutshell - garbage.
My point - you definitely won't lose me by overindulging in the coffee talk. Go down the rabbit hole. I'll be there with you.
On that note, the beans you sent me are very light, what is called a city roast. This has typically been my sweet-spot of roast over the years. City brings out the best flavor IMO but it does not espresso well, where "espresso" is being used as a verb there. The oily stuff is more full city+ which is entering second crack. That's where your beans almost instantly go from nice/firm city roast to fire, really fast. Smoke billows out of the machine and if you aren't precise with it, you'll destroy the bean in no time. This is the ballpark where you tend to get the best roast for espresso. It's not really fair to compare the roast the way I did. But I made an espresso anyway because I wanted to see how good the bean is. It's an excellent bean. If it ran for Mayor of Warren I would vote for it.
Left is for espresso, right is the magic bean (not Jack's, but Justin's). The one on the right is really, really light. In my experience this is a very hard place to operate from a roasting perspective. If you go too light, the bean is garbage, totally unusable. This is like 3 seconds into being ready. Whoever roasted this could also run for Mayor of Warren and get my vote. It's legit skill. Having said that, coffee beans look like old people's kidney stones. They're not exactly a thing of beauty.
I cleaned my espresso machine today and holy mother of god, it was dirty. I went through 2 full tanks of rinsing it with the cleaning solution and by the end of the second one, the water was almost coming out mostly clear. This can only help in the espresso I produce with this machine.
With that, and absolutely nothing to do with coffee nor espresso, is The Great Saturday Central Park Zwift Race. I am still hanging fruit cakes with the lowly Cs, so take any & all of this with a grain of salt. Here's how the race went.
* I make The Selection. At this point I think I'm pretty good with this. I'm sure at the next race I will get dropped 9 seconds in.
* I stick with the AB Selection when the first attack starts a mere 1-2 miles into the race.
* At mile 3, the ABs attack again. The Selection starts to disintegrate like a meteor entering the atmosphere.
* I end up in No Man's Land and there are 2 of us. Then 3 of us, then 4, then 6. We settle in at 6.
* The 6 of us form a Sub Selection. As far as I am concerned, the only goal is to not get gobbled up by the Pac Man Peloton.
* We ride together for about a lap and change. We are working well together.
* About halfway through the race, we split into 2 groups. The first is AAB, and mine is BBC. I'm the C. I feel like I am sequencing DNA with this bullet point.
* I stick with the 2 Bs through the end of the lap. With 6 miles to go, we are about a minute up from the Pac Man Peloton.
* At around 3 to go, the 2 guys explode, and I am dropped. After my 2 hours @225w yesterday, my legs are fighting to stay in this game.
* The last 3 miles I am solo, and trying to keep a chase of 5 guys away. They are gobbling up the distance between us fast.
* With about .4 to go, we are in full-out fire drill with my lead shrinking, and I am burying myself to keep them away, trying to determine if I have mathed this incorrectly.
* My math works. They fail to catch me.
I was 2nd in the Cs but the winner had a 3.9 W/Kg power output and was DQ'ed on Zwiftpower. So I won the actual C race. Go Canada!
Later in the day I go shopping with a 12 year old girl at Old Navy. Still trying to figure out which of the last 2 events I described was more painful. When we get back, I make her purge her closet & dresser of all the clothes she has grown out of since the last purge which, judging by the pile, is when Nixon was in office. We will now be dressing a small African nation with various girls clothing we'll be donating. On that note, when we put the clothes in the donation box in the church parking lot, do they get given away or does someone immediately try to make a profit from them?
@Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST stopped by after work with a fancy-looking electronics box and determined that the battery is perfectly fine. It just needs a good charge.
Topped off the evening with the local Brite Nites festival at Wagner Farms, with a special guest appearance from @UtahJoe and the family. I tossed it out there sometime today as an option for them to join us, and around 6:02 I think he told the wife, and at 6:04 he texted me back they they were on their way. It's a local pumpkin display of 1000+ not-actually-real pumpkins setup on the property. It was nice to hang out and the kids liked it. The hot cider was good but they need to revamp their hot chocolate recipe. Good way to spend a Saturday night.
Everything on the ToDo list from last night got done. Tomorrow is pretty straightforward:
* Easy ride early morning on Zwift, Central Park loops. Man I can sound like a douchey NYC hipster now.
* Jets-Vikings with step-dad.
* Pour battery acid in eyes after I get home from said game.
* Dinner with parents. My mom is making lasagna for us.
* Drop Zac off at some high school soccer camp thing around the corner.
* Simon also has a birthday party which D is bringing him to. Julia will make dessert with my mom during the day.
* D is doing the CR group ride but that does not involve me needing to do much other than stop the kids from setting the house on fire. I got this.
@taylor185 - you're new around here so I will bore everyone else by dredging up my history. I have a long one with coffee. I still have many pounds of green beans in the basement, waiting to be roasted one future day. They are surely past their prime, and being realistic, I may or may not one day roast them. I currently have 2 roasters (formerly 3 but I loaned one out and it ended up broken). One is simple and the other complex. Right now, neither works very well. I believe this was the death of my home roasting. I bought a better roaster and it didn't live up to the hype. I decided then I wasn't throwing bad money after good, and the roasting habit died then & there. I occasionally break out the simple one, but I think the internals of it must be so clogged with bean casings that I don't get the airflow needed to get an even roast. Thus, I end up with some oily beans and some dry beans all mixed together. In a nutshell - garbage.
My point - you definitely won't lose me by overindulging in the coffee talk. Go down the rabbit hole. I'll be there with you.
On that note, the beans you sent me are very light, what is called a city roast. This has typically been my sweet-spot of roast over the years. City brings out the best flavor IMO but it does not espresso well, where "espresso" is being used as a verb there. The oily stuff is more full city+ which is entering second crack. That's where your beans almost instantly go from nice/firm city roast to fire, really fast. Smoke billows out of the machine and if you aren't precise with it, you'll destroy the bean in no time. This is the ballpark where you tend to get the best roast for espresso. It's not really fair to compare the roast the way I did. But I made an espresso anyway because I wanted to see how good the bean is. It's an excellent bean. If it ran for Mayor of Warren I would vote for it.
Left is for espresso, right is the magic bean (not Jack's, but Justin's). The one on the right is really, really light. In my experience this is a very hard place to operate from a roasting perspective. If you go too light, the bean is garbage, totally unusable. This is like 3 seconds into being ready. Whoever roasted this could also run for Mayor of Warren and get my vote. It's legit skill. Having said that, coffee beans look like old people's kidney stones. They're not exactly a thing of beauty.
I cleaned my espresso machine today and holy mother of god, it was dirty. I went through 2 full tanks of rinsing it with the cleaning solution and by the end of the second one, the water was almost coming out mostly clear. This can only help in the espresso I produce with this machine.
With that, and absolutely nothing to do with coffee nor espresso, is The Great Saturday Central Park Zwift Race. I am still hanging fruit cakes with the lowly Cs, so take any & all of this with a grain of salt. Here's how the race went.
* I make The Selection. At this point I think I'm pretty good with this. I'm sure at the next race I will get dropped 9 seconds in.
* I stick with the AB Selection when the first attack starts a mere 1-2 miles into the race.
* At mile 3, the ABs attack again. The Selection starts to disintegrate like a meteor entering the atmosphere.
* I end up in No Man's Land and there are 2 of us. Then 3 of us, then 4, then 6. We settle in at 6.
* The 6 of us form a Sub Selection. As far as I am concerned, the only goal is to not get gobbled up by the Pac Man Peloton.
* We ride together for about a lap and change. We are working well together.
* About halfway through the race, we split into 2 groups. The first is AAB, and mine is BBC. I'm the C. I feel like I am sequencing DNA with this bullet point.
* I stick with the 2 Bs through the end of the lap. With 6 miles to go, we are about a minute up from the Pac Man Peloton.
* At around 3 to go, the 2 guys explode, and I am dropped. After my 2 hours @225w yesterday, my legs are fighting to stay in this game.
* The last 3 miles I am solo, and trying to keep a chase of 5 guys away. They are gobbling up the distance between us fast.
* With about .4 to go, we are in full-out fire drill with my lead shrinking, and I am burying myself to keep them away, trying to determine if I have mathed this incorrectly.
* My math works. They fail to catch me.
I was 2nd in the Cs but the winner had a 3.9 W/Kg power output and was DQ'ed on Zwiftpower. So I won the actual C race. Go Canada!
Later in the day I go shopping with a 12 year old girl at Old Navy. Still trying to figure out which of the last 2 events I described was more painful. When we get back, I make her purge her closet & dresser of all the clothes she has grown out of since the last purge which, judging by the pile, is when Nixon was in office. We will now be dressing a small African nation with various girls clothing we'll be donating. On that note, when we put the clothes in the donation box in the church parking lot, do they get given away or does someone immediately try to make a profit from them?
@Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST stopped by after work with a fancy-looking electronics box and determined that the battery is perfectly fine. It just needs a good charge.
Topped off the evening with the local Brite Nites festival at Wagner Farms, with a special guest appearance from @UtahJoe and the family. I tossed it out there sometime today as an option for them to join us, and around 6:02 I think he told the wife, and at 6:04 he texted me back they they were on their way. It's a local pumpkin display of 1000+ not-actually-real pumpkins setup on the property. It was nice to hang out and the kids liked it. The hot cider was good but they need to revamp their hot chocolate recipe. Good way to spend a Saturday night.
Everything on the ToDo list from last night got done. Tomorrow is pretty straightforward:
* Easy ride early morning on Zwift, Central Park loops. Man I can sound like a douchey NYC hipster now.
* Jets-Vikings with step-dad.
* Pour battery acid in eyes after I get home from said game.
* Dinner with parents. My mom is making lasagna for us.
* Drop Zac off at some high school soccer camp thing around the corner.
* Simon also has a birthday party which D is bringing him to. Julia will make dessert with my mom during the day.
* D is doing the CR group ride but that does not involve me needing to do much other than stop the kids from setting the house on fire. I got this.
Last edited:
