Hello Again

Man, it has been a min or two since my last post… too much cycling and a great new job at my new company have left me too busy to brew, much less blog.

 

Some updates on what you’ve been missing:

 

Lots of riding. The best cycling community anywhere, a couple of new bikes, and an endless supply of fun road has kept me up in the saddle quite a bit. Get stoked.

 

New job at Interior Motions. Great folks. Complete 180 from my previous position in hell.

 

New place. Kelly and I moved a few blocks down the street into an incredible apt. Its huge and my brother lives with us now!

 

“New” Family. Laurel and Rowan got married in BC and it was beautiful.

 

Hopefully I’ll be brewing for the first time in some months this weekend, but in the meantime I’ve got a backlog of reviews to post up. Enjoy!

Frenzby

We invented a sport!

You take what you can get.

This past weekend I was lucky enjoy a killer celebration in honor of my good friend John for his “Bachelor” party. While Kel and the girls raged in Healdsburg for Meryl’s Bachelorette bomb, we played on the beach in Cayucos. It was an amazingly rad time thanks to the awesome group of goodguys who kept the fun coming non-stop, the pretty little beach house that served up the fun, and the hole-in-the-wall bar with all the charming ‘n ugly ‘n lovely old ladies to dance the night away with. Mainly we drank horrible beer and great whiskey, smoked big embarrassing cigars, threw things, and thrashed on the beach. But enough about all that… the point of this post is that I have to share the best new sport since freestyle walking:

Frenzby!

What you need:

1) An open field or beach that allows for hella fast running without crashing into anything. The football field at your local public school would work well. We played on the beach.

2) 2, 3, or 4 ring-type Frisbees. The ones that go like 300 yards with a good huck. 3) Double the number of players as there are Frisbees. So, if you have 3 Frisbees, you need 6 dudes- 3 for each team. We played with 2 Frisbees which meant 2 teams of 2.

How you play:

Each team goes to opposite ends of the field and alternates throwing the Frisbees to the other team. I recommend starting with at least 100 yards between the teams as the Frisbees go wicked far.

Points are only received by the receiving team. The throwing team simply has one player act as that point’s “server.”

The server throws ALL of the Frisbees (equal to the # of opposing players) as evenly to the opposing team. The idea behind the throw is to release all of the Frisbees in a stack so that they are flying more-or-less in even formation.

I don't recomend playing this game with horse shoes.

The Frisbees will inevitably move apart as they make their way to the other side of the field, where the catching teams’ objective is to have each player catch one. 2 points are scored ONLY when every receiver catches a Frisbees (meaning, all Frisbees have to be caught). No points are scored if any individual receiver fails to make a catch. So, if there are 4 guys and 4 Frisbees, and 3 guys catch a Frisbee each but one receiver doesn’t catch the 4^th, the team gets no points.

Each throw is subject to a “repeal” from the receiving team if it determines that the release was faulty and rendered any of the Frisbees absolutely uncatchable. In that case the point should re-played.

The first team to score more than 7 points wins, but can only win by a margin of 2 or more points. The loosing team then buys the winning team the first round of drinks at the bar after the game.

DO IT!!!!!!!!!!

What a weekend!

5/11-5/13/12

Kelly and I had a truly epic weekend this past week. In the interest of launching the new "Pastures" page I thought I 'd post up a little debrief of what went down so that there would be a post to put on it.

Pastures will be a medium for us to share activities, events, and places that we think are a good time.
It'll most likely be kept to arts, the great outdoors, and community enrichment activities (all of which I could stand to experience a lot more of).

*I really don't want this to turn into gross, ego stroking, narcissistic, way too public journal where we constantly update the collective meat-wad as to our every bone-chillingly-mediocre daily activities... So we'll try to hold ourselves to a standard of quick, informative posts.*

Anyways.

Friday night Kel and I went to Berkley Rep and saw "In Paris," an amazingly beautiful, artistic, and humble play about an unlikely couple of Russian ex-pats in living in Paris in the 30s (I think, maybe the 20s?). Their paths cross at a neighborhood restaurant and they fall in love. The story is super charming, and comforted me with the perspective that we are all much smaller, simpler, and more human than we often get carried away with thinking we are.

Mikhail Baryshnikov produced and starred in it. Only a bit of dancing though. It was abstract (in my estimation at least-- I'm no theater critic) and performed exclusively in Russian and French with English "super titles." Really rad. We've seen a lot of great theater this year, but this was by far our favorite.



And then, on Saturday... RIDE FOR A REASON! <--follow the donations link ;)

Ian Sportz

My friend Ian is a science teacher at Claremont Middle School in Berkley. Being the great-dude that he is he had me sign up to participate in Ride for a Reason. It is a big fundraiser for his public school district that has participants ride from Oakland Tech High to the steps of the Capital to raise money and visibility for the hugely underfunded CA Public Schools.

The Trusty Steed

We started at around 6:30am, and came into Sacramento at 3ish. This was definitely a cut above other century rides I have done in the past; A perfectly planned rout through spectacular country, more than ample refreshments, and lots of friendly faces. The girls drove the rout and were waiting at all of the stops to encourage and inspire. The good company, positive vibes, and plentiful beer and cookies at the end were the icing on the cake. Killer day.


Chelse and Kel

Free Beer!

Anybody looking for a great weekend ride should make a point to check out the route and pick a section to enjoy (my favorite part was the first 40 mi. Awesome climbs, decents, and scenery coming out of the Berkley hills and then a mellow wind through vineyards).

We wrapped the day up with some tasty beers at The Trappist in Oakland. US Alive, and #7 were the crowd favorites.