Little Feet

Not *that* Little Feet but if you'll be my dixie chicken... nevermind.

At 5am our guests are departing for the airport. I hear little 3 year old Max call out for Mommy who is downstairs. I then here the pitter patter of little feet. I think, "Oh good, Max is heading into this bedroom and will nuzzle in to sleep for a bit."

But then...

I hear "falummph, falummph, falummph, falummph ..." which I parse as him sliding down the stairs on his pajama clad bottom. I'm amused at how these sounds paint such a precise picture about what is happening. I now listen more intently because I don't know if anyone is aware of his presence and they're loading up luggage and getting ready to drive away. I wait until I hear that he has been "received."

"MAX!!!" Someone calls out, "What are you doing awake?" ... all is well and I drift back to sleep.

Frequency

I'm looking at the year-to-year plummeting of new blog posts. I needed to get at least ONE post in 2009 so here it is.

Boo

Nothing going on except trying to lose the day job and replace it with something much more interesting (to me anyway)... oh and the kids are growing up.

Roaster

After ~30 hours, the ~1000lb beast of a coffee roaster is on terra firma. The engineering involved in getting it from the truck into the basement involved ancient and modern technologies. It was rolled on dowels Egyptian style, it was lowered down a set of stairs through several redundant pulley systems. We converted the stairs into a slide for this purpose. We created a sled for the roaster. I got quite good at descending and ascending this rather steep wooden slide... photos to follow.

Which one?

Our little Ben has decided he needs to know our opinion on every single thing. And it's always in the form of "Which one is better?"

Some examples:
"Which is your favorite car?" [referencing his obsession with the Cars movie characters]
"What do you like better, burritos or pizza?"

This is endless from when he opens his eyes at 6:40am to when he finally falls asleep at 9:06pm.

The best was, "What do you like better, the crust or the cheese?"
My response that he was having none of was this, "I like crust a little and I like cheese a little and I like sauce a little. But when you put it all together I like that way better."
"But Dad, which one do you like better?"
"I like it all Ben."
"But which one?"
... ahh kids.

soup

Max says, "I want to be soup." Then he grabs all the pillows and cushions from the couch, makes a huge pile and dives in. "Ben, let's be soup!" says Max.

"Time for dinner!"
"Not now... I need to be soup."

That is our lives these days.

Ben Quote for April 8, 2008

"There are photos inside of my brain."

Five x Two

Five years, two wheels. Yesterday he could scoot, today he can ride!

I mean seriously... every description of why you want to be a dad highlights this day. Ben makes a very particular facial expression when he is proud of what he is doing. He couldn't stop making that face. His dad is also rather proud of him.

FIVE

Consider five years of anything. That's more than the time between high school and wrapping up your undergraduate degree. For some people... ahem... it's enough time to move three times.

It's also enough time to go from a little 7 pound crying blob that can randomly move muscles and poop to one that can balance on two wheels and say, "Daddy, look at me go!"

The boy turns five in a few hours and as I watched him sleep, I saw a big yet small guy. On the one hand, he can fit in a paper grocery bag. On the other, he can jump from a high perch, run and play, successfully crack eggs into a bowl, tell stories with a plot and explain new and sophisticated concepts that show his depth of understanding about a million things. Just tonight he corrected himself when asking for a dinosaur where he started to say huge but replaced the word with gigantic. Understanding these two simple words isn't what excited me but instead his interest in elevating his speech with specific detail I thought was kind of cool.

The boy had his party today. A huge horde of us biked the mile to get gelato after eating homemade pizza and drinking cappuccinos and espressos. The stress of ushering half a dozen kids along Portland streets caused me to age about five years (speaking of five) just getting them there and back safely. With a bunch of parents and kids, we were our own critical mass! It actually went quite smoothly and the route was safe by all measures. He had a great time playing with his friends and I'm pretty proud of how this little soul is growing up.

He starts kindergarten in the fall.

PuvVa me

Our little Max asks to be covered, ahem... puvva'd up with his blanket all the time. Often he will be taking his nap or sleeping when he will wake up and scream "Puvva ME!" and start crying. We don't always do this for him but when we do, he will nestle back in and go right back to sleep. It's very cute if it's your kid, which he is to me.

Another thing did his parents proud was when Ben was sad and crying because of his case of scarlet fever. Max was at the bookcase offering up books for Ben.
"This one Ben?"
"What about this one Ben?"
... and so on. Max was being so caring, like as if he was a parent trying to sooth his child. And this is coming from the younger of the two. Max often spontaneously asks for hugs and tells Ben that he loves him. Of course they argue over the same toys all day long but there are these moments that are pretty wonderful.

BTW, his blanket is usually quite filthy and stinky. We have to sneak it away from him and get it cycled through the wash/dry double quick. So he likes to be puvva'd with this fetid thing all the time.... eeeick.

Wumdy wumdy wump wump wump

That's what Max says when he wants to slide down the stairs on his stomach. Onomotopoetically it sounds right.

Roasting

I have spent over $500 of my hard earned cash to go to a real coffee roasting class way up here in Sandpoint Idaho. It starts in 43 minutes...

"Beastie Boys just turned on in my head"

My boy Ben has been listening to the Beastie Boys (does a dad proud, a mom less so) and he just said the above quote as he drifted off to sleep.

Bixabody

The Bixabody runs on wires. It can also roll like a train. It can roll on tracks. It moves with a big wheel to pull the wires. It makes the pinwheel. It's like a tram. It goes on a big wheel that makes the wires move. That's it.

Ben

How does the world spin?

Please answer Ben because I have no idea about this one.

Here we go

Ben woke up and told me to write this one
"I had a dream that a paintbrush was coming out of the sky and painting me."

Ben Quote

"I can't remember any of my day" - Ben Nov 14 2007

I will be instituting a daily interview with my boy. One quote, one sentence, one line that summarizes what's on his mind. Will I stick to it? We will see.

Yellow, Orange and Red

After several YEARS of wanting to do something like this, I took the MAX rail to it's westernmost stop then found my way back home on a perfect fall day. I learned a few things like Pumpkin Ridge road turns to gravel and 120PSI tires do not fare well on this particular kind of gravel. Executing plan B involved another gravel road: Dixie Mountain Road. Then plan B becomes plan C because Dixie is closed after a bit. Plan C involves road names that I forget but on that road is an amazing place to buy and see all kinds of bamboo. The route finally worked out and with tired legs I was happy to see the northernmost point of Skyline as I transitioned from gravel to pavement. Then I was treated to a nice finale bombing down Germantown and then a nip across the St John's Bridge and South until home in NE PDX. What an amazing day. All was perfect but next time I'm taking the cross bike. 60 miles in total.

Chickens on the loose

It was a cold and rainy night.
The chickens were not in their coop.
Somebody had to put them in their coop
in the cold and rainy night.
This is how it went down:

Amy: Rock Charlie: Paper
Amy: Scissors Charlie: Scissors
Amy: Scissors Charlie: Scissors
Amy: Rock Charlie: Paper

Racing the Kruger Kermesse

Of course this post will push my previous post written just an hour prior off the page but do read it, it's interesting... really

But, here's this:
Brotha Corndog [me - how I got that nickname with my cycling team is for another day] finds fellow cyclisme riders Greg & Jeff. They're doing master B's, I'm racing the single speed class. With 15 minutes before the master B gun, I nip over to registration and give them $5 and join my peeps for the race. Two races is twice the fun right?

The Kruger Kermesse is a 4-5 minute loop of dirt that's raced for 45 minutes + 1 lap. It's relatively flat at the bucolic Kruger farm on Sauvie island near Portland.

At the start the peloton rolls in a dusty sprint. The course has room to pass along its entire length and my warm up consisted of pushing Ben around the kiddie course a few hours prior so I floated to somewhere mid pack. I could see the checkered energy ahead. I used the first lap as a warm up, staying out of the wind. After the first corner the dust has a similar effect to ultra dense fog. We're all bombing through some dusty fluffy bumpy crap and all you can do is keep the body loose and accept the brutality of the section. My strategy for the race was efficiency, staying out of the wind and jumping from group to group, picking off riders. There was also a particular rise right before a flat and then a downhill where I could gain many spots by doing a ten second out of the saddle sprint. If felt good to be hanging near some guys and then explode with power and just be gone. Some of these guys would find me on the long sustained climb but it was a good tactical move. I repeated this every lap. The downhill made for a great recovery.

Somewhere mid-race I gained on GoBrian as he was drafting a small group that was losing ground to a larger chase. I told Greg to jump on my wheel and I domestique'd his ass up to that group. I thought it was pretty cool to be able to execute some tactics on dirt. I kept my strategy of moving from group to group getting somewhere near the lead group but never in the hunt for a prize. Unknown to him, I drafted Gerwing for a few meters but faded relative to his velocity and while he was in sight for much of the time, I never passed him. All told, I think I was probably top quarter. I had fun.

I gave myself the fifteen minutes between races to decide whether I was going to roll the single speed race after such an effort. I bought a water and, with seven minutes to the start, I was mentally ready for another bit of suffering, ten minutes longer than the first race... fifty five minutes. Puke. My strategy was survival. I'm not some badass rider that should be racing two, just one that had the time and just enough insanity to give it a go. With no internal pressure to deliver, I rolled out without pre-race butterflies and just settled in and felt kinda strong. I wasn't leading but I wasn't spat out the back either. All of this changed as I read the timer at the start/finish. It read 40 remaining. It all fell apart then. I dropped the pace slightly in hopes that I wouldn't limp home fully cracked. Standing to sprint for the descent told me I was on the verge of cramping. My pace slowly degraded from that point. I've passed super slow riders wondering what they're doing in a B race or SS race and now I'm that rider. I get blasted by A's and other Single Speeders. At least the women would pass me at a civilized pace but they did pass me no doubt.

While I decidedly cratered for the second race, I'm really glad I did it. Given my work week and unrelenting family responsibilities, it was awesome to just completely drain the legs of all fuel. It turned a dark dark mood into a happy one. I have a small dream that doing the double will somehow make up for my lean training schedule.

Roasted

The Community Cafe (aka my kitchen & espresso setup) is now roasting beans. Yes i suck at it but even my worst beans are passable in a cappuccino. I go through something like 60 lbs of coffee a year which equates to $900/year and that's just beans, not cafe drinks. This is based upon the Blue Gardenia's latest prices. While their beans are truly epic, somehow $15 didn't sit right and I cracked... twice [ultra geeky insider roasting joke]. I've threatened (in my own head) to really roast full time for my own consumption but I'm now all in. Buying green beans and roasting those is 1/3 the cost so even if I didn't enjoy the process, there would be motivation with that stat.

Just because I'm a slave to fashion, I even bought a burlap bag to store the bigger 20 lb bags. I like the smell. My strategery [sic] is to get a volume of beans from a particular region and then play with the roast until I have something pretty good. I then move on to another region until I've been around the world in beans. I dig it. I'm actually starting in Brazil... I hate Brazilian coffee. OK hate is a strong word. I prefer other places more like recent crops from Oaxaca have been magical. And, like a good Cabernet, Sumatra always delivers. So why Brazil? I overheard, like when one overhears a good stock pick or racehorse to bet on, that the basis for most espresso blends start with Brazil so there you go.

I will resist the urge to do any blending and do all single origin beans with the hope that I will someday not only be able to roast but be able to articulate the differences between various beans using these things called words. One should dream big.

I will post pictures of the roasting setup. In the meantime, I'm using a steel hand cranked stove top popcorn popper and a very accurate digital thermometer. That and a pen & paper to detail notes. It is rumoured that this setup makes it possible to emulate a drum roaster. All beans that I love: Blue Gardenia, Stumptown, Ristretto and others all roast with a drum machine. Drum is the bid'ness. word. Oh, and there's little cheaper than my setup save just throwing beans into a pan or wok. People do that... really.

So at the moment, I wouldn't dare serve my customers a straight up espresso but milk drinks, even a tight macchiato are not bad.