Twice a year I travel to North Carolina to attend the ever popular World Beer Festival. They have it in Raleigh in the spring and Durham in the fall. Over 150 top breweries from around the world participate in the 4 hour drink fest. I attend with my younger sister and her friends. Sometimes they forget they aren’t careless college idiots anymore and get a little crazy. The event itself only lasts 4 hours (try drinking beer constantly for four hours; and I’m talking real beer not some watered down rice lager). My sister and her friends usually make a 12 hour drinking marathon out of it. Its quite the event. If you are lucky you will remember what you tasted the next day and actually come away having learned something. But that ain’t likely from all the fun the average attendee seems to have.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
beer stock
My beer stock photos document our preparations for any given event or weekend. I probably don't branch out as much as I should and its rare I go too far out of my way to some specialty shop. But Whole Foods ain't all that bad. Currently they have a great sale on Pilsner Urquell and some good once-a-year Dogfish Head specialties. Mmmm.
And digging through the archives I found at least two other beer stock photos. This first one is a little sad and I assure you its not my fridge. Its from just this last February at Snowshoe with a bunch of guys. I don't have to mention which selection is mine.
And this last one is from Thanksgiving in 2007. My parents and sister came here to Arlington and we ate turkey at my brother's house. This is what I had available for my guests.
And digging through the archives I found at least two other beer stock photos. This first one is a little sad and I assure you its not my fridge. Its from just this last February at Snowshoe with a bunch of guys. I don't have to mention which selection is mine.
And this last one is from Thanksgiving in 2007. My parents and sister came here to Arlington and we ate turkey at my brother's house. This is what I had available for my guests.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
kart racin’
It was a fun and interesting night racing karts yesterday and I thought I’d take the chance to give some non-racers some insight in to what race car drivers are up to. I race in the PCA Karting Championship and we get together on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Our championship points season runs from January till May. We do non-points races the rest of the year to stay sharp.
So lately things have not been going so well for me and I’ve been struggling to stay in the top 5. This is particularly frustrating because when I came in to the series (2005?) I dominated. I was beating everyone by at least a half second. A half second is huge in a competitive racing series on a track that is 24 seconds long. I used to be able to get in a bad kart that didn’t handle well and still win. And now I have trouble getting on the podium. What gives? It’s the same people I’m racing against. They are experienced and raced for years before I met them so it’s not like they all of the sudden got faster at once.
Well I think I know part of the reason and might have gotten over it last night. I finished the last two races with the fastest lap. Being fastest does feel good.
I was a very slick night last night. The track was very low on traction. Lap times where down considerably and it was hard to maintain grip in the turns. The track is a traditional road course with seven turns, fast and slow, and a straightaway. The problem with this track is that it is almost a polished concrete surface. That isn’t good for racing karts. A lot of rubber has been laid down but often only on the racing line. So going off line can mean sliding out of control. You have to know what you are doing to late brake someone going full speed on the inside of turn one with patchy grip. I used to really enjoy drifting through turns and it seems like we haven’t had those conditions for awhile. It’s all down to temperature and humidity mostly.
Drifting (sliding) through the turns is only faster on very low grip surfaces. Usually with rubber on asphalt you go out of your way to maintain traction. Any sliding means deceleration and it takes time to regain traction and then speed. On low traction surfaces such as gravel or dirt drifting is often the fastest way around a turn. You can enter the turn faster than normal and lose your speed by swinging it around in the middle of the turn. The trick is to slide it back on to the traditional racing line while maintaining your momentum so the process of regaining traction does not lose you any speed. Maintaining the momentum is the key. None of the other drivers I race against drift in those low grip situations on the kart track. Mostly because road racers are trained not to lose traction.
We usually qualify and then run 3 races. We do standing starts. And the 2nd and 3rd race is gridded by fastest laps of the night (qualifying or race times) so the starting positions can change. Again I started the night around 5th place. I had trouble maintaining rear grip in the conditions. This happened in the first three karts I ran so it wasn’t the handling of the kart. It was my driving style. This was my opportunity to practice my theory on why I’m slow. I’m not applying myself like I did a few years ago.
Back then I lived and breathed racing. I thought about going faster all day long. How do I manipulate the car to gain a tenth of a second in that turn? I would run behind guys faster than I and figure out what they were doing that I wasn’t. I watched guys while I was waiting to run. I’d talk to other racers. I read racing theory. And it eventually paid off and for a period of time I held the track record and was quite confident that I could get in any kart in any session against anyone and I would win. That was a fun time.
So I rack my brain as to what I need to do to go faster. As I said I was having trouble maintaining rear grip. Overstear we call it. The redneck oval drivers call it gettin’ loose. Especially in the slow turns 2 and 3 I was losing all kinds of time. Why? When you brake hard the weight of your kart shifts to the front and you lose traction in the back. So in my usual hard braking into the slow turns I would lose traction on the low grip surface and have trouble rotating the kart through the turns without that rear grip. I’d loose it for a split second and it would take time to regain traction and speed. The simple answer is don’t do the usual hard braking during these low grip conditions. It allowed me to enter the turn at a much higher speed because I had that rear grip and a decently balanced kart. I picked up many tenths of a second after realizing that.
I was losing speed when losing traction on the traditional line. Then I learned how to go fast on the traditional line by braking less. Having that high speed in the low turns gave me another advantage. I was able to change to more of a rally racing line and pull off a slight drift while maintaining my momentum on exit. The higher speeds I gained in the corner was enough to give me the momentum I needed to drift through the corner and maintain exit speed. The conditions last night was one of the few times that I was able to drift around 4 of the 7 turns (all but the esses) and do it while keeping speed. I ended the night a few tenths faster than everyone else. We’ll see if I can do it more than once.
So lately things have not been going so well for me and I’ve been struggling to stay in the top 5. This is particularly frustrating because when I came in to the series (2005?) I dominated. I was beating everyone by at least a half second. A half second is huge in a competitive racing series on a track that is 24 seconds long. I used to be able to get in a bad kart that didn’t handle well and still win. And now I have trouble getting on the podium. What gives? It’s the same people I’m racing against. They are experienced and raced for years before I met them so it’s not like they all of the sudden got faster at once.
Well I think I know part of the reason and might have gotten over it last night. I finished the last two races with the fastest lap. Being fastest does feel good.
I was a very slick night last night. The track was very low on traction. Lap times where down considerably and it was hard to maintain grip in the turns. The track is a traditional road course with seven turns, fast and slow, and a straightaway. The problem with this track is that it is almost a polished concrete surface. That isn’t good for racing karts. A lot of rubber has been laid down but often only on the racing line. So going off line can mean sliding out of control. You have to know what you are doing to late brake someone going full speed on the inside of turn one with patchy grip. I used to really enjoy drifting through turns and it seems like we haven’t had those conditions for awhile. It’s all down to temperature and humidity mostly.
Drifting (sliding) through the turns is only faster on very low grip surfaces. Usually with rubber on asphalt you go out of your way to maintain traction. Any sliding means deceleration and it takes time to regain traction and then speed. On low traction surfaces such as gravel or dirt drifting is often the fastest way around a turn. You can enter the turn faster than normal and lose your speed by swinging it around in the middle of the turn. The trick is to slide it back on to the traditional racing line while maintaining your momentum so the process of regaining traction does not lose you any speed. Maintaining the momentum is the key. None of the other drivers I race against drift in those low grip situations on the kart track. Mostly because road racers are trained not to lose traction.
We usually qualify and then run 3 races. We do standing starts. And the 2nd and 3rd race is gridded by fastest laps of the night (qualifying or race times) so the starting positions can change. Again I started the night around 5th place. I had trouble maintaining rear grip in the conditions. This happened in the first three karts I ran so it wasn’t the handling of the kart. It was my driving style. This was my opportunity to practice my theory on why I’m slow. I’m not applying myself like I did a few years ago.
Back then I lived and breathed racing. I thought about going faster all day long. How do I manipulate the car to gain a tenth of a second in that turn? I would run behind guys faster than I and figure out what they were doing that I wasn’t. I watched guys while I was waiting to run. I’d talk to other racers. I read racing theory. And it eventually paid off and for a period of time I held the track record and was quite confident that I could get in any kart in any session against anyone and I would win. That was a fun time.
So I rack my brain as to what I need to do to go faster. As I said I was having trouble maintaining rear grip. Overstear we call it. The redneck oval drivers call it gettin’ loose. Especially in the slow turns 2 and 3 I was losing all kinds of time. Why? When you brake hard the weight of your kart shifts to the front and you lose traction in the back. So in my usual hard braking into the slow turns I would lose traction on the low grip surface and have trouble rotating the kart through the turns without that rear grip. I’d loose it for a split second and it would take time to regain traction and speed. The simple answer is don’t do the usual hard braking during these low grip conditions. It allowed me to enter the turn at a much higher speed because I had that rear grip and a decently balanced kart. I picked up many tenths of a second after realizing that.
I was losing speed when losing traction on the traditional line. Then I learned how to go fast on the traditional line by braking less. Having that high speed in the low turns gave me another advantage. I was able to change to more of a rally racing line and pull off a slight drift while maintaining my momentum on exit. The higher speeds I gained in the corner was enough to give me the momentum I needed to drift through the corner and maintain exit speed. The conditions last night was one of the few times that I was able to drift around 4 of the 7 turns (all but the esses) and do it while keeping speed. I ended the night a few tenths faster than everyone else. We’ll see if I can do it more than once.
Friday, April 11, 2008
"Occasional Rarities"
Today I was at my local Whole Foods stocking up on craft brews for the weekend. First I noticed their sale on Pilsner Urquell. Not exactly a craft brew but at $4 off a 12 it was hard to pass up. Then I noticed they had Dogfish Head's Aprihop in. Its one of their seasonal beers and its probably been out for a few weeks. In the cart goes a 4 pack.
As I ventured deeper down the beer aisle to the more select brews I noticed they had a few of the rare Dogfish Head beers in 750 ml bottles. Dogfish Head calls these "occasional rarities". They are brewed just a few times, or once, a year in limited quantities. I picked up the Chateau Jiahu. Its one of their 2 or 3 beers made from traces discovered in archaeological sites and scientifically recreated. This one happens to be from a site in northern China that is 9000 years old. You know beer must be the select beverage of the universe because it existed 1000s of years before God made the first human. Another ancient recipe they have is the Midas Touch Golden Elixir. That beverage was found in a tomb thought to be King Midas and is the actual oldest-known fermented beverage in the world. I've sipped the Midas Touch before but my excellent memory can't seem to recall where.
The other bottle I picked up is their Red & White. I'm excited about this one. Let me save you the trouble of clicking on the link:
After enjoying such fine beverages I'll be a true beer dork and display the bottles next to the Golden Shower 750 ml I have (which must be worth lots cuz its no longer made).
As I ventured deeper down the beer aisle to the more select brews I noticed they had a few of the rare Dogfish Head beers in 750 ml bottles. Dogfish Head calls these "occasional rarities". They are brewed just a few times, or once, a year in limited quantities. I picked up the Chateau Jiahu. Its one of their 2 or 3 beers made from traces discovered in archaeological sites and scientifically recreated. This one happens to be from a site in northern China that is 9000 years old. You know beer must be the select beverage of the universe because it existed 1000s of years before God made the first human. Another ancient recipe they have is the Midas Touch Golden Elixir. That beverage was found in a tomb thought to be King Midas and is the actual oldest-known fermented beverage in the world. I've sipped the Midas Touch before but my excellent memory can't seem to recall where.
The other bottle I picked up is their Red & White. I'm excited about this one. Let me save you the trouble of clicking on the link:
A big, belgian-style Wit brewed with coriander and orange peel and fermented with Pinot Noir juice. After fermentation a fraction of the batch is aged in Oregon Pinot Noir barrels, and another fraction is aged on oak staves. The beer is blended together before packaging.Mmmm yum. They had their Black & Blue as well which is a belgian-style strong ale fermented with blackberries and blueberries. I was scared away by the blueberries at the time but its probably damn good. I won't miss the opportunity next time.
After enjoying such fine beverages I'll be a true beer dork and display the bottles next to the Golden Shower 750 ml I have (which must be worth lots cuz its no longer made).
Monday, April 7, 2008
glass in your glass
Do you drink Sam Adams? If you are like me there are at least 6 in your fridge. Its my staple I always come back to as I sample the bountiful selection of craft brews available these days. Well looky here => Sam Adams is voluntarily recalling certain bottles. Apparently there are little pieces of glass in some of the bottles from a certain bottler. They mention on their site how to ID the bottles. Turns out 8 of the 14 Sam Adams in my fridge have been recalled. 8? What about the other 4? Yes indeed I drank them. And the glass bits made it extra good.
75th Anniversary of the repeal of Beer
Today is the 75th anniversary of prohibition being repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight. Eight months later came the ratification of the XXI amendment. Previously anything over 0.5% alcohol was defined as an "intoxicating beverage" and prohibited.Raise a pint tonight.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
I was almost in a movie today
A few days ago I saw they had a little movie set on the Rosslyn Metro platform as I got off. Being on my way to work I didn’t pay too much attention. The equipment has been in the station ever since. Lots of electrical lines to power the lights and cameras while down in the station. Apparently it’s called State of Play featuring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman and Rachael McAdams.
Well I went home for lunch today and when I came back I got off the train, walked up to the long Rosslyn escalator and noticed a line of people. There was a big guy in a black tee-shirt and clipboard telling people at the front of the line they could go on the escalator. The people in line looked like the normal mix of people in the Metro… men, women, commuters, military uniforms. I was one of the first people off the train to approach and I slowed down not knowing what was going on. My first thought was to barrel right through, he didn’t look like a cop or Metro official. But I stopped for a second just to see what the hell was going on. Then if finally hit me they were extras in the movie. Right after I stopped the guy noticed the camera had made it to the bottom of the escalator and yelled at the extras to back up and look normal. Had I kept walking I would have mixed in with the extras going up the escalator as the camera came down and played a vital part in a major feature film! Maybe.
I didn’t see Ben Affleck or Russel Crowe. But TMZ is in hot pursuit.
Well I went home for lunch today and when I came back I got off the train, walked up to the long Rosslyn escalator and noticed a line of people. There was a big guy in a black tee-shirt and clipboard telling people at the front of the line they could go on the escalator. The people in line looked like the normal mix of people in the Metro… men, women, commuters, military uniforms. I was one of the first people off the train to approach and I slowed down not knowing what was going on. My first thought was to barrel right through, he didn’t look like a cop or Metro official. But I stopped for a second just to see what the hell was going on. Then if finally hit me they were extras in the movie. Right after I stopped the guy noticed the camera had made it to the bottom of the escalator and yelled at the extras to back up and look normal. Had I kept walking I would have mixed in with the extras going up the escalator as the camera came down and played a vital part in a major feature film! Maybe.
I didn’t see Ben Affleck or Russel Crowe. But TMZ is in hot pursuit.
Widespread Panic
This time of year I’m usually racing in the PCA indoor karting champtionship every couple Tuesdays. But during the day yesterday a friend contacted me with an extra ticket to the sold out Widespread Panic show that night. I decided since I’m already not going to make the podium of the karting championship after missing 2 events I should take the opportunity to see WSP. I haven’t seen them in years, some out-of-town friends sparked interest before it sold out, and I think the whole tour was pretty much sold out the day it went on sale.
The Warner Theater is in the middle of downtown DC. There were a bunch of college-aged pseudo-hippies hanging out on the sidewalk in front. On occasion you could hear a nitrous tank echo between the downtown buildings. I think there were 2 cops and a rent-a-cop or two walking around. The cops didn’t seem to care all that much and mostly keep people off the street. I heard they were more annoyed with the balloons popping than people actually selling and huffing hippie crack. Across the street at Cheff Jeff a bunch of suits where at happy hour on the porch enjoying the circus.
It was a bitch to get in the door and the bar lines were horrible. But we did have nice seats in the front row of the balcony. It was a good show. Jimmy Herring was set up half off stage. The second set was good and long. I’m not a big Widespread fan so I have no idea how it was relative to other shows or other tours of theirs. Along with the college kids there were quite a few people in the 30’s like my friend and I. It was an interesting mix with the preppy yuppies who were probably dirtier hippies than the swank college kids back when they were their age. I got down and had a good time.
The Warner Theater is in the middle of downtown DC. There were a bunch of college-aged pseudo-hippies hanging out on the sidewalk in front. On occasion you could hear a nitrous tank echo between the downtown buildings. I think there were 2 cops and a rent-a-cop or two walking around. The cops didn’t seem to care all that much and mostly keep people off the street. I heard they were more annoyed with the balloons popping than people actually selling and huffing hippie crack. Across the street at Cheff Jeff a bunch of suits where at happy hour on the porch enjoying the circus.
It was a bitch to get in the door and the bar lines were horrible. But we did have nice seats in the front row of the balcony. It was a good show. Jimmy Herring was set up half off stage. The second set was good and long. I’m not a big Widespread fan so I have no idea how it was relative to other shows or other tours of theirs. Along with the college kids there were quite a few people in the 30’s like my friend and I. It was an interesting mix with the preppy yuppies who were probably dirtier hippies than the swank college kids back when they were their age. I got down and had a good time.
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