Saturday, October 15, 2011

biking, Chilean mine exhibit, and ChurchKey

It was a nice day so I had to take advantage and get outside. I saw online that the Natural History Museum had an exhibit about the Chilean miners who were trapped and finally rescued. So I decided to ride down and check out that exhibit, ride past the new MLK memorial, and then up to ChurckKey for some new beers they had on tap.

I got to the museum around 4:00 about an hour before it closed. I hadn’t been there in awhile and the first floor ocean exhibit was new to me. The little special exhibit I was going to was in the geology section near the Hope diamond. I finally found it after checking out some other cool exhibits. It was interesting and laid out the geology of the area and how they mine the copper. There was a timeline of their time underground and a map of the mine. It showed how deep down they were and the three escape mines they drilled. The actual capsule used to bring the miners up was on display along with other artifacts donated by the miners. It was interesting to see the conditions they had to survive in. A video was playing of the rescue. Emotional stuff.


I walked around a bit more and checked out the Hope diamond and other gems. One of the coolest artifacts was molten rock that was in the shape of a projectile after it cooled and hardened while flying through the air.

It was getting dark so I didn’t ride over to the MLK memorial. I was also worried about getting a spot at ChurchKey. Sure enough when I walked in I got one of the last spots at the bar. I sampled a nice line up of beers while there. All the small 4 oz tasting size of course:

  • Sierra Nevada Estate Homegrown Harvest Ale (w/ Sierra Nevada grown organic barley & wet organic cascade, chinook & citra hops)
  • Sierra Nevada Northern Hemisphere Harvest Ale (w/ fresh Yakima Valley cascade & centennial hops)
  • Black Diamond Black Harvest Ale (w/ fresh organic hops)
  • Ayinger Weisse
  • DC Brau El Hefe Speaks!
  • DC Brau The Public on cask with summit hops
  • DC Brau The Public on cask with amarillo hops
  • Brooklyn The Companion (55% wheat malt & 45% floor-malted barley malt)
  • Flying Dog Wild Dog: The Fear (w/ pumpkin, squash, chocolate malt, spiced w/ cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg & clove)

Of course I had some food with this. I like their fully loaded potato croquettes with broccoli sour cream. I also had their pasta special which was very good. Don’t ask me to describe it now. I finished with their awesome arancini balls but I was getting full by then and it was hard to get the last one down.

After the ride home the Caps were playing so I watched that. Then at 2am it was time for the Formula One race live in Korea. I haven’t watched an F1 race live in awhile (timing being a big reason). It was nice to have the live lap times and twitter updates as the race was going on. That provides so much more information you otherwise wouldn’t get. I could only stay up for half of it and slept late of course.

No comments: