PJ’s Maple Street Blend

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  • Beans: Maple Street Blend
    • Roaster: PJ’s Coffee (New Orleans, LA)
    • Roast level: Medium (3/5)
    • Origin: Brazil/Honduras
    • Roast date: unknown
  • V60:

PJ’s apparently started out in NOLA in the late ’70s, but has evolved into a large chain (not on the scale of Starbucks, but they have multiple locations in several states). I’m not sure where or when the beans were roasted. The bag had a lot of husks and bean fragments in it — I don’t know if it was a handling issue during transit, or a Q.C. issue during bagging. It didn’t seem to affect the taste of the coffee until I got down to the end of the bag. My second-to-last cup was a little bitter. For the last cup, I spent several minutes picking out the whole beans, and composted about 3.5 grams of husks and fragments.

The beans worked well with a fine grind, but I really felt the caffeine, more than most other beans I’ve brewed to date. Not sure why that is. I brewed most of my cups at 1:16 or thereabouts. Taste-wise, it didn’t knock my socks off, but was perfectly drinkable. The web site describes it as “nutty/floral”, which I mostly agree with. No fruitiness or acidity at all, and no burnt/roasty taste, either. I have a sneaking suspicion that the beans were a little past their prime, but have no way to back that up. It’d be interesting to get my hands on a bag that I know was freshly roasted, just to compare, but with chain coffee, that’s easier said than done.

Orinoco Old Man Winter

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  • Beans: Old Man Winter
    • Roaster: Orinoco Coffee and Tea (Jessup, MD)
    • Roast level: Light
    • Purchase date: 12/24/2024 at Martha’s Café in Arbutus, MD
  • V60:

I bought a bag of this on a whim, not realizing that it was flavored. I got the best cups at grind setting 3 after initially starting at 5. This was OK black, but the maple/butter/cinnamon flavoring didn’t really work for me. It would probably be better with sweetener and/or creamer, but that’s not how I roll (except on very rare occasions). Oh, well, live and learn.

Good Time Earth Coffee

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Getting caught up on a few coffees I have brewed (or am brewing) over the past few weeks or months. This one is somewhat unique. It’s made by Good Time Health, based in Finksburg, MD. The description from the web site is: “Organic Medium Roast Ground Arabica Beans from Mexico, are paired with the Fruiting Body Mushroom Extracts of: Lions Mane, Reishi, and Cordyceps! Giving you a rich and naturally smooooth black coffee.”

So, coffee with mushrooms. It’s pre-ground (I suspect that they add the mushroom extracts after grinding) and looks to be a medium to coarse grind. My wife bought the bag in mid-December, so it’s probably a little past its prime by now, but my usual AeroPress recipe is still producing reasonably good cups. The mushroom extract adds a definite earthy flavor to the coffee.

  • AeroPress with Prismo, metal filter, and 1 paper filter
  • 1 heaping scoop of grounds (I use the scoop that comes with the AeroPress)
  • 250g of water at 95°C (or just pour to about 1/4″ from the top of the AeroPress cylinder)
  • Stir 6-7x / steep until around 02:45 / stir 6-7x again / press slowly

The one thing I’m noticing recently is that it takes a good bit of effort to press this — I suspect this may work well without the paper filter, so I am going to try it that way next time.

Zeke’s Snow Day Blend #2

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  • Beans: Snow Day Blend
    • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
    • Roast level: Medium (3/8)
    • Origin: Bali, Indonesia (Blue Krishna) / Tanzania (Peaberry)
    • Roast date: 12/30/2024
  • V60:

This is my second bag, and my first time grinding the beans with the Ode. Last March, I ended up using a very coarse grind with 95°C water, with good results. With this bag, I again started with 95°C water, but couldn’t quite get it dialed in. Grind settings 5, 6, and even 7 all had an unpleasant bitterness. Grind setting 8 was way too coarse — it did get rid of the bitterness, but the cup was weak and watery. So, I backed off to setting 6 (still on the coarse side for V60) and dropped the water temperature to 90°C, and the last couple of cups at those settings have been good. Interestingly, these are the exact same settings I used with my recent bag of Rise Up Winter Warmer, and the two also have a somewhat similar flavor. This tells me that when I buy Indonesian coffee in the future, I might want to start off with a coarser grind (e.g. Ode setting 6), and then adjust from there.

1/28: I nudged the grind setting 1 click “coarser”, to 6+1, for my final couple of cups. Both were among the best I’ve brewed with this bag. Recipe adjusted accordingly.

Today’s Run

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I believe that today’s weather was the coldest in which I have ever run. It’s possible that I ran in colder weather back in my 20s or 30s, but if I did, I have forgotten. I have, however, biked in colder weather than today’s (and may do so again tomorrow morning). I headed out at around 10:30am, and ran 7 miles. The temperature was somewhere in the mid-teens, but perhaps more importantly, the sun was shining and winds were light. I changed things up a bit from my usual running garb: I wore 32° Heat synthetic long-sleeve shirt and long johns, Kühl running pants (relaxed fit instead of my usual tights), Under Armour long-sleeve top, Patagonia R1 jacket, REI balaclava, Injinji Snow calf-height toe socks, Correct Toes, winter gloves, and Xero Mesa Trail waterproof shoes. I also put petroleum jelly on the exposed parts of my face (cheeks, nose, forehead).

Notes:

  • I worked up a good sweat in this gear. The gloves were a poor choice- my hands got too warm and sweaty, and I ended up taking the gloves off for probably 50% of the run. I should probably go with mittens over light liner gloves instead.
  • I am becoming a big fan of the Injinji Snow socks. My feet never got even the slightest bit cold. I may try these socks out for biking as well. In any case, I think I need to pick up another pair or two of them.
  • The balaclava was a mixed bag, much as it is with cold weather biking. Depending mainly on what direction I was facing, I alternately wore it up over my mouth or down around my chin. It kept my head and neck nice and warm. When I pulled it up over my nose and mouth, my sunglasses fogged up. With my mouth covered and my nose exposed, the balaclava did a decent job, but any breathing out of my mouth got it damp, so I mostly kept it up over my chin with my mouth exposed, again similar to how I use it on the bike. That worked well for most of the run, but was uncomfortable with any kind of headwind. I’m going to need to use something else if I ever want to run on a really windy, frigid day.
  • The pants worked out well. With tights, my legs sometimes get uncomfortably cold when the temperature is below 20. The combination of the 32° Heat long johns and looser-fitting running pants was quite comfortable. Never underestimate the power of air as an insulator! I didn’t seem to sweat as much “down there”, either. (Incidentally, 32° Heat is a Costco house brand. The material is a polyester/acrylic/rayon/spandex blend.)
  • I had a similar issue that I typically encounter in the summer: I kind of “hit the wall” around mile 6. It was a very similar feeling to what happens on a hot, humid summer day: I just run out of energy, and continuing becomes a struggle. I’m now wondering if it’s something to do with breathing and oxygen intake: it’s a lot harder to efficiently breathe when the air temperature is so cold. This is even more noticeable when I have to exert more (e.g. when running uphill). Similarly, in the summer, the humid, oppressive air (particularly on “code orange” days) can be hard to breathe as well. In the cold, this kind of goes back to choice of headgear: maybe I need something that will let me breathe more effectively with my mouth and nose covered, as that would help to warm the air I’m taking in. I should probably also just realize that I can’t operate at optimal levels of exertion on these kind of days, and maybe make a conscious effort to set a relaxed pace (particularly at the start of the run) and take the whole thing a little easier.

Ride Notes

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After an aborted attempt last week, I “rode” my hard-tail MTB to work today. I put “rode” in quotes because I ended up hiking about half of it. Last week, it was a little too soon after the snow fell, and there was too much deep snow for me to want to deal with. Today was better, but I think I waited a little too long. About 50% of the trails were well-groomed and fun to ride, but the rest was icy from snow melting and re-freezing. Everything was packed down very well, and I was thinking to myself that studded tires would have worked really well in these conditions. Alas, I do not have a set of studded tires to fit a 29er mountain bike. Maybe I should get a pair, but I’d likely only use them a couple of days per year, so I’m not sure it would be worth the expense and the effort to mount/remove the tires every year.

More notes about the ride:

  • Weather: around 20ºF, light wind, sunny
  • Clothes I wore: Minus 33 merino wool short-sleeve shirt, regular long-sleeve cycling jersey, Canari long-sleeve full-zip winter cycling jersey, Performance Triflex winter cycling pants, 2 pairs wool socks, Altra Lone Peak waterproof trail shoes with fleece insoles, Yaktrax cleats, REI balaclava, Gore Windstopper heavy cycling gloves, Bar Mitts

This kept me nice and warm. As I’ve noted before, I stay a lot warmer riding in the woods than on roads, likely due to the slower speeds and the terrain/trees providing shelter from wind. I didn’t sweat much, either, and my clothes were mostly dry when I arrived at work. The Yaktrax provided great traction while walking over icy areas and crossing streams. However, I noticed later that they scraped a lot of paint off my pedals. Not ideal, but not the end of the world, and I have no regrets, as the cleats kept me upright (one of my primary goals nowadays). Due to the ice, the ride took 2 hours, which is a lot longer than I would prefer. All the same, I’m glad I was able to get out. I also like how clean the bike always seems to end up after a ride in the snow. Nothing at all like riding in dirt and mud!

Snow Commute

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Today is my first work day of 2025. I took a little bit of extra time off during the holidays, and this week’s snowstorm delayed my return to work for 2 additional days. As a result, I hadn’t been to the office in 19 days. It’s nice to finally be out of the house again, but I enjoyed the time off. In the past, when I went to the office 5 days a week, I relied on bike commuting to stay physically active. During the long holiday break, I would start to go “stir crazy” because I wasn’t riding my bike, so I’d be ready and raring to go back to work after 10 days or so. Nowadays, I only commute 1 or 2 days a week, and I’ve transitioned to running as my primary form of exercise. I kept up my running throughout the break, so I never went “stir crazy”, and I was in no rush to go back to work. So, there you have it.

Yesterday, around 24 hours after the snowfall wound down, I went out for a run. As I learned last year, two keys to successful running after snow are: (1) wait until late morning or early afternoon to allow the sun to work on the roads a little bit; and (2) find a low-traffic road instead of relying on sidewalks and paths (which often are plowed/treated inconsistently or not at all). I’m fortunate to have such a road near me, so I made a beeline for it and did laps until I hit 10K. As I’ve done several times this season, I wore Xero Mesa Trail Waterproof shoes with liner toe socks, Correct Toes, and wool hiking socks, and my feet stayed warm and dry. The shoes have broken in nicely, and I think they’re going to work out great for these conditions. There were a few icy spots along the route, but once I got used to running over them, I felt fairly comfortable. The “ground feel” that minimalist shoes provide, combined with a correct gait, seem to help reduce the risk of slipping and falling on the ice.

For my commute today, I started out on the hard tail mountain bike. I was figuring that enough MTBers would have been out on the trails by now to groom them pretty nicely, but I was wrong — the PVSP trails around Belmont were mostly footprints, with nary a tire track to be found, and it was not good riding at all. About 0.25 mile in, I turned around, went back home, grabbed my trusty 1993 Specialized Rockhopper, and hit the mean streets. I had not ridden the Rockhopper since last winter, and it was still outfitted with studded tires and Bar Mitts. All I had to do was put some air in the tires (had the bike not been ready to go, I likely would have ended up taking the car). The roads outside of PVSP were all plowed, salted, and good to go. In PVSP, the roads had maybe a quarter to half inch of snow covering them, with some ice in the areas where the snow had melted and re-frozen. The studded tires had no problem there, and I mostly sailed through at close to my regular speeds. All in all, a nice ride that brought back memories of my salad days of winter bike commuting.

Favorite Geocaches of 2024

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Once again, I’m posting last year’s favorite geocache finds for posterity. The running list that I keep during the year only had 8 caches on it, so I had to go back and find a couple more favorites to round it out to an even 10. 2024’s list is very front-loaded, as I found 9 of the 10 caches during the first half of the year, and of those, 6 were between January and March (and 3 of those were in the first 10 days of January!). Here’s the list:

  • 2024 CAM Cache – Paw Paw Tunnel (GCAH1E9) – 5/18/2024
    I found this while camping with our scout troop. It was my first-ever visit to the namesake tunnel, in spite of knowing about it since I was a kid. It was a very nice round-trip hike from the campground — we hiked through the tunnel on the way out, and we returned along the trail that runs over top of the tunnel. The tunnel was almost exactly as I had imagined for all those years.
  • Cocktown Creek North Side (GC390F) – 4/16/2024
    This is the most “off-the-beaten-path” location of the 10. It is in southern Maryland in King’s Landing NRMA, across the Patuxent River from the more civilized King’s Landing Park. It was a 3.5-mile round trip hike through the wilderness, capped off with a great view overlooking the river.
  • Delaware Breakwater East End Lighthouse (GCA12QV) – 6/20/2024
    A great paddle from Cape Henlopen state park out to the breakwater, where we disembarked to find the cache at the lighthouse. It wasn’t a long paddle, but there was a ton of wildlife to see, and it’s always fun to see a lighthouse up close.
  • GoT: Jaime (GC8RCC5) – 2/29/2024
    Another representative of the Game of Thrones series in southern Maryland, this time in King’s Landing Park (how appropriate). I can’t remember how many stages it had, but it was at least 4 or 5. Lots of bushwhacking over hill and dale and through swamps, with a couple of easy-ish tree climbs thrown in for good measure. The final was a good hide, a somewhat precarious retrieval, and a well-crafted container. What’s not to like here?
  • Multicache Maze Mounts Multiple Meters (GCAAQ43) – 1/8/2024
    This cache was a going-away gift to the community from littleblkdog, erstwhile MGS president and legendary Maryland cacher, after he retired from the Navy and moved to Vermont. It was a fun tree climb (several in my case), interesting field puzzle involving a UV light, and a fun gadget at the final. It’s archived now, but it served its purpose well.
  • Numbers, Numbers Everywhere (GC8GVYA) – 3/7/2024
    This hide was a fairly standard-issue urban nano in Chicago, but it’s on the list because it was my favorite puzzle of the year — a numeric crossword based on sequences. Solving it involved lots of fun code-crunching.
  • Riverine Erosion Processes and Morgan’s Potholes (GC6QTGD) – 12/15/2024
    This is the lone representative on the list that I found near the end of the year. It’s an EarthCache located in Morgan Run Environmental Area, and it had been on my to-do list for many years. It is just one among several really good ECs I completed in 2024, but it is in a location where I have fond memories of caching during the mid-2010s, and it was hidden by prominent Carroll County, MD cachers whose hides I have enjoyed very much over the years. Unfortunately, they are no longer actively involved in the game, but it’s nice that some of their caches are still out there to find.
  • RWLS: Dugout, Titus, Ruby & Yoda Share Plum Merlot (GCAEYWM) – 1/8/2024
    This is one of a couple of oddly-named letterbox caches that I found at the beginning of 2024. This was a multi-stage hide that made creative use of public wi-fi as part of finding one of the stages.
  • RWLS: Revelation of Luke’s Shiraz (GCAFMP2) – 1/6/2024
    Another oddly-name letterbox in Oella, MD that involved a nice winter hike along the #9 Trolley Trail and through parts of Benjamin Banneker Historical Park. There’s nothing better than finding a well-stocked ammo box after a nice hike through the woods.
  • Tremont! (GC16HC2) – 3/4/2024
    I’ll have to go check, but I believe that this is the first year where my top 10 included two EarthCaches. This one was located in Indiana Dunes State Park, and involved hiking to the top of 3 large sand dunes and taking elevation readings along with other observations. It made the list because of the unique and challenging hike, with great views of Lake Michigan.

Rise Up Winter Warmer #2

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  • Beans: “Winter Warmer”
    • Roaster: Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
    • Roast level: On the darker side of medium (4/5)
    • Origin: Indonesia (Sumatra/Java)
    • Roast date: 12/3/2024
  • V60:

This is Rise Up’s winter seasonal blend, and I last had it in December 2023. The big difference this time is that I’m grinding the beans with the Ode instead of my hand grinder. I started off at setting 3+2 with 95°C water, which was a little bitter. 4+2 (this afternoon) was much better. With both settings, the draw-down finished at around 2:35-2:40.

1/8/2025: I’ve been nudging the grind coarser over the past few days to try to chase some pesky bitterness, and am now up to 5+1 (which was pretty good this afternoon).

1/11: I am now at grind setting 6 and water temperature 90°C, which was good this morning. Setting 6 at 95°C was still a tiny bit bitter the other day. The web site lists this as a “medium+” (4 out of 5) roast, and I am definitely finding that it is behaving like a darker roast. However, it tastes more like a medium roast. I am tempted to try it in the AeroPress and see how that compares.

Saturday Run

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Today was likely my penultimate run of 2024. If the weather forecast holds up, and I stay healthy, I’m planning my final run for the morning of New Year’s Eve. The weather today was not fantastic — low 40s, gray, and wet. It has been drizzling off-and-on for the entire day, but there was a nice, mostly rain-free window from 9am to 11am or so, and I was able to get a 9-mile run in. I hadn’t really planned on any particular distance, so I just picked a route I hadn’t run in a while, and didn’t even bother checking mileage until I was almost finished. I’m pretty sure this was my fourth, and longest, run in Xero Mesa Trail Waterproof shoes. This time around, I wore them with Feelgrounds toe socks, Correct Toes, and wool hiking socks. This worked out great- the two layers of socks took up most of the volume inside the shoe, so my feet didn’t slide around. They also stayed dry and warm, and didn’t sweat, and the toe socks prevented any rubbing/blister issues. This was the best my feet have felt after running in the Xeros, and while the sock combo undoubtedly helped, I suspect that the shoes have also “broken in” a little bit.

The Feelgrounds socks are the first toe socks I’ve owned that are not made by Injinji (I love Injinji socks, but a little healthy competition is a good thing). These are ankle-high, and very thin. They’re maybe a tiny bit thicker than my Injinji liner socks, but not by much. They are 39% cotton and 61% Coolmax (synthetic blend). I found them to be quite comfortable inside the larger wool hiking socks. They’d probably also work well with climbing shoes, and possibly my Vibram V-Runs in warmer weather. For the time being, though, I’ll continue to use them with the Xeros with wet weather, and see how that works out over several runs.