Ride Notes

lpaulriddle

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.

Tree House El Mirador

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  • Beans: “El Mirador”
    • Roaster: Tree House Coffee Company (Boston, MA)
    • Origin: Colombia (Tolima)
    • Roast level: Light
    • Roast date: 12/9/2024
    • Purchase date: 12/12/2024 at Tree House Brewing (Copley Place, Boston MA)
    • Process: Honey; Varietal: Gesha; Elevation: 1750-1830 MASL
    • Tasting notes: Persimmon, honey, and orange blossom
  • V60:
    • 19.1g coffee / 300g water (1:15.7)
    • Ode: 2
    • Water at 99°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 36-40g bloom water – finishes 03:10-03:20

This is the most expensive 12oz bag of coffee I have bought to date. I think it was more expensive than any 16oz bag I’ve bought, as well. It likes a fine grind, and has a long draw-down time. Taste-wise, it has a good bit of fruity acidity and a rather complex mouthfeel, with some flavors I can’t really quite identify. This is definitely a coffee connoisseur’s coffee, and while I’m not sure if the cups I’m brewing are the best they can be, I am enjoying them, and I am fairly certain that I couldn’t have brewed them as well a year ago. In other words, I’ve progressed to the point where buying top-shelf coffee isn’t a waste of money. Which isn’t saying much, but it’s something. 😀

MTB Deep Freeze

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After attending an early-morning geocaching event, I arrived home wide awake at 6:45am, so I hit the PVSP trails for a mountain bike ride. Temperatures were in the upper teens to low 20s, but there wasn’t much wind. I started out on Belmont Trail and rode Morning Choice, Old Track Loop, Nacho, Garrett’s Pass, and Ridge Trail + CJS Extension on the Howard County side, plus Soapstone to Starstruck via Avalon Mill Race trail in Baltimore County. I saw 6 other hardy riders, 3 of whom were solo like me, and 3 in a group. As I was heading home in the eastbound direction on the Mill Race Trail, my rear tire went flat. Not sure what I hit, as I haven’t pulled it off and inspected it yet. But, I’m happy it didn’t happen earlier in the ride.

For the ride, I wore a winter cycling jersey over a standard long-sleeve jersey over a 32° Heat synthetic long sleeve base layer shirt, long cycling pants, wool socks, Altra waterproof shoes with warming fleece insoles, Gore Bike Wear gloves, Barr Mitts, and medium-weight balaclava. My face was a little bit cold at the start of the ride, but I was perfectly comfortable once I got into the woods. As expected, the frozen trails were fantastic, and I rode through a few patches of frozen mud. Towards the end of the ride, some of the sunnier portions of trail were starting to thaw and get muddy.

My winter biking gloves have lasted a long time. They are at least 10 years old, and showing their age, but I think they’ve got at least one winter left in them. One thing working in their favor is that I don’t wear them as often as I used to, because I usually can get away with lighter gloves with the Bar Mitts. The exceptions are days like today, when the temperatures are in the teens or below. They are well-made gloves, but I’ve never been crazy about the liners, as they are very difficult to put on when they are damp. That basically means that I can’t take them off during a ride unless I am prepared to either change into different gloves, or spend a lot of time fussing to get them back on. In all the time I’ve had them, though, that hasn’t been enough to deter me from wearing them for cold rides.

December Running Notes

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I have settled back into a pretty good running groove since getting over my latest cold and returning home from Boston. I had a 6-day break while I was in Boston — I ran about 10K the first morning I was there, but after that, I couldn’t get the weather to align with my busy conference schedule. I did get plenty of walking in, though, and I was able to complete the Historic Boston GeoTour. Since I returned last Friday, I’ve gone running 3 times. I ran 11.4 miles on Saturday, 7 miles Monday, and 7 miles today (Thursday). My pace is back to where it was prior to last summer — 10:38/mi, 10:22/mi, and 10:33/mi, respectively. All 3 runs were in my Vibram V-Runs. The weather was in the mid-30s to low 40s each day. In hindsight, I should have worn my waterproof shoes on Monday, as the pavement was wet, and my toes got damp and cold. The other two runs were dry, and my feet stayed comfortable. I suspect that when the weather and pavement are dry, I should be able to stay comfortable in the V-Runs down to about freezing. If it’s wet out, the cutoff will likely be around 50°F, and if it’s raining, I may want to wear the V-Runs without socks.

I’ve had a slight issue with bursitis (or something that feels like it) in my right heel for the past several days. I think I picked it up while geocaching in Morgan Run Environmental Area last weekend. I did quite a bit of scrambling over rocks and steep, uneven terrain, in minimalist Lems Boulder Boots. I probably need to take it a little bit easier going forward, as I’m not a spring chicken any more, and can’t abuse my feet the way I used to. Fortunately, running (unlike walking) does not seem to aggravate the condition, and as of today, it seems to be improving.

I think I’m going to shoot to run 25 miles a week most weeks through winter and at least early spring. If I continue to run 3 days a week, that works out to two 7-milers during the week, and an 11-12 miler on the weekend. Once a month, I’ll see if I can stretch that to 13.1 miles. Of course, all of this assumes that I don’t have too many setbacks like illness, bursitis, or nerve pain, and that the weather mostly cooperates. I think my conditioning is where it needs to be to do this, but again, I’m not 25 any more. I am, however, quite a better runner than I was when I was 25! Wish me luck.

Back on the bike

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After a great fall mountain biking season, December has started off slowly. Today’s ride to work was my first time on a bike in 3 weeks. My last commute was Nov 27, and my last bike/geocaching ride was Nov 24. Weather, health, and travel have been the culprits — the fall drought finally broke around the end of November, and now we are in freeze-thaw season, which makes mountain biking tougher. Wednesday is my usual day to ride in to the office, but the past few Wednesdays have been rainy. 10 or 15 years ago, that wouldn’t have stopped me, but nowadays, I’m more apt to just telecommute on rainy days. Last week, I was out of town, and the week before that, I had another cold. On top of that, this time of year, I tend to start eschewing geocaching by bike in favor of hiking. So, there you have it — kind of a perfect storm. I expect the trend will continue for a while. Today was likely my final bike commute of the year (though there’s a small chance I’ll ride in on Friday). We’ve got a cold snap coming up, so I might try to get out on the mountain bike at least one morning next week while the temperatures are below freezing. On the weekends, I’ll likely continue to favor hiking over riding, at least through December, but we’ll see. I’ve learned over the years that with everything going on during the holidays, it’s best to be flexible with planning these kinds of things.

Bean Alchemy Elysian Morning Blend

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  • Beans “Elysian Morning Blend”
    • Roaster: Bean Alchemy Roasters (New Market, MD)
    • Origins: Bolivia, Colombia
    • Roast level: Medium
    • Roast date: 11/21/2024
    • Purchase date: 11/30/2024 at Sykesville Holiday Mart in Westminster, MD
  • V60:
    • 19.5g to 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15.4 to 1:15)
    • Ode: 5
    • Water at 95°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 02:45-02:50

I started this bag on 12/14, which is a little longer past roast date than I typically like, but that’s how the timing worked out with travel, etc. this month. It’s only a 10oz bag, so I’ll likely use it up within a week to 10 days. I brewed my first cup using grind setting 3+1, mainly because that setting had worked well for my most recent bag of medium-roasted beans. However, these particular beans seem to like a coarser grind. Setting 5 was a noticeable improvement on 12/15, and as of 12/18, my last 2 or 3 cups at setting 5 have been excellent.

With winter once again at our doorstep, and the house getting cooler, I’ve gone back to preheating my mug with insta-hot tap water prior to brewing. I used to also pre-rinse the V60 filter with insta-hot water, but lately, I’ve been pre-rinsing with heated water from the kettle. I also have consistently been using the plastic size 2 V60 for all of my brews, because, for whatever reason, I find I get longer draw-down times and better extraction than with the size 1. I still can’t explain this phenomenon, and there don’t seem to be many people commenting on it online. But, “it is what it is”.

12/22: I used the last of the beans up this morning. The last 3 or 4 cups were decent, but not quite as good as the cups I brewed 12/15 thru 12/18. I tried one cup a little finer at grind setting 4, but it was on the bitter side, so I’m still thinking 5 was the ideal setting (maybe I should have tried an intermediate setting between 4 and 5). I’m thinking that most likely the beans were just getting past their prime. If I buy these again at some point, I’ll try to open and use them up a little sooner.