Month: September 2024

Farewell 2024 Pool Season

lpaulriddle

Looks like pool season is over for the year. My final swim of the season was September 21, 6 days later than 2023’s final day and 6 days earlier than 2022’s. This year came in third since 2021 in total swims (74), second in total strokes (52,564), and first in average stokes per session (710). This will be the third straight year with no swimming in the month of October. Like last year, the culprit was the onset of a multiple-day period of overcast, humid, drizzly weather. Almost every September features a stretch of this kind of weather, which is why October swimming is so rare around here. Hope springs eternal for next year, though.

I have to figure out how I’m going to winterize the pool this year with the new pump. I plumbed it with unions to give me the option to remove it and store it inside for the winter. However, the wiring will likely make this somewhat of a pain. I may still try it, although I may hate myself for it next spring. I figure I have until around the second week of November to decide, as that’s when I usually finish winterizing the pool. I’m hoping to get the winter cover on it this weekend or shortly thereafter.

After starting it a few months ago, I’ve finally got all of my web infrastructure moved out of AWS RDS, and I shut the RDS instance down this evening, with the intent of deleting it if I don’t see any issues. Also, I’m in the process of switching domain registrars for lpaulriddle.com. When I initially registered the domain (at least 10-15 years ago), I used Yahoo! Small Business, and while slightly pricier than GoDaddy, I was happy with it until it ended up morphing into Turbify. Last year, the registration renewal fee jumped to $45, and this year, they wanted $55, which was enough to motivate me to switch. After some research, I settled on Cloudflare, and the transfer is now in progress, with a pending completion date of 9/29. In the meantime, I moved the DNS over to Cloudflare, which went off without a hitch. If all goes well with moving the registration, I’ll probably move my other domain (currently at GoDaddy) to Cloudflare as well. I’m not doing much with that domain, but I do have email forwarding set up for it, so I’ll need to figure out how to do that with Cloudflare. I will say that their registration fees are much cheaper than GoDaddy’s, let alone Turbify’s.

Edit (9/29) just in case it’s helpful to someone: I got a confirmation email from Turbify/Tucows a few hours after initiating the transfer with Cloudflare. It said that if I took no further action, the transfer would complete at 2024-09-29 01:30:17 UTC. That time came and went and nothing happened, so I revisited the email and noticed that there was also a link to “visit our website” at the end. I clicked the link, and it took me to a page with options to approve the transfer immediately or cancel. I clicked the approve button, and the transfer completed a few minutes later (verified by an email from Cloudflare). Not sure if it would have eventually happened automatically had I not done that, but it’s done now, and reflected in WHOIS. Now to go cancel the Turbify plan…

LostDogCoffee Peruvian

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Peruvian” from Lost Dog Coffee (Shepherdstown, WV)
    • Roast level: Medium/Medium Light
    • Origin: Peru (Chanchamayo)
    • Grade: Screen 18/19
    • Tasting notes from bag: Huge body, intense aroma, caramel & smoky wood burnt sugar
    • Purchase date: 9/14/2024
  • V60:

I hadn’t been to Lost Dog since May of last year, when I was just getting started with this new hobby. This place has a great selection of coffee beans, all sold by the pound, and my only complaint is that they don’t put the roast dates on the bags. Since they’re a small batch operation, though, I’m just kind of giving them the benefit of the doubt that the bags they have for sale in their store are pretty fresh. Unlike last time, I only bought 1 bag, as nowadays, I only like to buy what I know I can brew and drink in a month or less (plus, it’s highly likely that I’ll end up going back within the next several weeks).

The beans looked lightly roasted (as advertised) so I brewed them exactly the same as I brewed my last bag, which was also a light roast. The first two cups have been pretty good. Not sure if I’ll try tweaking anything going forward, but I don’t necessarily need to. Will add notes here as I use up more of the bag.

9/25: After several weak/watery/acid-y cups, I have figured out that these beans like a very fine grind. I kept nudging it finer and finer, until I finally got what I consider to be an excellent cup this afternoon, at grind setting 1+2 (or 1.67) on the Ode, which is just two clicks past the finest setting. I used 21.5 grams of beans or so, poured maybe 50g water to bloom (vs 60), and made sure to slosh it over all of the grounds. I finished pouring right around 2:00, and it took until 3:15-3:20 to fully draw down, which is a lot slower than I’m used to, but apparently the ticket for getting good extraction. No hint of bitterness at all, unlike some other beans where I’ve struggled to find the sweet spot between weak/sour and bitter/over-extracted as I’ve adjusted the grind.

9/29: I had 15.5 grams of beans left at home. I bumped the Ode to setting 1+1 (just 1 click past finest setting) and brewed with 248g water (1:16) and ceramic size 1 V60, preheated with insta-hot water. I used about 40g bloom water and otherwise followed the recipe linked above. The draw-down finished at 2:45, which is 30 seconds faster than my larger cups in the size 2. This produced an excellent cup. It was very well balanced and lacked the acidic aftertaste that my stronger cups have had. I have 21-22g of beans left at the office, and once they’re gone, I guess it’ll be time for another trip to Shepherdstown.

End-of-summer running report

lpaulriddle

This was a brutal summer for running. It was tough to stick with it, but for the most part, I was able to keep at it. The first issue was the heat in July and August. While 2022 and 2023 had hot stretches, this year seemed worse. When the heat and humidity are high, 4 miles is about my max, and that’s assuming I get out early and stick to shady areas. I had my best runs in July and August when I stuck to one particular route that is mostly shaded. If I went out in the sun, I overheated really quickly.

While the heat was a big factor, a larger issue was my left big toe. At some point early in the season, I stepped on something (splinter, tree detritus, etc) that got embedded in the base of the toe. It bugged me until mid August, when I finally got around to seeing a podiatrist, who removed the offending object, after which the toe healed up. In the meantime, I had been favoring it, which always leads to issues elsewhere. A month later, the toe is fully healed, I’m no longer favoring it, and most of the ancillary foot/leg issues have mostly resolved. Going forward, I’m going to be more careful about walking around outside barefoot, particularly in the spring/fall when the most stuff is falling from the trees.

Finally, over the past month or two, I’ve had an issue where I’ve been “pooping out” at the end of my runs. I’ll get maybe 4-5 miles, and then I’ll start feeling listless/tired and want to stop. I’m not sure of the cause, but things that have come to mind have been:

  • Lack of hydration / electrolyte imbalance
  • Other nutritional issue (glycogen depletion, protein or carb insufficiency, ???)
  • Hot/humid weather
  • Seasonal allergies that hit me in late summer
  • Mild virus
  • etc…

Just figured I’d document this here, so that I can refer back later and see if it’s something that happens at specific times of year. Obviously, hydration/electrolyte issues are going to be more common in the summer, and I seem to recall having some similar issues in May/June, which could be allergy related.

Today’s run was the best I’ve had in a good long time. My energy was much better, I ran 7 miles, and didn’t feel an overwhelming urge to stop at the end. For the record, I drank around 16-24oz of water between 6:00am and 8:00am. For breakfast, I had a protein smoothie with Greek yogurt, vanilla almond milk, chia seeds, almond butter, banana, frozen berries, quick oats, and mixed greens (not my tastiest creation, but that wasn’t the point 😀). I also ate a protein popsicle (my wife’s concoction) and a Rice Krispie treat. I went out just after 8:30. Temperatures were in the high 60s and humid, and I worked up a good sweat. On my last several runs, I’ve felt a little stiff and heavy-footed, but today felt more graceful and fluid. My feet felt great, and other than a bit of left hamstring stiffness toward the end, my legs did, too. Hopefully, this will be the start of an improvement trend. I’d love to get back to where I’m doing 10-milers on the weekends.

Rise up Pura Vida (bags #2 and #3)

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Pura Vida” from Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
    • Roast level: Light
    • Origin: Costa Rica (Finca Las Gravilias)
    • Tasting notes from web site: Complex and very well balanced; bright with hints of honey and orange citrus. Light roast, sweet cup
    • Roast date: 8/13/2024
    • Purchase date: ~9/3/2024, 9/10/2024 at Green Valley Marketplace in Elkridge, MD
  • V60:

I have a new grinder this month. I’ve been happy with my 1Zpresso JX hand grinder, but got tired of hand-grinding beans twice a day. I also wanted something that could grind enough beans for more than one cup. For now, I’ve taken the JX to the office, so I can grind beans there instead of pre-grinding at home. I’ll also continue to use the JX as my travel grinder. My new home grinder is a Fellow Ode Gen 2. I initially had my sights set on a Baratza Virtuoso, but I had a 25% off coupon from Fellow which brought the Ode 2’s price down enough for me to pull the trigger. (Sometimes it pays to take surveys. 😀)

The Pura Vida have been my favorite of the beans I’ve bought (at least locally) this summer. They have also been the freshest Rise Up beans available at the local grocery store for the past few weeks, so I’ve bought 2 12oz bags from the same batch this month. I’ve brewed a few cups with the JX at setting 18 (same as July) and a bunch in the Ode at setting 5, most of them with the size 1 ceramic V60, and this morning’s with the plastic size 2 V60. The JX cups have been fine, but the Ode cups have been better. The grinder has been the only variable, so I’m curious if the difference has to do with grind size, grind consistency, presence or lack of “fines” in the coffee bed, or all/none of the above. As I’ve noted before (more than once), with identical grinds, the size 1 V60 consistently drains faster than the size 2, and today was no exception. With the Ode at setting 5, my brews in the size 1 are always finished by 02:30, but today’s brew in the size 2 finished at 02:35-02:40. Not a huge difference, but it seemed like this morning’s cup was a tiny bit better extracted than some of my previous cups. Just something to keep in mind when I’m trying to dial things in, as one size might work better than the other, depending on the beans and various other brewing parameters.