I rode to work through Catonsville this morning, for the first time in two months. I went through Patapsco Valley State Park on the Grist Mill Trail, then out to Ellicott City via River and Frederick Rds., and into Catonsville via Oella Ave. and the #9 Trolley Trail. This route is roughly 15 miles, and back when I commuted by bike almost every day, I used to ride it about once a week. Lately, I haven’t done it much, mainly due to the recent long-term closure of the Grist Mill Trail (there are other ways to get to Catonsville by bike, but they’re not much fun to ride on weekday mornings). I’ve always liked the route as an alternative to my usual ride through Halethorpe/Arbutus, and it’s not bad to do even on school days, so it was kind of nice to ride it again for the first time since the trail reopened. Going forward, I’d like to get back to riding the route once or twice a month, so we’ll see how that goes.
Category: Biking
Biking Report
I rode my bike into Baltimore today, for the first time since May 14 (according to my geocaching logs). My usual route into the city has me picking up the Gwynns Falls Trail at Wilkens Ave. about 0.6 mile east of Caton Ave. Then, I follow the GFT into the city and past Carroll Park, where I can go north towards the B&O Museum, or east past M&T Bank Stadium, towards Federal Hill and the Inner Harbor. To exit the city, I usually go south through Federal Hill, over the Hanover St. bridge, and through Brooklyn and Harmans to Linthicum. Both routes are roughly 14 miles one-way to or from home, so I’m guaranteed to get 28 miles plus wherever I go within the city. Today’s ride took me through downtown along Light and Pratt Sts., and along the waterfront promenade to Fell’s Point, one of my former stomping grounds which I hadn’t visited since probably before COVID, and never on a bike until today. I had mixed luck looking for a few geocaches along the way — I found a couple, but struck out on several others. That’s kind of the way it goes with me with urban caching.
Baltimore really gets a bad rap nowadays, even amongst people I know who grew up there. It’s kind of depressing. The city has its problems for sure, but there are parts of Baltimore that are still very nice. The city has added two-way protected bike paths in a lot of downtown areas, and when I was there, the whole harbor area was busy with walkers, joggers, and bikers. There were lots of folks out and about in Federal Hill and Fells Point, as well. I will grant that some areas along my routes in and out of Baltimore leave something to be desired. Parts of the GFT between Wilkens Ave. and Carroll Park are secluded and a little bit creepy, and Brooklyn is not a great neighborhood, in spite of being along the East Coast Greenway. It probably helps that I usually ride through these areas early on Sunday mornings, but I’ve never had a problem after 3 years and 15-20 rides. Once I’m in the city proper, I stick to nicer neighborhoods like Downtown/Inner Harbor, Federal Hill, Locust Point/Port Covington, and Fells Point, and I have always felt safe.
Late Run
I went to the Orioles game last night, and didn’t get back until after 11. As a result, I slept until 7:30, and didn’t get out for my run until almost 10, which is really late for this time of year. Luckily, while it was humid as ever, the thick cloud cover kept the temperatures cooler than they ordinarily would be by late morning in August. So, I could have picked a worse day to get a late start. I set out to run 10K. About 3.5 miles in, I started feeling a tiny bit under the weather, and thought I might have to cut it short. Luckily, it was just a brief abdominal issue that went away after a few minutes, and I was able to complete the full distance. It was not a bad run for mid August.
Coffee: I’m still using up the last of my “La Esparanza” medium/medium dark blend. I brewed this recipe twice today. I’d rate cup #1 a 3.5 out of 5, and cup #2 a 4.5 out of 5. The only difference was that in between the cups, I put a new water filter in our Brita pitcher, and I reused the same AeroPress filter for cup #2. I wonder if some of the taste variation between cups is because I’m brewing a blend of two different roasts, and with each cup, I’m getting a slightly different ratio of medium-roasted beans to dark-roasted beans. The way to test that theory would be to use single-origin beans and see if the results are any more consistent from cup to cup (assuming all other variables stay the same). This will be interesting to try.
Morning ride
Nice morning for a ride today, even if it was just a garden-variety commute to work. It’s my second day in the office this week, which has been the exception more so than the rule this summer, in spite of intentions. Weather, holidays, and vacations (mainly weather) have kept me home on a lot of Mondays. Weather once again threatened this past Monday, but held off until I got home, and I made it to the climbing gym in time to ride out the crazy storms. Different story today, with pleasant weather (for August) and no storms predicted. Both of my commutes this week have been on the road, as the trails have been a little too wet for mountain biking.
On the coffee front, I brewed yesterday’s recipe with the same beans this morning, and the cup was fine, but not quite as good as yesterday’s. I noticed some dripping while it was steeping, and when I flipped the AeroPress, I saw that it was because I had inserted the plunger a little bit crooked. Also, the filter paper was used once (for yesterday’s cup). I can’t really see where either of those things would affect the finished product. All the same, I’ll eliminate those variables the next time I brew this, which will be either late this afternoon, or tomorrow morning. I have enough of the beans left to make 4 more cups, and I’m hoping at least one of them is as good as yesterday’s.
Miscellany
We took the “kids” (age 20 and 17) for an overnight trip out to far western Maryland Monday into Tuesday. We visited Swallow Falls State Park, the Maryland Rock Maze, Sideling Hill Creek State Park, Cumberland Narrows, and Washington Monument State Park. We got some hiking in and found several geocaches. Even though we were away less than 36 hours, it was nice to get out of the house for a while, and brought back memories of trips like this we used to take back when the kids were smaller. Who knows if we’ll ever be able to drag both of them out for something like this again!
I rode my mountain bike to work today, for the first time since June 7. Although I’m no fan of mountain biking in the heat and humidity, the main thing stopping me this summer has been the wet and stormy weather we’ve had since the second half of June. My schedule is most conducive to mountain biking on Wednesdays, and most weeks, the trails have been too muddy. Currently, we are in the midst of a several-day dry spell, so conditions were pretty good. I stuck to familiar trails, and they were in mostly good shape, but there were lots of muddy patches in areas that aren’t usually muddy. I passed around 8 hikers on the Howard County side between Belmont and Rockburn Branch, which is 8 more than I usually see in that area weekday mornings. I guess the beautiful early August weather brought everyone out of the woodwork. Temperatures were in the upper 60s, with low humidity.
On the swimming pool front, something seems to be wonky with our SWG today. This morning, I went out and noticed that the temperature sensor was reading 5-8 degrees higher than the actual water temperature. I calibrated it to match, but I’ve never had to do that before. I ran a test, which showed normal cell amps, but then after I exited the menu, the display started flashing a low amps warning. Not sure if the two issues are related. The temperature thing is usually related to the tri-sensor, but the low amps thing usually points to the cell, so I’m not sure what to make of this. I power-cycled the controller and also backwashed the filter, but neither helped with the temperature anomaly. The low amps display went away after a minute or so, but the Chlorine has been running a little lower than expected this week, so I wonder if this has been happening for a few days. This evening, I’ll pull the cell out and inspect it, and I’ll also look at the check valve and see if there’s anything impeding flow through the tri-sensor. The cell is 14 years old, and has outlasted the original controller and tri-sensor, so it could be that it’s finally time for a new cell. However, it doesn’t seem like a bad cell would cause the issue with the temperature reading. I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of it, and I’m sure it’ll end up costing me more money. That’s just life with a pool.
Weekend Ride
I rode through parts of Columbia, Savage, Laurel, and Jessup this morning, for a round trip of almost 40 miles. I usually plot my routes on gmap-pedometer.com ahead of time to get a rough estimate of distance, but I did not do that for this ride. I had guesstimated it at roughly 30-35 miles, which I guess was too low. Nice to get out for a longer ride, though. It was a fairly flat route, so I took my single speed bike. I was out for right around 3 hours, and found 4 geocaches along the way. The weather was nice: it started out in the upper 60s with a dewpoint in the low 60s, which felt great compared to the past 3 days. A line of strong storms passed through the area yesterday evening just ahead of the cold front. Most of the action must have been to our south, as there was a lot of storm debris in the roads, particularly around Savage.
Based on the weather forecast, it looks like I might be able to ride my mountain bike to work on Wednesday, for the first time in forever. Looking forward to that if it happens.
This, that, & the other
I brewed 13g that makes you happy this morning with my “Angel Albino Corzo-Chiapa” medium roast beans that I picked up on the way home from Bethany, after getting great results with the recipe with different beans yesterday and the day before. Everything was the same, except I slightly overshot and ended up with about 190g of water (the recipe calls for 180g). It wasn’t a bad cup flavor-wise, just ever so slightly on the weak side. I’ll try this again and try to avoid over-pouring (update — 180g tasted about the same — maybe try tweaking water temperature and/or grind size). I seem to get better-extracted coffee from this recipe than I have been getting recently with the James Hoffmann recipe. My last few cups with the latter recipe have tasted kind of sour and weak. Granted, this is only the third time I’ve brewed today’s recipe, but I have yet to get a sour-tasting cup. I’ve gotten great cups of coffee with the Hoffmann recipe, too, but not consistently, and I’m still not sure exactly why that is. My goal is to find an idiot-proof recipe that produces consistently good coffee with a wide variety of beans (with maybe a small tweak to grind size and/or temperature here and there), and I am hoping that today’s recipe will turn out to be it. Time will tell.
Yesterday morning, I ran just over 10K at 10:45/mile, which is my first time averaging under 11:00/mile in probably a few weeks. I suspect it was mainly due to the weather, as the dewpoint was in the low 60s… still on the muggy side, but less so than my past several runs, and everything is relative this time of year. It will be interesting to see what my pace is like once we get into the cool, crisp days of fall. Later this week, we are supposed to have our first real heat wave of the summer, so I may end up running in the pool a couple of times. I hope I can find my flotation belt…
I got out for a “short” bike ride of about 25 miles this morning, looping through Ellicott City and parts of Columbia. Along the way, I rode the Grist Mill Trail from the swinging bridge west to Ilchester Rd. Parts of that section of trail could use some work. There is one area where some of the asphalt has washed away, and several other areas with remnants of flood debris on the path. I guess that part of the trail wasn’t in the scope of last year’s bridge work. Perhaps they’ll work on it later this year. I don’t go into the park often on weekends, so just for future reference, it was still nice and quiet at 7:30am. I didn’t see any other people (other than a park employee) before I crossed the swinging bridge. I’m not sure exactly what time they open the gates, but it was clear they hadn’t yet when I was there.
Bike Ride
I had been hoping to ride my MTB to work today, but I woke up to unexpected rain showers that hung around for 3 hours. No complaints, as it was a nice, gentle, beneficial rainfall (in contrast to our usual summer deluges) and, in spite of recent flooding elsewhere in the region, our area has been relatively dry over the past couple of weeks. The rain let up around 8:30am, and I headed out on the road bike just before 9. It was my first ride to work in two weeks. I got to check out the newly-reopened Grist Mill Trail in PVSP. The trail had been closed since last October to replace two bridges which had been washed away by floods in 2018. The trail was originally scheduled to be closed for a year, but reopened after 9 months. The new bridges look great. I was able to see some of the work in progress as I biked by on the other side of the river, during the winter when the leaves were off the trees. Based on the size of the drilling rig they used for the footings, I’d say the bridges should withstand any future flooding. Most of the trail has been repaved as well. I only rode as far west as the second bridge, but next time, I’ll ride all the way out to Ilchester Rd.
Ride notes
It’s our first day back from Bethany, and while I usually go in to the office on Mondays, I decided to telecommute today so that I could take care of a few post-vacation chores around the house. In lieu of my usual bike ride to and from work, I decided to ride a quick loop around the airport this morning, something I had not done on a weekday in a couple of years. Traffic was not all that bad, probably partially because it’s summer. Ridge Rd still seems to carry less traffic than Race Rd and Hanover Rd, at least for now, as I have a feeling that it is going to be getting more developed in the coming years. There’s already a monstrous townhouse development going up just south of the 295 overpass, although that does not seem to have impacted traffic all that much, at least at the times of day that I pass through. Until it becomes unpleasant to ride, Ridge Rd will continue to be my go-to weekday route to and from Elkridge. The BWI loop itself seemed quieter than the last time I rode it on a weekday, which (I believe) was in 2021 — still during the peak of COVID. Including a quick detour to find a cache in a business park along Aviation Blvd., my total distance today was a little over 23 miles. The weather was in the 70s with a dewpoint in the mid-60s, which felt downright pleasant after spending a week at the coast. I rode my Surly Disc Trucker. My next ride will likely be to work on Wednesday, and if it stays dry, I may try to take my mountain bike.
Ride/Brew Notes
Today’s ride took me west from Bethany to Frankford (DE) and back, passing through the town of Omar along the way. On the whole, this is a more pleasant ride than south through Bayard, because there is less traffic, and the roads are wider and more bike-friendly. The town of Frankford itself is something of an exception, with more traffic and narrower roads that are not exceptionally well-maintained, but that’s a rather small portion of the ride. My total distance was just under 24 miles, which is about what I set out for today. From Frankford, the route can be extended by heading north to Dagsboro, South to Selbyville, or even east to Fenwick via DE-20 and DE-54.
I’ve been making a glass of cold brew every day this week, and I think I’ve gotten it nailed down to this recipe:
- Pre-moisten 2 new or used paper AeroPress filters
- Set AeroPress up in inverted orientation
- Add 1 heaping scoop (roughly 15 grams) Wellsley Farms Breakfast Blend pre-ground medium roast coffee
- Fill AeroPress a little over halfway with room temperature water
- Stir vigorously for 1 minute
- Press slowly into an 8-ounce glass
- Add ice and top with water
I had been brewing this in standard orientation previously, but a lot of water was dripping through while stirring, which the inverted orientation avoids. I think inverted produced a slightly superior result, but I’d have to do a blind taste test to say for sure. Next time, I think I’m going to try topping off with milk or cream, and see how that tastes.
I also found that using the drip coffee brewer makes a better hot cup with this coffee than the AeroPress method I was using earlier in the week. I’ve been using 4 level tablespoons coffee to 8 ounces (1 cup) water. I’m sure I could get better results from the AP with a little bit of tweaking, but haven’t really bothered fooling around with it.