some stuff i forgot...

I literally type this post two weekends ago and......never posted it. Please, explain how I survive daily.

ANYWAY I have things to talk about like school and malthouses & brewery tours but if I let this post never see the light of day I don't get to show off my barrel, SO.

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After two straight holiday weeks and two straight 4-day holiday weekends, only having two days off last week was an incredibly cruel jolt back in to the reality of the 5-day work week.  Also for the first time in a while I didn’t have much in the way of actual plans, which meant almost the whole weekend was devoted to working out and brewing beer…….could be worse.

Friday night was the annual Men of Zumba event at CC+ - when I first started really hitting the gym hard about 5 years ago, after I made the switch from my small local gym with not much more than a smattering of cardio machines & a weight room to the grand (and pricey) wonderland of Life Time, it was dance cardio classes that really hooked me.  I still enjoy them (I’ve migrated from straight up ‘zumba’ style classes to more hip hop type classes, which if you would have told me I’d be doing about 10 years ago I would have laughed in your face), even though I’ve mostly moved on, but a lot of my favorite instructors participate in this every year, so it’s fun to support.  Unfortunately the more I get out of the scene, the less familiar I am with the local instructors, and the more time I spent desperately trying to catch on to their routines while only being able to see about 50% of what was going on on the stage…but it was still a good, sweaty time.  Props to CC+ for managing the insane amount of people, too – at one point I turned around and the place was packed to the gills, all the way back on to the carpet behind the dance floor!

I also got a surprise delivery from my friend Kirsten in Minnesota – fresh, pesticide-free black spruce tips to add to my next brew, and (almost even more exciting), some Caribou beans!

Saturday I crawled out of bed, hit a boot camp class at my gym, came home to shower & headed back out almost immediately to White Lotus Yoga Studio for their new location’s grand opening.  I was really hoping to check out an aerial yoga class, but unfortunately they were all full, so I popped in to a vinyasa flow since I was already there, & signed up to do some flying next Sunday.  I’d been to the studio for Friday community classes at the old location, but the new one is soooooooo nice and bright and airy!  Solid job, ladies.

Next up: barrel curing!  Back in November a friend picked up a discarded Journeyman Distillery whiskey barrel for me from his homebrew shop (after doing a little investigating – it used to house Silver Cross whiskey, which sounds delightful).  I’ve been scheming a brew to put in it for quite a while now, and finally settled on an eggnog porter that I’ll be brewing next weekend, but it’s been sitting empty for so long that I wanted to go through the curing/sanitizing process even though it’s only held liquor so far.  Luckily my parents’ house, with its much larger laundry room and unused bathtub, was on the way home.

My darling <3

Curing away in a strange environment...

I can’t believe how much char came out of this thing – or how good EVERYTHING smelled. Damn, son.  A week of curing + some sanitizing and she’ll be ready to go!

Prepping for a new batch meant I also had to move along some of my current fermentation projects, so Sunday was a beer transfer day – I have two batches going right now, a Belgian golden strong that I racked over a slurry of almond extract & brandy-soaked dried fruits (blueberries, apricots & golden raisins) to try and conjure up a stollen bread flavor (fruitcake beer is SO last Christmas!), and a standard American IPA that I wanted to pull off a couple gallons to play with (I ended up adding a juniper berry tea).  Both of them came along nicely throughout primary fermentation – the Belgian has a perfect yeasty golden ale flavor and it hit all my projected numbers almost perfectly.  I was shooting for an 8.4% ABV, nailed my original gravity, and after primary it was sitting around 8.9% - bonus!

Beer ingredients looking pretty vile.

Amidst all the transferring I also took down all my Christmas decorations and got in a little extra fitness aka, “I bet you I can totally squat this tree.” (Spoiler alert: it was actually really light and I was kind of disappointed by how easily the whole thing went down).  Apparently the fitness theme of the day was “cold,” though – I tried to meet some bootcamp friends for a nice hour of hot vinyasa in the morning, but the heat at the gym was busted so it was a little more like slightly chilly vinyasa. Still managed to work up a sweat by the end, but hooooooly wow was it hard to find some zen for those first few minutes.

Disappointingly easy, but don't ask me how the attempts at pistols went.

Luckily I warmed up with some Paleomg spaghetti squash pizza casserole once all was said and done – an extra big batch with heaps of ground beef, spinach and mushrooms.  It might only look pretty when it’s fresh out of the oven, but damn is it good (and thank god for that, because with this big of a batch I’m going to be eating it all week long).

this outdoorsy thing i did!

Oh little blog, so much has happened & so little has been recorded of it.  Thus begins a series of blog posts chronicling events that happened between May and August, in no particular order, but which I want to remember enough to put them into words.

One of my “resolutions” this year was to go camping for the very first time – no, seriously, I have never gone. My family, despite that my mother and father took cross-country (even cross-Canada!) motorcycle camping trips before I was born (which is something I can picture my father doing but NEVER my mother???), the closest I’ve ever come to what you could consider camping is That One Time we stayed in a cabin when visiting family up in Canada (or was it Cheboygan? I was tiny!).

Luckily I have an extra outdoorsy boyfriend who promised to take me; and thus began a birthday road trip of epic proportions that changed about six thousand times between its inception and its actualization.  It’s been over a month since this trip occurred, and I have no idea how to be succinct when it comes to words, so the below archive of five days spent delighting in beer and mountains will probably be lengthy and scattered, but if you can bear with me, I promise there are a whole lot of pretty pictures.

Day 1 – Denver -> Durango -> Mesa Verde

I got up at the crack of dawn for a mostly uneventful flight (seriously people, Spirit is not the devil people make them out to be) to Denver, where Nate met me with hot coffee (this is how I know he truly likes & understands me) and then loaded me up in his car and we commenced the Longest Drive Ever.  The positive thing about driving in Colorado is: EVERYTHING IS LOVELY AND MOUNTAINS.  The other positive thing was bananas and almond butter.

A few hours in we happened upon the glorious act of serendipity that was the discovery that we were like six seconds away from Elevation Brewing Company – so of course we stopped for some libations to tide our weakening selves over until we hit Durango to hit up Ska Brewing Company, home of the Actual Worst Designed Logo, but what might be one of the coolest views I’ve ever had from a brewery patio.

From there we were back on the road to Mesa Verde National Park where we camped out & built an $18 fire, drank some incredible sour birthday beers and took a walk on which an outrageous amount of wildlife happened in ridiculously close proximity, and then curled up slept in the delightful outdoors (the verdict: I am pleased by camping).

Your intrepid road trippers.

No one with any history in graphic design made this.

My first lil' camp site :')

$18 fires & Russian River sours; this is how I want to always spend my birthday.

Day Two – Mesa Verde -> Ouray

We woke up early and I ate approximately 8 pounds of trail mix for breakfast while desperately creating camp coffee and trying to tame my greasy, unwashed camping hair (eventually a ponytail did the trick….sort of), and then drove ourselves further out into the park for a couple mile hike through some ruins to see some seriously cool petroglyphs. 10,000+ steps by 10:00 am, baby!  Also at some point during this hike I decided to try doing basket/bound headstands at a precarious cliff edge and succeeded for the first time ever without a wall to support myself, so you’re pretty badass, Colorado wilderness.

Midday we set out on some twisty turny windy rainy mountain roads (seriously the temperature drops between morning to afternoon to night in this state are outrageous) and made our way to this tiny little town nestled in the mountains called Ouray, where we found ourselves a camp site and then ventured down into the (rainy) civilization to go to a brewery that was literally called “Mr. Grumpy Pants” (aka the Ourayle House), as well as the actual Ouray Brewery, and then investigated the local hot springs (ALWAYS hot springs) before trekking back to camp where Nate made me some incredible burrito concoction and then we ate Bon Bon Bons, investigated a river, and drank a truly fantastic quad until I was too frozen to do anything but curl up and sleep until sunrise.

I also did a headstand here.

Petroglyphs!

Why are there all kinds of cars pulled over on this terrifying mountain road? Oh, because GIANT WATERFALL.

Day 3 – Ouray -> Glenwood Springs

Again, randomly, Colorado mornings continued to be absolutely sunny and beautiful, and after I repurposes leftover burrito insides into scrambled eggs we went on a morning hike around the area.  Ouray in the winter is home to a huge ice climbing park, so we were basically clambering all around a bunch of cliffs & rock formations lined with modified sprinkler systems & giant pipes to transport water that freezes everything over in the winter.  As the world’s most amateur ice climber ever I was transfixed with desire to come back and show everyone just how bad(ass) I am at scaling frozen over rock walls.  Someday, Ouray.  Someday.

After our morning excursion we popped into a super cute little coffee shop where I had a cappuccino with house-made brown sugar cinnamon sauce (MORE PLEASE) and a slice of almond-flour blueberry coffee cake (ALSO MORE) and then headed out to what was originally going to be Redstone, but ended up being Glenwood Springs because we couldn’t find a campsite.

The weather in Glenwood Springs took a crazy turn for the OUTRAGEOUS DOWNPOUR, but I was a thousand percent restless after being trapped in a car for so long and I whined about it for long enough that Nate indulged me in waiting it out so we could hike Hanging Lake Trail, which ended up being SO worth it.  The damp, slightly rainy weather actually made the hike really enjoyable – at some points it felt like we were actually traversing through a rainforest.  The whole hike out was uphill, but the view at the end was SO worth it.  Plus after a sweaty descent there were more (bigger than football field-sized) hot springs in our future, so life was delightful.  (We also stopped at the Glenwood Springs Brewery afterward, and a beer bar where I got tequila barrel aged IPA, which is probably the best possible way to follow up soaking in a giant oversized natural hot tub for an hour).

I’d promised to provide at least one gourmet camp dinner, so that night we ate fancy soba noodles by candlelight (and more bon bon bons and beers beers beers) and then passed the fuck out.

That sunrise, though...

Got that freezing cold camp cooking on lock.

Now picture climbing up this when it's covered in ice.

Hike a soggy mile and a half uphill for this? Yes.

....now come on, Colorado wilderness, just stop.

Hot springs for dayssssss...

The worse food photo I've ever taken.

Day 4 – Glenwood Springs -> Denver

Because he is the greatest human, Nate found – seriously – what was basically a Scottie Dog fucking convention and (after an incredible Cajun breakfast that included bison meatloaf) delivered me to basically an ARMY of adorable little black old men dogs for a late birthday present.  Possible greatest most ridiculous moment of my life (don’t ask me why but I’ve been obsessed with Scotties since I was tiny – I think it has to do with Walker’s Shortbread but don’t quote me on that).

Following the Actual Scottie Dog Celebration Picnic, we headed up into the city to go drink allllllllll the sour beers at Crooked Stave, followed by a mini city brewery tour that included the best Devils on Horseback I’ve ever eaten (made with peppadew peppers instead of dates!) and a Czech restaurant where I buried my face in svickova and Pilser Urquell.

LITTLE OLD MEN DOGS <3 <3 <3

This was someone literally ordering a flight of EVERYTHING.

I salivate just LOOKING at these. Can someone tell me where to find peppadew peppers in Michigan?

Be still, my little quasi-Czechoslovakian heart.

Day 5 – More Denver

Okay yeah, camping is over at this point, but a thousand other things are not so shut up and bear with me.

After fancy coffee and a walk through downtown, we went and had breakfast at Ophelia’s, which I had never heard of before, but which is this fantastic sprawling former-brothel decked out in fancy string lights, old vaguely sexually explicit posters and bathroom stalls made out of yardsticks, where I ate lingonberry duck meatballs over PARSNIP GRITS dear god I love parsnips.

Following this we urban hiked our way up to Epic, to Ratio (that strawberry berlinerweisse, though), Spangalang, and then a handful of bottle shops so I could load up my suitcase (this bitch came in at 49.1 lbs – the airline limit without extra fees is 50), and Sugar House Bakery because ARTISAN POP TARTS.

Oh my gosh the difference a shower makes.

The haul!

So, long story short: camping happened.  Glorious nature happened.  Beer happened.  Mountains happened.  I was distraught to return to extra flat Michigan, but my kitties were pleased to see me home.  Next adventure please!

ziplining in the dark

Last summer I did a glow-themed night 5k at Camp Dearborn and it was wonderful - not only did it feel great to run at night when it was a little cooler, but the environment at the park was fabulous. Campers with glow necklaces and sparklers say outside of their trailers with Christmas lights strung along them and cheered us on as we did two laps around the gorgeous evening scenery & I PRed my 5k time by over a minute!

The point of the story is that a bunch of friends and I have been talking about going to Adventure Park ropes course & ziplining for a long time & last Friday they were having a special "glow night", I remembered how fabulous that run was, and we were sold.

Suited up and ready to go (we thought).

Adventure Park calls itself an "aerial forest park," which is actually a pretty apt description. The park has 20 different "trails" of platforms in the trees connected by various arrangements of ropes, cables, wood and ziplines that form bridges between platforms. It all looks like a fun easy romp through an obstacle course, but IT IS NOT.

Coworker bonding time!

Being the badasses we are, after getting
our harnesses and going through the safety briefing, we decided immediately to start with the mid-level course, which put us 10 feet up in the air to begin and lulled us into an incredibly false sense of security about degree of difficulty. Fresh off of some pretty basic (though challenging) rope bridges & some awesome ziplines through the trees, we decided to conquer the next harder course (actually we tried to skip to an even harder one, but were chastised by some employees).

The second course took me and two of my brave friends 20 feet up in the air and began with a deceptively easy bridge, ladder, and zipline...and then immediately went crazy. Let me tell you, being short is NOT an advantage at a ropes course. At one point I got tangled up between my cable clips and the cables holding the platform up, swaying back and forth 20 feet above the ground and 10 feet away from a platform, had to back up to right the situation and finish crossing super awkwardly and oh yeah, the park lights died right in the middle of all this!! My lucky friends were safely back on the previous platform, as only one person is allowed on an obstacle at a time, while I clung for dear life to a tiny cable and inched my way forward until I finally made it to the next platform (but not before two more mini light failures!).

We did all (well, the six of us who opted to try it) make it through the blue course & were rewarded with a 20-foot free jump/repel at the end - once you convinced yourself it was okay to jump off of a platform that high off the ground into the pitch black, it was a grand old time.

I opted to leave my phone in my car (because I definitely saw myself dropping it from 20 feet up and being faced with hundreds of dollars in replacement fees), but we did grab a couple pictures as we were walking around before it got dark out.

We never made it to those impossible looking triangles, but we'll get you next time, double black!!

At times the course felt like it was never going to end, and I found myself dreading the next obstacle - but my friends & I pushed each other to finish, and honestly despite how I felt at the time, the adrenaline rush was amazing, and it was a really cool experience to find new ways to push my body's limits. It was crazy how much of the challenge was all mental - the biggest challenge of all was having to force your mind to override when your body says no.   It was so easy to forget that when you jumped on a platform onto the zipline, you'd be sitting in your harness - the whole time my brain was screaming at me that there was nooooo way I had the upper body strength to hang on for the whole length of the rope.  But in retrospect, I had so much fun!  We're all still talking about the trials and tribulations of the zipline, and planning to go back and conquer the black and double black courses. And, to top it off, it was a serious no joke upper body workout. I was feeling it for days!!

(And of course, afterwards we chose to reward our weary bodies with a pineapple/feta/jalapeno pizza and a night of watching Little Shop of Horrors like the bunch of nerds we are - so all is well that ends well.)