Water into wine

The one thing that I never really thought about when I planted a vineyard was what to do with all of the grapes. The problem is that they are all ripening at the same time. We eat a bunch but still have a surplus. Although it is highly against my better judgement. I am considering trying recreate the first miracle and using my dad's recipe to attempt to make wine. I'll let you know if that ever happens.











These are a mix or Concord and Fredonia grapes. I promise that my next blog will be something more interesting than agriculture.

Attack of the giant worms

Today I came home and noticed that most of the leaves were missing off of my tomatoes. I was perplexed as to where the leaves had gone. There were no leaves on the ground. I just asked myself, "who would have done this to my tomatoes?"

I was only seconds from blaming the kid next door when I noticed some well camouflaged visitors. Maybe some of you are familiar with these giant worms, but I ,for one, have never seen anything like it. They had eaten until they were lethargic and immobile.

After getting E to check them out, I pulled them off one by one and took them to the neighbors garden.........just kidding, I took them to the empty field and let them have they're way with a young sweet gum tree. I guess that organic gardening is much more difficult than I thought.

My brother is a geek....... but it is about cycling!click the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_70uupNgfs

The 109 is a pretty popular route in the Birmingham AL area. It descends into the edge of Leeds, which is our old stomping ground. It's a nice ride with a beautiful climb. You gotta stop at the Meth Mart, half way for some juice. Greg and I have been riding the 109 since Lance was a Junior and Indurain was king. Since before inflation hit. It was just the 42 back then.

Violent Thursday at SLP

It was a normal, but not so hot, Thursday. I showed up to SLP early after a long day at work and a long week recovering from our trip to the 30A. I was looking forward to a casual MTB ride with some idle chat and a couple of water breaks in between laps. BF showed up and mounted his 29r. A few salutations were exchanged and BF was off down the trail with me to follow. All started out pretty tame. We caught up on the past week as we rolled through SLP's many steep hills and off camber switch backs.

SLP ( Sportsman's Lake Park) is a relatively short MTB and Xcountry running trail that is right in the heart of town. It is only 1 minute from my office. It packs an unbelievable punch into such a short amount of trail. There is never more than 30 seconds rest at any point on this trail. You are either trying to keep traction in a switchback, climb a painful 16% slope or keep from shooting off into the poison oak on a tight and technical down hill. It is a wonderful trail and 90% of it is smooth enough to ride with an cross bike. Although, disc brakes really help you to get the best out of this trail.

Anyway, Back to BF. Soon the chat became more difficult as I noticed the pace beginning to rise. I thought that maybe this is just a short peak in a usually fast but mellow riding style. Well, needless to say...... The pace never broke. When he started the blog " Life at 15mph", I didn't know he was talking about the mountain bike. I obviously said something to piss him off, because he was out to hurt me. We rolled into every corner (which is always followed by a nasty climb at slp) at full speed. I rarely had to hit my brakes before we would slide through the sharp turns and immediately stand on the climbs, never loosing speed. From time to time I would think to my self,"Maybe he will let up after this section", No! such luck. BF was not here to play today. After two good laps of this painful exchange, I was hanging on but definitely aware of my discomfort. We passed the cars as we approached the middle of the trail and I pulled off. BF never slowed. He continued on to ride the middle section again. To add insult to injury, I could hear him in the trail pushing his 29r to the edge as I sat on the pic nic table, feeling like a wuss.

When the ride was over, I looked into BF's cooler. I have to say that I halfway expected to find a couple of bags of blood on ice and a vile of EPO. All I found was a couple of huggys and two of BF's favorite after ride brew. An A.. whoop'n and ice cold beverage turned out to be a perfect solution to a rough week.

Cycling the 30A

Time to talk about some cycling for a change................ There are not many things I miss about cycling the coast. I can't go without saying that it does have it's charm from time to time. The 30A is about a 15 mile coastal road that runs through Sea Side, Watercolor, Alys Beach, and a few other highly selective Gulf front communities in the Florida pan handle. There are tons of bike lanes and tons more serious cyclist that prefer the road. More than that, are the loads of entitled drivers of Range Rovers, 7 series and M classes that think cyclist have no business on the road. Not to forget the F350 duel wheels that are constructing these beach side compounds. But, for the most part, it is a pretty nice place to ride and the quantity of cyclist keep the motorist on high alert. However, on this day, I saw one guy that was road rashed pretty hard from running up under the rear of a tour bus after a sudden stop. Most of us seasoned cyclist will have to assume that he was attempting to draft. (aero bars....need I say more?)

It was great to be back on a familiar wheel that I trust 110%. There is something comforting about hanging on a wheel that produces 23mph for 8 miles with the consistency of a Vespa with cruise control. It is ironic that he has earned the name "Wheel Sucker". Mostly by out smarting his competition and hanging in their draft until their legs have gone sour, then he flashes a snow white smile and rides away up the mountain to the finish. Lucky for me, on this day, it was flat and I guess he had pity on me.

If you venture off the 30A, you don't have to travel very far to start finding the reminders of when this area was simply a few mosquito dominated fishing camps and plantations. We followed one shell packed road and found the nice surprise of a well preserved antebellum mansion.

And of course, the dreamer in me had to find this Volvo wagon, which sent me into a fruitless restoration fantasy. In the end..... I guess GK the WS pulled too much and had to be carried home. On a day of 97 degrees and what seemed like 300% humidity, A couple of ice cold Red Stripes were a welcome sight at the end.

Fruits of Summer

Well, it is not hard to be pessimistic about Summer in the South. The wicked heat, the constant afternoon showers, the bugs ect. One of the wonderful ,among many, things about a rainy summer like this one has been, is all of nature's goodies. Fresh tomato's, fat green and red apples, big plump concord grapes and of course black berry's. In the evenings, Little E loves to stroll on to the adjoining ten acres where we have endless black berry's. It is a little bit of a walk across our land to get there and he usually ends up on my shoulders before we get back, but it is worth the trip.

When the sun sets, a cool steady breeze always seems to move in across our little meadow making the last few minutes of each summer day wonderfully pleasant. That's when we like to settle in and the next sport begins. The hunt for fireflys.

Paradise found.........at the Strawberry fest.A perfect day

You know, as "The Outsider" I think this town looks a lot different to me at times than it does to the home growns. Sometimes better and sometimes worse. But then there are times when everything lines up and I realize that I have ,for a moment, found paradise.

We went to town to make good on a promise to the boy for sleeping all night. The reward being a trip to a famous local 60+ year old doughnut shop,with the even more famous blue screen door. We made the visit and left with our wonderful cookies, peanut butter macaroons and chocolate milk....... We decided to stroll. As we moved North ,window shopping along the way, in all of the closed, quaint, little shops. We see some activity at the end of 1st Ave. It turns out to be the Strawberry Fest. It appears that this is a very old tradition in this town. The farmers market was full of vendors selling berry's, veggies, local honey and more. I have read about this place on one of the more famous blogs, but had never really stopped in for any length of time. As I watched EC climbing on the tractors, jumpy castles and giant slide, a well known
L. Armstrong song came to mind.
We even bought a fresh loaf of bread from a young Monk who resides at the local Abbey. For the bonus, the museum was free this day! Up stairs they had a video of Strawberry fest parades that dated back to the early 50's. It kind of gave the since of history for this town that had missed before. This place often reminds you of the towns you only see in the movies. It's a wonderful life, Groundhog day, Big Fish,................. Psycho..........gotcha on that one. I crack myself up. Anyway, It was a perfect day.