Books, Bicycling, and Beers 2023: Venn

6/3/2023 - Venn Brewing.  Thank you - last one for a while and I'm all caught up.  I'm not caught up on UK vacation photos, but now I can get back to a better pace.  I love the dogs at Venn. There are always a ton of them wandering around.  Arbeiter is dog friendly as well, but Venn seems to attract so many of them.  This guy was insistent that I provide belly rubs.  He was part of a wedding party and wearing his own tux.  Super cute.

Reading Sugar about how awful sugar has been for humanity and eating a giant, monster cookie that traveled up into south Minneapolis from Eagan just like me.  I think the cookie factory is at the far end of Diffley by Trail Stop Tavern, a stone's throw to the south of Thomson Reuters.

Venn is one of the closest breweries to me, but this was a long ride.  I pedaled along Minnehaha Creek and did the lakes loop, all the way around Bde Maka Ska [Lake].  About 40 miles total.  I was trying to get my timing right so I was at Angry Catfish cycling right around 4:00 p.m. as they were showing off a new line of bicycles and serving FREE root beer floats and beer [Voodoo, no sneaky extra local brewery this time].  I didn't buy a new 4000 dollar bicycle.  But I did lust after the many bicycle packs. I've got that new road bike and I don't want to drop a rack on it, so adding a stiff pack and underbar pack might be the ticket to allow me to use it for brewery tours as I HATE carrying a book in a backpack/bike bag.  I think I spent a full five hours of my afternoon on a bicycle, drinking, shopping tour.  There are worse ways to spend a day.

Books, Bicycling, and Beers 2023: Wild Mind

5/31, Wild Mind in Richfield.  Although this is more appropriately Books, Bicycling, and BREWs 2023.  It was too early in the day for beer.  But like Venn, Wild Mind doubles as a coffee shop before 4 p.m. weekdays, so I went with a cold press instead.  Great thing about this ride was, I was getting a little beer-ed out, so coffee was a nice alternative, although it doesn't really have a brewery "character" to speak of.  Cold press is pretty much cold press. And, the flooding was finally down enough on the Minnesota river that I could pop across from Eagan to Bloomington and Richfield on the Old Cedar Bridge.  Cuts soooo many miles off rides to the near north side of the river, particularly as I start to head West.

My sister gave me this book.  Ronson' Publicly Shamed isn't as quirky as his Men Who Stare at Goats.  It's all about internet shaming/et al and it feels a bit dated given it's about ten years old [as far as shaming instances] now.  Still, mostly makes you wish you lived in Europe/UK where you can have info killed/forgotten if you want to.  I saw a PERFECT example of this at work the other day on No Rolls Barred where a professional card counter was banned from a casino and, while he suspected it was for characteristics related to card counting, they hadn't told him.  He know electronic surveillance was part of their set up, so under GDPR he asked for the digital records to see how they'd decided to ban him.  That's a cool use of that law.

Books, Bicycling, and Beers 2023: Wandering Leaf

5/28 Wandering Leaf.  I had NO idea this place existed.  They're not even fully installed in their mall yet as the outside patio is still under construction.  This was amazingly close to home.  Still about an 18-19 mile round trip, but just a hop across the Hwy 5 bridge at Fort Snelling and I'm there.  Closer than even Venn.

Today's reading.  Dystopia time.

They've got a very cool plant vibe.  Reminds me of the new coffee shop [Curiouser] that went in recently down in Apple Valley.  Gives it a real great ambience for a mall.

And their board game selection was excellent.  I didn't know Trash Pandas came with so many bananas.  Like some board game Hausu.  But there were a number of non-starter games, more than I've seen anywhere.  Only thing that made me sad was I dropped my odometer when I went to put it back on my bike.  Fell less than three feet, but landed right on the edge and cracked.  I could live with it, but I suspect it'll be a huge problem if I'm in the rain, although even then I can just transfer it to the protective plastic baggie I keep in my bike bag.  I looked it up.  They're repairable, although if you do it through Garmin they swap you for a refurb on the cheap.  I'll have to work my way up to that.  I'd like a stiff bike bag for the back of the rackless road bike first, so we'll see where I feel my priorities lie.

Books, Bicycling, and Beers 2023: Modist

5/26 - Modist Brewery in downtown Minneapolis.  This was a good choice.  Particularly if you like to go to breweries where most of the people are more attractive than you are.  Although perhaps that applies to all of downtown.  I love the ride along the [Mississippi] river up past the Stone Arch bridge and into town.  So much to look at and so many people to see.

Reading the second Lacey Lamar and Amber Rufkin book, which is really the first.  I liked the second better because it expanded more fully to other family and friends.  But they were both well worth the read.

Sank might be amused to know I ended my trip to Modist by buying their THC gummies on a whim.  Very good.  No after taste.  Although I didn't chew one mid bike trip.  That feels crazy.  But I did try a 5 mg at home.  And nothing.  I know that's not uncommon.  Then I did it again.  And nothing.  Then I went to 10, nothing.  Again.  Again.  The last time I coughed once.  I suspect I slept better as I took them in the evening, but I'm five tries in without an effect. Someone else said that perhaps it was simply a bad batch and took a 5 mg.  It was obviously NOT a bad batch.

I was sort of ambivalent, so I'm not sure I'll continue with the experiment, despite the big leg bruise and intercostal strain.  I'll wait for something more consistent before I add a new vice.

I love Modist.  Great beer.  LGBTQIA+ [see the colored flag that looks like someone hung up Minnesota backwards on the right].  Great breeze.  The photo above was inside, but I quickly moved to an open table outside with a little shade and was in heaven.

Books, Bicycling, and Beers 2023: OMNI

5/22 - Omni Brewing [and wine] in the Rosemount area. Another brewery in a cornfield.  Apparently most things south of me trend that way.  Maybe it's ambience.  Maybe everything south of me is a cornfield.  Regardless, a nice play.  I asked the bartender if it had been there long and he said "oh, yeah, long time."  I was surprised, because I hadn't heard of it.  Then he added, "Since December."  I obviously have a different definition of a long time.

Aeryn showed up to have a soda and pizza with me.  This book on sex was good. I'd have liked MORE history instead of some of the affirmational sex-positive reassurances, but I'm fairly sex-positive and assured, so it's a bit wasted on me as a target.  Still...I get the audience she's after.  The World Record Book of Racist Stories is wonderful.  Part of a two book set and I recommend them both. I found out that one of my coworkers in my book chat on Slack went to school with the Ruffins in Omaha.  He recognized people from the stories.

Their ambiance.

And tap list. If you zoom in on their tap list, you can enjoy beer names like Time Machine and Strategery.  Points for clever beer names.

Books, Bicycling, and Beers 2023: Nine Mile Brewing

May 19: Nine Mile Brewery - a heck of a haul after being in the UK for two weeks without my bicycle.  The Theory of Everything Else was a sort of trivia book.  Good.  Not great.

Did about 40 miles and change round trip.  Safety book in this photo - it doesn't count because I didn't switch.

Flooding was still going on, so part of the reason the ride was 40+ miles was that I had to go around the Minnesota river and across the 494 bridge instead of across Old Cedar Bridge.  Google Maps tried to lead me back across near Nine Mile.  Google Maps does NOT understand flooding.  Unfortunately, to get to this crossing I had to come way down into the river valley and then....go back up.  It was a tough enough [albeit short] climb that I forgot to turn my odometer back on.

I thought that I had strained a muscle, maybe during the ride, maybe when I had a charley horse that woke me up that night.  It was tough to sleep after that ride.  But a few days later Jen says "What did you do?"  I had no idea what she was talking about.  She said I had a black and blue mark on the back of my leg.  This does not fully capture the glory of that bruise.  For a while we were concerned I'd had some sort of clot/thrombosis on the plane.  But it is possible to get a charley horse so bad that it breaks blood vessels in the muscle.  Meet an example.  I can't really articulate how bad the charley horse was that woke me up. I was pretty sure my leg wasn't going to rip itself off.  Apparently that's exactly what it tried to do.

I'm trying really aggressively to injure myself.  I managed to get an intercostal muscle injury [ribs] running recently as well.  Feels like I'm sleeping on a softball on the left side.  It's finally getting a little better and I biked and ran my way through it because I'm not straining it like some professional.  But I'm clearly outpacing my ability.  And I should stretch more.  Always that last thing.

Sakura (and more)

We've been doing a monthly dinner event for almost a year now.  We've gotten around.  Tonight we went to Sakura in downtown St. Paul.  I had the Chriashi sushi - it's in the foreground.  K and L are eating primarily appetizers and rolls.  The food was good, although Kyle had the most positive things to say about the whiskey flight they tried before I got there and my sushi was better than Poot's salmon teriyaki, which looked like what you'd order if you didn't like sushi.  She did enjoy her dumplings.  I particularly liked them when I squeezed some orange on them (as in citrus, not simply the color) to complement the soy sauce.

Our historical venues:

• November 2019 (Kyle) - Sakura
• October 2019 (Matthew) - Chimborazo
• September 2019 (Larry) - Mesob (Ethiopian on Hiawatha)
• August 2019 (Scott) - Apoy Phillipino Bistro
• July 2019 (Ming)- Mama Sheila’s Soul Food Kitchen [Buffet]
• June 2019 (Kyle) - Babani’s Turkish
• May 2019 (Matthew) - Winzer Stube German Restaurant
• April 2019 (Larry) - Adelita’s
• March 2019 (Scott) - George and the Dragon [Brunch]
• February 2019 (Ming) -  City Afrique (Poot and I missed this one)
• January 2019 (Kyle) - Peninsula

Outside the restaurant someone had dropped their sushi roll.  Very sad.  I hope it wasn't the Zach Parise specialty roll.  And I assume they dropped it rather than flung it at the wall/ground in anger.


We also made it to the play "Towards Zero" by Agatha Christie this weekend, over at Theatre in the Round. Good play.  I really enjoyed the first 99%.  And then there was a weird Christie twist at the end that made it feel like a bit of a rom com.  The acting was great and her murder mysteries are fun. This one had the motto that the murder should occur at the end of the story.


Kyle gave me a birthday present, a bottle of Ohishi Whisky. 


And Joe gave me a birthday present.  Schematics for a keg and other brewery related items.  I'm going to ask my father in law to frame them for me.  They'll be really nice wall art.  My family got me a cast iron bank.  A dog.  I have a small collection, and it fits in nicely.  Poot says she picked it up in Wisconsin near the cheese shop while on her visit to a friend last month. No picture.  You'll have to trust it looks like a cast iron dog.

Puzzleworks

On Sunday, a bunch of us went to Puzzleworks next to Lake Monster Brewing in St. Paul, close to Cretin and 94.   Robert wanted to check out the VR studio in the same building before we started, so we met him there and watched him wander around a rocky, Swiss landscape, throwing sticks for things that looked sort of like pigs.  He also played a game where he could take the place of any of the defenders (bow/sword) in a castle defense type game.  That one looked more entertaining.  Here is in the studio.  We wondered for a while how he managed to stop before running into a wall.  Apparently he has a proximity detector we couldn't see on the display.  That seems like a wise feature.


It was a particularly good puzzle room. I won't talk about the details and puzzles, because that's mean, but it allowed us all to be working on something, individually or in pairs, simultaneously with minimal walking on top of each other.  Maybe we were just really good at it by now (we've done three together if I'm counting right), but it seemed better suited to asynch exploration.

This was our theme.  We weren't really locked in the room.  St. Paul has legal stipulations.  I will say I was in charge of math.  If you've done a puzzle room, that there's a bit of math won't surprise you.  I seem to be the default math dude/ette.



We finished in 51:47.  Seemed really fast.  He noted that they sometimes extend by five minutes as that gets the completion % up to 70.  We did have one hint - but it was sort of an unnecessary one as we were already well on our way to done.  I don't think I've written on a wall since the bathroom at the rental property/duplex when we lived there.


Our success photo.  We are the conquering heroes.  The Puzzleworks guide noted that there is a puzzle for 12 people.  Robert seemed excited about the possibility.  He's our puzzle room motivator.  The guy next to me is Brett.  It was his first time in a puzzle room, although he's done a True Dungeon before like Eryn and I did at  Gamehole Con last year (I don't think I ever blogged that, which is crazy.  I liked it better than Hawaii and we're going again this year) which has some of the same ideas, it's just distributed.  He had a great time, although he was a bit like me my first time in a puzzle room in that he wanted to see every puzzle that was being solved.


Puzzleworks is great in that they give you a beer token for next door (or soda) at the end of the event.  We'd been there only shortly before for my sister's birthday.  Once again, my family missed the food truck.  Robert had a copy of Cards Against Humanity in his car.  It was a fairly subdued game in some respects, partially because I kept picking tame cards to play.  Which was a winning strategy.  Gotta know your crowd.  Great picture of Marie.  Morgan is probably staring me down because he lost by one card.

Great Divide - Denver

I cajoled my family into going to two breweries while we were in Denver. The second day we went downtown to Great Divide. If a cop asks, I'll say it's just a story, but I was angling to eliminate three generations of my family downtown that day. Five people in the car, four of them talking while I was driving in a circle trying to zero in on the brewery. I sort of forgot there were things like stoplights. A few other drivers were keen to remind me they existed.

You'd think it would have been easier to find with a big beer bottle hanging off the corner of the building.


And an amusing beer truck out front.


My grandma and mother were enjoying the sun.  Keep in mind we were in the mile high city, and it was relatively toasty out, even with the snowy mountains nearby.  Compare that to a few days later when it snowed 7" in Sidney, or when it was 30 degrees for the Ironman here in Minnesota.  Grandma looks great for 95.


The bottling room.  Can you tell I spent some time in the taproom prior to the tour?  I was enjoying some of their casked beer which was running closer to the 10% alcohol range.  A few of those on top of the tasting glasses, and it was definitely having an effect.  Eryn LOVED the bottling machine.  They were loading a palate of bottles into it while we were there.  It just picks them off one row at a time and feeds them into the line.  Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!  John from work told me there's a name for it - something like "the paletizer."  For obvious reasons.  There were also kegs - whiskey kegs - in the brewery for making the casked beer (delicious).  I asked the tour guide about them, and she said they were a local brewery, Stranahans.  Kyle said he though Stranahans and Great Divide traded in kind - casks for mash to distill.  They have a tour as well, so when I go back, that's a definite destination.  Apparently they do limited bottlings (140) of whiskeys with names like "SCW Triplewood Snowflake".  If it tastes as good as the name, I bet it's wonderful.

Reexamining this picture, I really do look soused.  It doesn't help that my pants don't actually fit and I look like I need a rope belt with them sort of sticking out the top of my leather belt.


Eryn wasn't so sure she wanted me to take this picture, although she thought it was pretty funny.


She drank so much she was dancing on street poles afterwards.  I like this picture because she's smiling and cute, and there's a hidden brewery in the background as well as a bike.  Beer, bike, Eryn...definitely things that make vacation enjoyable.

Denver - Oskar Blues IV, The Brewery

After dinner at the Oskar Blues restaurant, we headed over to the Tasty Weasel, which is their brewery/onsite bar.  The guy we'd met earlier had told us tours were still on, despite Easter Sunday, but when we got there we were told it was closed, and one of the guys in charge was in his bike clothes, fat tired bike in the back of his running pick up.  He stopped what he was doing and took us inside so I could buy some beer.  I love it when you can buy beer at the brewery. There's something seriously wrong in Minnesota.  This is in their work place.


I don't think you can see one from this view, but they have a few Surly cans on the wall.  They were very complementary of Surly.  Note the live music that happens at the brewery.  Their beer is in cans, but it's delicious.


He couldn't get into the beer cabinet, and had to go find me some from the back.  But this had a nice display of their cans.  Next time I buy a beer fridge, I'm getting a glass door.


This is what happens to all the leftover cans.  Those blocks are hard to move.


I don't know what to make of this.  I didn't want to hold him up, so I didn't ask.


These were brand new.  They like to keep the kids busy while the parents are on the beer tour.  And I imagine they're fun to play if you're there drinking, or if you're an employee.  We need these in the basement at my workplace where the developers have shared workspace.


It looked like this at Schell's when they bought Grain Belt and all the leftover can stock.  But the black cans are much stealthier looking.


Second picture of Eryn and I near the equipment, the outer wall of the in-brewery tap room in the background.  Great brewery!  I want to go back some day when they're running the tour or just having happy hour.