March 25, 2007
Golfing glory and failure
A couple weeks ago while in Albuquerque with Teresa, I played a round of golf at Santa Ana Golf Club while she had an all-day job interview. I was happy to see that the course had a set of pretty long tees, with the scorecard showing 7298 yards. The par 5's have lengths of 600, 599, 633, and 534. :-o
Despite not playing in a couple months, I was doing really well. I was hitting a ton of greens, and I was pretty solid with the putter from 10 feet and in, for the most part.
The front nine was relatively uneventful. One 3-putt, a couple shots in the sand, and I finished with a 3-over 39. Good start!
Back nine started well, but I just couldn't hit a birdie putt. Starting on the 8th hole I had a string of eight greens-in-regulation in a row, and I didn't make a single birdie. That's terrible. Still, I didn't 3-putt any of those, so there I was through 16 holes sitting at +3.
Then one of the guys playing with me did something incredibly stupid: he says "so you're what, about 3 over?"
He probably didn't know any better, but he totally jinxed my round, and I knew it. Letting myself think about it was surely a mental error on my part. I proceeded to hit my worst drive of the day off the tee, and long story short, I make a 9 on a par 4. :-( Now I have to go -1 on the last two holes just to shoot a 79, and they're both par 5s.
The first is the 633 yard hole, and there's a big crosswind blowing now. I hit a long drive, but it goes off to the right considerably. I catch my 3 wood pretty solid and the ball makes it back to the fairway, leaving me about 100 yards out. I knock my wedge to about 4 feet - perfect! Then I miss the putt. :-(
Last hole is the 534 yard par 5, but now it's going straight into a really strong wind, and there's a lake right in front of the green. I hit a good drive, nice and low and right down the middle. I have to clear about 220 yards to get over the water, and if I don't make a birdie there's no 79, so I go for it. The shot went straight, but I caught it just a little fat. While that wouldn't normally have been a problem, in this case it popped the ball up in the air, the wind caught it, and right into the water it went. :-(
So my would-be 75 turned into an 81. Still a great round given how little I've played lately, but the things it could have been...
A bit of car work
Last week Clayton and I put some Mazdaspeed springs on his new Miata one day after work. A few things came of it:
1. Working on clean new cars is way better than working on old dirty cars.
2. Spring compressors are a huge pain.
3. My impact wrench is pathetic.
Items 2 and 3 kind of go hand-in-hand. Using the impact wrench is definitely the fastest and easiest method of closing up the spring compressors, but mine is so incredibly weak and inefficient that it took forever, and my decent-sized tank was emptying pretty quickly. It's the one that came with my compressor, so I suppose I should expect this weakness, but it's still lame.
That said, I'm not looking for a new one. I think a few good price/performance models are the Husky Composite, Ingersoll-Rand Super Duty, and Craftsman Professional.
But back to the Miata, overall the install went fairly well, and I got a set of wheel sockets for my trouble. The car sits low enough that it's pretty close to "just right," and to my surprise, it seems to actually ride better as well. Win-win!
More bottles
More beer bottles! Jon and I decided to have a Belgian ale blind taste test. He stated that Chimay is the best Blegian period, while I contend that there are many American-made Belgian ales that are every bit as good (or better) for less money. For reference, Chimay at a liquor store for about $9 for a 750ml bottle. Many of the American brews are $4-5 for a 22oz (about 650ml) bottle.
For the comparison, we sampled two real Belgians (Chimay Blue and Tripel Karmeliet) and three American Belgians (The Reverand, Brother David's Triple, and Trippel by Green Flash Brewing).
At the very least, we'll find out which spelling of Tripel/Triple/Trippel is the best. ;-)
We basically tasted them all, and ranked them by preference. The general consensus was that the GFB Trippel was excellent, especially for the price. The Chimay was right behind, and BD's Triple shortly after that. The Reverend didn't do so well, and Tripel Karmeliet was way in the back. Both it and the Chimay didn't taste like they were right (the Tripel Karmeliet was picked up at the suggestion of someone at Bevmo). So, given that GFB Trippel was up at the top at half the price of Chimay, I'd declare it the clear winner.
More on the beer front
As I'm finishing up my first batch of beer, it was time to start the second, from a kit called "Packs-a-punch Porter". Learning from my past mistakes (which still resulted in a drinkable product), I was now free to correct those mistakes and make all new ones!
I steeped the grains at the right temperature. I added the hops at the right time. I used better yeast. I took out the useless filter in the funnel. Everything went smoothly...except...I let the brew pot boil over. Instruction sheets for beer kits only have one line in all caps, and that is "DO NOT LET THE WORT BOIL OVER". So of course I had to do just that.
It was taking forever to come to a boil after I added all of the malt extract and hops. I put the lid on so it could keep some heat in (mistake #1). Then, I went and did something else for about 3 minutes (mistake #2). I come back to see wort EVERYWHERE. I thought I wouldn't have enough heat to bring it to a boil. I thought my pot was so big it could never boil over. I thought it wouldn't happen to me. :-P At least now I have something to improve upon next time!
This was my first time using the hydrometer that came with my kit as well, and it started out measuring a reasonable 1.060, which is right in the range specified by the kit. This past week I transferred it to secondary, and it had gone down to 1.020. Hopefully after two weeks in secondary it'll drop a bit lower, then I'll be ready to bottle. Should be drinking the next batch in about a month!
San Diego National Tour
An interesting co-drive opportunity had me going to the San Diego National Tour last weekend - a 1985 Camaro running in CP. (Click for full size on all of these.)
Weighed in at just over 3100 lbs, supposedly 525hp, and fresh 12" wide slicks. Despite all that, it wasn't all that fast on the courses we ran. :-P It was fun to drive though, once I realized that you had to be sliding around a bit to be fast. I was not fast.
I hadn't been to a tour in a couple years now, so it was nice to see so many well-prepared cars in person again. My album with lots of pics is here.
Entries a-plenty - it's Evo time!
I finally bought Brian's Evo, fulfilling the prophesy I foretold just before Brian bought the car himself.
I'll be running it in STU, so some initial purchases have already been made:
1. 5Zigen FN01R-C 17x9 wheels
2. Yokohama Advan Neova 245/40-17 wheels
3. Cusco front camber plates
So to complete the setup I'd still need a turboback exhaust, ecu flash, and some coilovers.
Gas mileage is a bit worse than the Integra - a tank of basically 100% city driving delivered 18.1 mpg, while a tank of 100% highway gave me 22.7 mpg (Integra returned about 26/28 city/highway). At least the miles are more fun now. :-P