She's My Little Hot Mess, In A Sundress

Ride bikes, drink beer, be awesome, sleep, eat and repeat as necessary. Last night was the latest installment of the Tour de Brew LNK ride and if you judge based purely on the numbers one could easily argue that it was the best one yet, I heard somewhere between 90-120 riders showed up to partake in the cold offerings from Zipline Brewing.


Started off at Moran's Liquor Works, to get the registration formalities out of the way and to sample a few beers from Zipline. These guys have really come on strong as of late, a year and a half/two years ago you'd probably be hard pressed to find that many people who could tell you who or what Zipline Brewing was but now it seems that they have just exploded onto the local beer scene. It doesn't hurt that they brew up some of the best beer coming out of Lincoln right now or that they offer cheese and beer pairings frequently at their tap room and they are super bike friendly and lets be honest craft beer and biking just go together; whatever the reason, people are certainly talking about this little brewery now and just the opposite is now true; you'd be hard pressed to find someone in Lincoln and maybe even eastern Nebraska who hasn't heard them.


Once you've downed all of the free samples at Moran's you can reasonably manage without looking like a heroin addict looking for his free methadone hand out, it was off to Cycle Works for more man sized servings via $2 bottles and some fat bike drooling... mmmm, fat bike.... Oh you gonna take me home tonight, Oh down beside that red fire light, Oh you gonna let it all hang out, Fat tired bikes you make the riding world go round!

As I said there was a really phenomenal turn out last night, it's a good thing we cyclists don't mind the smell of our own brand because it was pretty steamy out and we were producing in ode de swamp ass in quantities.


First stop on the tour was Longwell's down in the recently developed Rail Yard section of the Haymarket, I had never been before but it was pretty swanky bar with some really good food.


So what do you do if you're a bit more upscale and you have 100 sweaty, smelly cyclist swarm your establishment... simple, you put them out on the back patio area, feed them food and pour them ice cold beer.

The TV could have been a little bigger but beggars can't be choosers as they say...


After filling up on food and even more beer it was off to The Hot Mess, our final destination for the evening. The Hot Mess is 100% dive bar, you could argue that fact if it happens to be "your bar" but you'd be wrong, fortunately I love dive bars. Each and every dive bar has it's own personality, it's own type of clientele and a unique atmosphere that you just can't get from the more traditional establishments worried about their image, The Hot Mess was neither of those places and it lived up to expectations.


Any place that has to tell it's patrons not to eat the toilet mint is a place I'd definitely belly up to the bar and throw back a few cold ones; mostly to try to figure out who has the minty breath with that underlying tell tale hint of urine and then strike up a conversation with them. Lord knows if they don't have a problem using the toilet mint as a tic-tac you know they have to have some other interesting stories to tell.

Plus any bar good enough for Chuck is a bar good enough for me, even if the drink that bears his namesake most likely tastes worse than the a fore mentioned mint. For a dude known for his bad-assery he sure did endorse a pansy ass drink.


One little, two little, three little ghosts... you'd have thought I used the flash for this one but honestly this trio was so white they glowed in the dark. It's called the sun people, comes up everyday around 6 and sticks around for most of the day, go say hi sometime. I kid, I kid, I joke, I joke, thet guy from Zipline had some interesting stories to share and the Moran brothers (probably not their real last name... but who knows) are always fun to chat with. I blame beer for the reason I can't remember anyone's name ever or mine half the time for that matter; drunken stupor and Alzheimer look a lot a like if you're not close enough to smell the alcohol.


Remember those people I was talking about earlier that frequent dive bars... yeah... those people, these would be a good example.

Can't wait until next month to ride bikes, drink beer and take pictures of some interesting adventures, I would say it'd be fun to do this every week but I think my liver would emphatically disagree. Once again my hats, er... helmets off to all of those who do all of the work putting these events on so lazy dudes who like beer have some place and someone to go drink beer with at least once a month. 

Official Opening of Walnut Creek

Tonight was the official opening of the new trail at Walnut Creek, this is the first trail opening I'd ever been to and the first trail I've helped make with my own hands, it was a pretty cool experience and likely one I might not ever get to share in again.


T.H.O.R was out recruiting members and supporting the trail, first year I've been a member of T.H.O.R as well... those guys and gals bust their butts making sure we have great trails to ride!


Had to fight the wind riding to the event and didn't anticipate that a 20+ mph head wind would slow me down as much as it did so I was a bit later than 5:30 and thought maybe I had missed it all. Fortunately the festivities were just starting... look at the fabulous view I had of the back of peoples heads.


The trail leader Jeff and T.H.O.R representative Roxy speaking a little bit before the kids tore through the ribbon officially opening the trail to the public... and another awesome view of the backs of more heads.


Had a really amazing turn out for the grand opening, a lot of people spent a ton of time making this trail happen I am glad I got to be a part of it and hope to continue to be able to help out, it is just down the road from me after all. If you get down to Papillion give it a ride, I think you'll be impressed and leave with a smile. Tried to get around to the other side to get some faces... and then they all turned around, the backs of more heads. FML.

The Junk Jubilee

Decided to head out to the 21st annual Round the Bend Steakhouse Testicle Festival last night for a good ole helping of bull fries, or rocky mountain oysters if you prefer.


Without fail the first thing most people do when they find out you're going somewhere to eat the naughty bits of a bull is that they get a disgusted look on their face and they usually imply that they think they are gross through some form of eww type sound. However from the length of the line that I've had to wait in every time I've been to the festival there are quite a few people who would disagree with that assessment. Luckily the line for the beer is a different and shorter line so you can enjoy a nice cold beer while you shuffle, shuffle, shuffle to the sellers of the sac.


The other thing that is almost always a constant is that most of the people who have decided that bull fries are gross are people that have never had them before. I am guessing it's a mental thing because they don't come out looking like anything that once was hairy and dangling between a bulls legs once they are prepared and fried up.


Even girls like balls in their mouths, look at those smiles.


The weather was pretty close to perfect for the festival, storms are supposed to roll in tonight which could make for an interesting second night of the festival, glad we got out last night.


As an added bonus it was Friday the 13th and there was a full strawberry moon putting on a pretty decent show of it's own. If you haven't ever had bull fries before I would recommend giving them a try, once you get past the mental block I think you'd find them to be really good, I know I'm going back next year... always a swinging good time.

ThNNDRR - Ernie and the Barn Door

Mother nature just hasn't been too nice to us dirt guys this spring, lots of rain and lots of mud, so the ThNNDDR was cancelled again this week so I decided to load up the bike and hang out with the roadies on the ThNNDRR.


And we're off, decided to head out on Hwy 77 straight north into the wind, towards Ceresco and then just turn around and enjoy the tailwind.


Stopped for a regroup...


...and promptly got into an exhilarating conversation about cycling socks, man those roadies have all the fun.


We were making better time than we thought we would be considering the wind so we decided to ride it all the way to Ceresco and turn around there and head back. Also discovered that 4 dudes on road bikes suck at land navigation, when we decided to push on to Ceresco none of us thought it was farther than another mile/mile and a half, four miles later we were in Ceresco.


Had another regroup in Ceresco, took a little break with a refuel... and maybe some more sock talk.


Made it back just as the sun was starting to go down, all told 37 miles and a little over two and a half  hours of riding on a beautiful spring night. Hard to believe we are almost half way through June already and haven't had any overly hot days yet.


Man of many hats or signs of group ride commuter?

More Beer And Less Bikes Lately

Haven't been doing a whole lot of biking lately, most of it's been due to the weather and the rest has just been laziness. Regardless neither has affected the beer drinking, not sure that's really a good thing though, whole lotta calories in beer that aren't getting burned off properly. I guess it's time to stop with the excuses and start with the pedaling again, but today wasn't the day for pedaling it was the day for beer.


I knew Beerfest was coming up and had thought about going as I've been known to drink a beer or two now and then but didn't actually buy any tickets, then I was given a free ticket by a good friend of mine.


Choice seemed obvious at that point, Beerfest here I come.


Luckily only a few people showed up...

Being an event called Beerfest they had a few beers there, some I have had, some I had not, some local and some from places far off but most of them had one thing in common and that was that they were good... and cold, so I guess they had two things in common.



Of course there were vendors there that didn't have much to do with beer and I naturally skipped over most of those but I did find two of them fairly interesting. The first was Deep South Barrels, the barrels weren't really intended for beer but you could put liquor in them and have a nice conversation piece at your next house party. It was almost enough to get me past the bad reference to the movie Sweet Home Alabama and Deep South Glass, almost, but in the end I left barrel free.Of course jerky always holds my interest, man cannot live on beer alone, really can't live on beer and jerky alone either but you sure would survive a lot longer with both and this jerky was actually really good.

And of course what would be a beerfest without some awesome t-shirts and some unique people. Loved this t-shirt especially, I think I've actually heard a few people use I'rish in a sentence before after having one or two too many.


While this one didn't quite have the same smile inducing phrase it did fully represent why everybody was here.


This dude had to be my favorite person there as he went all in for this Captain America theme, just had to ask him for a pic.

This would almost count as a mullet except while there still might be some party left in the back, it looks like the business in the front closed it's doors a few years ago.


Of course if you give people enough beer they eventually start making unwise choices... like playing on the children's swings, I was waiting for her to go flying off or to start projectile vomiting, sadly neither occurred while I was still watching.


Drunk people, sharp nails and hammers, there is no way anything could go wrong here. There was more than enough free beer for your average person to get really lit, I wasn't driving and had a serious buzz going after just hitting half of the booths that were there.

There was even a band, with one really excited fan. In actuality though they were pretty good, I even made this determination before I had that good buzz going.


Clouds were threatening but it never did rain, the clouds and breeze were appreciated though as it kept it from being as warm as it could have been otherwise.


After having my fill of beer, people watching and crowds it was time to beat feet home but before I did that it was time to satisfy my other vise, sweets. It just so happens that right next to the Beerfest is Jones Brothers Cupcakes and they make one very tasty maple bacon cupcake that was calling my name.