Fish 'N' Pubs

Last Friday we celebrated a birthday in the traditional style - going to the guy's house and catching and eating all of the rainbow trout in his pond:



We took a pavlova (no mean feat on bicycles), which was extremely popular and raised all sorts of questions like, "What's in the cream filling?" "Err... Cream."


On Saturday we went on an extensive pub-crawl to Eugene and beyond, in a yellow school bus with so little leg room it constituted cruel and unusual transport. This has to be both the best and worst utility I've seen on a bus, but probably a good idea when there are three kegs of beer in one of the seats to "tide people over between pubs":



The first place we went to was also the most awesome, in my mind. The Brewer's Union in Oakridge is a British-style pub with really good beer of authentic style served in the appropriate way at the right temperature. Bangers and mash for lunch. Also, all of the outside chairs are rocking-chairs.


Another place we stopped at had a brilliant concept - a little box to put people in if they insist on talking on their cell-phone:


And this is how much of a sock I can knit on a pub-crawl:

Why US Customs officials hate Easter

It feels funny, having no statutory Easter holiday. We were greatly surprised to find the Easter Bunny had left Cadbury eggs in our letterbox (which we didn't find until Easter Sunday, by chance). Methinks the soft, soft touch of US Customs was involved... Maybe they misread "chocolate" for "cocaine", maybe they freaked out when these innocent eggs showed up with solid contents on X-ray... For whatever reason, this was how the eggs came out of their respective boxes:


At least, I'm sure they had gloves on. Possibly covered with other people's cocaine.

In other weather, Spring continues to spring in a disturbingly seasonal manner:

Serious beer (what else?)

Yes, I've been incredibly slack about posting. I know. A couple of weeks ago we went to a club brew day at OSU, and took over their fermentation sciences lab for a Sunday. The idea was to learn a bit about brewing on a more commercial scale (although this still doesn't approach the big breweries), and to make off with a serious amount of beer. 300L is serious in my book. A nice pictorial synopsis of the procedure is on the Heart of the Valley Homebrewers website, here.

Needless to say, there were some awesome toys. Everything was steam-heated, so no burners at all.




One key requirement for making a large volume of beer is a mechanism to move the liquid around - otherwise known as a giant pump of awesome:


You may remember our little plate chiller pictured in a previous post..... Here's one that really means business:


In other lifestyle geekiness, I've got a little mirror that goes on my glasses (or bike helmet) so I can see behind me without turning my head while cycling. I promise I won't become one of those guys who wear it all the time "so people can't sneak up on me". That's just not cool behaviour. Besides, it would totally clash with my tinfoil hat.


Since we're starting to get some warm, fine days, Mort & I headed out to see the wetlands while they're actually wet. I think we got a few odd looks from passers-by as we knelt for extended periods on the boardwalk, identifying invertebrates. We also saw our first (live) hummingbirds (I saw one in necropsy a while ago). They are crazy little birds on crack that sound like a crow trying to imitate a machine-gun through a kazoo.