Clever Title Here.

Jammie and I have both been busy working recently, which is a good thing.  We are trying to pay stuff off and save some money for the fall, so we need a much work as we can get.  Sunday I worked a U2 "Tribute" band. (I thought it was cover band while they are still alive and tribute band after they're not.?)  Either way it was terrible, but another day done is how I've started to look at it. 

I bottled some beer yesterday before going to work at the shop.  I hate bottling beer because it is so time consuming and so tedious, but it is the only way I can save beer with all the hooligans around this house.  (Namely my brother who still thinks its OUR beer.)  I have more beer stuff on the to do list as well, which I hope to take care of this evening after work.  I'll let you know how it goes.

One good thing is I think we have found a couple campgrounds we can use as home for the month of August.  One is located in downtown Golden which is city run and right along the creek.  It is not very large but looks pretty nice.  The other campground is in Morrison, also city run I think, but much larger and even more affordable.   Neither one of them take reservations which is less than ideal, but both of them are first come first serve and rather affordable compared to the parking lot campgrounds closer to Denver.  The other attribute that was important was for one of us to be able to moped to work, and both of these are close to Red Rocks.

Wolfgang is prepping to be a beach dog.  He loves the small sandbox area in the yard.

The biggest concern I have with camping for the month of August is the wolfman.  We intend to get a 'drive away canopy' for the westy, so that if and when we sell the Jetta one of us can still take the van to work and Wolfgang can still have somewhere to hang out.  The tent we are looking if you want to check it out: http://busdepot.com/details/addaroom.jsp.  It isn't cheap, but looks like the perfect setup, with awnings you can put out, and a floor.  My only concern is how much camper space it will take up when we are traveling, but we will have to figure that out.  Also how is it that two years in a row I intend to camp in a little van for a month while working?

Beer Day

After a long busy weekend working Pridefest...Today is a Beer day.  Started by cleaning a few of the empty kegs that have been getting nastier day by day.  Then racked the first of my summer wheat beer series, the raspberry wheat.  Racking involves siphoning the beer out of the primary carboy into the secondary carboy which is pictured below with the fruit in the bottom.

Wolfgang scoping out the 4lbs of Raspberries.

 The base beer tasted good too, perhaps a little sweet.  Residual sweetness means its not completely done but I will raise the temperature to get the beer to finish out.  The warmer temperature will keep the yeast active and get them to finish eating those sugars.

Racking beer and cleaning kegs all while brewing the next beer to go into the primary fermenter, another wheat beer, which I think I'll make into a blackberry wheat. 

Mashing out on a nice sunny day.  

I've been pretty productive today around the house too, not just with beer.  Carson and I cleaned up the garage pretty nice, going to pull the jetta in there in the next couple days and fix: horn, hood release, coolant leak, and the solder joints in the door latches which are starting to set my alarm off when the car is unlocked.  Then going to list that stupid car for sale and eliminate a giant non stop headache.

Oh yea, Carson's parents gave us a Wii.  Wii only have wii sports for it so far, but it is quite a bit of fun.

Jammie having a virtual sword fight.  Pretty epic.

vws beer bikes and garden too.

Now that Jammie is home I can let the world know about the garden I planted for her while she was away.  I took advantage of a great sale on starters from our favorite local hydroponics and organics garden store, NoDo Hydro, and got several vegetables and herbs. 

The list includes: Spinach, Lettuce, Jalapenos, Bell Peppers, Basil, Cucumber, Tomatoes, and Yarrow.  I am personally very excited for some bell peppers and perhaps home made salsa from the jalapenos and tomato plants.  We will see how the garden produces.

One more for you.  Garden, Sunflowers and Grapes all thriving in the beautiful Colorado sun. 

Kick Back.

Jammie has one of the coolest bikes I've ever seen.  Its an old Schwinn Traveler with a Bendix Automatic Kickback 2 speed rear hub.  Everything is built into the rear hub so you can shift gears and brake all without any levers or cables running back.  The only thing wrong with the bike is the ridiculous amount of rust covering the entire bike. 

I have already done the impossible last summer by completely disassembling the complicated rear hub and greasing it and reassembling.  The other day I went to work on replacing the flat rear tube and then got sucked in, initially by trying to tighten up some spokes as the whole wheel was pretty loose, which of course was impossible as the spoke nipples are rusted in place.   So a trip to the Track Shack (the coolest bike shop in Denver) and I had a handful of spokes and new nipples.  A couple hours later and all the spokes were replaced and the wheel is looking good.  Next up is to put it in my truing stand aka back on her bike and try to straighten the wheel out a bit and get it all tightened up. 

The VanAgain

 I figured I would start off the whole blog thing with the thing that has consumed a large portion of my time the past few months.  Jammie and I purchased a 1985 VW Vanagon Westfalia last June nearly 1 year ago.  It is an awesome vehicle that has taken us on one roadtrip so far with many more to come in the near future.

It that 1 year I have managed to double the amount of money invested in the van.  Everything from a new starter and various cosmetic and camper functionality improvements to the most recent addition of a rebuilt GO Westy 2.2 waterboxer engine.  It has been a fun and more importantly, educational journey we hope ends with more sweet road trips and less van maintenance.

Lots of elbow grease, sanding and painting.  The end result is a nice (slightly more)powerful engine, and the beginning of what will likely be a full restoration of the westy.  More tales of VWs beer and bikes coming soon.