Ack. Ninety-something outside and only a little less than that inside. By the time I got done shoveling out the VeloBarrel this afternoon I decided I was not interested in cycling of any sort, especially as practiced by me. So instead I rode the Vespa down to the grog shop for a sixer of Deschutes Brewery’s Twilight Summer Ale.
This tasty brew, a seasonal beer available from May through September, will take the rabies out of the maddest of dogs beset by Englishmen in the noonday sun. Herself likes one on a hot day, too, so we’ll put a couple in the freezer for 10 minutes and then hit ’em hard, like a hungry Hemingway chugging a distingué at a Parisian café. Well, I do, anyway. She nurses hers as if Prohibition is coming back.
I like the Green Lakes Organic Ale too, though I was not impressed by my first encounter with the brew. My second, however, followed the first leg of the Adventure Cycling Association‘s 2010 Southern Arizona Road Adventure, when a new friend and I had a dram apiece at the Velvet Elvis in Patagonia. Something about 48 miles of cycling and 3,400 feet of vertical through sun-splashed, wind-whipped southern Arizona, I guess. Whatever — I was an instant convert and have remained one.
Not much action in Le Tour today and even less tomorrow, the second rest day. Tuesday brings the Alps, and thus the pain; all the big shots vow to attack without mercy, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
Well, that would be refreshing, wouldn’t it? So far it’s the officers doing all the talking and the grunts doing it hand to hand, just like in real life.
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