Are chickens are doing well. They have laid 40 eggs to date. That comes out to 2 eggs a day! Perfect.

The great pepper mystery

Once upon a time (July 30, 2012), we moved to a whole new part of the world. One of the first things Liz and I wanted to do was start a garden. We like gardening; We thought it would make our house seem more like a home; It gave us something to forward to.   However, there really aren't a lot of seedlings available at the end of July. We went to a couple of stores and they didn't have anything worth buying. But THEN...THEN....THEN....we stopped at this little market that sold produce which they grew in the back yard of the store. It was a long shot, but we saw that the owner had pepper plants growing in the pots, and we asked if we could buy a few of the actual plants. He said smiled and said something in Spanish. We never actually understood him. Turns out he was giving away his pepper plants for free. We were estatic and grabbed three plants before he changed his mind. We tried paying for them but he had none of it.

After planting them, we realized that we had no clue what kind of peppers we grabbed. It was a mystery. We knew that they were not green peppers, and we were hoping for banana peppers. We watered those plants, debugged the plants, and watched them thrive. We were rewarded with a great crop of yummy looking peppers that started to turn orange.

Tonight we decided to pick a pepper and solve mystery. Liz cut it into a few pieces, and I noticed that it smelled spicy. We each took a small piece and placed them to our tongue. I must not have placed more than a pin head of the pepper onto my tongue for more than a split second. What followed was incredibly unpleasant. I can best describe it as oral torture. Both liz and I instantly started sweating and looking for ways to escape the sensation. It was painfully hot. In the following 10 minutes,  WE DRANK all of our HALF and HALF in search of relief. After 20 minutes we knew we were ok, but our mouths were still tingly.

All this for just a touch to the tongue!!! Thank goodness neither of us bit into the thing.


We figured out that it was a habenero pepper. We looked up pepper hotness online (after calming down).

habanero peppers = 350,000 to 500,000 scoville units
jalapeno peppers = 5,000 scoville units
Anahiem peppers = 1,500 scoville units

Training Result 13.07.2012 03:11

My first mountain ride!


Training Result 13.07.2012 03:11


You have to use the settings button on the chart to view the elevation gain. I would also suggest deselecting the speed to view it best. I'll still trying to figure out how to embed the picture straight into the blog post.

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Penny wants to know what is going on.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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I'm a rock star.... But not really

Fast ride

I went on the fast ride today. I severely underestimated the meaning of "fast." I made it seven miles before the group kicked the pace to a level that I simply didn't have. Seven miles is a really short amount of time when you are averaging 27 mph. I took a pull at the front, and moved over and never was able to regain the slip stream. They dropped me like a 8 year old on a trike. I rode the rest of the ride with another straggler. I hurt all over now.

It was great. I'll do it again next week for sure.

Beer by candlelight

Why by candlelight? Simple. We don't have power. A clap of thunder took us out about 2 hours ago. I wanted a beer but I hadn't biked yet (a firm prereq for my nightly beer). So I got on the trainer and did it in the dark. It was like some crazy sensory deprivation experiment. While not horrible, it also wasn't fun. However, I sure am enjoying my beverage. The candlelight does not diminish flavor.