[jrenaut]

First, this isn’t a question of rules. Team 5 had a player who didn’t join up. The player was replaced. Then the player finally joined. At this point there are two options – kick someone out, or let it ride. I think letting it ride was the correct choice. Some may disagree, but it wasn’t a rule violation decreed by The Dark Cabal of Volunteers.

Second – there isn’t a Dark Cabal of Volunteers. This IS a democracy. Everyone who plays the game is part of it. Opinions and criticism are accepted. Personally, I have a fairly low tolerance for criticism of creating and managing the teams. It is an enormous amount of work, and we are all lucky that Sunyata is nicer than me (and, perhaps, that she doesn’t have the database password).

And last, if there WERE a Cabal, it would be hozn and I, because we DO have the database password.

[jrenaut]

It might help to remind everyone that this is a volunteer run game. It does not seem as though everyone appreciates the large amount of work that Sunyata and others put in to making the game work.

So, two things to do:
1) Volunteer to help out next year
2) Go ride your bike. Kicking someone off Team 5 isn’t going to help you catch Team 22.

[jrenaut]

Finally made it to Hellbender when they were open. I have a soft spot for this brewery – when they opened, their beer was not very good. But they stuck with it, and they are now much improved AND have a really chill space. We brought a dinner picnic, which was great, but then found that they had tacos from Tamales Pachuca. We ate too many tacos. The kids loved them.

IMG_20180314_174815880 by Jon, on Flickr

What I love is that Kansas Ave NW is uphill in both directions, and we also had a headwind in both directions because probably global warming or something.

Oh, right, the beer. I had the Agosto, which they alternately call a Belgian IPA and a farmhouse IPA. It’s also 4.8% alcohol, which is very low for any type of non-session IPA. It didn’t taste like a session, though. Also their Ignite IPA is solid.

[jrenaut]

I seem to have failed to gather enthusiasm on my team for a meetup and group ride to happy hour, but I’ll be there.

[jrenaut]

I wish I did. I am firmly in favor of secret plots.

[jrenaut]

@Steve O 176071 wrote:

Just to scramble things up a bit, I think the final standings should be based on the scores of the last 8 players on each team.

I think the final standings should be based on the Beerneuring leaderboard.

[jrenaut]

Also I seem to be unable to send a PM to your teammate rumipumi – I’m not ignoring the PM, it just won’t let me send a response.

[jrenaut]

Team 7 is currently 2 points behind the 12 member team – I think Rule 5 is in effect here.

[jrenaut]

When have we ever agreed on anything? That doesn’t sound like something we would do.

[jrenaut]

This ride will be SO MUCH NICER when they connect the trails and you don’t have take the road or “sidewalk” on Route 1.

The beer was good. This is the IPA. More interesting was the 97 Pound Weakling, which I think they called an imperial wheat wine. or something like that.

IMG_20180312_132305145 by Jon, on Flickr

[jrenaut]

@Sunyata 176023 wrote:

Well… I officially concede defeat for this year. Jon has just taken things to a whole new level!

I must say that after my love of beer, the fear that you were going to go hit 6 breweries on a Saturday was my biggest motivator.

[jrenaut]

We blew it again – we’ve successfully scored a beerneuring point in only 3 of our last 7 tries.

We took bikes on the Metro to King St because the ride to Portner is too much for the kids and it’s even pushing it for me after 35 miles yesterday. But the Eisenhower Rd trail is quite pleasant. Portner is I think the only women-owned brewery in the area. I liked the place – we ate an early dinner. It’s a German-inspired menu, Americanized a bit, but not so much that it sucks. My grilled cheese had more ham than cheese, but it hit the spot dipped in a cup of tomato soup.

I started with their Pilsner, which is one of their flagships. It was solid. The DIPA was very good, and the IPA was also worth drinking.

IMG_20180311_165628241 by Jon, on Flickr

While we were having dinner, we finally got around to looking up the hours for Port City and realized that they were closing in 30 minutes and we hadn’t even finished at Portner. So we missed out on Port City. We should have gone there first, but we were all hungry and they don’t necessarily have food. Next time.

[jrenaut]

@sjclaeys 175979 wrote:

I’d recommend giving them another try. Their dopplebock is quite good, as is their brown ale on nitro. They are constrained in making the usual lineup, but also have two or so extra different ones. Plus, they are great supporters of the DC homebrew community.

Their Amber on nitro is NOT good, so avoid that. And yeah, they did have two that were a bit out there, but neither really my style. I’ll give it another shot.

So today we struck out completely. Gremlin 2 had her first soccer tournament out in Arlington. Game at 1:00 and another at 4:30. We needed to kill some time in the middle, so we decided to go to Heritage. Wife drove the kids to the game with her bike and Gremlin 1’s bike on the car. I rode the longtail 10 miles to the game so Gremlin 2 didn’t have to ride – soccer game, 9 mile bike ride, soccer game seemed like a bit much for a 7 year old.

So it turns out that Heritage doesn’t always have ANYTHING brewed in house on hand. And they didn’t today. I had the Freedom Isn’t Free aged in gin barrels, which was really interesting. Then I had their as-yet unnamed NE-style DIPA, which was fantastic, but I’m a sucker for NE-style IPAs AND DIPAs so that was no surprise.

Gin barrel aged Freedom Isn’t Free IPA by Jon, on Flickr

When we got home, we were determined to get a point, so we headed out to Hellbender, only to find out that they close at 7pm on Saturdays. What kind of crazy hours are those? So we got no beerneuring points at all. At least we got some riding in.

[jrenaut]

@dkel 175958 wrote:

Yes, I’m in league with the devil. Not sure how that happened, but it’s probably because they have better coverage. I’m a cheap date.

I mean, when it comes to cell phone providers, they’re all evil. If you’re going to go with evil, you might as well get the best service.

[jrenaut]

Your 430 kid hauling miles are insane. I have fewer #kidical miles this year than past years for various reasons but I don’t think I ever got much higher than 300 or so, and I’ve been far and away the leader in this for a while now. It’s awesome to be getting my butt kicked this year.

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