Restaurant Review: An Evening In Easton

Tuesday night was the big night -- the opening night for Black and Blue, aka "Which Brew II," Kelly-Jo's, and Larry's, new bar and restaurant. We'd heard rumors that they would be open soon, then heard last week that it would be "next week," and finally I got a few phone calls, from people who'd heard that Tuesday was the day... so off we went to Easton last night, to the old Blue Tone (on Walnut street, across from the courthouse), and it was like entering a reunion -- Didi, and Kateryna, and Caitlin, and Michele (plus a couple of new faces) were all working the bar and tables; and there was Ed, Lee, Larry, Mark & Terri, and Margarita, among many others -- the place was mobbed. (Plenty of other WB regulars came in too as time went by.)

 

We eventually settled in with Joe and Sally, and were joined by Judy and Erika; dinner was "pommes frights" -- though they may have had a new name, to go with the new location and theme -- and sesame-ginger hot wings. They have twelve taps, with the expected awesome selection -- trust me, only the surface was scratched...

 

Creak! Creak! I finally broke down and replaced my bottom bracket bearings on the Turner. It's a surprisingly easy task, easier in fact than doing a standard bottom bracket replacement, and I think I re-remember this fact every time I replace them (after long procrastinations those times too). We'll see if that fixes that squeak in the bottom bracket.

 

I also got a new middle chainring, since the chain was skipping last week at Lehigh and the (very worn) chainring is the most likely culprit, but that didn't work out quite as well: even thought they have the same bolt pattern and the old/new rings should be pretty much identical, there's a tab on the inside diameter of the ring near every bolt hole, which butts against a sort of shoulder on the crank, and my new (Shimano) ring has a larger tab than my old ring, and it doesn't fit on my (TruVativ) crank. D'oh! I may try to grind the tabs down to fit tomorrow, and if that doesn't work I'll just order a TruVativ chainring. In the meantime I have the old ring back on, so I should watch my gearing on hard climbs.

 

Next up on the bike is replacing the shifter cables and housings.

Greetings From Ithaca

Monday morning, and we'll be getting ready to take off from our hotel soon, but for now I'm just killing a little time, in the lobby with a cup of coffee...

We're up here for the wedding of Pam's daughter Sarah; Pam is a good friend of Anne's and we spent a lot of time with Pam and Sarah a few summers ago before Sarah moved up here. She and her husband both went to Cornell, and I think a lot of their friends did too (or at least they made a lot of friends here), and so they had the wedding at the Sage Chapel and the reception at an on-campus hotel. The reception was very nice, but the wedding ceremony itself was one of the best I'd been to, made truly awesome by the huge pipe-organ playing the wedding music.

That was Saturday. Friday was our arrival, and we caught up with the rehearsal dinner revelers downtown Friday night. Saturday was an easier morning than I expected, but a bit later wake-up than was practical... we rode over to breakfast, then did a relatively short ride (20 miles) along the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, all we could really do before getting ready for the wedding.

Yesterday was another relatively late start, but we had nothing on the agenda except a ride... It was still not the longest we could have done, but a beautiful ride up the western shore, then west to the town of Ovid and south from there -- we could see Seneca Lake along this section -- and back to town. Out for about six hours, or 3:30 ride time once you removed our breakfast and lunch breaks, a beautiful sunny day and pleasantly cool, almost chilly. Perfect! Except for that bit of sunburn I got...

Today we're going hiking among some of the gorges, then heading home.