Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Now, that's vegan food



Not the most amazing I've ever had, but Rasta Pasta in Colorado Springs was delicious, cheap, filling, and the Bristol Brewing Winter Warlock for $4 was the perfect accompaniment to take the edge off of the spicy pasta.

Sadly, kinda disappointed.



J and i had the seitan "buffalo wings" at the otherwise awesome Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs about a year and a half ago. I remember then as much better. This time they were yay enough, but really just crusty little seitan balls, with a very, very thin vegan ranch dressing. Really not worth the $10 - I'd have been mildly okay with them for half that.

Heading out of the Springs today, and have a kinda weird, last minute itinerary for LA. S, about to email!

Monday, April 29, 2013

My rental car



My calculations suggest it's not quite that good of gas mileage, but the 2013 Hyundai Elantra has been averaging in the high 30s the whole trip, including mountain passes and extensive dirt roads. Good stuff. Now a fairly leisurely evening in Colorado Springs (well, leisurely except for returning some unused rebar.)

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Alamosa hotel vegan!



Bread, "steak", avocado, and hot sauce.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Unknown

Where I'm headed next:


Google Maps, sometimes you're just... silly. But occasionally in a cute way.

In other activities today, I had to take a picture of our jeep to send to my mom. I went through literally thousands of images (not all of them: the "Pictures" folder on this computer has 43,140 items, totaling 100.1gb) to try to find a picture of the Jeep, and couldn't find a single one.

I found scores of pictures of bicycles. I love the balance.

Off to the airport to experience the manufactured FAA personnel "crisis"!

Oh, hell, yeah.



It's all Led Zeppelin, all the time, here at Dangr-us Thoughts World Headquarters. J is... amused. Fortunately for her I'm traveling most of the next couple weeks. Gotta get this shit on my *pod!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Spring cleaning!

Well, kind of of the house, yes, since I'm teaching a sauerkraut making class tonight, and the only time J and I really clean the house is when we have people coming over.

But specifically, I mean of my phone, and the photos that are building up on it. So there absolutely may or may not be a sudden rush of blog posts of not, um, entirely timely travel, food porn, and other such shit. But c'mon: when is food porn NOT timely?!?



Here is my beloved Sitba loaded down like she likes it. I don't have any recollection where I was going with my big suitcase on my bike. Memory, such a fickle thing.




And here is delicious vegan food porn from the Little Grill, an awesome worker owned collective in Harrisonburg, Virginia, from our recent road trip. Tofu Rancheros on top, and the delicious Lambert's Platter on the bottom:

Lambert’s Platter (V)
Tofu scrambler, soysage, and fried potatoes covered in groovy gravy. Served with your choice of bread.

La Guardia

I'm labeling this "walking out of airports" because it seems silly to create a new label for "walking in to airports". And because technically, you don't need to walk in or out of La Guardia (LGA) just to avoid a bullshit surcharge to discourage people from taking public transit, like JFK.

Rather, several MTA buses (M60, Q48, Q47, Q33, Q72) go directly to LGA for the same as you pay for any MTA bus.

My friend T was curious about why I didn't just take the M60 to LGA, and I explained that as much as I love public transit, I try to avoid buses at all cost. I'm just too damn tall to be comfortable on them. And in particular, I've been stuffed into suffocating spaces with people and luggage on the M60 before.

Anyway, to walk to (or from) LGA without taking the bus, you take the 7 train (subway) to Junction Boulevard & Roosevelt Avenue. When you step off into the utter chaos, traffic, and street vendors, walk directly up Junction all the way to LGA. (It turns in to 94th Street at 32nd Avenue, but you might not even notice.) Here's a map.

And here's the only worthwhile photo I have from the walk, at 94th Street and Ditmars Boulevard, just south of LGA: 



The take home message here is essentially "don't run the red light."

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Big NYC walking days: three boroughs, 9.5 miles!

I'm actually not a huge fan of New York City. As I described to my friend T this morning while walking along the Hudson River greenway, as a result of trying to cram too many different people with too many different needs and interests into too small a space, it's like a low simmering catastrophe, which, with rare exceptions*, doesn't really boil over.

I did a lot of walking in several different parts of the city today...

To get to the Upper West Side to meet T.  
From the Upper West Side to Chelsea, where I had a delicious (previously blogged about) Buffalo "Chicken" Sandwich at Terri on West 23rd.



I then tried unsuccessfully to get takeout at Blossom du Jour, which was apparently closed for a private party.

Then I took the subway to Flushing, Queens, and walked from the Junction stop on the 7 train, all the way up Junction to La Guardia. It was a study in some extremes: the first section is like being in a street market, then it's astonishing gridlock traffic for a bit on Junction, then it's a fairly pleasant stroll through a mostly residential neighborhood, until you start hearing the jet engines roar to a start. And LGA, well, it's... LGA. Not my favorite airport in the world by a longshot, but also not in the rungs with the worst (Dallas, Miami.)

Awaiting a flight back to ATL for the first decent amount of time in a bit, which is nice. Home for a couple weeks, then Colorado and California at the end of April / beginning of May.


* Consider, for example, Hurricane Sandy, the NYC Blackout of 1977, the Son of Sam Murders, about half of the Yankees fans who wander the city unattended, the pisspoor thin brown liquid passed off throughout the city as "coffee", and almost the entire New York Police Department.

Terri nyc vegan



Buffalo "Chicken" sandwich. Delicious especially after walking here to Chelsea from 96th Street! Terri is very small, about eight counter seats, zero tables, and zero bathroom, but provides tasty vegan food at a good price point for NYC (the above sandwich was $8.75 total.)

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Baseball stadium project game 1



The stadium is big and fancy and huge. The weather is cool and overcast, but not cold. The game is solid, and the Orioles are currently beating the Yankees 5-2 in the bottom of the 5th.

The fans are some of the most obnoxious I've ever been to a baseball game with.

First trip!



Beginning my project to see a baseball game at every major league stadium in the US. Life to date: 10/30.

Total project cost so far: $23 (all ticket).

Staying about five blocks away.

Go Orioles!

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

More from North China Restaurant



The food!

Surprisingly delicious!





North China Restaurant, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Intensely solid service. This Chinese restaurant was pretty close to the only real vegan option in the entirety of the bizarre tourist town of Gatlinburg, TN. J calls Gatlinburg the "bastard child of Estes Park and Atlantic City." Home tomorrow!

Saturday, April 06, 2013

Vegan pizza fixins!



In Vermont. Yum!

Clockwise from left: baked marinated tofu, fried green peppers and garlic, sauteed mushrooms, and delicious caramelized ONIONS!

Friday, April 05, 2013

Ninety-nine point nine fahrenheit degrees

My weather app thingie is confusing the 45 degrees outside at the ATL airport with actually nice weather.



In the airport with J, flying to Vermont, to drive back down to Atlanta. We're looking to visit a couple national parks on the way back, albeit briefly, including Shenandoah, and Great Smoky Mountains. Whee road trip!

The TSA agents were dumbasses as always. When they also irritate J, that really says something. 

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Hampshire

And now for a moment of non-photo blogging. If you're a Hampshire alum, please go vote for me for trustee.

Vegan hot dog!



Just as advertised. Because that's how I roll.

Kimchi!

also spelled kimchee, kim chee or gimchi.


Holy crap, I might be breaking my all-time single day blog posting record. But I'm not inclined to go check.

RETRO DIRT

This is returning unneeded dirt on my beloved badass bike Sitba. Around eighty pounds of dirt. Newly built and filled raised bed in the background.


I have no idea why, when I re-sized for posting, it turned black and white.

HOLY FERMENTATION, BATMAN!

This is a whole pile o' fermenting love recently made at a fermentation class that C and I co-taught for the Atlanta Free School.



From left, that's three 2-quart jars of sauerkraut, a 2 quart of kimchi, two jars of (turnip) sauerruben, on the bottom right a jar of mixed sauerruben (turnip and cabbage), and on top, another sauerruben.

The stuff I hung on to is starting to get deliciously funky!

Raisin' the beds!



This is a set of raised beds I recently helped make in West Virginia, almost entirely out of scavenged and re-purposed materials. I built the top three; and helped a newbie raised bed builder with the bottom (closest to the camera) bed.

GARDEN PORN!

See, I promised y'all some solid gardening porn, didn't I? I and DELIVERED, didn't I?











And oh, what the hell. How about some food porn?

Cameras. and tomatoes!

Okay, so in this post anyway, the tomatoes are really mostly a prop for the cameras. More gardening to follow!

This is comparing my existing digital camera, a Panasonic DMC ZS-19, 14.1mp, a nice camera that is about as feature-filled as you can get in a compact with the new, ultracompact Nikon S01 (10mp) I just bought because I really want something smaller and lighter I can carry around consistently in my pocket.


Both shots were taken with the camera on Auto mode, auto flash (neither fired), at the same distance. This is a screenshot, which of course has its own limitations, but shows the color represented the same way.

Really, the ultracompact S01 takes a pretty solid shot, at least in full daylight, with no zoom. (Haven't had the chance to compare them yet with moving subjects, in lower light, indoors, etc.) The green of the tomato plant is better represented in the more expensive and larger Panasonic, and the Nikon gets a little washed out at the outer edges (upper right) of the soil. But really, a pretty damn impressive showing for a camera that measures almost exactly 2" by 3" (smaller than a credit card!) and weighs only 3.4 ounces all in, with almost 8gb of internal memory. I prefer cameras I can take a memory card out of for easier downloading, but I'll deal.

What I really ought to do is another comparison that includes the DSLR Canon Rebel, and Canon Rebel XT.

I know: you're all waiting with baited breath, right?

Photoz


I think I might have some photos for you soon!


A few you've already seen, but I just set up the desktop computer yesterday after months in storage / boxes. This is copying the contents of the SD card (~720 items, ~3.5gb) from my main digital camera to the desktop so I can empty it.