Food porn!

Since we're leaving for New England in a couple days, we realized we have a ton of fresh food we need to deal with. So we began a busy weekend of cooking with breakfast:

vegan pancakes with pink lady apples

boiling potatoes (yeah, I know: boring, right?)

but add some baked tofu,

and SHAZAM! it turns into something more exciting

pretty exciting: Thai tofu red curry with yellow, orange, and red peppers, onions, and zucchini

spicy Thai peanut noodles with tofu
(seeing a theme? it was actually accidental)

prepping brussels sprouts for Fresh Brussels Sprout Salad
from Earth Eats, a podcast I love.

adding green onions to the brussels sprouts

Unfortunately, the brussels sprout salad was kinda disappointing.
In fairness, I didn't have the toasted sunflower seeds or the red pepper flakes.
But I did have tofu and a hot skillet, which did wonders.

Another disappointment: Thai peanut cakes from an otherwise normally fantastic cookbook, The Gate Easy vegetarian Cooking , from The Gate vegetarian restaurant in London.

I know what you're thinking: what kinda lameass food porn blogging cooks are we that we need the "easy" version, rather than the full version ? Well, we also have the full version, and it has some amazing recipes, but the dishes can take hours, and the ingredient lists are often super complex and obscure. So many recipes might be feasible if you live in San Francisco or NYC and have hours to shop, but you'll have to trust me: it's much more difficult in Atlanta.

Why a disappointment? Well, they just didn't hold together in frying. At all. And since they're vegan, we couldn't cheat with a binder like egg. I mixed in a bunch of flour, which made them hold together better, but also took away the fluffy texture and made them taste a little more mild. I still have some of the mix, so I might try to work on them more tonight.

Three people, one dinner party: six wine glasses, five pint glasses, one small wine glass (the chef's share!), two digestif glasses.
Among other delicious libations, we enjoyed a 1.5 liter magnum of Anchor's Our Special Ale 2009 , their always delicious xmas ale. Yum.

And here's just a hint of what a three dish dinner party does to your kitchen. (It was well worth it.)

Play with your food

No, I actually wasn't bored in Barcelona. I just felt like playing with my food, okay?

The cast & crew.


Huh? Why are you anthropomorphizing me?

HEY! I'M TALKIN' TO YOU!

Fine: we're gonna make a run for it!

Hey! Wait for us!

This is what happens when your food tries to run away.

And this is what happens when you let someone else play with your food for you (at the Sal Cafe.)

Spain's favorite pastimes

Top Three, of which I share none:

1) Smoking. Everywhere possible. I regularly came back to my room without having patronized a smoking bar or restaurant, and still smelled like I'd been bar-hopping in the mid 90s.

2) Ham. It's everywhere. On a rather silly wine show on the plane on the way back, Andrea Robinson mentioned in her Madrid visit that there are apparently over 400 varieities of ham in Spain. Yuck. Tapas in bars often seemed to be a slice of ham with some cheese on top of ham, garnished with ham.

2a) Footnote to my badmouthing Andrea Robinson: she *is* a Master Sommelier, and she was the first female master sommelier in the US. Oh, and her newly developed "you only need one wine glass" glasses, called "The One" , bear a very strong resemblance to the red wine glasses we have. From Costco. That cost $14 for eight, not $49.95 for four. But to continue my random digression, her show is amusing, except that it's really more about travel and eating and being lovey-dovey with her somewhat oafish husband John, and kind of not about wine. And she ooohhhs and aaahhhhs about every dish that is brought out to her, and loves every one, as well as every wine. Apparently she never gets even an average dish or bottle, or they just edit that crap out. In any case, she never really gives details about any of the wine she's drinking, beyond a couple adjectives, and some moaning.

3) Public nose-picking. Aggressive public nose picking. Like, not trying to just subtly clear up one that is really bothering you, but sticking your index finger way up your nostril and tunneling. Diggin' for gold. I'm not alone in this observation. Just google it, and check out quotes like this:

Though marvelously dressed, Spanish men often accompany their wardrobe with a finger in their nose. There is something about the climate or allergens in Spain that makes mucous glands run on overdrive. After about a week of being here, I understand the need for Madrileños to probe their nostrils in search of a green gooey reward. I take a more refined approach to my menacing mucus and blow my nose often, yet the snot never seems to stop. Even mucous glands cannot resist the vigor and vitality of Spain.

"The nose picking here is continuous," said 22-year-old Palo Alto student Cristina Mireles."I suppose the people here must have really dry boogers or enjoy it (nose picking) as a hobby."

Okay, now I really have to get some other stuff done, like send in my passport for renewal.

Back from Spain, and better living through pharmeceuticals

After an 11 hour* plane trip yesterday, got back and had delicious spicy peanut noodles with tofu, green onions and cilantro with J, and soon went to sleep. Well, after a week of being jet-lagged and generally sleeping poorly in Barcelona (which might also have had something to do with other guests in the hostal coming in from clubs through the wee hours of the morning) I took 2/3 of a melatonin before going to sleep, and got a good night's sleep for the first time since I left North America.

*11 hour plane trip? That sounds really long, right? Well, a bozo in business class (essentially first class since it was a two-class 767 ) decided as we began to taxi for takeoff that his tum-tum hurt. So the flight attendants called for doctors, and and Totally Inappropriately, announced the reason why they needed a doctor ("really bad stomach cramps.") Two guys, ostensibly doctors, wandered up from coach to business class, and after about ten minutes, the decision was made to go back to the gate. And get the idiot off. And then wait for his checked baggage to found and pulled off. And then wait for "1300 pounds" of fuel to top us off (which seems like an immense amount of fuel for taxi, but whatever.) (And here is what going down the google rabbithole can do: a cautionary tale about switching between the imperial and metric systems.)

So we finally got back into queue for takeoff about an hour late, and got up into the air. In the air:

* Four Christmases was surprisingly funny for much of it, until it turned into a stupid, formulaic romcom in the last 15 minutes.

* Four returning LDS missionaries were on the flight. First amusing thing was when one of the flights attendants (cue up Total Inappropriateness, Round 2!) just assumed that they were continuing on to Salt Lake City (they weren't, but the hyper-aggressive niceness of the LDS missionary caused them to be, well, really nice about it.) Then as Four Christmases cranked up, you could visibly see one of the two male missionaries get quite wide-eyed at the somewhat edgy pickup and sex scene in the very beginning, and the other look totally mystified.

* The plane was only about 1/3 full in coach, so people were playing musical seats most of the flight, which got surprisingly irritating. But I had a two-seat wide exit row to myself, so I can't really complain about the people who were stuffed into prison cells of Delta's 767 coach configuration needing to move. J and I flew to Belgium a couple years ago on a Delta 767 in coach, and I swore never again. I apparently forgot this when I booked the Barcelona trip, but the exit row made it totally tolerable.

More observations and some images to come: this post is already getting really long.

Barcelona

The city, in many parts, is teeming with people. Then it will feel oddly empty on some sidestreets.

Yesterday included putting my feet into the surprisingly pleasant Medeterranean, and lots of walking, and some mediocre tapas, and some decent wine.

Not sure what today's plan is. Still sleeping poorly, waking up every couple hours feeling wide awake, so I don´t have a ton of energy. Un cafe solo is definitely in my immediate future.

Taking a fair amount of pictures, but not sure how many are worthwhile. I´m starting to think about the literally hundreds of gigs of images I have on the computer at home that I mostly haven´t sorted.

Okay: time to do something not involving a computer!

How to get cheap green onions in Barcelona

1) Go to the market, and ask nicely for them.
2) Be mystified when the woman cuts off the top parts, but the green onions are enormous, so there is still plenty of stuff left.
3) Ignore the sign on top of them: it's wrong.
4) Don't speak or comprehend adequate Spanish, so when the woman rattles off the price too quickly and you give her forty euro cents too little, she is too frustrated with your crappy Spanish to bother, and just tells you it's okay.
5) Proceed to the ripe avocado table, and buy one for 27 euro cents.

A nice flight, lovely hostal: Hostal Campi, a nice three hour nap, some good walking around, an amazing museum: Museu d'Història de la Ciutat de Barcelona (MHCB). More of same for tomorrow (well, probably not another flight.)

Barcelona: Absurdly cheap wine. Amazing crowds. Lots of energy.

It's nice to be challenged to use my Spanish. I really wish I spoke more.

Okay: time for picnic dinner in the room.

Confidential to NPR: SERIOUSLY?

Driving back from Death Valley to Beatty, Nevada, NPR gave about ten seconds to reporting that Iran is threatening to pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and about four minutes to whether sandwiches are better cut diagonally or crosswise.

Vigiling

I was up the ass crack of dawn to help at the vigil, only to find out it was a false alarm. Now preparing for other (real) stuff.

99 miles of road under the bike, 99 miles of road

Rode from atlanta to columbus. On balance a good ride. Scenic, lots of small town and rural Georgia, nice to have the time to breathe and think. Definite down sides: aggressive dogs (especially in the dark) and the stomach upset and runs that made much of the second half, ummmm, complicated.

Tomorrow I go into high gear. As if a century ride isn't high enough. (Yes, I'm calling it a century, notwithstanding the missing 0.8 miles.)

AZ

A lovely weekend in arizona with great people. Busy and tiring, sure, but well worth it. I'll try to get up some images soon.

With one exception, the Sierra Vista police department was uniquely professional. One insecure, chest puffing turd with two little stars on his lapel was an ass, but every other officer I dealt with was just doing their job, calmly and dispassionately.

If only I could say the same for the obnoxious rude bigoted ignorant trash who made up the vast majority of the counterprotesters. From the scumbags on motorcycles who intentionatally tried to make their flapping flags hit us as they drove by (nice job swatting that ocotillo tree, dumbass) to the screeching troglodyte with the megaphone who was out again spewing venom, to the hateful trash with the bizarre anti-priest signs, it was an appallingly ugly display of poisonous human nature.

Sitting on a tiny plane from TUS to SLC, so over halfway done with trip #4 of 6 in three months, with one more to book (might be Barcelona!) Listening to the fantastic tribute album to Springsteen's Nebraska, Badlands.

Now if only there was any good food in the SLC airport. At least the local brews in the Sky Club will ease the pain: last time through, it was Park City Steamer (surprisingly excellent) and Uinta Golden Spike Hefeweizen (mediocre but drinkable.)

Big dudes

The two guys sitting in 7C and 7D on this tiny little regional jet are about 300 and 350 pounds. Have fun, guys!

Hippy?

At the end of today's protest, some kids were riding bmx bikes in a parking lot. I went to put something in the car, and one asked me, "Are you guys hippies?" I said "some of us would probably say yes, but I just like protests. I'm a lawyer, I help with the legal stuff." The kid said "Ohhhh." I think maybe I didn't explain it all that well.

My first mobile blog. Woo.

Sitting in a hotel room in Tucson, testing out mobile blogging, since I've recently joined the mobile generation. Yes, friends, that's right: I no longer have a cell phone that is six years old and reminiscent of a coffin, I have a Droid.

So far, as I told A who waxed enthusiastic about the Droid, I like most everything about it, and love a couple things. I LOVE the GPS navigation. It works vastly better than either of the two standalone GPS units I've owned. Being able to drag the google map around along your route is huge, and the street view photos provide a much better context when you're unclear on something than just a map with streets.

Obligatory flight/airport snark: woman boards the obnoxiously small plane; and I smell her from an aisle away. I immediately think ohhh, I hope the smoker isn't my immediate seatmate. She is. She sits down, drops her stuff on the floor, and starts fishing in her purse. She immediately offers me a mint. I politely decline, and she says okay, and puts them back without taking one herself. She says "Are you the one with the onions?" A little confused, I say, "uhhh, no." She responds "Good, 'cause someone just ate a ton of onions. if you figure out who it is, let me know, so i can offer them a mint." Her cigarettes are visible in her purse, and she smells like the smoking room at SLC. (When will the geniuses that run public health programs realize that if you make it easy for people to kill themselves and the people around them, they will, and it you make it more difficult, they'll be less inclined? Or at least not smell so freshly bad when they sit down next to me?)

That would be the whole story, except for this brief epilogue: she dunked her nasty little biscotti cookies in her diet coke to eat them.

Fortunately, it was a relatively short flight.

Now running around in Arizona, but apparently with plenty of time to blog.

Various & random airport observations

Sitting in a lovely Delta sky club in A: it's the secret one in the center (find the Chili's Too), not the consistently crowded one near A17. Great views but limited electricity in the northernmost part.

Well, this little room was great, if you can ignore the CNN Headline Noise in the adjacent room. Then Team Idiot rolled in and began babbling. Two women, one prattling away into her cell phone, another texting while shoveling in a bagel with cream cheese and trying to ignore guy in his 20s. Guy in his ~60s is visibly and audibly drunk at 8:36am, and working on a(nother) bloody mary and his cell phone.

Just watched a pretty shabby looking MD88 roll out of the nearest gate: from up here on the 2nd/2rd floor, you could see that it's been a while since they re-painted it.

Waiting on a flight to JFK en route to BOS for a some G time. Big times to come!

Delta baggage truck (one of those bizarrely cute Tug vehicles) just ran the baggage trailer over an orange cone and looked back, obviously surprised. (UPDATE: about 10 minutes later: a delta trash truck nailed one of the orange cones that a Delta poop truck (aka "lavatory waste") had just put down, about 50 feet from the first sad cone.)

On the MARTA train coming down here, there were at least three sets of identical twins, two of sets apparently going to the same expensive private school. One girl had both a iPhone/iTouch, and an iPod, and was working both of them while doing some sort of homework balanced on a Chinese language textbook. Her sister was going over some fairly complicated math homework that she had gotten a 34/45 (i.e., a C, at 75%) on. The twin brothers seemed to be mostly concerned with laying all the way out on the benches, shoes up and all, though brother #2 was also interested in repeatedly blowing bubbles and getting them stuck all over his upper lip, the pulling it off with some significant effort and starting the process over again.

Okay, about time to begin packing up for some good times on the plane. Woo!

Dinner party!

Briefly alluded to in the last post: a dinner party for seven people, with six courses, and 2.5 hours to cook = eek! I can only blame myself. What J and I started discussing as having soup and bread for three out of town friends, I turned in to a monster while reading cookbooks and shopping.

The menu:

• vegetarian chili: black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, tomatoes, sauteed onions, garlic, sauteed zucchini, red wine (all organic except the wine!)
  
• pumpkin soup pureed
  
• spicy Thai peanut noodles: whole wheat spaghetti noodles, peanut butter, carrots, scallions, pan-seared tofu (all organic)
  
• sourdough bread, with dipping options: apple balsamic vinegar, fig balsamic, cherry balsamic, extra virgin olive oil, chili pepper oil
  
• stuffed baby bella mushrooms, with garlic, sauteed in a balsamic reduction and then baked
  
• spinach salad roasted red and yellow peppers, grapefruit, tomatoes, avocado (all organic)
  
• wine: three reds, a white, and a rose
  
• beer: Sweetwater IPA
  

All in all, despite my frantic cooking, it was a success. I didn't have time or mental energy to take pictures of everything, but here are a few images:

Onions. (Duh.)



Onions and carrots. (Duh.)




Zucchini, post-slicing, for the chili.




Onions, carrots, and zucchini being sauteed for the chili.




Vegetarian chili, early in the process.




Mushrooms after being wiped clean.




Mushrooms being prepped. (Stems in the bowl form a lot of the stuffing material.)




The mushroom stem and garlic mix for the stuffed mushrooms.




Post glazing, pre-stuffing, pre-baking baby bellas.




Sauteed tofu, before being pitched into the spicy Thai peanut noodles.




The balsamic assortment and some freshly polished wine glasses.




The stove isn't tilted toward the back, no matter how it looks.

Food!

Since I really don't don't have the time to do a substantive blog post, here's some recent food porn instead:

From spinach and basil:POOF! to pesto:

(Yes, it is more or less that easy. I basically chop up a few cloves of garlic and some pine nuts in the food processor, add a couple cups of spinach leaves and fresh basil, then blend with olive oil to a consistency I like.)



Sauteed tofu with fresh oregano and cilantro, and carmelizing onions, that POOF! turn into a sandwich:


Sauteed tofu, fresh tomatoes from my balcony gardening, fresh pesto (basil from the balcony garden), caramelized onions, sourdough bread.

Speaking of caramelized onions, here's a really really disgusting looking recipe from wikihow. Newsflash: caramelizing the onions bring out PLENTY of sweetness, you don't need to add sugar. A tablespoon of sugar per onion"?!?! YUCK. (Okay, okay: as many of you know, I don't like most sweet foods. But seriously? That's gross.) Every onion I've ever caramelized has been plenty sweet when I'm done.


This is a teaser from the dinner party we threw last night, with a longer post to follow. I started cooking at 4pm for a 6:30pm dinner party, with six courses, for seven people. (Handy Tip: this is inadvisable.) Fortunately, the only thing I really messed up was burning the shit out of some garlic in a skillet, minutes before the first guests started arriving.

Rain and rotten fruit

After a week of beautiful, sunny, clear skies and low humidity, it's raining again in Atlanta. Sadly, I had so much to get caught up on after all the time traveling that I didn't get out for much biking. Actually, almost zero, beyond generating daily errands. But I'm feeling more on top of my to-do list, which is down to only nine items.

I just made a smoothie, using some very overripe bananas (almost of the banana bread vintage) and was struck walking back to the computer how the taste and even the smell border on that Central America, fruit so ripe that most estadounidenses would consider it rotten. I regularly surprise people when I'm picking through the bananas to find something I won't need to put in a bag for two weeks to consider it edible. Fortunately, J hates raw bananas (bizarre, I know) so I get to buy and eat the bananas however I want.

Upcoming trips: to NYC to help with a bathroom renovation, to Arizona and southwest Georgia for protest support, and to the southern Nevada desert, for vacation with J (We're both excited, since we haven't done a vacation trip together in about a year and a half.)

Okay, blogging actually isn't one of the nine items on my to-do list, so... here are a few random photos from the last months of traveling:

This is my first of three flat tires in one day, patching it on a street corner in Brooklyn around 8am. The crossing guard across the street (the picture didn't come out) was visibly snickering at me.


On a sidewalk in San Francisco, in the North Beach neighborhood. Now, San Franciscans are exceptionally nice people, but going to the trouble and expense of treating something for bedbugs, and then donating it? Just call me D for Dubious.


About to ride over the GW bridge from NYC into New Jersey. Looks really inviting, huh?

No lime, no time

Really truly no time for blog post. Stop. So will speak in telegram speak. Stop. Seattle nice, beer good, espresso lovely. Stop. Recovering from significant sleep deficit. Stop.

Still life in tomato:



Tomatoes still producing despite overnight temps low 40s. Stop.

More soon. Maybe.

The great suitcase hunt

I decided I needed a new suitcase. My otherwise very nice 22" roll-aboard style suitcase simply isn't fit for Delta's overhead bins, which seem to be the smallest in the industry. This is a suitcase which has fit on Alaska and United with relative ease, both long-ways (the nice way, wheels-first or wheels-out, that leaves more room for Ma and Pa Kettle's six carryons) and wide-ways (the more obnoxious way, but hey: I actually observed the carryon limit, so if you didn't, I don't want to hear about it.) It has fit even when fairly stuffed, and on various models of planes: basically everything except the loathsome regional jets.

But in the last month, it has barely fit, or not fit at all, on Delta's 737-800, Md-88, or 757-200. With some class irony, carryon bags are significantly more difficult to fit in the first class bins on Delta planes, due to the curvature of the airplane making the bins smaller as you go forward. Ha!

So anyway, yesterday mom, J, and I do a super fun vacation activity (mom's vacation, not ours): we go suitcase shopping. My priorities, in order: a shorter rollaboard (20" or even 19"), fairly thin, four wheels would be nice, hard-side would be frosting on the suitcake.

REI is a big fail, with a ton of overpriced rollaboards, but all 22" or larger. Costco sucks even worse than the last time I looked, selling one large 22" rollaboard, and a three-suitcase set. (Buying sets is usually about as bad of an idea as buying a block full of knives when you really only want two or three of them. When was the last time you needed eight cheap matching steak knives? Similarly, when was the last time you used that 28" monster suitcase that would get you hit with overweight fees if you filled it with anything besides bubble wrap?)

So we go to Macy's. Mom loves Macy's, and it's right across the miserable parking lot from Costco. We proceeded to consider and debate no fewer than twenty different models and approaches, and filled various of them with towels to compare capacity, which Macy's very kindly puts right next to the suitcase department. I'm sure that's what they had in mind. (Or maybe they want people to buy them? Huh. I dunno.)

After about 45 minutes of comparing suitcases in a desolate department relegated to the back 40, a salesclerk shows up and asks if we need help. I politely decline, saying we're just considering all the options. She continues to stand there and shoot us doubtful looks. Mom is sitting on one of the display playforms reading a paperback book. J and I have, at this moment, three or four suitcases laying around on the floor, and mom quips about how we're using their towels to see how much they hold. Salesclerk is nonplussed. She continues to stand there, make unhelpful comments, and generally make us feel somewhat uncomfortable. (Which, in retrospect, was probably intentional.) The only question I have is about the return policy. She initially mumbles something, and then I clarify:

Me: What if I use it for one trip and really hate it?

Salesclerk issues unclear, vague answer, but in sum says nope, that wouldn't be good enough.

Me: What if it won't fit in the overhead bin?

Mom: You know, I've never had a problem with Macy's in with returns: they're always really good about it.

Salesclerk: another mumbled, unclear answer. When pressed for a clarification;

Salesclerk: well, you can't just use it and then return it.

Mom: [good-naturedly] I don't think he's talking about using it like a prom dress and then returning it.

Me: What if the zipper breaks on the first trip?

Salesclerk: well, yes, if the handle totally broke, you could return it.

Uhhhh, okay. Now that the grunting salesclerk has unilaterally re-written Macy's return policy, and essentially accused me of being a prospective thief (over a suitcase that is on sale for $60: yeah, that's worth risking my bar licenses for) I walk away to find other suitcases to compare. Grunting and accusatory salesclerk hovers for a while longer, then then fortunately another customer (only the second customer besides us to venture into the luggage department in about an hour) asks where she can find a five-suitcase set selling for $79. (Gee, those are gonna be really high quality sweatshop suitcases.)

After much consideration, we settle on a suitcase, and go in search of bathrooms. We then wander the third floor to find a cashier. salesclerk #2 really tries to do the right thing, as Macy's apparently works on commission, or at least has some other kind of bonus system for salespeople. she asks the suitcase salesclerk "hey Soandso, where you working with these people?" she starts to walk away with another customer, saying "no, you do it." Salesclerk #2: "well, do you want to type your number in?" Suitcase salesclerk is evidently so unwilling to deal with us again that she just grunts and walks away, so Salesclerk #2 shrugs and types her nnumber in, to get whatever pissass bonus or commission will flow from a $60 suitcase, minus the 10% coupon I printed out from the web.

I get that sometimes retail staff have bad days (I've certainly walked in those shoes) but, Confidential to Macy's: having your sales staff misconstrue/lie about the return policy, and accuse you of wanting to defraud you over a $60 suitcase, is really not A+ sales methodology.

JFK

JFK: mediocre president, horrible airport.

JFK presidency: we canonize and lionize any president who is assassinated, and even those who just die. (Newsflash: all humans die. Being a dead president, or a dead pop singer, or any other flavor of public figure, doesn't make your death more tragic. There are, of course, degrees of difference. Johnny Cash and Kurt Vonnegut dying is considerably more of a loss than Michael Jackson.) Anyway, he was a philanderer who led the world to the brink of nuclear destruction and escalated the conflict in Vietnam.

His little brother dying a couple months ago was another excellent example of being way, way too star-obsessed with public figures. Yes, Ted Kennedy was a reasonably respectable senator. he did some good things. He also collaborated on No Child Left Behind, supported the invasion of Afghanistan, and generally compromised with the right wing any time it seemed politically expedient. Funny that in all the news coverage on Ted Kennedy's death, I literally heard the dreaded word "Chappaquiddick" mentioned once; I heard "Mary Jo Kopechne" zero. Those of you who know me, or at least know my politics from this blog, know that this is no right wing talk radio sort of rant. I just want us to stop this bizarre hero worship of deeply flawed people simply because they've died. I'm very proud to have gone to a college where, when they made the mistake of lowering the flag to half-mast when Nixon died, it was burned within hours.

On to the airport: my flight was first on time, then early, then delayed for mechanical for one hour, then delayed for 2.25 hours, and now one hour delayed. I'm going to check now.

The balm: one of the bartenders in the Delta Sky Club mixes a screamer of a mojito: mostly rum, with a splash of mojito mix and just a kiss of soda water. Yum.

(some of) america's best bicycling cities

This story about America's best bicycling cities is one of those semi-lame, superficial stories that pop up when you log out of yahoo mail, and often seem tempting to click on. But then when you do, they are essentially junk food: the information equivalent of empty calories.

Anyway, it's worth a very quick perusal for cyclists, and here's a list of the cities they mention:

• Austin
  
• Eugene
  
• Boulder
  
• San Diego
  
• Seattle
  
• New York
  
• Minneapolis
  

I've lived in one, biked in four, and have been to all of them, most many times (Eugene only once, Austin three times, the rest multiple times.) My primary comment would be that I'm a little dubious of the claim that "San Diego tops most lists of best cycling cities of over 1 million people, and it may one day surpass Portland..." San Diego is hilly, car-clogged, has fast, bad drivers, and doesn't have great bike lanes for getting between lots of important places. The Bayshore Bikeway that they trumpet is a nice recreational ride, but doesn't really get you anywhere useful if you live there.

Here are another couple bicycling lists:

America's Worst Cycling Cities from Bicycling Magazine. This one definitely falls into the empty information calorie category: it only lists three, doesn't indicate the methodology, and doesn't list Atlanta. Boo.

Kryptonite's 10 Worst Cities for Bike Theft This one is somewhat better, since it ostensibly is grounded in quantitative metrics. Yay. Though it's a generally accepted notion that bike theft is significantly underreported. Boo. Note how many of the cities listed here are also in the top 10 cities in the yahoo article above. Boo.

Way too many of these lists and city analyses largely ignore the cyclists who bike daily to live and work and run errands, and focus instead on rides and facilities for spandex clad weekend warriors on multi-thousand dollar carbon fiber, Dura-Ace equipped road bikes. Boo.

FUN POLL: Should I rename this blog to something like "booyay.blogspot.com"?

Bagels

Walked by J's childhood home this morning while on the phone with her, and she asked me if if would get me (her) an excellent bagel. So I went to Hot Bagels, on Newkirk Plaza overlooking the Newkirk stop on the B/Q trains, just north of Foster Ave.

Referencing the coffee and landfills post, the guy did try hard to give me a bag, and a pile of napkins, but was fine (if slightly confused) when I declined both.

Truly, honestly, about the best bagel I've ever had. Doughy and chewy and big and substantive and tasty with just enough crust to make it right. Amazing. And I even skipped the salt bagel, because J really wanted me to get either an onion or a garlic bagel. Those salt bagels must be fucking amazing, if the onion are that good. Maybe I'll go back tomorrow, even if the gas station grade coffee did suck.

Poop: another great Dinosaur Comic

At the end of a very productive day, a lovely end to the evening with some Dinosaur Comics.

Honey, can I have a bike mounted kegerator?

http://bikehacks.com/ultimate-party-bike/
http://bikehacks.com/keg-bike/
http://bikehacks.com/pedalpub/

Coffee & landfills

I didn't have time this morning to make coffee at the place I'm staying in NYC. So after I got off the subway (the bike had a blowout flat about one block in to my ride -- boo) I stop in to a local deli. Places like it are all over the five boroughs, and this one is pretty typical of lower Manhattan: slightly upscale, slightly pricey, with relatively friendly but somewhat harried and world-weary staff.

I order a large black coffee. The woman goes over and puts together two cups and then puts on one of the cup-sleeve thingies. I tell her I really don't need it double cupped, and she looks at me like I'm deranged, and says:

Coffee Woman: But it's really hot.
Me: I know, I promise to be really careful. I really hate to take more stuff I have to throw away.
Coffee Woman: [nods sympathetically to pretend that she understands and agrees] Okay, but you have to take this [sleeve thingie]
Me: Really? I'd rather not. [I'm being nice and smiling.]
Coffee Woman: No, you have to.
Me: Okay, that's fine. [I wasn't going to win this particular debate.]

Coffee woman puts the coffee down on the counter.

Coffee Woman: Do you need a bag? (She already pulling one out. I'm not ordering anything else, just a single cup of coffee.)
Me: No, thanks. I really don't like to take the extra stuff.
Coffee Woman: [nods sympathetically again] Okay.

Coffee Woman puts a stack of napkins about an inch high on the top of the cup. I reach over and gently take then off the cup and put them back on her stack.

Me: I really don't like to take the extra stuff, you know?
Coffee Woman: [nods sympathetically again] Okay.
Coffee Woman: A dollar sixty-five, please.

I pay, thank her, and drop a dollar in the tip jar.

I swear, I was being really, really nice, and really, really polite. But shit: really? A single cup of black coffee was nearly responsible for a clearcut forest.

Honestly truly overheard on Delta 844

Passenger in 1D (first class) is lucky enough to be the only person to get a pre-flight drink, as the pilots were apparently trying to hustle us out of PIT to avoid ground delays in ATL. Woman in her 50s or 60s, somewhere between obese and morbidly obese, orders “a vodka with just a tiny splash of orange juice.” It's almost 6 in the evening, so nothing too surprising so far.

Woman gets her drink, and begins slurping it down like she just walked out of the Sonoran desert and missed the drive-through liquor stores in the Arizona stretch.

Somehow the conversation with the (amazingly friendly) flight attendant turns to this (paraphrased, but pretty darn close):

Flight attendant: You should watch it, because alcohol affects you double in the air than it does on the ground.

Editor's note:(A marginally dubious claim, which I'm unable to find primary evidence to support or disprove. The best indications are that the added intensity of alcohol consumption in flight is really rooted in dehydration, so you mostly need to be sure to consume a lot of water. A more profound impact than on the ground? Maybe. Double? There is zero evidence i can find for this. But I digress.)

Woman: Really? I have never, ever heard that, and I fly all the time.

Flight attendant: Oh yeah, absolutely, no question about it.

Woman Who Flies All The Time:Wow -- I have never heard that. I'll be fine, though: I can sit here and drink a fifth of vodka straight and not even feel it.

Flight attendant: Oh wow, well, you won't be getting that tonight. (It's an hour and a half flight, incidentally.)

Fifth of Vodka Woman: Oh yeah, I can drink anyone, and I mean anyone, under the table in about three minutes! Any man, any woman!

(inaudible conversation, brief pause as the flight attendant goes and does some other stuff)

Woman Who Can Drink Any Man, Any Woman, Under The Table In About Three Minutes: Say, do you sell these little bottles on board?

Flight attendant: No, sorry, we don't.

Woman Who Wants To Give The Idea Of Buy On Board A Whole New Meaning:That's too bad, 'cause I've been taking care of my mother who is 91 all week, and she has a whole line of them on her shelf, and I thought I'd take her a couple. (That she is apparently heading the wrong direction for such a gift is part of the nature of the Folk Process, with apologies to Dry Branch Fire Squad.)

Flight attendant: Well, you know you can buy them at any liquor store?

Woman Who Wants To Give Her 91 Year Old Mother A Couple Shooter Bottles of Cheap Vodka As A Gift To Add To Mother's Collection: Really? I never heard of that! Never saw them!

Flight attendant: Sure, every liquor store sells them.

Woman Who Can Drink A Fifth of Vodka In About Three Minutes And Not Even Feel It And Can Drink Any Man Or Woman Under The Table In About Three Minutes But Doesn't Know Liquor Stores Sell Small Shooter Bottles Of Cheap Vodka: Well, I'll just have to look for that!

A few minutes go by, we continue the pre-flight process, and next thing I hear is the flight attendant leaning in close and telling the woman kindly, but firmly and repeatedly, that she needs to behave herself. Gosh, can't imagine why.

Balcony garden: late September 2009

Here is what happens when you fly around to five states, through seven airports, in two weeks. Your plants miss you:


This is an overall of the plants. I could probably blame some of their sad appearance on the intense thunderstorms they've had to endurse in the last two weeks, which some are saying resulted in epic, 500-year flooding, but that's probably a cop-out. Really, I've just been a bad plant parent.


Here's a closeup of the Bonnie tomatoes, which are still producing. I ate one just before leaving for Pittsburgh, and it was pretty darn tasty. The leaves look like shit, but the tomatoes themselves look pretty decent.


Here's the Bush Goliath, looking much the same: the tomatoes are looking pretty decent, while the leaves and plant is looking pretty dire.


The herg garden is looking so-so; I'll probably start to harvest quite a bit of it soon.


Here's a closeup of the sage in the herb garden, which is a pretty mixed bag: some of it is clearly curling and dying off, while other parts are doing fine.


And the stand-alone basil planting, which is struggling, but putting up a game fight.

Of plants and protests.

Since I have plenty of entertaining stories about providing legal support for the protestors at the over the last few days, I'll instead post pictures about my balcony garden. Okay, okay: a few summary thoughts, with more to come.

The police response was properly described by one activist as a "bumbling and violent police action."

The cops did a whole lot of arbitrary shutting down of streets with rows of riot-clad cops, when zero protestors were anywhere nearby. In this picture, at Liberty Ave & S. Millvale Ave near Western Pennsylvania Hospital, the cops had watched the protest march continue down the street. They were about a third of a mile away when i took this picture (I had to hotfoot it to catch up.)

And as usual when the police engage in the overwhelming show of force, shock-and-awe style repression of dissent that has been popularized since Seattle, the cops did some pretty stupid stuff, and beat down some people who had nothing to do with the protests. This included University of Pittsburgh students who happened to have the nerve to try to walk through their campus, and deploying of tear gas and peper spray on narrow residential streets.

Police outnumbered protestors approximately five to one, or six to one.

I'm going to break up these posts and do the gardening pics separately...

Snippets from the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh

Context: this is several miles away from any protest activity at a road closure near Shendley Park. Literally three activists are standing near, doing nothing after being told they can't enter the park for their permitted event. There are approximately ten police, including at least Pennsylvania State Police, Pittsburgh PD, and Cleveland PD.

Pittsburgh PD to activist: "Quit being such a fucking smartass. Get the fuck out of here. I will fucking shoot you."

Cleveland Police Department officer to attorney: "Get out of here. Move. Go away." (I ignored him and turned my attention to the homicidal Pittsburgh PD, as Cleveland cop wasn't even remotely in charge of the area. He was an out of town, deputized rentacop who was essentially relegated to traffic management. He had his uniform shirt unbuttoned low enough to show the hair just above his bellybutton. He had a lot of it.)

More after-reports to come. (Confidential to anyone who might worry: I'm perfectly safe and being careful.)

People I don't understand

1) People who launch themselves out of their seats on the airplane, so they can occupy the aisle for the several minutes it takes the ground crew and flight crew to get the door open. Then it turns out the (specific jerk in question) needs to wait at planeside for his gate-checked bag to come out, just like the people he was jockeying to get in front of.

2) People who rush to the televisions in the airport to see the football game. (Confidential to football fans: the game won't change because you're watching it, and the ten minutes you see of grown men smashing into one another will be much more interesting without all the pap and filler when you watch it tomorrow on Sportscenter.)

3) People who don't tip, or even worse, tip badly. Examples: too numerous to mention. You know who you are.

4) Self-important TSA officers, who seem to think their scowl and facially insincere grunt of "how are you" somehow imparts some sort of gravitas or authority. Confidential to TSA: you're largely incompetent rentacops that 98% of the regular-traveling public despises. Oh, and suspiciously sneering at me when you look at the x-ray of my carryon isn't intimidating: it's just silly.

Boarding soon for segment five of nine in two weeks, so I should get my stuff together.

Dateline: Montana

At the tail end of a week+ of excellent mountain biking in Montana. I hope to upload some of the 120+ pictures I took sometime this week, but for now, you'll have to settle for numbers:

~275: total miles ridden
38.6: average miles per day (including off-route grocery/beer stops)
32.4 mph: max speed
51.18: max daily miles

Wildlife: a bunch of white tail deer, one pesky red fox near Fatty Creek (on two different nights), a ton of cicada, crickets, and beetles, and assorted smaller animals.

The people, on the whole, were fantastic. Truly nice, accommodating, pleasant, and fun to talk to.

The roads, well, I could take or leave them. Much of the Great Divide Route is on Forest Service roads, which range from flat and brutally maintained to singletrack, technical, and moderately unpleasant.

Some shoutouts to some particularly wonderful local businesses:

The Grateful Bread, Bigfork, MT. Great bread and sandwiches, solid espresso drinks, amazing people, and great vegetarian and vegan (ask!) options. Went twice in two days.

Glacier Cyclery , Whitefish, MT. Fantastic people, decent bikes, great location.

Markus Foods , Whitefish, MT. Solid grocery store with a nice little deli and excellent beer selection.

The store at Swan Lake Trading Post, Swan Lake, MT. They have a nice little grocery, and a great take one, leave one paperback book section.

More to come. Now back to flying! Tonight FCA-SLC-SMF.

Insert: deep, loud, irritated sigh

The asshattery here in the LAX Delta Skyclub gets more intense by the minute. Not only does it sound like a junior high school cafeteria, both in volume and content, but this fucking nitwit is standing next to me, immediately in front of the "QUIET AREA" sign with a cell phone crossed out in a circle, with his cell phone plugged in right behind it, talking on it. There are literally dozens of electrical outlets spread throughout the room. Idiot.

Now the moron has left his cell phone plugged in while he wanders around. I'm tempted to pour my margarita on it, but the margarita tastes too good.

More calories, please

I decided that it's not really worth the walk to browse more overpriced food in other terminals, so I needed to get some more calories here. Fortunately, the bar makes a surprisingly good margarita. (Hey! It's almost noon, okay?)

Airports and etc.

After a frenzy to get packed and ready for the bike trip, I'm finally en route.

The morning flight from ATL to LAX was pleasant due to an upgrade, but unpleasant due to none of the reading lights working. The flight attendants were apologetic about this, but still didn't seem to think it worth leaving the overhead lights on, and the always helpful fellow passengers all closed their windows so they could watch The Fast and the Furious, and bad romcom. I got a little reading done until it started to really strain my eyes, and then I did some more eye-straining reading on my netbook.

Now in the Delta Skyclub in the crappy, run-down Terminal 5 at LAX. The lounge is nice enough, if quite crowded and loud. I'm actually listening to music (Gomez: Get Miles, appropriate in so many ways) which I almost never do in the airport or lounges. This is to drown out the woman who has been prattling nonstop with her companion since she came in. Well, not truly non-stop: she takes breaks to prattle loudly on her cell phone, too. All while she keeps her feet up on the chair. She's a teacher, but apparently hasn't learned Inside Voice.

The food at Delta Skyclubs pretty much always stinks, with a few exceptions (JFK terminal 2 has some really good snacks and appetizers at certain hours.) I'm hungry, and the food options in Terminal 5 mostly suck, so I was pleased to see them roll out a cart of food when they took away the breakfast foods. What was it? Some sort of caramel-fudge-flourless-chocolate cake thing. At 10:30 in the morning. Yes, really. My favorite response to this (well, the only response other than mine so far) came from a friend via e-mail: "turtle fudge cake? gross. i wouldn't eat that at any time of day."

It does appear that GrossCake(tm) is going to be the only option, so I'll be sticking with pretzels and beer. (Hey, it's now after 11!) I mean, c'mon: you can't even bring out some soft, wilted celery and carrots with grayish/white caking?

In other travel (news), my travels in the next month and a week will have me in the following airports: ATL, LAX, SLC, FCA, SMF, SFO, PIT, JFK, SEA. Woo.

Maybe I'll go hunt down better food, since I still have an hour and a half. A little web searching did indicate that it's possible to walk from Terminal 5 to Terminals 6, 7, and 8. Yay informationsuperinfobahn!

Bicycling and more bicycling! (oh, and some traveling)

Yesterday J and I both rode in an organized ride. We did the first ~31 miles together at a relatively slower pace, then J cut off to do the metric century (~62 miles, which with some difficulties due to the cue sheet, map, and course markings, ended up being ~70.) I sped off to continue the century, which ended up being 93 miles due to needing to cut off a distance loop at the end as they were beginning to close down rest stops and SAG support.

Numbers:

93.07 miles
6:12:01 total riding time
34 mph max speed
15.0 avg speed
135 max RPM
72 avg RPM

I also did a good turn by a fellow rider which took a long time and slowed my average speed somewhat, but which isn't something I'll blog about. Lovely weather all day, overcast and a slight breeze in the morning, and hotter, more direct sunlight in the afternoon. None of the torrential downpour stuff from last weekend.

Now I'm finalizing my packing list for self-supported backcountry mountain bike touring in Montana later this week, followed by a whirlwind tour of northern California. (Y'all know who you are.) As with many such trips, it'll require trips to several local stores for food and gear, which is likely to gobble up much of the rest of my day.

Then PIT. Then NYC. Then SEA. And maybe more ATL sometime: who knows?

Big times! Lots of fun! Very poor carbon footprint!

A Nervous. Fucking. Breakdown.

Is what I'm about to have. In the condo next door to the north, for the second day in a row, they are replacing flooring and otherwise making such an astonishing amount of noise that it's like having a dance party inside a 747 engine. On our floor to ceiling windows to the south and east, the window washers dangling from ropes are slamming around. (They also make a surprisingly massive amount of noise.) They are allegedly cleaning the windows.

I'm going to go read new urbanism at a coffeehouse. In the not-very-amusing irony department, I'm going to have to ride my bike to get to one, since there really isn't a good one within a five minute walking distance (consistent with NU principles.)

Before I go, here are a few pictures from the 65 mile (~metric century) ride I did with a friend on Sunday, mentioned in the previous post. We'll call this friend J2, to distinguish him from J. As mentioned, the first two thirds of the ride were fantastic: rolling hills, and quiet back roads in central Georgia.


Here is the obligatory bucolic country road, with white picket fence, and cyclists approaching the second rest stop image:



Here is the obligatory condom-icecube-in-the-portapotty urinal picture. Yes, really. (This is at that same rest stop):

It was a lovely rest stop, complete with a friendly volunteer mechanic who fixed J2's rubbing front derailleur. In other news, J2 had never heard of the idea of a condom icecube?!? Consider this a request for a Highly Scientific poll of my readership: please leave a comment if you knew this fantastic utilization for condoms.


Remember, dear reader, how I said that the first two thirds of the ride was fantastic? Well, after the last rest stop it rapidly got marginally less fantastic, as the last twenty miles was in apocalyptic-quality rain, thunder, and lightning. Here is the obligatory standing-water-in-my-shoes at the end of the ride picture:


We had great conversation the whole time, including shouting to be heard over the thunder and rain about whose bike was more likely to be struck by the lightning that was blasting at nearly the exact same time as the thunder boomed: my friend's steel frame urban commuter style bike with slightly wider tires, or my aluminum frame road bike with super skinny tires. My friend maintained that his bike and person was less likely to be struck down due to the wider tires (because the lightning would have to go farther to get to ground.) I maintained that my aluminum frame was less attractive, period, and still believe the lightning wouldn't be doing the endgame analysis when it decided who to strike down for their wicked ways.

Of course, in the wicked ways analysis, I definitely lose. (Incidentally, when I described this to J later, she agreed that the steel frame was far more susceptible to lightning strikage. And she's Really Really Smart about such things.) Sorry, J2.

Rode a lot.

Rode a metric century (~65 miles) today, the last 20 or so in apocalyptic-value rain.

specs:

total miles: 66.18
total riding time: 4:00:44
max mph: 37 mph
average mph: 16.4
max rpm: 131
avg rpm: 73

Excellent ride! Toward the end, repeated lightning and thunder in the very near vicinty, and the last 20 miles in rain thick enough that at various points we could barely see and it stung exposed flesh, not so fun, but super entertaining, and an excellent ride overall.