Airplanes, Peru, food porn, avocados

Pretty excellent comic that's relatively new to me: The Oatmeal. Check this one out for How commercial airplanes should be laid out.

And alright, Apple Juice definitely didn't find me, so it's time for some... wait... FOOD PORN, PERU STYLE!

Here's the summary: I ate pretty well, went through probably 5000-7000 calories in an average riding day, got almost no protein except quinoa, ate a literal shitton of avocados (sometimes three in a meal, sometimes ten per day.)

Peruvian food is... bland. Almost everything you see below required salt and pepper, at a minimum, to be added.

This is the special breakfast I got served three or four mornings at our hotel in Cusco, while my fellow trip members ate scrambled eggs that looked like yellow and white dish scrubbies. Yes, I shared. No, I didn't eat the honey.

The folks who cooked for us on the trip went out of their way to make me special vegan food. Yay! This was a lunchtime salad. Sometimes lunch occurred at 10am.

Breakfast. I told you I ate a lot of avocado, right?

Pizza! We went to this place at the foot of Macchu Picchu twice, and, uhhhh, I got some avocado. I was particularly hungry at this meal: this was when we hiked up Macchu Picchu, and Huayna Picchu, and then A6 (I think he's A6) and I hiked back down on the road with about a million switchbacks, rather than do another set of endless stairs.

Bland food, but you do see a lot of beautiful salad presentations in Peru. This is at the same pizza place as in the previous shot.


Ummmmm, how about more avocado, and more salad?

Okay, how about more salad. And more avocado.

Need more avocado, and more salad?

Fine, sure: more avocado. Good thing I love avocado so damn much.

Most of the coffee in Peru is, in a word, dreadful. I drank a ton of instant, made ultra-strong just to make it drinkable. The brewed coffee in hotels and restaurants was usually thin, bitter, insipid crap.


I drank a decent amount of beer, too. This is Cusquena, the beer that had floating around under the seat in the van for a week, that we drank while driving back from our last day of biking. It was pretty bad. It did provide for one highly amusing (for some) moment: in my rush to toast, I foamed beer all over the trip leader, and A6. They were... not amused. But everyone else was.

Lots of quinoa. Usually bland, usually with bland, unseasoned tiny vegetables in it.

We went back to this place three times. No, it isn't that amazing, but the trip leader really liked it. And after an initial incident with mayonaise, they figured out how to serve me avocado vegan-style. We actually managed to empty their stock of avocados on at least one occasion.

This is a sandwich. Yep, really. This is at the Cusco airport restaurant, but it burned through through nine soles (about USD$3.25) and got some food in my stomach.

The lovely little hostel I stayed a couple nights at in Miraflores, Lima, The Gallery House, had a kitchen. So I ate some more avocado!

I mixed up the avocado with sauteed ONIONS! and asparagus.

WAAAAAAIT. You said you want a detail of ONIONS?!? You got it! Oh, and some garlic playing second fiddle.

It may not look super appetizing, but a terribly exciting find in the supermarket in Lima was dry protein chunks (essentially dehydrated seitan.) They were a little over USD$3, and got some much needed vegan protein into my diet.


On my last full day in Peru, I stayed at a basic but totally serviceable hotel near the airport called Hostal Victor, and took my own picnic dinner (and breakfast, and avocado sandwich for the flight the next day.)

Okay, enough food porn for now. Gotta get chugging on, uhhhhh.... other stuff.

More Peru food porn

This includes the juice from the  crazy orange juice machine I blogged about in the Lima airport. Looks pretty unlikely that Apple Jack is gonna find me, so I plan to put up more images soon from my mountain biking trip in Peru.

High Museum = lame

I really like museums. Most of you who have traveled with me know this. I particularly like free and cheap museums. Even museums that aren't free or cheap, I can love: I'm a huge fan of the Atlanta History Center, and rank it in my top five or ten favorite museums anywhere (this list include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, LAMCA: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the British Museum.) I did a significant chunk of my law school studying at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston.)

We've lived less than a mile from the High Museum, which bills itself as the "leading art museum in the southeastern United States", for over two years. We haven't gone, though, since it's stupidly expensive: $18 for adults. Finally, a halfoffdepot.com coupon and J getting in free through her work enticed us to spend a hot, muggy Saturday afternoon there.

The air conditioning was nice, but on balance, it was an incredible disappointment. Despite a truly stunning (if somewhat disorienting) physical space, it's totally overrated. The curation is ridiculous: it looks like someone went on a meth binge with an art history book in one hand and googled the word "modern" with the other. There was a photography "exhibit" I was excited to see that ended ended up consisting of one room, about 10x10, four photos, and an "interactive" display (where you can put different sizes of frames against a print to see if you would have framed it the same. Whee.) They tell me that John Marin was the most important American artist of his time. Huh? The guards occasionally have to literally yell at the stupid people who touch the art. Yes: yell. As in: "DON'T TOUCH! DON'T TOUCH! DON'T TOUCH!" Navigating through the three major wings and walkways is confusing even with the map. There is all sorts of "art" that is only "art" because the museum tells me it is.

And I'm not the only one who thinks the High Museum is on the wrong track.

It's a kinda long story as to why, but we ended up getting in entirely for free yesterday. I'm going to give away my remaining free entry voucher: it's that uninteresting to me to bother going back in the next two months. Oh, if you want to check it out yourself for free, that famous patron of fine art, Target, is sponsoring free admission on Thursdays in September.

MIA sucks

Yep, it's official: MIA is definitely my least favorite domestic airport (indeed, it ranks near the bottom of all airports.) Stairs, escalators, elevators, and ridiculously long walks plague this dump. I just wanted to check out dinner at a place next to D8, I'm flying out of E9. The walk, done rapidly just short of jogging, took 20 minutes, including a stint on the Airtrain.

Ultimately I didn't have time to risk ordering food and waiting for it. I hustled back (a slightly arduous journey since the ol' tum-tum is on a flight rebellion.) I got to my gate with five minutes to spare, to consider the way the BA 747 dwarfs the Aerolineas Stalinistas 738 I'm flying (can't really complain, though, since I'm in first class, on miles, which is making this whole journey vastly more pleasant.)

In case you're curious, though J and the newly re-coined W already know this: the only close competition for worst domestic airport is DFW (which you might know is also a major hub for Aerolineas Stalinistas. Coincidence? Unsolved mystery? Dear readers, you be the judge.

Oh, and, in case anyone is wondering why I'm prattling about this rather than the wild trip I'm returning from... I have a bet with a fellow trip participant that he can't find this blog by googling me. He has a week, so I'll post images and text soon-ish. Even writing this, of course, is sort of throwing him bone. You listening, Eh Jaay? Yep, this is me!

Crazy orange juice machine

res ipsa loquitor, no?

Peru food porn!

At a nice little hotel, Hostal Victor, http://www.hostels.com/hostels/lima/hostal-victor---airport-hostel/1070, 10 minutes from the airport. Got food, got books, got cheap red wine, got wifi, so all set to post up and get a good night's sleep before my 0430 (ugh) transfer to the airport.

"Premium" lounge at MIA

Citrogne, Grand Marnier, fresh fruit. Yep. Life is excellent.

Obligatory

beach picture, since I'm standing in the ocean. Life is outstanding. Holy shit, I have a great life.

Vegan Miami Beach!

I know, a little surprising, but true, and delicious. This was a raw vegan pasta-less eggplant lasagna at ThriveVegan.com. Delicious!

Miami Beach

Kinda, well, sucks. But I have 12 hours to kill before my flight to Lima (whee!) and MIA is genuinely one of my least favorite airports on earth, so... yeah. Had a decent stout at Abbey Brewing Co., which A and W (the Artist Formerly Known As J2. Or J3. Or something) may remember from our rough sleeping romp to Florida . (happy barfday, W!)

In Peru mountain biking and wandering through August 3, so posting will be sparse. Shocking, no?

WV,

Sorry, readers: it's been a wild few weeks. Got back from West Virginia Monday midnight, and fly out to Peru tomorrow morning for 8 days of mountain biking. Yes, yes: life is rough. Or not.

In a likely futile attempt to satiate my readership in the meantime, what's better than some FOOD PORN?

A full on salad and fixins before I left ATL.

Here is some high speed vegan stir frying love in the outdoor kitchen.

Here are some fresh pickles, and some of my very kind and capable sous chefs prepping for the dinner I made for around 12-14 people (wraps and fresh pickles.) An excellent new friend who, shall, sigh, be coined J5, provided a ton of fresh produce, including a case of cucumbers.

OK, it's not food porn, but it is about West Virginia: this is what your tub looks like when you clean your thermarest in it.

Taking:

Taking suicide food to a whole new offensive level.

Welcome to West Virginia.

Wild and Wonderful!

A picture of last night's schmancy vegan dessert, at Cafe Sunflower, for my slightly early birthday dinner (or J's very, very delayed birthday dinner, depending on how you see it.)

Headed to the airport now, for the first of a couple trips to WV this month, and got on the MARTA in the correct direction at that. Yay!

(as one reader, A2, knows, the last time I took MARTA to the airport, I got on the northbound train, and didn't realize it until, ahem, Doraville.)

Running, Eating, Playing

Last Saturday, J and I ran a 5k, J PR'd, then we treated ourselves to a big, delicious vegan brunch at Soul Vegetarian 2 (which notwithstanding the name is actually 100% vegan):

This is the tofu scramble and soysage.

And with the tofu scramble in the background, vegan pancakes, and the house classic BBQ Kalebone Twists, with mac and "cheese" and collard green sides.

Even better, it was a Scoutmob!

We then went to play in the streets at Atlanta Streets Alive, which was lovely and inspiring and calming and exciting. Yes, all of those at once.

Tomorrow I fly back to Wild and Wonderful. I'll miss J for much of the next 1.5 months, between WV, Peru, and upstate NY, but I'm also excited to be back in WV.

of Js and motorized ice chests

This photograph was taken by our friend J2*, who was on the phone with J when he saw it in Albuquerque:
Yes, friends and neighbors: that's a motorized ice chest. No, I don't know why he made it, how fast it goes, or where the guy puts his feet while (riding?) J2*, feel free to elaborate in the comments section if you have additional details!

*As I was starting to write this post, I found myself in the throes of a naming dilemma: I realized I have described two different people as J2 in previous blog posts. And I have already coined a J3 and a J4, so I can't just reassign further muddying the waters. As a matter of fact, I was out at a local filmmaker showing last night with J4 and someone who will now be coined J5 when J was on the abovementioned phone call with J2*. This shit is getting confusing!

The thing is, you'd have to know me reasonably well and at least know of my friends if not know them personally to be able to decipher who any given blog post references. And referencing people in the blog is mostly a shoutout to the person, not meant to identify them to the masses on the internetz. So any confusion, well... kinda doesn't really matter.

But dammit, what was it with naming kids names that start with J in the 1970s and 1980s? Actually, a little more internetting shows that J names were awfully prominent throughout most of the 20th century.

Thus, going forward, it's like this: J2(a) and J2(b), y'all are now joined in cosmic-cyberspace bondage. This is forever, since the internetz don't forget. Readers, you'll just have to sleuth it out in any given post, or email me for clarification. J2(a) and J2(b), deal with it. I actually think you'll like one another quite a bit. And I don't want to hear any fighting in the back seat if you don't, or I swear to god, you'll be walking home! (A shoutout there to mom. Or maybe it's more a shoutout to my brothers, since we actually had to walk home once.)

Another bicycling & fundraising appeal

Hey all. I'm writing this for both a blog post and email, so please pardon if it reads weird.

Basically, I'm asking you to donate some money to a good cause, and I'm really not good at asking people for money. (Odd, I know, for someone who spends so much time volunteering and working with nonprofits.)

On September 25, J and I will both be riding in the Wapiyapi Classic, a 50 mile bike ride starting in Aspen, Colorado. 100% of the proceeds from this ride will benefit Wapiyapi, a Colorado based 501(c)(3) non-profit. The mission of Wapiyapi is to offer a community of hope and support to children and their families affected by childhood cancer.

This ride is very personal to me, for the same reasons as I made a fundraising plea on this blog last year: there is a direct connection to our friend Gretchen Life. Gretchen was J's best friend in medical school, and J was the maid of honor at her wedding. She died in a boating accident in 2005, just before she was to finish her pediatrics residency in New Orleans and return to Colorado to become a pediatrician in Rifle. She was incredibly gifted with children and people, and it's no surprise that she was a longtime volunteer with Wapiyapi.

I wrote about Gretchen at much more length in that post, and I'd encourage you to go read it, since just writing this is making me cry. Actually, I'll paste in some of the backstory at the bottom of this post.

J and I will be riding this year with Gretchen's father, who I rode the Children's Hospital Courage Classic with last year.

On to the ask: each ride participant is required to fundraise a minimum of $200, and we are also encouraged to exceed that amount. ($800 covers the cost for one child affected by cancer to go to summer camp for a week.) Any amount you can give, even $5 or $10, is helpful, and 100% tax deductible. Please check out http://goo.gl/jnaaU to donate, and be sure you fill in my name at the top of the page where it says “Find a fundraiser to support:” (Either my full first name or nickname will find my personal page.) Anything is immensely appreciated!

An aside: I'll probably get notified when you donate, even if you select the “hide donation amount” and “anonymous” donation options. A had the irritating experience of trying to make it anonymous with the Courage Classic, and I still got an e-mail saying something like “A________ donated!”

More information about the ride and organization can be found at: www.wapiyapiclassic.org

THANK YOU!

p.s. Here is some of that prior post, explaining a little more about Gretchen:

...to honor her life, and her commitment to pediatric medicine, which she was natural at: she had an immense amount of love, compassion, dedication. She was genuinely one of the kindest people I have ever known.

Gretchen's death was, in a strange way, sort of caused by Hurricane Katrina ([for] which I flew to New Orleans to assist with protests, rebuilding, and resistance work around, and to stay at Gretchen and Frank's house, only to show up on the doorstep and find out they had drowned two days before.) This drowning was a little different than the ones we heard so much news coverage of: Gretchen and Frank went out in a boat that Frank had built on Lake Pontchartrain shortly after the hurricane, it capsized in high winds, and they held on for hours: long enough to shred their lifejackets from the friction of the boat bobbing up and down. Before the hurricane, a boat floating out on Lake Pontchartain within a half mile of the Pontchartrain Causeway would have been cause for alarm. Not so after the hurricane, when debris was still floating throughout the lake, thoughout New Orleans. So for J and I, and perhaps for Gretchen and Frank's families, the official death toll from Katrina should be 1,838.

101 miles

Rode an out and back century today on the Silver Comet with my friends K and M. Great ride, great people, great times. At K's urging, we started right near the crack of dawn, just after 7am. We rode out to just past 50 miles,
turned around, and had a lovely lunch at a Silver Comet legend, Frankie's.

Shortly after departing from lunch, the skies opened up. Fortunately we had already done our triumphant bikestand at the Brushy Mountain Tunnel:
(faces obscured to protect the innocent and the guilty.)


Good, good, good times.

Busy busy busy busy: Brief notes from recent travels

photo by Cheshire Tongkat

Just back from a truly amazing, and challenging, and inspirational, and difficult, and extraordinary experience in West Virginia: Appalachia Rising: March on Blair Mountain. I had the privilege and honor and delight of working with some of the most amazing organizers and participants imaginable, and we overcame some pretty extraordinary obstacles. Five days of marching on narrow busy roads through two of the most pro-coal counties on earth to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining, culminating in ~775 people marching on Blair Mountain, and around 148 of those walking up to the historic battlefield, one scene of the largest armed labor uprising in modern American history: the Battle of Blair Mountain. Yeah, run-on sentence, what?

Drove back yesterday through some of the worst driving weather I've ever dealt with: it was basically nonstop driving wind, thunder, and lightning from the VA/TN border, all the way back to Atlanta via Knoxville.

Now unpacking, and putting stuff together to ride a century tomorrow with a friend.

Need to book travel to Afghanistan, for which the departure will be very shortly after returning from Peru, in early August. Like maybe the next day.

Lots and lots and lots of pictures to come, I promise. Now I have this burning desire to shower, shave, eat breakfast, listen to public radio, and drink good coffee.

What to drink

when the power is out in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica: fresh orange juice, squeezed with a battery powered juicer!

Just under the wire!

Checked in and dropped bag with literally 2 min to spare. Ran from MARTA to Delta sky priority check-in.

Am looking good. On Airtrain to E gates now.

Holy SHIT, I hate this nervewracking last minute bullshit.

But, it all worked out.

Next stop: Costa Rica!

observations on aging

Getting old and being physically active both suck sometimes.

Tore up my heel, and ripped part of a big toenail off, on eve of flying to Costa Rica (on train to airport now, meeting A2 in CR!) Still going, but will have to cancel a jungle hike that I was VERY excited about.

Also have 2 week old poison ivy that is infected, and that J is worried might go septic.

Boo. If I weren't on my way to a great vacation, you should feel bad for me.

Bike porn, food porn, booze porn

Yep: this post has it all!

My lovely bike. I recently took off the milk crate, and it was kind of amazing how much lighter and more nimble Sitba feels without it.


I used to, uhhhh, hate bloody marys. My sample size? One. Unfortunately, it was after running a hot, fast 10K in Denver some years ago, and they were giving away free bloody marys with some top shelf vodka. I took one sip, and nearly had to spit it out. Then last year, I bumped into my friend J4 at Atlanta Streets Alive, and we popped into the Corner Tavern, where J4 introduced me to how delicious bloody marys can be, if made well. The not so secret ingredient? A little bit of high quality stout! The above bloody mary was at J4's house, before the Inman Park Festival.

This was the bloody mary fixins bar.

Speaking of the Inman Park Festival, yeah, well, it sort of sucks. I'll leave you to judge the above image (hints: yes, that is a Volvo crossover, I think an XC60, and yes, they were an official vendor for the event.)

When was the last time you cooked 10 quarts of coconut vegetable curry on camp stoves? For me it was last weekend. (And this won out of four dinners over two nights in our friendly but fierce little competition.)

This is what happens when you organize a cycling event for 400 people, are are somewhat obsessive about diverting recyclable and compostable material from the waste stream. Yes, that is my kitchen floor.

Busy busy busy. Today Atlanta, tomorrow Costa Rica, next week West Virginia. Whee!

Bikes bikes bikes!

So, yeah: I've been SO DAMN BUSY these last few weeks I've barely remembered to eat, much less blog. Here is a cool video about one of the big things that has been taking up a ton of my days: BIKES! WHEE!



I totally love the intro line: "Bicycles are beautiful, like the stars are beautiful."

More soon, really, seriously. Soon means after Saturday May 7 when a major event I'm helping organize is done.

File under: police beatdown

From what I could tell, the initial interaction involved an intoxicated homeless man declining to stop and talk to the popo.

Good job, Atlanta Police Department cop: you managed to throw a guy down to the sidewalk who could barely stand up in the first place. Good job, backup APD, you all definitely needed seven cops to stand around while one cop grabbed one guy, and threw him in the back of a patrol unit, and then open up the door to give him some shit. And a shout out to the astonishingly worthless rentacops from Central Atlanta Progress who crowded around as beatdown voyeurs: nice showing, but you still look silly in your pith helmets.





Perhaps the most troubling part of it was that the cop you see doing the beatdown was laughing and joking and smiling hugely with his cohort.

Confidential to APD: I don't feel safer knowing that you enjoy throwing people down on the sidewalk and smiling and laughing after you arrest them.

A little more food, a little more travel!

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have a (not totally unsubstantiated) concern that J doesn't eat well when I'm out of town, so I'm in the habit of making sure we cook a lot right before I leave, and leave a shit-ton of leftovers for J to eat.

I'm in the airport about to fly out to WV for five days, and here is our fridge as of this morning:


This morning as I was getting ready to leave, J said something like, "Now, honey, I just want you to note what the fridge looks like. So when it's empty when you get back, it's because I've been eating well, okaaaaaay?"

I love her.

A little food, a little travel

This:
was a fairly tasty, and fairly fun, and fairly expensive, "Steak and Cheese" vegan sub at Cafe Green in DC. The slaw was good, the pickle good, the sandwich... slightly underwhelming, especially for $9. But I couldn't resist trying a sandwich with a vegan meat substitute I'd never heard of before: “boolgogi”.

This is what happens when you are sitting in the airport lounge, and you need to simultaneously charge your laptop, i*od, and (semi-smart) phone with only one charger. Here's to standardized USB!

And since I'm throwing around random photos, here's a totally, completely gratuitous shot of onions.

Unbelievably busy lately, with half a dozen different major projects on the burners. So I should really quit blogging, shouldn't I? Yeah.