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.