081: Eats

Tony Pereira put this up on his Flickr account today. Pretty awesome I have to say. Especially the card in the middle.

And now I'm starving, so thanks for that.

018: Documentation

The riding may be over, but the documenting is never over.

You'll have to wait a little while to see the photos that come back from this little "adventure" that isn't entirely over. As they were shot with these antiquated cameras. Apparently they take real film not just digital memory cards. They tend to look amazing-er than the digital stuff as well. Although, Velodramatic may beg to differ as he's pretty amazing behind the lens of a digital camera. Check out his most recent post as he put up a gallery of images that he shot during his time with the Conti-Crew.

Also check out Daniel's write up's on Bicycling.com.



I don't even know where to begin in telling the tale of the Rapha Continental Tour of California preview. So, I made a list of the food that I ate this morning. Yesterday we climbed over Palomar mountain. Was not too hungry after the 100 mile ride, but this morning was another story.

1 Grande coffee from starbucks
1 sausage egg and cheese from the same
2 packages of lucky charms from hotel lobby
2 mini blueberry muffins
1 cinnamon roll

Then we headed over to Auntie Em's for an amazing breakfast (no, the above wasn't breakfast, it was more of a precursor.)

2 coffees Intelligentsia this time
1 order of biscuits and gravy with
3 over easy eggs on top
1 coconut cupcake

disgusting I know.
but it held me over for hours.

I've also made a list of the roadkill that I've seen, but I figured that the two probably wouldn't go together that well and decided to save that for another post.
or at least an hour.

014: Tea for Thought.

I was reading this post on Tea by friend J.P. and it reminded me that I haven't just been doing bicycle related stuff while I've been traveling. Sometimes I get caught up in the cycling end of things as far as this website goes and I forget that I actually do other stuff worth mentioning. Ok, maybe not really worth mentioning, but I do other stuff besides think about bikes.

Sometimes.

I really like food, for instance, and almost more than that, I enjoy taking photos of food and the dining experience.

Well, Jen's post got me thinking about Tea as well and the interesting encounters that I had with it in the last few weeks. The first was a couple weeks ago at a Dim Sum restaurant in London and the other was the past few days when I was deathly ill and drinking it like it was going out of style. Ok, I wasn't deathly ill, just a little under the weather, but its so much more dramatic if you say "deathly ill," I've found.

Dim-Sum
Was led through the underground network of tunnels called "the Tube" to Ping-Pong, a nice little tea house and dim-sum restaurant in London's SoHo district that boasts "Little steamed parcels of deliciousness." How can you go wrong with a tag line like that? The food was amazing, but what struck me more were the "flowering pearls" of tea that we ordered. I haven't been privy to this style of tea before and my mind was almost entirely blown as I sat there watching the "pearl" of tea literally unfold, or blossom in front of me.

The tea came to the table looking like a tightly rolled ball of field grass. Which, I guess in a way, it is. Then when hot water is poured over the "pearl" it starts to unwind itself. Almost creepily unraveling as you sit and stare. Slowly moving through the steaming water. There were a few levels to this unraveling as well, the first opened to reveal a bright pink blossom, which then opened further with a brilliant white flower at the top. At this point, being the delicate tea lover that I am, I jammed the pearl down to the bottom of the glass, hoping something really spectacular would happen. It didn't, but it looked nice.

Up until this point I'd thought of tea in a few very different ways:

1) as something that my mother and grandmother would give me when I couldn't sleep, usually in the vein of "Sleepytime Tea" or "Lemon Zest" or something to that effect.

2) the dark, smoky teas that Mr. P. Rubijono introduced me to when I started racing cyclocross "to keep you healthy and in the sporting lifestyle." Perfect post race or just in from a cold training ride.

3) as something you order at a coffee shop to either
a) look smarter than you are, or
b) when you've just had too much coffee for one day

4) as a Russian Tea Embrocation. Hint: its near the bottom, and I've used it, its near amazing.

What I didn't realize is that there is a whole world of Tea out there. And this world involves not only a bizarre mixture of flavors for your palate, but something for most of your senses...apparently including sight as well.

Cheers to you, Tea,