HHH: My Cookies!

I’ve heard the HHH rest stops are great.  Lots of food, fun times, helpful people.  I assume all of this is true as I didn’t get to spend much time at any of them before Hell’s Gate and by the time I got to the ones after Hell’s Gate, they were in the process of shutting down.  All of us there knew we were in the last group of riders, and I know the volunteers had been there for a while, but it would have been nice if they had at least pretended like they thought we had a chance to finish.  Overall though, they were fine-with one notable exception.

At the 80 mile rest stop, there was a “carb station.”  I use the word “was” because it was completely gone by the time I got there.  The table was still up, along with the “carb station” sign and another sign for “cookies.”  Considering that I had only eaten a smoothie and pieces of oranges and bananas, I was seriously in need of something more substantial.  I asked one of the volunteers at the drink station if they were really out of cookies.  Just as she turned around to ask someone else, I noticed a volunteer who could politely be described as extraordinarily large in weight and slight in stature who was sitting on bench under the drink station tent shove an entire tub of enormous oatmeal cookies into the bag sitting next to her.  Normally, I would have just moved on, but I was not exactly thinking clearly and as far as I was concerned, those were my freakin’ cookies.  I earned them.  Hell, I paid for them.   Just as the person turned back around to me to say that they were all out of cookies I started to point and stammer something about the fat woman in the back, but before I could say anything he said “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got some extra stuff on my bike.  Come with me.”  He must have seen what I saw and sensed my desperation, so I stood there, half pointing in general direction of cookie thief, completely blindsided by this man’s generous offer and said “Really?”  I know, very eloquent.  He hooked me up with some hammer gel and a Clif Bar.  I have never been so grateful for the equivalent of $1.25 worth of food in my life.  Also, I think he might have saved me from getting banned from the HHH for life.  So really, I’m indebted to this man.

And that’s it.  Those are my stories of the HHH.  A week after the ride, I did a triathlon sprint with my dad and it was disastrous.  My body had clearly not even come close to a full recovery, and I posted my worst time ever.  Lesson learned.  Now, whenever things get hard in my life, I can just keep my race day slogan in my mind: Winning means never having to do this crap again.

Dispatches from London VII

Back in Texas in one week.  Salsa here I come.  There’s one decent Mexican food restaurant here.  It’s called the Texas Embassy which stands near the site where the Republic of Texas had it’s embassy in London during it’s brief period of statehood (I’m not making this up).  And get this, the first basket of chips and salsa is on the house (after that, it’s about $4.00!).

Regardless, I’m ready to come home.  It’s been great, but I’ll be happy to be home.

Science

At STN we are both scientists (one a brewer, the other a sociologist), and as scientists we must say that the state of affairs in the world is unacceptable.  We are disappointed in our colleagues for their laziness and lack of dedication.  To take one completely random example, it is currently not possible to have chips and salsa or a decent chimichanga delivered from a good Mexican food restaurant in Texas to someplace across the world (England, say) while it is still hot and fresh.  This is abominable and we chastise the entire scientific community for not figuring this out.  Shame on you other scientists.  Shame on you.

Note: The example above was derived purely at random and has nothing to do with one half of STN’s impending departure to the land of bland food for 5 weeks.  Nothing at all.

When Will This Robot Get His Due?

We here at STN have met the “retro” 80s comeback with mixed enthusiasm.  While one half of STN would be glad to be done with it altogether, the other half insists on perpetuating this legacy of questionable fashion by sporting ridiculous white sunglasses that were stolen out of Kanye West’s car.  Regardless, neither one of us can figure out why this dude hasn’t gotten more attention, especially with the internets making such things so easy:

40,000 Calories

Keeping in the long tradition (going back to last week) here at STN of making lists, I thought it might be useful to list the food I ate in N.O. last weekend:

Beignets x 3

Fried Catfish PoBoy

Gumbo

Red Beans and Rice

Jambalaya

Pizza

Bacon Egg and Cheese from McDonald’s (I know, I know, but it was a desperation situation).

Cheese Danish

Coffee x 100 ounces

Crawfish Boil w/ Sausage, Corn, Mushrooms, and Potatoes

Muffuletta

Snowball

Snowball w/softserve and condensed milk

Fried Pickles

Something else I can’t remember

Beer x ??? ounces

Super Hot Cheetoes

Dill Pickle Chips

Egg Sandwich

And now a list of what I’ll be eating for the next two weeks:

Salad

No Mo’

In addition to the totally obvious awards for worst lyrics and most unwatchable video, this totally wins the following awards:

least interested back-up singer
worst hair for a back-up singer
worst fitting suit for a lead singer
most awkward physical combination of lead singer and back-up singer
worst dancing
worst combination of food items (Lucky Charms and Iced Tea?)
most racial stereotypes ever unintentionally displayed in one song.

I double dog dare you to watch the whole thing.

[via H]

And I helped

So tonight for dinner one half of stn made fish and pasta with a garlic butter sauce and corn on the cob.  Good dinner.  In the middle of making it I decided that it would be good to have something for dessert, so I found a new recipe for peanut butter oatmeal bars with choc. chips.  My wife helped and we had it in the oven while we ate dinner.  Unfortunately, the recipe didn’t quite work right.  The crumbly stuff just wouldn’t stick together (probably some mistake we made when we halved the recipe).  No problem, I thought, I’ll just do what any good cook would do-add butter.  As it so happened we even had some melted butter left over from dinner, so I reached in the fridge, grabbed it and poured it on top.  Worked like a charm.  Everything started coming together.

Wait, did I mention that we had GARLIC butter sauce for dinner?  Yeah.  Not so good for dessert.  Oh well, now we’re making cookies.

Bread Me

Have you ever been eating a really good bacon cheeseburger, turned to your buddy and said “Damn, you know what would make this even better?  More bread.  I could really use a lot more bun here.”  No of course you haven’t.  So why does Applefrili’s insist on promoting these mini-burgers?  Seriously, if I wanted White Krystals, I’d go to White Krystals.