Posso Parlare Italiano? Certo.

I went looking for a recipe for agrodolce online and stumbled across this blog. I don’t speak Italian, but read a recipe in Italian? Sure, I can handle that. Come on, it’s just food. Alright, I admit my first impulse was to translate it but as I read over the recipe, all sorts of familiar sounding words jumped out and then the not so familiar ones became clearer in the context. Uhmm. . .kind of like learning to read in one’s own language. So I just kept going and now I am fluent in Italian in less than five minutes. Fact checker, please.

Anyway, there’s some good recipes on this blog and skimming through it and seeing some un-food-related posts and the general feel and nice photography made me think about my friend Suzy’s blog. Ostensibly or initially a vehicle for her jewelry design, her blog covers a lot of ground besides jewelry. And well. And flies in the face of all sorts of blog-advice I read when I thought about starting my own. Keep it focused. Know your audience. Post regularly. That last one is actually a good tip but the others, fuck ’em. This is not to say that Suzy’s blog is unfocused or doesn’t know it’s audience or doesn’t feature regular posts. I think Suzy is the only person in the world who would call herself or anything she’s pursued unfocused. I’m talking more about the good changes in direction a blog can take from time to time.

Also — and this is a little hard for me to admit — the ability of the intra-web-compruter-world-web to tap into a far reaching, serendipitous audience. And then make a connection.

 

Bay Area Super Prestige.

AKA BASP. AKA San Francisco Cross. AKA approximately half the size of Cross Crusade in Portland.

After a week of regression in New York, followed by a stomach flu that had me puking for two days but in a state of malaise for almost a week, and with just two punchy little rides last week to prime the pump, I knew this was going to be some tough sledding. Oh yeah, there’s also this trio of facts: I’m old and slow, I don’t train and cross is generally just hard. At least I set my sights super low — don’t come in last.

So racing in SF is very similar and yet very different from Portland. First, the fields are way smaller. 60 in Master B here versus about 120 up in Oregon. Across the spectrum in both places, there are guys who could be up or down a category easily. I’m in that latter category.

I overheard some guys in the lineup before the start complaining about the cold. It was sunny and about 60 degrees. That’s strange. It kind of reminded me of standing around in freezing rain for 15 minutes before the last PIR races.

The course itself was fairly hard yet really fun. No monster run-ups, actually no run-ups at all. But plenty of deep sand, loose, chunky gravel, funky transitions with angled lips from dirt/sand to pavement, a few curbs to hop, a few gravelly or lumpy little hills (rideable, but energy suckers) a stretch of pavement and all of this with cool views out to the bay and then over to Candlestick Park. It was definitely a faster course and if I have a strength in cross, it’s certainly not that. I thought I would struggle more with the surfaces/terrain than I did yet I think I was a bit too cautious (read: slow) until the last lap. By that time though, my slowness wasn’t due to caution but my skewed ratio of sucking to not-sucking.

All said and done it was fun as usual. There’s not much spectating and not much to do after the race – no food or beer tents — so we ate some bagels that Big Ed brought and then cut out. I had to work later that night and wasn’t completely gassed so maybe I left some out there. The PA announcer kept mentioning the rider in front of me that I tried in vain to catch — Dag Otto Lauritzen. Him and some of his Norwegian cronies were filming a show about their bicycle adventures up and down the west coast to drum up interest in biking back in Norway. Alls they need to do is incorporate more drinking, skiing and ice skating into biking and it’ll become the new national pastime.

BTW I was not DFL. Go me.

New York.

Every time Holly and I go back to New York, at least one of us, usually in an alternating pattern, experiences some serious longing for the place coupled with the far-fetched notion of moving back. This time was my turn, though the longing was neither serious nor oriented in the usual direction. I didn’t miss the hustle and bustle of the city, or polyglot Queens or world-class museums. Well, that last one a little. What I missed was. . .Long Island!

Let me qualify that a little further —the nostalgia of growing up 20 minutes from the beach was very palpable. That’s about the extent of it, but nevertheless is was a strong reaction to a substantial part of my childhood spent playing at this beautiful swath of land. Especially beautiful on a Fall day when the beaches are officially closed and the masses of humanity that usually spoil the beaches were off spoiling something else.

Besides the wedding we were in town for, much of our time was devoted to taking Chloe around to various kid-friendly things like the beach, Hicks’ Farm in Westbury and the Museum of Natural History. Fastest visit I’ve ever recorded there as Chloe was going a little buckwild. As much fun as I had in New York during my high school and post-college years, revisiting the New York of my youth and reliving it vicariously through my daughter has certainly altered my perspective. And then Holly and her eagle eye spotted a Magnolia Bakery uptown!

Then there was the wedding. I have a friend who never understood why I went to and enjoyed so many weddings. Reason is weddings are, in my experience, a lot of fun. Getting tore up with your friends and family is reason enough. For us lately, it also means a chance to go back east. Then add in the possibility for some good grub (Lama and Carolyn came through.) And because these kids are such boaty people, we took a boat from part of the way to the reception. Who doesn’t like boats?

New York. Wait, no. New Jersey.

We went to New York for Martin Lama’s wedding. A day after we arrived, I went to Atlantic City for the bachelor party. I haven’t been there in nearly 20 years and it’s about exactly the same. I am going to invoke the Vegas rule—AKA what happens here, stays here —  with this exception: I’m going to discuss what we ate in AC.

In three quick days we went to several of the mainstays — Chef Vola’s, Knife and Fork Inn and then subs on our way out of town at White House. Vola’s is classic Italian-American, off the beaten path but still well known. We got a table outside, brought our own beer and wine — yes, we showed up at this not-fancy-but-still-nice place with a big cooler of natty light and four bottles of wine — and sat down to a pretty ridiculous feast. Nothing extraordinary about the menu. All the usual suspects, but done very well.

Knife and Fork Inn is also off the beaten path and I think a little lesser known. Again, nothing cutting edge about the menu, just a pretty straight forward steak and seafood restaurant. And again, the food was pretty good. Most of the restaurants I’ve been to over the last few years have had a decidedly different approach — either using rarely sourced ingredients or innovative combinations of common items or over the top quality of simple preparations or some combination of the three. And of course all that done with a hyper-local sensitivity. I am a fan of that type of cooking, no doubt. But digging into some classic dishes that taste exactly like you expect them too, exactly like you remember them from years past, that’s good eating too.

White House Subs. Are you sensing a theme here? Good subs, nothing fancy, just done right. And they’re fucking huge. Some of the fat boys I was rolling with ordered a whole, which is essentially two subs. But the true fat boy reared his head and ate into a couple of them extra halves.

Just for shits and giggles, I’ll mention this one too. Irish Pub. Not “The” or “A” Irish Pub. Just Irish Pub. This was a cavernous bar, also off the strip, steeped in all the requisite Prohibition history. Secret entrances, trap doors, you name it. Good bar food. Perfect accompaniment for some tasty pints of Guinness.

I will get around to the New York part of the trip in another post. Still a bit peaked from a stomach flu that wiped out Holly, little Chloe and me.