Desert biking (or dessert biking, if you have ice cream afterwards)

I just got back from spending 10 days in the Phoenix area with my family.  Leaving Vancouver (my bike) behind and leaving DC (the city in which I live) behind are always a little difficult, especially this year, when after heaps of schoolwork, I finally had time to go riding and the city was looking especially nice for the holidays.

And yet family matters demanded a long trip to the Grand Canyon State, so off I went.  

I have long been highly, highly critical of Phoenix for being overly conservative and also run by people who are, frankly, bat-shit insane (*cough Joe Arpaio and Jan Brewer cough cough*), and this break was no different.  After the Newtown shootings, the attorney general of Arizona decided that one person in every school (preferably the principal) needs to have a gun because the state budget is just too stretched to stick a police officer in each school.  The logic behind this thinking entirely escapes me because, as someone who is vehemently pro gun control and also a human with basic moral principles, I don't believe that guns and kids mix well.  Guns don't belong in schools.  Period.  Anyone who argues differently is missing the point.

Anyway.  The point of this post was not to make soapbox speeches, yet here I am, making soapbox speeches. Believe it or not, the point of this post relates to bicycles.

Because I have been so dead-set on hating Phoenix for the last, oh, six years or so, I have drastically and mistakenly overlooked many of the bright points of the city.  Specifically--there are a LOT of cyclists there!  Maybe not in South Chandler, where my parents live, because it's pretty far away from anything, but that doesn't mean the city hasn't built the infrastructure for them.  In Chandler and well beyond, there are bicycle lanes everywhere, and when you hit the suburbs closer to Phoenix and, of course, Phoenix itself, there are LOTS of cyclists around!  I saw people whizzing by on intense-looking mountain bikes, I saw a man teetering to and fro as he carried a large sack of groceries home on his steel 1980s Schwinn, I saw a girl on her single-speed with a Chrome messenger bag pedaling along in cut-offs.  And honestly, why wouldn't you want to bike there?  It's completely flat, so a commute of 15 or 20 miles couldn't be so bad, and if you're into mountain biking, you're absolutely in the right spot for it.  I don't know if it would be possible to live car-free in the area, but it was heartening to see so many people out on two wheels.  So heartening, in fact, that it was torture, and I longed to have my bike with me.

To me, a love a biking means a love of the environment, and in the smog and humidity-filled Valley of the Sun, there is absolutely a need for more people to care about the unbelievable natural desert landscape in which they live (fly over the state sometime and you'll see what I mean).  So I tend to equate biking with liberalism, because biker-friendly areas tend to be more liberal.  Most cyclists I know are vehement liberals, but maybe that's just because I live in DC and don't get out much in the way of the political spectrum.  But anyway, my initial thought, for whatever reason, was that maybe this massive amount of biking means that the citizens of Phoenix are less crazy than the people that govern them.

I realize, though, that this doesn't matter (it would be nice, but it doesn't matter).  If you're on a bike, it doesn't matter who you are or which way you vote, it just means that you like to bike!  If more people are biking, the government, no matter which way they swing, will need to start responding to this growing population, and ultimately, that means a safer biking environment for everyone.  My dad used to tell stories of biking around the city when he was a kid, and I had naively and blindly figured that was a time long past.  But apparently I was very wrong.  So, citizens of Phoenix, I stand corrected, and I look forward to riding with you at some point in the future.

I will say, however, that whoever is put in charge of installing bike racks has some serious studying up to do.  I saw this at least three times:

We won't get into that right now.  Never mind that a 4-bike parking capacity has been reduced to one, MAYBE two if you can squeeze one between the rack and the building.  Baby steps.

My one question to Phoenicians and anyone else living in a deathly climate--what on earth do you do in the summer months?

Thought for the morning

I once knew someone who, as a PhD candidate, was rather disparaging of Master's students and claimed that they never do any work, that they glide right on through two years of graduate school with nary a difficult task or assignment.

As I sit here working on this grant proposal for the umpteenth hour with five more large assignments looming over the next two weeks, and not really due to procrastination on my part (seriously), all the while having gained a few pounds from stress over the past two weeks, I would like to throw out a giant "fuck you" to this person.

I really hope subsequent semesters suck less.

New racks along 14th Street!

....you're welcome.  Now stop locking your bikes to those poor trees, dagnabbit.

Keep on Truckin'

I've had my eye on either the Surly Long Haul Trucker or the Disc Trucker for awhile now.  Any thoughts on either of these models?  Disc brakes v. not?  Expense?  Components that I should invest in if I get one? 

How not to use a grinder...

In general, I seem to be getting the hang of this job.  I'm home from work and don't feel like I want to a) die or b) cry.

Today brought a whole host of exciting events.  This morning, I installed a rack outside of Revive Catering on Florida Ave NW, just before North Capitol Street.  As usual, I was hauling around a giant trailer of stuff, so I opted to take the back roads because Florida Avenue at morning rush hour = a hellish nightmare in the best of times.  Aside from being unable to bike any faster five miles per hour, it was actually a really nice ride.  The sun was out, there was a light breeze, the temperature was in the upper 60s--perfect weather, in other words. 

The beautiful weather was, of course, marred by the usual cat-calls and even a "Hey, sexy lady!" from a gentleman (ha) in the park across the street.  When I proceeded to ignore him, he amended his statement to, "Hey, sexy white girl!", in order to clarify--as if I was somehow confused.  It wasn't really worth saying anything or telling him off, so I went about my business and he eventually shut up.  As usual, I drew curious looks and offers of help from passersby.  I was especially amused by one man who greeted me, offered to help, then when I politely refused, kept a constant 15 feet or so away from me and just watched for the entire 20 minutes I was there. 

I think that traffic control box is defunct.

On my way back to the office, I put in another rack at the new Pleasant Pops shop because when I stopped by this weekend, the sidewalk was almost literally littered with bikes.  The owner, as always, was super nice, and I had to force myself to leave without buying a popsicle.  God, those things are good.

I spent about 15 minutes trying to line that last (closest) one up, and I'm still not convinced it's right.

The highlight of the day was confusing the DDOT staff at their outcrop office along 18th Street in Adams Morgan.  My contact at DDOT had asked me to install the last Adams Morgan rack, so, assuming he had let the 18th Street office know in advance (which was stupid of me), I marched in, picked up the rack, said, "I was told to install this," and I was about to walk out when the guy at the desk stopped me.  He asked me (a bit more brusquely than necessary, though I suppose the line of questioning was warranted), who I was, who I was with, and what I was planning on doing with the rack.  When he got to that last part, he said, "So, I assume you're not planning on installing that by yourself?  You've got crews outside or something?"  I just looked at him for an uncomfortable second and said, "Nope, it's just me."  He sputtered and said, "Well, I didn't mean to suggest you're not capable or anything," which, of course, was exactly what he was suggesting. 

Lesson learned: Don't assume anyone knows who I am!  

I took the rack, went on my merry way, and installed that sucker outside of....where else....Jumbo Slice.

EIGHT HOLES.  Completely unnecessary.  Also, those things are about twice the weight of a normal rack.
That is my darling sledgehammer.

After all of this fun, I went up to 11th Street, next to Meridian Pint, to investigate a resident complaint.  Apparently one of the bike racks had long been used as a hitching post for a motorcycle, and unsurprisingly, two of the bolts had come off.  Unfortunately, the only way that you can really take out a bike rack is by using a grinder, and, perhaps more unfortunately, I'm not great at using one. The one I have isn't very steady to begin with, and I never once bothered to read an instruction manual or anything.  By the way, if you don't know, a grinder looks like this.  I wouldn't have known until about, oh, a month ago.  

I managed to get the rack out of the ground, and because bike parking is TIGHT along that street, saw fit to move it outside the restaurant Maple....only to be informed halfway through that installation that the only available bike parking spot left on that block was home to outdoor seating for the restaurant which had taken the owner 3 months to acquire because, surprise surprise, the permit had to come from DDOT.  Oops.  Back to the grinder.

Somehow, in trying to remove the rack for the second time, I wore the grinder blade down to its very nub.  It went flinging off the grinder followed by a majestic stream of sparks, and I was left with a useless spinning thing, a partially installed rack, and one very panicked restaurant owner who was apparently on her way in (someone in the neighborhood had called her).  Fortunately, I found a spare blade hiding in my toolbag, and unfortunately, I put it on upside down, which I only realized after I tried to use it and it got very, very stuck and the grinder came, quite literally, to a screeching halt.  

Right at the point when I was about to start frantically kicking the bike rack to get the freaking thing out of the ground, a man walked out of Columbia Heights Coffee and said, "Hey, I noticed that you put your blade on backwards.  Do you want me to get my grinder and help you finish this job?"  

I always knew there was a god.

As it turns out, Paul (appropriately named, because I'm pretty sure he was a saint) was working on construction at The Coupe across the street and, true to his word, he brought out his grinder and helped me get the rack all the way off.  He also helped me bang the studs into the ground, tried to fix my grinder, and even better, didn't judge me for being a complete and utter idiot.

If your blade looks like the one on the left, you've done something wrong.

So that was today.  Some very, very nice man at Glover Park hardware got the grinder blade off for me and sold me a new one, and Maple still has its outdoor seating, so no harm, no foul.  I'm actually really glad that someone stopped me mid-installation because as much of a pain in the ass as it is to get halfway-installed bike racks out of the ground, it's about 50 times more of a pain to get fully installed racks out.  Plus, I wouldn't want to upset any restaurant owners.  I'm trying to do a nice thing for the community, and pissing people off doesn't really fall in that category.

Lessons learned: Always double-check before placing racks, and learn how to use properly power tools before you get all gung-ho with them.  And, when all else fails, pray for a nice man to walk out of a coffee shop and save your ass.

Confessions of a Bike Rack Installer

This post is not coming from a place of complaint or unhappiness, but as a response to the constant stream of questions I'm getting about what it is I do, because it generates a lot of confusion.  Basically, I install bike parking racks around the city.  Easy enough, right?  Not so much.  It's actually pretty challenging, and here's why:

1) Each installation, whether it's one or five "hoops," as those inverted U shaped things are referred to, requires me to visit a site, take some pictures, take some measurements, determine how to fit a bike rack in to conform with DC codes (which, believe it or not, exist, although no one but me cares about them).  Then, I go back to the office, put together a proposal, send it to the requester, wait for confirmation from whatever landlords or powers-that-be exist, and find time in my calendar to return to the site with a generator, a socket wrench set, a hammer drill, the racks, a grinder, a sledgehammer, and other sundry tools.  If the ground is made of anything other than cement, there are different tools, and if the ground is brick, I get to work with DDOT crews who have to drill out the hole with a rock hammer.  At present, I have a backlog of over 50 places that want at least one bike rack.  Many of them want or need more.  There is one of me.  One of me, 50+ of them.  The District Department of Transportation, lovely folks that they are, only allots funds for me to work 32 hours a week. 

2) Very few people out there know what the non-profit organization I work for is.  When they ask me who I work for, I tell them. Usually, they respond with, "There's a whole organization that supports bikes?  What do they do???" Which is pretty exciting, because I get to tell them all about all of those wonderful things.  Unfortunately, the curious passersby are usually asking me this when I'm lugging around hundreds of pounds worth of stuff, in a set up kind of like this:

Or when I'm in the process of trying to drill some holes in the ground with a hammer drill OR when I'm trying to bang things into those holes with a sledgehammer.  If I tell them I work for DDOT, they generally say, "Oh," and walk away.  So sometimes I do that.

3) When people ask what I do my response inevitably produces a raised eyebrow, a visual up-down of my rather small frame, or both.  PARTICULARLY from men.  Whether or not they mean to be, this is incredibly insulting, and incredibly frustrating, especially when it happens on the job.  Just the other day, I was trying to install some racks outside of USDOT while the building supervisor (a male in a suit) stood by to make sure security didn't pitch a fit over this strange girl with her power tools.  I heard the following comments from two of his colleagues:

• "It's a man's world when the woman's doing all the construction and the man gets to stand there and watch her while wearing a suit."
• "They sure are putting your pretty little arms to work, aren't they?"

In response, I said nothing to the first, and threw out, "Well, I don't know that I'd use the adjective 'pretty'", to the second, which wasn't terribly clever or biting, but it shut him up.  I messed up the installation, due in no small part to the fact that I was getting angry and also very nervous under the judgmental eyes of several men standing around watching me and making comments.  Which made me feel stupid, because I really DO know what I'm doing. Anyway, it ruined my entire day and it's making me mad just thinking about it now.

4) Unfortunately, the learning curve for this job is fairly steep and largely based in trial and error.  My predecessor did a great job of training me, but of the several installations I've done so far, a few have been unavoidable screw-ups.  Sometimes this is due to nervousness, as in my last example, but sometimes it's because the ground isn't quite steady, or the pavement cracks from the drill bit, or there's actually sand where there's supposed to be concrete, or the fasteners that I have are the wrong kind and won't secure the rack in the ground....there's a rather large spectrum of things that can go wrong that I have very little control over.  Because I am something of a perfectionist, I don't like this.  At all.  It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, and because I'm only a couple of weeks in, it's going to take awhile to get past that.

5) The work is straight-up draining.  There's the mental strain of trying to organize installations, and then there's the physical strain of actually doing them.  I repeat: I am a perfectionist, so trying to juggle this and being a full-time student (remember, I can only work 32 hours a week!) is, well, taxing.  

At the end of the day, I 100% love what I do.  When things go right, I have the ability to make people really, really happy.  Just yesterday, I visited an elementary school waaaaaaay out in Southeast, and the woman I was working with kept excitedly introducing me to people, saying, "This is Rachel.  She works with Department of Transportation, and she's going to give us some bike racks!!"  Each rack I install is one tiny bit closer to making DC a more bike-friendly city, and there's nothing like walking by a place of business and seeing a bike chained to something that YOU installed.  I also enjoy knocking down a few gender norms and stereotypes along the way, although that's a part of it I wish I didn't have to deal with sometimes.  Frankly though, it's all worth it!

Bleh!

3 sad days without a bike ride....my body decided to come down with some sort of mysterious illness that has left me sore and unable to ride a bicycle for any distance, particularly anywhere that involves hills...

The upside of this is that I've gotten to enjoy the fun that is the D1 (hey, that rhymed!), which picks me up from my front door and drops me off at work--and vice versa.  Occasionally, on normal, non-sick days, I have to forget this bus route exists because it could potentially make me very, very lazy.

After spending last night lying awake with a fever, however, I was forced to forego work at all today, and, to my dismay, it was GORGEOUS outside (as I discovered when I staggered out the door to catch the bus to go to the doctor's).  It's much easier to be sick when the weather sucks.  But the only thing I wanted to do was grab my bike and go spinning around in circles for hours.  Alas, it was not to be....

Keeping my fingers crossed that this bullshit clears up by Friday--between coffee club and Bike Prom, I feel I don't have much of a choice but to be up and about...

Back to blogs, bikes, and bites

A few visits to the Friday Coffee Club have helped me put faces to all the previously anonymous bike bloggers out there....and this morning, I felt especially remiss for not having updated since March.  It certainly was not intentional, but sometimes projects like this fall to the wayside.  In order to make up for this, I will attempt to summarize the last few months in pictures from my camera.  I take photographs with every intention of blogging about the events, and then I completely forget, so I apologize for the excessively long entry.

On the "bikes" side of things, I photographed Bike to Work Day (back in May), once again, with every intention of blogging about it.  It was a historic, momentous occasion for me because it was the first time in five years that I a) didn't have to work renting bikes out to people at 7 AM and b) registered in time to get a t-shirt.  I was a little sad that the t-shirts were a lurid green color this year, but hey--it was free.

Nifty sign

Nifty tandem

My bike, Vancouver!

Kate's first time biking to work!

Kate and Anjali

My shadow on a bike

BEAUTIFUL day that day, and many cyclists out on Pennsylvania Avenue

On the employment side of things, if you care, I quit my job selling cupcakes to rich people and making coffee for strangers, and instead did this:

That's right.  I've spent the entire summer riding Segways around the National Mall, managing the program for that company whose name you see on the bag (and with whom this blog is absolutely, in no way affiliated).  It was an interesting time for me, a cyclist who has more than once made loud, snarky comments to tourists riding Segways on the 15th Street bike lane.  It irked me to no end that those things were legally allowed to be in my way, so maybe this was just karma at its finest--I learned a lot in the way of patience.  As my friend Marc quipped, "Segways are the bikes of the bike world."    

Let's just say it was fun while it lasted, but there are bike people and there are Segway people, and I definitely fall into the former category.  They're about half as fun as riding a bike, but I really, really enjoy being on a bike, so Segways are not all bad.  

Moving on to the "bites" side of things, I've only made two pies that have been documented since I last blogged.  The first, a vegan strawberry pie, is not worth mentioning.  The second, however, was a cherry-berry pie that was delicious, if I do say so myself.

Cherries! ...but how to pit them without a pitter?

Smash 'em with the side of a knife!  The results were a little...morbid-looking.

A few cups of raspberries and cherries

A lot of sugar

...plus some lemon juice and 3 tbsp instant tapioca.  Let sit for 15 minutes.

Mixing butter, flour, baking powder, an egg, vinegar, and cold water

Forming into a ball....

....and measuring...

....and dumping some berries in....

....and HOLY SHIT, THAT'S ALMOST A PROPERLY FLUTED CRUST!!!

...with an awkward snowflake design on top.

And, most recently, Kate and Kate and I decided to go on the reverse of the trip we took in February, with the sole intent of eating pizza at the Italian Store in Arlington.  The trip, I would like to note, was much easier the second time around....possibly because we took the Custis Trail towards DC, and it was more downhill that way.

Thug life...plus some helmets.

They see me rollin'...

The Weenie Beenie!  My goal is to eat there someday.

AWESOME pizza.  I would have biked a lot longer for it.

So....that's pretty much it?  More exciting things to come, hopefully.  I may or may not have gotten a new job yet AGAIN, and in about a month I will start installing bike racks and answering pretty much all bike parking-related questions for a particular non-profit bicycling advocacy organization whose name rhymes with "Jabba" (as in, the Hutt)....*cough cough*....I'm unbelievably excited. 

Dooring

I knew this was going to happen eventually.  Super biker guy (in work clothing) on his Orbea with a fi'zi'k (or whatever) saddle and clip-in shoes passed me going down Massachusetts this morning.  Just outside of Dupont, he was speeding along next to the stopped cars, when a cab door opened in his path.  He saw it in enough time to start to break, but he still hit the door and went down pretty hard on the sidewalk.

Ouch.  Because I was just a few feet behind him, I stopped to make sure he was OK.  Although he seemed totally fine, I offered to call an ambulance because I guess that's what you're supposed to do in these situations...he said, "Nah, it wasn't that serious," while he put his chain back on. Meanwhile, the gorgeous blond who got out of the cab clearly felt horrible and was apologizing her face off.  There wasn't much I could do besides awkwardly stand there, and I figured it was between them, so I left.

And that is my very anti-climactic commuting tale for the day.  This guy must have had balls of iron, because he didn't seem shaken up at all.  Then again, I guess dooring hurts a lot less when the person who does it to you is tall, beautiful, nice, and extremely apologetic.

I have been doored twice.  Once, it was in roughly the same spot as this guy.  The French girl who had opened the door felt awful, someone in a Georgetown hat stopped and called an ambulance, and someone else rushed out of a nearby embassy and offered me Tang, then invited me inside (to this day, I am annoyed at the person who suggested that I not move).  I thought I was OK, but they stuck me in the ambulance anyway because I was being an idiot and not wearing a helmet. The paramedics spent a lot of time arguing with each other over what to do with me, so I'll assume my condition wasn't that dire.  

All I got out of that incident was a tacoed wheel and a citation from the police officer for passing on the right.  After consulting WABA and some local bike laws, I contested the ticket and won.  Small victories.

The second time, I was delivering documents to Copy General and got doored by a van on 12th and Pennsylvania.  I got knocked into the street and an SUV tire narrowly missed my head (fortunately, I was wearing a helmet).  That time, the door-er was a male utility worker.  Of all things I could have been freaked out about, I chose to be upset fact that my favorite pants got ripped, and he offered to buy me new ones at the Macy's across the street (I declined the offer).  To make matters even more humiliating, it was on one of my former company's brand new rental bicycles, and I eventually had to roll it back to the shop in shame.  Then my boss made fun of me and made me cry, but that's a whole different story.

Anyway.  I now have my brakes tightened to within an inch of their lives, and I ride VERY cautiously next to cars, whether they are parked or stopped at a light.  When there's a lane divider next to parked cars, I ride on the left side of it.  It pisses some drivers off, but they go around you eventually.  Because as observant as you'd like people to be sometimes, they often aren't, and accidents just happen.  

Comfort food: Chicken Alfredo

Alfredo sauce is incredibly easy to make--making it really well so that Italians approve might be a different issue, but anyone with a pan and a spoon can create some concoction that tastes alfredo sauce-y.  And it's quick, and when your friend is coming over for dinner and you have most of the ingredients already, it's a good option.

First, I fried up some chicken breast in olive oil with minced garlic, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. I set the chicken aside and deglazed the pan with some white wine, and while ideally, I would have made the sauce in the same pan, it was too small, so I just had to transfer all the pan juices.  This deglazing concept is new to me, and I'm not sure if this is what I was supposed to do, but it all tasted OK, so I guess it worked?

In a bigger pan, I melted about 2 tbsp butter in with the pan juice and added salt, pepper, 3 or 4 minced garlic cloves, half a diced onion and a bunch of sliced mushrooms, then sauteed until the onion was translucent.  Slowly, I added in some flour to create a roux.  I let that cook for a short bit then slowly stirred in about 1 3/4 cups light cream.  As I tasted it, it was 1) too thick, so I thinned it out with some white wine and a little bit of soy milk (shhh...I don't drink real milk, so I didn't have any, and I was desperate).... and 2) not at all garlicky enough, so I  pressed 2 more cloves of garlic right into the sauce towards the end of cooking.  Correct technique?  Almost decidedly not, but it tasted better that way.  I then dumped in a bunch of Parmesan cheese.  The recipe that I was sort-of-kind-of-not-really following called for colby jack cheese, but that seemed like too much, so I skipped it.

Anyway, in the meantime, I boiled some linguine (fettuccine would have been better, but it wasn't on sale....), then tossed it and the chicken chunks with the sauce. 

Lessons learned....substitute some of the cream for (not soy) milk to thin things out, and potentially use less flour.  Add more garlic from the beginning. Fresh herbs would have been AWESOME in this (my guest suggested parsley....I would have added thyme or maybe a sprig of rosemary during cooking), so next time, I'll try that.

Scary drivers and jerk cyclists

So yesterday, I had an event to attend at North Chevy Chase elementary school and the weather was beautiful, so I decided to take the Capital Crescent/Georgetown Branch trails up.  It was a seriously pleasant commute, probably because I left the house around 7 and there weren't a ton of cars on the road.  Even going down the Mass Ave hill wasn't totally terrifying due to lack of traffic.  (I did get on the sidewalk at one point, however, and nearly smacked into a tree that was growing diagonally over the ground).  Lots of super bikers going onto the CCT at that point.  The guy in front of me, in his white and blue spandex, powered up the entrance ramp.  I got off and walked my bike up because I had zero momentum...

The trail was mostly uneventful, until I got to Connecticut Avenue with its 17 lanes of traffic, signs for the Beltway, and no obvious crosswalk in sight. Little did I know, the trail jogs over and continues on the other side (I found it on the way back), but because Google maps led me astray, I turned left up the Connecticut Avenue sidewalk, crossed onto Manor Road, proceeded to get a little lost until a friendly driver noticed me looking confused, then finally found the school on Jones Bridge Road.  Success!

A side note: I did this all without coffee in my system.  Trying to work on the caffeine addiction.

One thing that I appreciate about the office where I intern is that none of my co-workers expressed shock that I was biking.  It annoys me, for some odd reason, when people say things like, "You're planning on BIKING EIGHT MILES?"  Probably because 1) it gets old and 2) it proves that cyclists are still in the minority because apparently, we're hard to come by (it continues to baffle me that I see a bunch of cyclists out on any given commute downtown, yet I never know where they go because I rarely encounter them in everyday life).

Anyway.  On the way back (noontime commutes home are FUN!), I passed a couple of guys who were riding next to each other.  One moved behind the other, so I assume they saw me, but I said, "On your left!"  anyway because that's what you're supposed to do.  The rear guy responded with a snarky, "I was aware."  Thanks, jerk. 

Once in Georgetown, I decided to head to GW to check out the anthropology department (they accepted me!), and in doing so, had to go around the terror that is Washington Circle.  No one really respects anyone's right-of-way there, and a cab driver just looked at me blithely as he started to cut me off.  I stared back with all the loathing I could muster, and clearly he did not care because he cut me off anyway.  As I was turning onto K Street, I stopped at a red light where a pedestrian was about to cross.  He paused and stared at me when he saw me coming, then when I stopped, he said, "Thank you for stopping!"  I responded, "The light's red...?"  And he said, "Oh, but you're the first person on a bicycle I've ever seen who actually stopped there."  So apparently cyclists are jerks at that particular intersection.   Law-abiding pedestrians really shouldn't have to fear getting mowed down by a bike, and it makes me sad when stuff like this happens.   

Because I am extraordinarily directionally challenged, I get confused about who has the right-of-way at un-lit intersections.  When I can't tell if I'm supposed to go or not, I just look purposefully confused and/or lost and/or distracted until it's clearly my turn.  I need to work on that.

Everything fried tastes good: 3 case studies

(In case you can't tell, I don't always take my "cooking" very seriously.  There was more thought that went into the last 2 recipes, but let's be honest, it's fried stuff.)


Case Study 1: World's Quickest Dinner

Ingredients:

A sliced potato
Lots of olive oil
Sliced onions
Garlic
Cheese

Using the oil, fry the shit out of the onions and garlic.  Add potatoes.  Fry the shit out of those.  Scrape onto a plate.  Add cheese.  Microwave if you are too impatient for the cheese to melt.  Maybe add sriracha.  Inhale.

At one point there was more food on this plate.

Case Study #2: Risotto Balls

Ingredients:

Homemade risotto with crushed red pepper and garlic (too complicated to write out in this post, look it up elsewhere)

Bread crumbs

Parmesan cheese

Egg

A bunch of fresh mozzarella cubes

A shit ton of oil

Beat egg.  Mash together risotto with egg, bread crumbs and cheese.  Form into balls.  Stuff cheese in the middle of each.  Roll in bread crumbs.  Fry the hell out of said balls (at 375 degrees, drain them off on a paper towel), then serve with warmed pasta sauce.  Boom.

Risotto mush

Cubes and Balls

Case Study #3: Onion Rings

Ingredients: 

An onion, sliced into big rings

Some combo of flour, baking powder, dark beer, and maybe an egg
More shit tons of oil

Make batter.  Dip onion rings in said batter.  Fry at 375 degrees.  Absorb extra oil on a paper towel.  Dip in many delicious condiments.  Eat.

I don't remember what I used; it doesn't REALLY matter which recipe you pick.  My batter looked like this.

Yum.

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Pie

Sometimes, you just want to take as many creamy and delicious things as possible and combine them into something edible.  When my coworker told me about a super easy salted caramel pie that she had made, my brain was intrigued and I bought all of the ingredients for my own, ridiculous version of it.  They sat in my cupboard/fridge for a couple of months, as working at a bakeshop apparently makes one disinclined to bake for oneself.

But today, I woke up and thought, "I'm going to make that pie, goddammit."  So I did.  It took a long time, and simultaneously, I managed to do three loads of laundry and watch 12 episodes in a row of "Who the (bleep) Did I Marry," which is possibly one of the best reality shows I've seen lately.

So yes, based on the ingredients list, this SHOULD have been the easiest pie in the world.  And it was, in some ways, because it's hard to mix chocolate, caramel, and cream in such a way that it tastes terrible.  But because I started this without caffeine in my system (baking is to caffeine is as driving is to not drinking alcohol...or something like that) and I have no sense of mise en place and am terribly out of practice, this got overly complicated.

For the caramel, you will need:
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
salt (the recipe calls for fleur de sel, which would have been lovely, but I couldn't be bothered to go out and buy salt for $4 an ounce)

For the ganache:
1/2 c. heavy cream
4 oz. good, bittersweet chocolate

For the crust, you will need:
1 1/2 c. chocolate cookie crumb (I used Newman's Own Alphabet Cookies)
4 tbsp. butter
a couple tbsp. sugar (maybe 2)

For the whipped cream:
1/2 tbsp. confectioner's sugar
1/2 c. heavy cream


First, combine your crust ingredients and mash them into a 9" pie pan.  Pop in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  Remove (duh) and set aside.

Crank up the oven to 425 degrees.  Pour the 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk into a pan, and place inside another, bigger pan.  (The recipe called for a 9 x 13 pan inside a roasting pan, but I don't have a roasting pan, so I used  a smaller dish inside a 9 x 13 pan.)  Sprinkle on some salt, place foil over the little pan, and fill the bigger pan with water until it's about 1/3 way up.  Place the whole mess in the oven and leave it to bake for about 2 hours.

Every once in awhile, you want to lift the foil and give it a good stir.  Unfortunately, when I did this, I somehow got water into the pan.  Convinced that I had ruined the entire pie, there was much gnashing of teeth and crying....well, not really, but I freaked out a teensy bit and consulted Kate, the official star of this blog because she likes my cooking and provides emotional support when I do stupid things like get water in caramel.  She suggested pouring off the water, and when I did that, I discovered a  nice layer of golden brown wonderfulness underneath.  I stirred everything together, took off the foil, and let it bake for a little longer, assuming that the water molecules would evaporate.  That seemed to work.

Anyway.  When done, the caramel will be a rich color with some lumps that will straighten out as it cools.

Once things have cooled slightly, scrape everything into your crust.  Spray some plastic wrap (or Ziploc bags cut open, if you don't have plastic wrap....) with cooking spray and let it sit over the caramel.  Place in the fridge for a really long time.  4 hours minimum.



As you are nearing about the 3 hour mark of refrigeration, make your ganache.  Get your chocolate and cream all nice and gooey in a double boil on the stove, then pull out the pie and pour the ganache on.  Place it all back in the fridge.  Plastic wrap isn't really necessary, but I used a pie pan cover to keep out weird fridge flavors.



Once the ganache has cooled, whip your heavy cream into a frenzy and layer it on the pie.  Add chocolate shavings and potentially more salt.  You can re-chill it, but at this point, you probably just want to slice into the freaking thing.  Feel free to do so.

I love whipping cream by hand.  It's just so damn satisfying and beautiful.

I don't mean to brag or anything, but Kate declared this the best thing she has ever eaten.  You will probably need to eat very tiny slices, because this is RICH. 

Next time, I would make the ganache layer a little thinner, as the flavor overwhelmed the caramel a bit.  I would also mash the crumbs in the crust into a finer grain, but as I am lacking a food processor, I used the rolling pin method until I got lazy.  It might also be worth buying the $4 salt, because I couldn't taste the "salted" part of this pie so much.  Most recipes I've seen for this just call for caramel and whipped cream, but Kate hates whipped cream, and I wanted more chocolate in here.  It might be worth trying it that way, however, so the caramel can really shine.  

Enjoy!

***Later note: After discussing this recipe with my parents, my dad mentioned that when he lived in Brazil, they used to set cans of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of boiling water for 2 or 3 hours, then open them once they cooled.  I might try that next time, because dealing with 28 ounces of sticky, boiling sugar in an open pan is a MESS.  

Illegal things

You know, the funny thing about those no U-turn signs on Pennsylvania Avenue is that THEY'RE THERE FOR A REASON.  I saw no less than 4 cars blatantly breaking that law today, and I missed some idiot diplomat town car by about two inches.  He crossed right into my path with nary a second glance, which resulted in me stopping and yelling (G-rated yelling) at him.  He had his windows up and looked thoroughly lost--probably late on his way to pick up some very rich and impatient person.  I'm not drowning in sympathy for him, though, because if my brakes had been ANY looser, that could have hurt.  A lot.

aslfdhsak h.kjsahg.kwawgwa.

UGH.  I'm so mad.  Says Kate on the subject, "I hate non-diplomatic driving by diplomats."  Just because you have immunity doesn't give you the right to be an asshole.

Before that happened, I was all whistle-y and happy--so distracted by the weather, in fact, that I almost fell off my bike while standing still at a red light.  That takes some doing.  I heard at least 2 other cyclists singing to themselves today, including the grumpy guy with the chopper recumbent who likes to switch between the sidewalk and the street a LOT, and I have definitely seen him with an air horn blasting pedestrians out of the way before--even HE was happy.

I am now decidedly less happy after the run in with the diplomidiot.  But still humming to myself, so welcome, springtime! ....not that you haven't been lurking about since January or anything.

Daffodils!

I was going to blog about my ride this morning, but the only exciting parts were as follows:

1) There was a red Honda parked in the bike lane that pissed everyone off.
2) I stopped for a pedestrian in the cycle lane crosswalk and she was huffy because two cyclists had already whizzed in front of her.
3) I picked up an old iced tea jug that was rolling down the street because it occurred to me that if I didn't and someone swerved to miss it and crashed, that it would somehow, cosmically, be my fault.
4) Sharrows recognized me, and it makes my day when other cyclists, especially cool bike bloggers, recognize me and say hey.  It doesn't happen often.
5) Hipster Douche in pink crew socks and a plaid sweatshirt cut in front of me at a red light then proceeded to bike slowly because a CaBi biker was in front of him.
6) The weather.  Was.  Beautiful.  So beautiful, in fact, that I left my internship early and took the long way home through Rock Creek Park. No hipster douchiness ensued, though lots of roadie douchiness did (would it kill you to bike slowly behind a pedestrian for 3 seconds so I can get by????).

--

But that's not what this blog post is about! The Kate-inator (as she shall henceforth be named) and I decided to go for an epic bike ride this past Sunday, when the weather was less beautiful.  After careful consultation of the DDOT bike map, we (by which I mean Kate) decided to bike to Virginia, take the Custis Trail up, cut over to the W&OD, find Four Mile Run, take it to Mount Vernon, then bike back home through the wilds of Georgetown.

Kate on the Key Bridge

Somewhere in Nova.  NoVa?  NoVA? 

The ride, in total, was something like 20 miles, which to me, falls into the category of "semi-epic."  However, had the entire route been anything like the Custis Trail, it would definitely qualify as epic.  Holy HELL, does that trail have hills going into Arlington.  They're short hills, but most of them are between roughly a 75 and 90 degree angle.  Sheesh.  We had to do a lot of standing and sprinting.  By the time we got to the park at the end of the trail, we realized we'd ridden only four miles and were baffled, because it felt more like 15.  

There's a system of really cute parks in that part of Arlington.  We rode by a disc golf course and saw lots of kids out playing on awesome playground equipment.  It makes it pretty easy to get confused, but fortunately, the Kate-inator (that's lame, isn't it?) has a much better sense of direction than I do, and we found our way.

Four Mile Run is NOT four miles.  It's more like nine.  So why they named it that, I will never know.  

Shirlington seems like a fun place to live, but there were parts of it that weren't so awesome.  It might also have been the dismal grey skies....

Something called the Beenie Weenie.  Or Weenie Beenie.  I wanted to eat there, but it was closed.

I have done the Mt. Vernon Trail roughly 27 million times (not to sound like a jaded ass or anything), so there was nothing super notable about it up to the point where it hits the 14th Street Bridge.  Except that, in a moment of weakness and stupidity, I stopped to use the port-a-johns at Gravelly Point.  It's not an experience I ever want to re-live.  I think everyone was anticipating the snowstorm that never happened, because that trail, along with all the others, was pretty empty.  I wasn't complaining.

We rode back up to Key Bridge, past Roosevelt Island.  That was pretty neat, because I've only done that part of the trail once or twice.  It was pretty cold by that part of the ride, though, and both of us were slightly under-dressed and therefore ready to go home.  We took the back streets of Georgetown (of which there are many) and wound our way back.  

There were TONS and TONS of daffodils on the side of the Mount Vernon Trail.  I don't even know how they got there--aren't daffodils bulb flowers?  So don't they require cultivation and wintering and all that fancy stuff?  Didn't someone need to plant them?  I actually noticed a whole bunch on the side of the Rock Creek Trail today, too--has DC always had a giant crop of wild daffodils or has it been this abnormally warm winter?

Daffodils in the distance

Anyway, excited for future springtime rides!  Kate is training for some super athletic event, so it's a good excuse to go on rides with her.  We think it might be fun to head out to Leesburg on the W&OD and see how far we get before we have to start biking back, because I doubt my legs' ability to make it the whole way.  It would be good training for a cross country ride, however....