Summertime always calls for some bitchin’ in the kitchen, ’cause this place with its six south-facing windows gets hot. Deciding what to prepare for dinner is something of a struggle — cranking up the oven for enchiladas, oven-fried chicken or baked salmon is only adding fuel to the fire. But being a man of some appetite (as in “great fat bastard”), I generally want something more than a simple salad.
Whenever I’m stumped I turn to Martha Rose Shulman’s “Recipes for Health” feature in The New York Times. She focuses on fairly simple, seasonal dishes — as she puts it, “food that is vibrant and light, full of nutrients but by no means ascetic, fun to cook and a pleasure to eat” — and when I checked in on her yesterday she had posted a recipe for soft tacos with chicken and tomato-corn salsa whose cooking demanded only a single saucepan for poaching the bird and a skillet for warming the tortillas. No sweat, to coin a phrase.
“These light, fresh tacos make a wonderful summer meal,” Shulman wrote, and she did not lie. Happily, we have enough leftovers for a repeat performance tonight.
Meanwhile, Le Tour hits its first real mountain today. Astana is running the bunch as if they had the yellow jersey, while the guy who actually does, Fabian Cancellara, double-flatted on a descent and had to chase back on at speeds approaching 60 mph. Dude went around the corners like he was on rails. I wasn’t scared at all, but somebody shit in my seat.
• Late update: Once again, Big Tex did not get the yellow jersey, and there is much chin music among my colleagues as to just how he feels about Alberto Contador hitting the afterburners on the final klicks of the climb to Arcalis. The two of them probably split a sixer of Shiner Bock in the Astana bus and cackled at the befuddled chamois-sniffers, professional and amateur alike.
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60 mph is plenty fast when the only thing between you and Mr. Pavement is lycra. I hit about 55+ mph on my first descent into Red River after topping Bobcat Pass; that is one screaming steep descent with a tricky right hand curve to it. Far steeper than I had considered. The only reason I didn’t shit my pants was because it took all my efforts to keep the bike on the road and more specifically, not in the oncoming lane.
Jezuz. I’ve done 47 downhill and held myself there, too afraid to let it go. I didn’t think the pickup driving locals in Marquette County would find my remains for some time so I backed it off. That’s PLENTY fast for this dude!
I’ve toned it down. A buddy of mine was descending NM-4 out of the mountains on his motorbike and went overland to avoid a deer. Spent a month in ICU and then months in rehab after that. Makes you think about your mortality.
Well, one things fersure after today. Tex ain’t too slow for an old fart of 37. Was wondering how much of a gap Contador was going to open up on his rivals after he dropped the hammer.
Thanks to the VN crew for the live coverage.
I hit 55ish once on a descent in Alabama of all places… It was a straight road that went straight down. I came to my senses and realized that I was riding a charity ride and my closing speed was in the 20mph range….. Not to mention, having the wind start whistling around the cable housing is an interesting sound.
Ol’ LA seemed a little miffed about Contador attacking especially when he realized how close they were to getting the jersey. The interview on Velonews is humorous….
Cance cancels out all of the bad stuff about bike racing. Too bad Riis seems to care about results and doesn’t simply want to fuck around with everyone’s head, because if i had Cance, Jens, and O’Grady on my team, it would be balls out from the gun just to see who showed up for work ready to go.
Speaking of bike racing and recipes, someone needs to make Brice a sandwich. If you told me I could win a stage in the Tour but first I had to look like Skeletor, I’d say, when does that curling seminar start?
Poached chicken, eh? Seems like a waste of a perfectly good Weber, but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot.
I hit 53 once, going down Hardscrabble Cañon between MacKenzie Junction and Wetmore. I was on a mountain bike, of all things, ripping it along a long straightaway that segued into a blind, off-camber, left-hand corner with a bunch of hard, lumpy rock on the inside and a sheer drop-off on the outside.
“Hm, this isn’t too smart,” I thought, and grabbed a double handful of brake levers. Never been that fast again; a combination of too much fear and too much imagination. I can always see in my mind’s eye the front puncture that sends me to Valhalla, where Fabio Casartelli sits shaking what remains of his head and calling me a dumb shit in Italian.
Not an all-time speed record, but I used to regularly hit 40 mph on my knobby tired mtn bike cruising from the barracks to the office at Camp Howze, Korea. (We called this place the Doesn’t Matterhorn — just one big ass hill to nowhere.) We had an alert one morning, so I threw my 75 pound duffel on the rack and pointed her downhill. A bungee snapped, whipped around the rear brakes and into the spokes, locking me up and creating a fishtail that would have made Captain Ahab piss his pants. Oh yeah, this was at three in the morning in total darkness. Somehow I stayed upright, and my ‘puter told me I had been doing about 47 when the bungee snapped. The troops watching me down at the bottom of the hill got a good laugh out of the deal, and once the alert was over, they tried to match skid marks but couldn’t get a set half as long.
Once hit 59.9 coming down Lee Hill north of Boulder with a tailwind. I think I’m entitled to round that up to 60. It’s nice to have one aspect of cycling where I get faster with age. I fear deer but I’m very weary of bear.
On a cross country touring trip, descending a pass somewhere between C-Springs and Hartsel, I had a pannier rack break at the brake bridge mount point at speed. The panniers pivoted around the dropout mount bolts and were dragging in the road. Not really dangerous but scary. I didn’t manage to repair the rack until I reached Rawlins, WY.
Then there’s the time I took a brand new bike out for a first test ride. I liked it so much, I decided to ride it up flagstaff mountain. On the descent, I passed a car and then braked for the first switchback. It turned out that neither of my brake cables were properly anchored. I rode straight off the turn, fortunately there was a dirt pull-off area on the side of the road. I put the bike sideways, put a foot down and managed to skid to a stop before plummeting off the cliff. I’m standing there in a cloud of dust as the car I just passed drives by, trying to act like I meant to do that.