#VeganVriday

  

Every Friday I attempt to be  Vegan. I have failed mostly because of forgetfulness, but I’ve been consecutively successful for quite some time. It’s not hard to be Vegan for one day a week. I am Vegan on other days by accident and sometimes for fun.

  

My intake of dairy has dropped significantly since last year. I have made a pact to myself to only eat pizza on the first of every month. Do I wish to be Vegan eventually? Not really. Will I? Probably. 

  

I love preparing Vegan food for the challenge and for the fun. I do enjoy food muchly. 

  

I often overthink my dishes. The one that I made yesterday seemed unbelievable in my head, but didn’t turn out that great. It was still very delicious, just not 110% perfect. 

  

I took two drug tests this week for two different companies. Pending results on the second, I passed both! Party on, dude! 

  

I also took a break from my Garmin Edge 1000 all week. Perhaps as an experiment. Perhaps to relax. The conclusion is that I ride the same way mostly without the Garmin, but I do not ride as far. I ride the bare minimum along my commutes. Where with the Garmin with me, I ride extra kms. 

  

I did, however, have to ride with my Strava phone app with 45 km/h tailwind on Friday. Not far from where I party, we had, I think, a few tornados touch and destroy materials and two lives. The one was an EF4. 

  

I saw a tornado at the age of 3-4 in a suburb of Denver, CO, but haven’t seen one since. I’ve tried. Oh, how I’ve tried. 

  

I’ve coined myself as the anti-tornado. And I stand by it. I did witness an “Inland Hurricane” in Carbondale, IL in 2009. 

  

I occasionally try and sell things on Craigslist. It’s all spam nowadays. 

  

Today, I planned to try and reach a goal of 200 km. Also, there is the world premiere streaming of Inspired To Ride tonight and it would’ve been great to fit both into the same day. Inspired To Ride is another Mike Dion / Hunter Weeks film about adventure, pushing limits & self-sustained cycling. 

  

I hate riding with traffic. I still do, just not all the time. I chose to ride the I & M (Illinois & Michigan) Canal, which I’ve done hundreds of times. I was going to ride until just short/south of Joliet and turn around and eventually get picked up when I reached the goal. It sounded great in my head. We had numerous severe storms on Thursday and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Aim high when purposing a goal to yourself. Floods and downed trees consumed the path. Not to mention the detour I took. My parents were in a town visiting family where I actually was picked up. Basically perfect timing. I rode hard and captured decent pictures. 

  

I planned this ride while enjoying vast beers. Two of which were Big Muddy Brewing beers from Murphysboro, IL. Just a few clicks west of Carbondale, IL aka SIUC aka Southern Illinois. Before my untappd days, I enjoyed many of Big Muddy brews and am always ecstatic when finding them 300 miles north. 

  

The Blueberry Blonde was good. I expected too much blueberry, but instead was surprised with a subtle hint of blueberry flavor and more of an explosive smell of blueberry which works out very well.

  

The Saluki Dunkeldog, which I’ve had many of times, is always enjoyable.

  

I have an awesome pic of myself with four Saluki’s. 

  

What the hell do you call a century ride when you ride kms?

I’ve always used “century” with miles. I’ve heard “metric century”… 

  

Today out of my 200 km goal, I only actually rode 36 km. I averaged 24.3 km/h after putting up with a lot of crap. 

  

The washout has been there for years with a crossable man made bridge, but right now it’s basically uncrossable without stepping in water. 

I decided to fight weeds and pedal bites to find the railroad 20 ish M north of the towpath. Instead of a little water, I chose thorns, probable poison ivy, water still and strange noises. Good one, dude. I took my earbuds out of my waxy ears and  used nature to transition my loneliness from my buds. I heard some interesting noises. The railroad tracks that aren’t used very often were making strange noises. The only way I can compare is to the movie Cast Away when Tom Hanks keeps hearing noises and finally concludes it’s falling coconuts. The tracks were popping, almost zapping and creaking as if they were moving. Very weird. Also, I was daydreaming about the whisky that I packed. Jameson. That I wanted to wait to start enjoying when a loud swoosh happened. It almost sounded like a car and train speeding by. It was rather close and hurried and grabbed my phone and snapped a pic. 

  

It was a Bald Eagle either attacking or playing with a Hawk. I couldn’t grab a great picture, but I could clearly see the difference between the Eagles (there were two) and Hawks. It was very cool to witness that sound. It was either from their wings or like hissing or something. Awesomeness! No animals were harmed 🙂 I do respect the food chain. 

I finally found a path that looked dry to get back to the towpath. It wasn’t dry. I stepped in water. I continued on and climbed fallen tree after ridden through flood. Good times. 

I’ve come to think of myself as more of an adventurist grinder type cyclist. I do not have the cycling gear problem some people have of being a damn shoppoholic. I have the necessities and always try to get nice necessities, but soon I’m gonna make a list of different types of cyclists and even an equation of how much money you should spend based on your hours of ride time. 

FOOOOOOOOOOOOD

  

Along with being Vegan, most ingredients are Organic and all is oil-free. The Veggies didn’t turn out exactly like I wanted them too because of my laziness/hunger, but it was good. 

Oil-Free MexVegg:

  

Ingredients:

-Chipotle Rice 

-SeaSalt/Pepper/Cayenne/ Chipotle P/Garlic P

-Veggies, I used steaks from a massive Parsnip, Turnip filet, half an Onion, ⅓ beefsteak Tomato, diced Sweet Potato, Zucchini, Yellow Squash

  

I wanted to obtain nice color to the veggies, but approached it wrongly. Doesn’t this Strava km/h look like a middle finger!

VEGGIES DIPPED IN WAX ARE NOT COOL

  

Chipotle Rice ingredients:

-Dried Chipotle peppers, rehydrated while saving water

-Veggie Broth

-Japonica Rice

-Brown Rice

-Pearled Barley

-Lentils

SeaSalt/Pepper/ Garlic&Chipotle P

-Balsamic Vinegar

-Fresh Parsley, chopped

-Fresh Cilantro, chopped

Hydrate the Dried Chipotles and remove seeds however motivated and dice while keeping the warm/hot water. Add Barley and Japonica Rice, bring to a boil and cover bringing heat to a generous simmer for 20 minutes. Add balsamic and seasonings and then add Lentils and Brown Rice and simmer for 20 more minutes adding Broth whenever needed. NOT TOO MUCH. Add herbs when finished and set to side. Add Vegan “Cheese” if ya wish! 

Roast Veggies and steam Broccolette and season and create a pretty plate. I garnished with sliced garlic, Avocado and more freshly chopped herbs. 

Have a beer pat yourself on the back, but only if you finished reading this entire blog. I’ve been typing for a while. And have lots of pics to upload. Yay