This weekend, after a grueling, 8-hour, holiday-weekend drive to Spokane, I participated on a 5 person team for the 24 hour mountain bike race. This has been one of the few biking goals for myself for quite a while. My first lap went well, but then I had the dusk to dark lap around 9-10, and everything basically went to hell. I crashed on one of the really technical sections, bruised my palm something awful and almost broke my headlamp but ended up just bending it into a really awkward position that basically just lit the region right below my bike. I had quite a few literal and mental dark moments in the wood and thankfully finished the lap in almost 20 minutes more than I had done the first one. I came back to the camp and proceeded to burst into tears about the dark and then see the medic about my hand, who scared me that I maybe broke my hand. My team skipped my next turn, but then I managed another lap in the light around 8am. This lap was fun, and it felt so luxurious to actually see what was in front of me. We ended up 4th out of 4, but we were a team composed of 3 people who had never mountain biked in the dark (myself obviously included) and 2 who had never mountain bike raced before. (Also, my hand is not broken. The triage nurse at Hall Health didn't even think I needed an x-ray since it had gotten so much better by Tuesday. However, it is bruised, as our my thighs and knees, which make me look part leopard.)
If I can actually get some more experience in the dark, with my lights properly oriented, I'd love to do it again. It was really a fun atmosphere, so very very different than road racing, which I am completely not missing right now, though I am doing the crits coming up this weekend.
On another, completely materialistic note, we went out this past Memorial Day and bought ourselves a giant-ass tv. Okay, it's not that big but it sure feels ginormous. This replaces the RCA tv with built-in vcr that I inherited from my grandmother when I went to college (a little under 10 years ago). She had had the tv for years before and only got rid of it because she got a bigger, newer one. Yeah. But it worked great, vcr and everything. But now we've finally entered the 21st century, so we can now watch broadcast tv in all its HD glory and have a much crappier picture with the cable, since our box is not an HD cable box.
Also, if anyone wants it, I have finally written down my recipe for peanut sauce. This is amazing on stir fries, especially if you have fried tofu (the only way I make stir fries now):
1-2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 jar (maybe 3/4 to 1 cup) crunchy, salted peanut butter (I used the TJ's organic, hippie, oil-separating PB and not other stuff. Jiff and the like are too sweet, I've found.)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar or seasoned rice vinegar
2.5 tablespoons molasses or to taste (or brown sugar with more liquid added)
1/2 cup warm water or enough for preferred consistency(can use steeped black tea for a bit more flavor)
Chili flakes to taste (optional)
Grated ginger to taste (optional)
Mix the peanut butter and some of the warm water to dilute. Mix everything else into the peanut butter to taste. Add more water if necessary. Serve over stir fry or anything else that needs peanut butter goodness. The recipe is pretty open to interpretation. I've been making this for years, and today marks the first day that I ever wrote anything down. Sometimes I add ginger, sometimes I make it with tea, sometimes I totally mess it up and can't figure out what went wrong.
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