From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XX

Introduction

This is the twentieth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, and Volume XIX is here. Today’s post holds the distinction of being only the second instance of two palindromic volume numbers in a row (the first instance being II and III). The brain reels. (No it doesn’t. At least mine doesn’t. Maybe yours does?) The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in order, out of order, in pecking order, in good order, in court order, or in compliance with a restraining order.

What are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re the little bits of fascinating literary background that my biographer would be thrilled to discover, were I important enough and/or interesting enough to warrant a biography. They’re the types of things magazines like Us or People Weekly would report on, with regard to celebrities, if they used actual text instead of just photos, and if I were good looking. Most of these are snippets from personal correspondence. Others were written indelibly on my wrist or my psyche with a sharpie.

Pay attention to the dates. Some of these dispatches are hella old. Others are just hecka old.

January 10, 2005

[Background: I had sent around my tire chain saga, and my dad responded at length. What follows is from an email I wrote to a family friend with whom I’d shared some of my dad’s response.] 

I have indeed come to expect pure oddness from my dad. I wasn’t surprised at his overly complicated chain installation methodology [involving jacking up the car on the side of the road and taking the wheels off], since he seems to seek the hardest route between any two points (metaphorically speaking). This has only gotten worse since he’s been retired. The part of his email that was the strangest to me was the following sentence:

When you are in a nasty cold wet situation and have to install chains, breathe deeply and consider how much better it would have been to have studied Vipassana or other Buddhism, concentrating on equanimity.

This is so confusing. It would have been better than what to have studied Vipassana or other Buddhism? Better to have studied Vipassana then to have driven a car in a snowy place? Better than whatever my dad supposes I have done with my life, such as squandering it in earthly pursuit of pleasure centers, instead of something mindful and Eastern which might have done me some good? Better to have studied Vipassana than to have gotten all pissed off about my tire chains breaking and wrapping around the axle? What is he saying: that I’m a hothead? Well, duh! All the Vipassana or Buddhist study in the world wouldn’t help a lost cause like me. I’d be on the side of the road muttering things like “Suck it, Buddha!”

February 1, 2005

I’m reading a book right now by a former college professor of mine, the writer Maxine Hong Kingston, and was amused to come across a term, “spike” (and elsewhere, “spindle”) that she uses to indicate the thing that a waiter sticks paper orders on. It’s amusing because I remember Maxine asking us students what that thing is called, all the way back in 1992. On the one hand, I have to wonder: did she really work on this book for like twelve years? But then I consider: will I have anything to show for the next twelve years of my work?

November 4, 2009

Man, I can’t believe your little town has its own fight club! West Coast Fight Club, huh? Man. I have to admit, I love a good fistfight. The problem is, the aftermath is just too much hassle. If you don’t beat your opponent literally to death, and then kill all the eyewitnesses, or else create a shroud of fear over them all so that nobody will talk, not even to save his family, well then you have to deal with the authorities, and though it would take a whole SWAT team to bring me down, they would certainly assemble one, and then my kids would have to visit me in prison, and despite my kids’ lifelong fascination with incarceration, I think they’d eventually get bored of it and then E— would have to bribe them with sweets to behave and not fidget during visitation. Shoot, I wish we had a fight club here, instead of just a bunch of cannabis clubs, and of course my book club. Man, where’s a guy have to go to work out his fighting impulses? Maybe next time I bring the family up to visit you (which alas won’t be during Thanksgiving this year), you and I will have to head over to the WCFC. Would you want to fight me? Dude, I’ll do it. I’ll totally do it. Are brothers allowed to fight? Encouraged, even? Dang it, I’m getting all worked up! I have to go punch something! Or maybe I’ll just get a drink of water! Okay then!

November 11, 2009

That was really fun last night. I’m surprised to hear of [your wife] G—’s concern [about keeping us up too late] because I didn’t hear [my wife] E— say anything about [herself] being tired. She thought it was G— who needed to get to bed early the next day. Probably we all would have enjoyed staying out later but for this apparent misunderstanding between the wives. Who knows. Guys are sure simpler creatures. We’re like the needle on a speedometer: simple, reliable, easy to read. Women are like some much finer, more sensitive needle, that upon receiving the smallest chance vibration goes shivering back and forth so fast you have to ignore it until it calms down and you can get a believable reading again.

December 9, 2009

What do you mean, which bike should you ride?? Look, Mount San Bruno isn’t a tour, it isn’t a “fun ride,” and it isn’t a granfondo. It’s a race—so you should ride whichever of your bikes is lightest, stiffest, etc. I will probably ride my Orbea, even though it’s probably broken. I did this race on the Salsa last year and was slower than crap. (I know, it wasn’t the bike’s fault … just sayin’.) Now, I know I implied before that this was really short and easy and just for fun … but that was when I was trying to talk you into doing it at all. Now that you’re committed, I need to be clear: it’s a brutal race. It starts like a gunshot and ends like a crippling disease. But the NoDoz is on me! I’ll bring plenty to share and there is no legal limit!

December 31, 2009

I will keep an eye out for you at the [Mount San Bruno] race [tomorrow] unless it’s raining in which case I’ll assume you made good on your threat to bail on it. As for recognizing my new (to you) car, it is another Volvo wagon, of a very light green/gray color. The color of a weak green curry, I suppose. The styling is très moderne, as if my old 240 wagon melted in the sun. Photo attached.

I have refrained from cleaning my bike, so as not to bait the weather gods. So far, weather.com says 50% chance of rain, and NOAA says 60%. If they both said 100% we’d be home free, because the forecasts are always wrong. As it stands I’d say there’s a 40-50% chance of rain. Anyhow, my kids love to run around under umbrellas and stomp in puddles in their monstrously expensive calf-scrotum boots so I’m going regardless (or, as some idiots say, irregardless).

[Postscript: it did not rain and my pal did show up at the race. You can read all about it here.]

January 1, 2010

For the [team] website: I placed 7th at Mt. San Bruno in the Masters 35+. (I like the trend here: 9th in first stage of the Everest Challenge, 8th in the second stage, and now 7th in this race. Maybe next time I’ll get 6th! Or maybe I should quit now before I spoil anything… ;-)

Four years ago today, famished after this race, I took the family to Denny’s on the way home. This year we figured something a bit more upscale would make a more fitting start to the year. Thus, E— made reservations at Skates on the Bay in the Berkeley marina. As I’d hoped, getting there right at opening time meant sitting next to the giant windows overlooking the bay. A— begged me to let her have a window seat, and amazingly L—, whom we seated at the head of the table, didn’t notice the inequity of this.

Quick aside on our restaurant choice: I’ve been going to Skates, albeit only occasionally, for almost twenty years. Being rather pricey, it has always struck me as a place for grown-up, well-off Cal [Berkeley] alumni to take their student offspring after football games. It’s not quite as good as when I was in college (or was I just an uncultured rube then?). They did a remodel about ten years ago that was a big step down aesthetically. For one thing, the art in the entrance area is lame. Someone needs to tell the management that a football stadium is not an appropriate image for an oil painting, unless it’s abstract or satirical (I’d like to see what Hieronymus Bosch would do with football). And the painting of the Golden Gate Bridge is just awful. The “artist” totally botched the ratio between the span of the bridge and the height of the towers, so it looks amateurish, even cartoonish. Heaven will take note. But the food is still good.

After much deliberation, I ordered the bacon cheeseburger because a) the waitress said it was larger than the king crab Benedict and size does matter; b) the beef was grass-fed and local; and c) hey, bacon cheeseburger! I have to tell you, it was glorious. A half-pound patty, onions, lettuce, tomato, cheddar, lots of perfect, thick, crispy-but-not-hard-and-powdery bacon, and of course grease. My heart, and my blood cholesterol, soared like a hawk.

[The friend who did the race with me] had the king crab Benedict, but I didn’t even really get a look at it, so absorbed was I in my burger. I did get a glimpse of his Bloody Mary because it was about a foot tall. E— had the grilled trout, which I also didn’t take much time investigating, though when I saw something had been scooted to the edge of her plate, silvery like balled-up foil, I assumed it was something unhealthy and snaked it for myself. It was the fish skin: crispy and oily but without scales. In other words, delicious!

Skates has a good kids’ menu. L— had the macaroni and cheese, A— the fettuccine Alfredo. Both came with sides; we ordered one with asparagus, the other with mashed potatoes. Why do restaurants do this double-starch business? My kids had already had focaccia (very tasty and buttery), and then they get pasta and it comes with potatoes. I should have asked for a side of rice and some oyster crackers. Anyway, a few minutes into her meal L— said, “I have to whisper something in your ear.” She whispered that I make better mac ‘n’ cheese than Skates does. Then she whispered it to E—. I’m so glad she didn’t bark it out loud, since we’d already tried our waitress’s patience by knocking over L—’s chair (my fault) and many times almost tipping over her water glass.

Frankly, it’s true about the mac ‘n’ cheese—it was tossed with cream and spattered with cheese instead of having a proper cheese sauce made from a roux. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the sizeable portion I inherited. Then, to further make my day, A— lifted some fettuccine onto my plate and said, “Parental tariff.” That I don’t even have to ask makes me think I’m actually raising these kids right. The fettuccine was overcooked, as though the cook assumes children don’t have teeth, but it was creamy and highly edible. The mashed potatoes were rich and famous.

To sum up, racing Mount San Bruno is a great start to the year if you play your cards right, and even if you don’t. In another couple of years I may make another assault on its lofty summit.

[Postscript: I didn’t get back to racing Mt. San Bruno until 2014; full report is here.]

January 6, 2010

I’ve asked around and nobody has ever seen a cashew in a shell. One person said something about them being tubers, not nuts. I won’t look it up on wikipedia because that’s cheating. Anyway, on top of that mystery, I find cashews preternaturally tasty, just like Cool Ranch Doritos which are definitely made in the lab and taste like nothing that can be found in nature. So why doesn’t Big Cashew come clean? They should just own it: “Cashews, from ConAgra ... better living through science!”

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From the Archives - Our Fiesta

Introduction

When my wife and I bought our house, in Albany, California, we probably thought it was a starter home. Well, over 24 years later, we’re still here. Thus, what we assumed could well be the first of several housewarming parties became possibly, probably our only one. Fortunately, the party was glorious, mainly because we procured the food from our favorite (and alas, now long gone) Mexican restaurant, Mario’s La Fiesta . What follows is an account of that party—or, more precisely, the food, because that’s almost all I wrote about. Please enjoy this mouth-watering account from my archives. (At least, it made my mouth water.)

[Here’s the picture we included on our invitations, which we actually printed and mailed out. No, that’s not really our house.]

Our Fiesta – April 1, 2001

[My wife] E— came up with perhaps one of the greatest ideas ever conceived by the human mind: to get the food for our housewarming party from Mario’s La Fiesta. There were gobs of details to worry about for the party (cleaning the house, having enough toilet paper, providing a wide variety of healthy-style soft drinks for the non-drinkers and four pregnant women at the party, battling the logistics of having more than a hundred beers cold at once), so it was great not to have to worry about assembling decorative trays of whores-douvres. As it was, cleaning the place took several evenings, because we didn’t want to spend all Saturday cleaning and then be too tired to entertain our guests. The yard out front had been completely infested with weeds, and completely covered in fallen leaves (the camphor trees seem to do all their shedding at this time of year), and E—happened by a small crew of gardeners working in the neighborhood, and asked them to come out and give a bid, and they did a bang-up job for $100. By six we were almost completely ready. I realized I am an amateur party-giver when I loaded about 100 pounds of ice into a giant tub, before putting in the drinks, then had a devil of a time plunging the drinks through the ice. A bottled fizzy juice thing forced in head-first must have ruptured slightly, because there was a hissing sound somewhere in the tub. But we were essentially ready.

Our first official guest, a middle-aged lady from E—’s work, arrived at 6:10, some 20 minutes early. Then, nobody arrived for a very long time, and I was starting to worry that nobody would show, when everybody seemed to show up at once. Things were so busy that I actually forgot about the food, believe it or not, until I suddenly realized I was starving. “Man, what do they give you to eat around here?” I incongruously thought, before suddenly realizing I’d completely forgotten about my 7:15 food pickup at Mario’s. Panicking, I looked at my watch: it was already 7:15, on the nose. I looked around at a large crowd of guests who didn’t have a single thing to eat: not a cracker, not a celery stick, and certainly not one of those hackneyed spinach/artichoke dips inside a hauled-out bread bowl that seem to curse every party I’ve been to since college. No, my guests—spared though they were from the insipid brie wheels and 7-layer dips and inedible highfalutin pâté-style nonsense—were starving.

I quickly found an able assistant, my former colleague P— who immediately spoke up because he has a brand-new truck, one of those massive one-and-a-half-ton pickups with crew cab. We rushed to the restaurant, making a horribly time-consuming side trip to the ATM to cash up as La Fiesta doesn’t take credit or checks. Inside the restaurant, there was general confusion because a) nobody could understand that I’d placed the order days in advance, since they assumed I was there for a standard take-out, and 2) I was in the wrong place—I needed the banquet facility around the corner.

So I was like half an hour late, and lo and behold there was a La Fiesta employee waiting out front. Kind of an older looking guy, robust but not fat, and I had the distinct impression I was in the presence of somebody important. Sure enough, it was Mario himself! Not even the son of the original Mario, but the very founder, 42 years ago, of La Fiesta! I even shook his hand! He had the solid, nonchalant confidence and cheerfulness of somebody who knows his customer will be completely satisfied.

Mario saw how far away the truck was parked, and said to bring it right up front and double-park. Then we went into the banquet facility and I saw my food there, on the counter, in two huge, four-inch-deep aluminum casserole trays, next to three deep tubs of salsa (one a smoked tomato thing, one a classic salsa roja, and the other green tomatillo). My heart soared like a hawk to see so much La Fiesta food in one place at one time. At this point Mario beckoned to P— to come forward and help haul: “We’ve got a lot of food here!” Imagine my amazement when another member of the La Fiesta family approached, wheeling a large dolly with a stack at least four feet high of more giant trays of food. It was probably more food than I’ve ever seen in one place. (I’m not counting Sizzler as food.) I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

Mario’s wife Rosalinda settled up the bill. I’d ordered 30 flour tortillas, which weren’t on the menu but which Mario supposed he could provide, though he had no idea when I ordered how much they would cost. Well, they ended up charging me four dollars and change, roughly a quarter what I would have paid at Safeway. And somehow, though I’d meticulously calculated the total and the tax, the bill came out about $25 lower than expected. All in all it was an extremely reasonable sum: within fifty bucks or so of the most expensive dinner for two I’ve had with E—, and we were feeding forty-plus people.

The food absolutely filled the bed of P—’s truck, and this is one of those massive pickups that it so large, in fact, that it doesn’t deserve to exist except as a legit work truck, with the type of oversized bed that could carry the space shuttle, the lunar lander, and any modern sedan all at one time. There wasn’t even room in the bed for the salsa and the bag of chips (which was the size of a small cow), which I carried up front on my lap. I was so excited at this point I thought I was going to cry. We were just about to pull away when I remember the Agua Fresca. Agua Fresca is a lot like punch, except that it’s made from fruit instead of corn syrup and food coloring. Thus, the flavors are things like pineapple and strawberry instead of “blue” and “red.” It’s delicious stuff, and I’d ordered four gallons. So I went back, and found to my horror that I couldn’t get back in. The banquet facility is right next to People’s Park, which is so full of desperate homeless people I couldn’t blame La Fiesta for having a big locking gate out front. It was some time before I discovered the doorbell. Mario came back out, and I said, “The Agua Fresca!” He threw his hands up in the air. “Ah, the Agua Fresca!” he shouted. He turned back and went inside, yelling, “The Agua Fresca!” Everybody in the place starting running around yelling “The Agua Fresca! the Agua Fresca!” and looking for it as though it were a small animal that could run under a table and hide. Suddenly Mario found it, seeming to pull it out of thin air, though it was a massive lidded plastic pail, at least three feet tall. He loaded it up on the dolly and we rolled it out to the car. It took all my adrenaline-boosted strength to hoist it up into the crew cab. I could hear the ice cubes clattering around and I all but drooled down the front of my shirt.

[Here’s a photo of another giant order from La Fiesta, from another party years later. You get the idea.]

We drove as fast back to my house (my house!) as is prudent in a truck filled with such a precious and precarious cargo, and when we pulled up I ran into the house and yelled for assistance. At least half a dozen guests, half-crazed with hunger I imagine, streamed out the door and helped unload. It was like an army of ants carrying massive crumbs to their queen. I distinctly heard a colleague of mine ask another, “Have you ever seen Dana this happy?” It didn’t even all fit on our dining room table. The dining room was instantly thronged with people. And the food was a hit! I was in there for at least half an hour before I got anything to eat, and the burden of socializing with guests was starting to be a severe obstacle. I almost wanted to dismiss the whole party so as to get at those enchiladas verdes and chiles rellenos, the magical refried beans and the rice, the guacamole (a huge tray), and the three, count-em three, kinds of salsa.

The husband of one of E—’s friends approached me, plate-less, looking quite grave: “I will know if this is worth eating,” he said in a low voice, “after just one taste of the guacamole. If it isn’t good, nothing will be.” I practically forced a chip into his hand. (Later in the evening, his gut bloated with gas and cramp, he apologized for having doubted my choice, explaining that he’d been subjected to a dreadful hotel-catered “Mexican” buffet the previous week, the awfulness of which was heralded by milky-sour-cream-based, uniformly weak and thin ersatz guacamole. 

Eventually I made my way to the table and had, over three or four trips, what in aggregate could be called the Super Mario platter—at least three each of rellenos and enchiladas, with rice and beans and tortillas accompanying each round. I ate more La Fiesta that night than I ever have in a single sitting. It may have been because I was standing up, thus giving more room in my gut. Plus, it’s very hard to cut a chile relleno with one hand (the other hand was holding the plate), so I ate at least one of them in a single bite.

Ten years ago, had we the inclination and the means to throw such a party, I imagine it would have ended at three or four AM or whenever we ran out of booze. Instead, the last guests left at 2:40 AM, which was actually 1:40 AM except we lost an hour at 2:00 AM (when daylight savings began). Many of the guests had assumed it was BYOB, and we ended up with more than half, perhaps even two thirds, of the beer un-drunk. We never even opened the tequila, and barely tapped the vodka. The bowl of spiked Agua Fresca was only half gone at the end, though the total of un-spiked Agua Fresca left over was only about 2-1/2 quarts. When I think about it, I realize it was more popular than the booze! Part of that was the pregnant women at the party, but then again all of their husbands should have been drinking for three. I guess my generation is slowing down. As for me, I spent a lot of time in bed on Sunday, not because I drank a lot (I didn’t) but because I had eaten so much. Kind of a lard hangover.

The leftovers? A vast amount. I think when you order large takeout from Mario’s, they pay little attention the quantity you actually ordered and just give you gobs of food. Maybe they round up to the nearest hundred items (I’d ordered four dozen of each). I can’t wait for my next excuse to throw a party.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume I

Introduction

I’d say albertnet isn’t really a blog, per se, in the sense of a “web log” (i.e., diary or journal). I try to write essays, reports, or humor pieces that have a point other than simply documenting my life. (After all, who cares about my particular experience?) All this being said, I’m emboldened of late by recent published volumes of David Sedaris’ diaries, which people seem to like well enough, and by an account in The New Yorker of the upcoming publication of (part of) the journal of Claude Fredericks, a classics professor in the ‘50s whose output exceeded sixty-five thousand pages. Fredericks extols the virtue of on-the-ground immediate reporting of one’s experience; as the article explains, “A journal is a ‘living thing,’ he says; a novel is a ‘taxidermist’s replica.’”

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I’m publishing here choice snippets from old letters to my brothers, which I think can give the reader a flavor of the era during which I wrote them. These bits and bobs should be better than diary excerpts because at least I wrote them with an audience in mind, so I had incentive to make them good. This post comprises a handful, in chronological order; others will follow in these pages periodically. I’ve provided, for each snippet, the locale I was writing from.

January 26, 1989 – Isla Vista

My roommate S— came home today telling me that Joe, the owner (and sole employee) of MicroPro, where I bought my computer, was busted on a felony computer piracy charge. Joe was S—’s roommate here last year. S—was bummed about the news, of course, but also seemed a bit titillated. I myself was kind of worried, not so much for Joe, but for myself if anything goes wrong with the computer I just bought. S— tried all evening to call Joe, giving me the impression they were best buds or something. “He must be in jail!” S— ultimately concluded. But finally the phone rang and I picked up. Sure enough, it was Joe. I asked, “So, how’s everything going?” He said, “Oh, okay I guess.” I asked, “Are you calling for S—?” He said, “No, I actually called for you. This girl left a message for you on my machine. Her name’s Lisa. Let me give you her number.”

Now, as you can well imagine, I was pretty confused. A presumed felon, who we’d thought might be in jail, had instead called me to relay a message from some random girl. I took down the phone number and was about to ring off when Joe said, “By the way, I think I fixed your WordStar 4.0 program. It should work now. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.” By this time, Scott was practically ripping the phone away from me, bewildered and perhaps hurt that the big shot criminal hadn’t asked for him. I told Joe, “S— wants to talk to you. Should I put him on?” Joe replied, “Uh, well, I guess so.” (I reckon he gets as sick of S— as I do.) They talked for about thirty seconds, S— offering to give the judge a character reference.

You’re probably wondering about the girl by now. Gosh, this sounds like a spy thriller, doesn’t it? The elusive computer hacker, the nosy roommate, the mystery girl, and the microfilm (okay, MicroPro). Turns out when Joe moved out of this apartment last summer, he took the phone number with him—but somehow it’s listed as my number in the student directory. (I didn’t even know I was listed!) The girl, Lisa, is in my French class. I guess I’m flattered she reached out to me, because it’s not like I’m her boyfriend or anything (though I’ve been trying to insinuate myself into the role). She called because her cat got run over on Wednesday, so she was too distraught to come to class, and she needed the homework assignment for tomorrow. She’s had a run of bad luck lately: over the weekend, she fell asleep driving and crashed her car into a ditch, sustaining a minor concussion. I guess these are the perils of college life.

October 6, 1989 – Isla Vista

You know how you always wish you could get one of your bike crashes on videotape? Well, I did. I was cruising around on my mountain bike and reached this big concrete boat ramp that goes down to the beach. (I assume the ramp reaches the water at high tide.) There was a guy standing at the top filming with a little VHS camera, and I asked if it was cool for me to ride down. He said yeah, so I went down at top speed and then locked up the rear wheel and did all these sweet fishtails (showing off for the camera, I confess). What I didn’t realize was that there was like a foot drop-off at the end. But I figured no big deal, I still had plenty of speed, so I jumped off it and made a perfect landing, rear wheel first. Thing was, once the front wheel landed it bogged down in the sand and I was flipped right over the bars. I landed in tons of sand, and tucked and rolled, so it didn’t hurt at all. Like twenty people were out there sunbathing and they all cheered as I leapt to my feet and put my hands up in a victory salute. I wonder how many times the guy with the camera will watch that footage, laughing his ass off.

August 17, 1990 - Oakland

It’s kind of a trip living in Oakland. I mean, this place is huge. I’ve never lived in a big city before, but so far I like it. That said, sometimes the complexity of it all can be intimidating. Here’s an example. A couple of friends and I went to this Thai restaurant, and ordered this big fancy soup. It’s served in a ring shaped bowl, which has this chimney deal that comes up through the middle of the ring. A flame at the bottom of the chimney is supposed to keep the soup hot. Our waitress struggled to light it. Not that the chimney was the problem; she just had no idea now to strike a paper match. She was trying to squeeze the head of the match between the striking surface and the folded over book, and I half expected her to catch the whole book on fire, or inadvertently fling a burning match at me. She finally got the match lit, dropped it in the chimney of the bowl, looked at it with an air of uncertainty, and walked off. Remembering a waiter who failed to successfully light my flaming baked Alaska a few years back, I was pretty sure it hadn’t lit. I looked down the chimney of the bowl to see. Never, never do this. To my horror, it ignited very suddenly and the ensuing fireball completely engulfed my face for a split second before I pulled my head away. The bright blue flame extended a good six inches past the top of the chimney!

I could smell burning hair. Fortunately there were mirrors on the wall and I ran over to survey the damage. Sure enough, my eyebrows had been singed. It really doesn’t look very good. At least I don’t have the shoulder-length hair I was sporting last summer. If I did, I’m sure it would have caught fire and I would have burned to death, right there in the restaurant. I can envision my last dying moments: my life flashes before my eyes as the hapless waitress fumbles stupidly with the fire extinguisher, eventually giving it up and returning, with a shrug, to the kitchen.

I wasn’t very pleased with the whole situation, so I dipped the tablecloth in the flame and very quickly the entire table was on fire. We were out the door and running down the sidewalk when the massive explosion hurled us to the concrete. (Okay, I’ve exaggerated quite a bit about my response, but the part about my eyebrows is 100% true.) I’m going to have to be more careful until I’m accustomed to the sophisticated cuisine of the big city.

November 19, 1991 - Berkeley

So help me God, I’m going to make this the best letter I’ve ever written. This is my goal. It has been stated. Were it possible, I would get you a few sandwiches to munch on while you’re reading. Anything to make this a special time for you. I would do that for you. I would.

Jesus, Geoff. Just think of all the letters I’ve written, always just writing along, knowing that I’m not being graded, you won’t send it back with all the errors circled, little arrows to show where I left out something I should have put in, no general comments like “Little or no relevant material. See me.” No, it’s a simple job, I just write for a change, nothing to get stressed out about. But who says that’s good enough? Things are gonna change. You’re my brother, after all, and you deserve at least as much hard work as a stupid TA who’s paid to write tetchy little comments like “watch your pronouns” in my margins. (Why should I watch my pronouns? Are they misbehaving? Do I need to take them outside?)

Ah, but I also have selfish reasons for wanting to write well. I want to be a great writer someday. No matter what I write, it is nothing more than a stepping stone towards this goal. Writing this letter, or indeed anything, is just a chance to polish my style into the one which will propel me to fame, fortune, and maybe a gig on “Hollywood Squares” or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” So I must confess that through all my correspondence I have only been using you. And that’s not right. This is your letter, not an exhibition of the literary machine I am trying to build: a machine that so far requires eighty tons of coal, a tanker truck of natural gas, twelve gallons of premium unleaded and eight D-cells just to produce passels of pointless pages of trite, trifling text. It’s a machine you would expect the military to build. Tons of money, marginal promise, dubious worth to future generations. All unacceptable. So I’m going to double down and improve my letters. They will henceforth be of the highest quality I can muster.

Maybe a running account of my latest exploits isn’t the right approach. Perhaps I need to look back over my past, determine the most salient events, and recount them as vividly as possible, while framing them in the context of why they were so formative. I’ll try that out. Here goes:

That summer ended childhood. I hoped there would be work in San Luis Obispo, my new home [during my gap year before college]. Every day is the same: I collect the paper and move swiftly through it, starting with the comics. Charlie Brown is about to get laid for the first time. Nancy finally put a good one over on Sluggo and they say he’ll never walk right again. Garfield has slumped over on the fence, killed by a clock thrown at him. Now, on to the Classified Ads: unspecified work for Ernie Ball under the title “day laborer.” A data entry job in Grover City, a fifteen mile commute for $5 an hour. Dishwasher at Sizzler. Well, so much for that. What else is here? A letter to the editor insists that for all Sarah Riordon’s trouble at the free throw line, she is a valuable asset to the Mission College Prep team. Front page: REAGAN SAYS “EVERYTHING’S JUST PEACHY.” Yeah, now if he could just solve unemployment, starting with mine. I head down Foothill to Spirit Cycle Works. Jay, the obese head mechanic, is sitting on a stool popping plastic bubble wrap in the vise. Garrett is cussing about a bottom bracket adjustment he can’t get right. You’re reaming a seat tub, violently, viciously, a tyrannical grin on your face as you subvert the soft metal to your will. I would take a job here for two bucks an hour, just to work with you. But Spirit isn’t hiring.

It was fun hanging out with you for that year, but I couldn’t ever act excited about it, nor can I reminisce fondly about it now. Maybe it’s because I was un- and under-employed and needed to act cynical. I wonder if you saw through my cool front. (I never did.) But was this front my own idea, or was I unconsciously mimicking your own tough guy act? The thing is, you veer between hard-boiled and almost cloyingly nostalgic. Which one is the real you? Let’s admit it, you yourself are, and have long been, a hard dude to try to figure out. And “figure out” implies that there is an answer, which there is not. There is no solution in the back of the textbook for Geoff Albert. He just is. You just is. We just is.

August 18, 1992 - Berkeley

Let me tell you a little story about my roommate A—’s brother, Robert (I think it is). He’s been couch surfing here for weeks, and even stocked the kitchen with all his own food. He had the cheek to label it all so we won’t steal any. His stash consists mainly of hot dogs, cold cuts, Oreos, white bread, and milk. This guy has no idea how to cook. He prepares a hot dog by putting it, raw, on a slice of bread and microwaving it for thirty seconds (just until the bread’s hot).

Well, one night A— had cooked himself a meal (some weird South American thing) and offered his brother his leftovers. Robert hemmed and hawed, as if put off by the notion of secondhand food, or perhaps by the cuisine being outside his norm, and finally asked us what nearby restaurants delivered. He wasn’t interested in pizza so I suggested a few takeout places within cycling distance. “The bike is kind of what I wanted to avoid,” he said, peering down forlornly at his big belly, which sagged down below his belt. Okay, so no leftovers, no pizza, and nothing beyond walking distance. For a guy who doesn’t even have a place to live, he sure does seem picky.

Finally I thought of a barbecue place like four blocks away. A— explained how to get there, but I guess Robert wasn’t satisfied with the directions so he asked us for a map, which my other roommate eventually produced. After studying the route a while, Robert finally embarked on his daring solo mission. Well, like half an hour later he came back empty-handed, looking totally grief-stricken. Apparently a street hoodlum spotted an easy mark and grabbed the bag of food right out of Robert’s hands! Poor dude was too upset at this point to go buy more, and settled for a couple more hot dogs.

Is there any moral to this story? Yeah: don’t be a dork.

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Review - Da Crack Taqueria, Poipu, Kauai

Introduction

As I discussed in my last blog post, I took a vacation to Hawaii recently, and though I know you don’t want to hear how great a time I had, and conversely nobody wants to hear any complaints that start out “When I was in Hawaii,” everybody loves a restaurant review, right? Well, given that it’s a review of a hole-in-the-wall on the most remote archipelago in the world, and you will probably never go there, maybe you’re not that interested.

But wait, are you a foodie? And do you like taquerias? Are you curious about one man’s effort to find good spicy food in the land of poi? (If you haven’t heard of it, poi is a paste made of taro corm that ancient native Hawaiians allegedly ate, and which you can still get, and which I did try, and which has a flavor a lot like Spackle or Bondo but not as intense. And yes, “corm” is a real word, and yes, I did enjoy using it just now—first time!)

Okay, what if you’re not a foodie? Might you be a tech-weenie? Well then, read on, because—lacking a laptop PC in Hawaii—I dictated this entire review to my smartphone. That leads to all kinds of fun: you can decide for yourself how impressive the voice-recognition software is; laugh at it biggest gaffs; and try to decode (via context) the intended words lurking beneath best-efforts like “dustless pros,” “whole ten toes,” and “run Russian unicorn.” I’ve left the haphazard capitalization in place, such as the so-called smartphone’s decision to capitalize “Chipotle” and “Thunder” but not “hawaii” or the first word of any sentence. I’ve also left misspellings uncorrected, because poor spelling seems to be an island tradition.

(Note: I originally sent this via e-mail as a race report to my bike club. My race reports focus almost exclusively on the food, to the point that it simply doesn’t matter that I lacked a bicycle during my vacation.)


Restaurant Review – Da Crack Taqueria, Poipu, Kauai

Greetings,

This is a non race report because I’m not doing any racing much less riding while I’m in Hawaii but I’m going to give you a report anyway because not riding racing should never stop you. the food is what’s important I’m going to regale you with the tale of our taqueria here on Kauai because you like to try different taqueria is at least some of us Lindsay of course being the notable exception who hates all Mexican food. okay now I’m really ticked because my whole last sentence all of which was dustless pros has been lost because it couldn’t connect. you see, I’m using the voice recognition because I have awkward stubby fingers to type like the dickens on a proper keyboarding but don’t do so well with these smartphones. stupid anyway, the place we went to as this little hole in the wall taqueria called Da Crack. it was highly recommended on Yelp or whatever those one of those sites one of those rating websites. the logo was a crew leader on cartoon of a guys butt crack. on that basis Alexa refused to eat there but we didn’t give her a choice. Lindsay meanwhile hates all Mexican food on principle making me wonder who the father really is.

so what’s a walk up place just a counter no tables no chair there’s a little tiny bench along the wall outside but it’s really a carryout deal. the whole menu is on a chalkboard but they are also selling their logo bearing hats and shirts. so it’s a combination of small time and self congratulating big time. not that I have any problem with that my favorite place ever la fiesta sold really groovy t shirts. but now I have stolen my own Thunder by mentioning la fiesta because you know that I can’t possibly given to Sterling review to any place having summoned the ghost of my long lost favorite place. this is Andy speaking not Andy and right now I’m eating with a weird seeing images.

Erin has a fish taco for $11 and I do mean fish taco, singular, but hey Islands prices, right? Alexa and I both had pork burritos, but they were not carnitas, they only had shredded pork, which is a shame, and is matched by the offering of only whole ten toes or whole black beans, not the refried beans that I think should be required in all talk worldwide. but the burritos to come stalk with cheese and sour cream, which is pretty nice because of some expect to be nickel and dime stood up on everything when you’re traveling in hawaii.

so one of the unique things is that they offered two kinds of sour cream or perhaps it was dressing for the fish taco and that was either Chipotle or what sabi and I had to guess that erin would want massage me because she had wandered off to supervise Alexa who refuse to be seen standing in front of a place called Da Crack. Not “what sabi” or “massage me” but wasabi, geez. the burritos were un remarkable and run Russian unicorn remarkable in terms of choices except that it was Mexican brown rice, and cabbage instead of lettuce. Unicode Lindsay ordered see Keiki kids cheese quesadilla, which route was about five dollars, and wish we could have easily made at home which we should have done because of course we took these back to our condo to eat on the lanai.

okay, down to brass tacks. how was it already, you surely want to know. well, the fish taco have these little bricks of fish that looked slightly funny, and meet us a little nervous, at least me, because you know this is the land of spam. not spam as in unwanted email like this one, I but I mean real spam, as in shoulder of pork and meat, or whatever spam stands for. you know, Hormel spam. but the fish, which was probably mahi mahi, was not at all like spam and in fact was quite tasty, and those hotties sour cream, which you’re going to have to figure out what I mean kama because surely this voice recognition software is going to butcher wassabi yet again, was quite tasty. it was a flour tortilla, oddly enough, but there’s a silver lining in that in that the taco, there being only one of them, it was fairly big. it had a side of pinto beans and that aforementioned Mexican brown rice, which were both pretty good, and if there was any complain I had with this thing is that there wasn’t enough salsa, but we had some handmade store bought salsa from the island heater that was fairly good. plus we had some dose Aki’s beer, the special lager with the green label, which wash everything down real good.

so on to the main item that being the burrito, the tortilla was grilled rather than steamed which is great, and the size was pretty good, and the beans were black which of course is not as good as refried was pretty darn good I actually like the rice pretty well. the cabbage was good, & I think I’m going to start using that in our home made make your own tacos, an albert standby, because it gives a little extra crunching is probably better for a kids at being cruciferous. the meat of course is the star of the show, & I couldn’t help but to wish that my shredded pork was carnitas, or that I’ve gotten beef, because it turns out most of the beef on this island seems to be local grass fed beef, but I forgot that and when you’re getting something at a sketchy walk up counter called Da Crack, there’s something that causes you to hesitate about taking any gambles on your meat.

the salsa was okay, but I ordered hot and this stuff was pretty darn tame. they did have a great nation called fire but I avoided it on principle because I think it’s lame to call something fire, and by the way didn’t Taco Bell already steal that name? so anyway I said it was a good burrito, but not a great burrito, and then Gertrude Stein punch me in the face.

so, a little background about the name of this place, which I have to admit did not entice us to eat there. according to the counter person, this place was huge in the 70’s and had some sort of standard name, play pou taqueria or something, but everybody nicknamed Da Crack, and then when it folded in 2007 it was a great opera and everybody back for them to open up again and so when they did this time they just gave it the official name of Da Crack. so what has the script loyal following, almost every review you read says its where the locals go, & I guess I can’t blame them because it’s one thing to come from the Bay Area, possibly the best place for burritos in the entire world, but another to be on some isolated island where most of the food is not Mexican, and where most of the food probably shouldn’t be Mexican, if I’m to be perfectly candid.

bottom line? if I found this place in the mission I might think it was kind of neat because it was a little different a little island inflected, a little islandy you might even say but I wouldn’t go back there because it was perfectly mediocre. but if I found this plays in Saint Johnsbury Vermont, or in Ashburn Virginia, or in an airport, or hell, even in Boulder Colorado, I would think I was a revelation and be very glad to have it around. but that doesn’t mean anything could ever have me rocking a Da Crack baseball cap.

Mahalo.

Spotting Bad Restaurants

Introduction

I fear for the one-off, family run restaurants in this era of Yelp, smartphones, and opentable.com. At the rate things are going, the most popular restaurants will be the ones with the best web presence. Given the cutthroat competition among restaurants, this could lead to the demise of some really great places. (I’m still mourning the loss of my dearly departed La Fiesta.)

You might think citizen reviews like you’ll find on Yelp are democratic and fair, but really they’re not. Why not? Because when I find some tiny hole-in-the-wall that’s great, I might not choose to Yelp about it because the next thing you know, it’s overrun. Our local breakfast place is swamped every morning after a certain rerun of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” airs. Meanwhile, I get friends visiting from out of town who, instead of asking me—a bona-fide local, and a food fanatic—where to eat, tell me where they want to go based on some website or TV show.

So when I’m in a foreign city looking for a restaurant, I put away my smartphone. (“Luke, you switched off your targeting computer. What’s wrong?” / “Nothing. I’m all right.”) If I can’t get a tip from a local, I’ll fly almost completely blind. I’ll even check out strip malls: oddly enough, I’ve found some real jewels in such unlikely places.

This strategy is of course highly risky. This blog post gives you some pointers for spotting a bad place right away based on a few powerful clues (what Malcolm Gladwell calls “thin slicing”). Anthony Bourdain has written on this topic as well, but his book costs money and isn’t sitting right in front of you. And I promise to make this post as entertaining as possible, weaving in the case study of a truly revolting restaurant I was recently a victim of.

What’s in a name?

Probably the name of a restaurant doesn’t ultimately mean much. But there are a few ways to at least tell how authentic a place is, and what clientele it’s aiming toward. For example, “Thep Phanom” is an excellent restaurant, and I doubt the chef who started it really cared whether or not people would recognize the name of a Thai angel, nor whether or not they immediately recognized the restaurant as Thai. Meanwhile, “Thai-riffic” and “A Taste of Thai,” not to mention “Café de Paris,” are making damn sure everybody—i.e., tourists—know what kind of food it is.

Why do foodies seem to despise tourists so much? Actually, it’s not the tourists we mind, it’s the places that cater to them. I prefer to eat at places whose livelihood depends on repeat business. When you’re guaranteed a revolving door of undiscriminating one-time diners, you can focus on your profit margins and serve up whatever cheap rubbish increases those margins.

I recently went (unwillingly) to a place called Cozmic Café. The misspelling of Cosmic suggests that the owner is either sloppy or (more likely) wants to tell the world that he’s not afraid to “think different” and do things his own way. As soon as I saw that “z” I feared the worst. But I wouldn’t rule a place out based on its name alone, and I gamely went along with my wife’s unilateral decision to go there. I should have been worried when she didn’t tell me where we were headed. It was the dining equivalent of being approached from behind, having a sack pulled over my head, and being stuffed in the trunk of a car.

Watch out for gimmicks

There’s a very successful restaurant in San Francisco called “The Stinking Rose.” Normally, a restaurant that survives for decades in such a competitive market is bound to be good. But the one time I went there (dragged by guests from out of town) I really didn’t like it. You know why? Too much garlic. Well, duh! There’s a reason most restaurants don’t go through 3,000 pounds of garlic a month. But people go, because they read about it in “Sunset” or something, where it’s featured because hey, catchy name, interesting idea!

Fair-trade coffee, and related do-gooder notions, are also gimmicks. Why? Because with just about every single consumer product we buy, from the disposable plastic bottle to our new PC to the clothing on our backs, we are raping the earth and/or exploiting cheap sweat-shop overseas labor. Unless you’re eating at a farmhouse where every single item was raised within a one-mile radius, you’re part of the problem. When I go to a restaurant I want to have a good time, which means not being reminded of how guilty I should feel. Throwing me a bone—“nobody was slain over this coffee, and the corn that this poor cow ate, that made it overweight and miserable and arthritic and that changed the pH of its blood, was organic!”—makes me feel worse, not better.

I consider vegan restaurants a gimmick. Why? Well, first of all, they’re serving a niche market. A lot of normal restaurants, at least around here, have plenty of good vegetarian and vegan options on the menu. Lots of these offerings (e.g., a simple pasta with marinara sauce,) aren’t ostentatiously vegan. But vegan places often seem to like to make fake meat out of weird soy protein. Yuck. Regular restaurants don’t try this sleight of hand (how about a carrot made of duck fat?). What’s the point, when good basic food can be vegan? I think they’re just being flashy. When a place is strictly (or even mainly) vegan or vegetarian, it’s expecting repeat business from people who are rewarding it on its political or ideological beliefs, and/or people who are tired of shaking down waiters about whether the salad dressing has anchovy paste in it. This is all fine if you’re a vegan, but I’m not, and I want good food, period.

Cozmic Café isn’t strictly vegan or even vegetarian, but these offerings are prominent on its menu. Their sandwiches, for example, include The Very Veggie Wrap, The Vegetarian, Vegan BLT, Nut Burger, and Garden Burger. The menu didn’t grab me; in fact it repelled me. But my wife assured me this was a good place; she’d been there before. Word of mouth is important.

Safety in numbers?

Of course there is reason to believe that a popular place will be good. It’s not a completely reliable rule, though. Plenty of mediocre chains, such as Cheesecake Factory, PF Changs, and Macaroni Grill, are routinely packed. (I used to travel a lot to Columbus, Ohio and every restaurant I ever set foot in there was completely packed.) All the places in Fisherman’s Wharf seem to thrive. And I already mentioned how popular The Stinking Rose is. So lines aren’t everything.

However, if a place is dead, that’s really not a good sign. Not only does it mean the locals have abandoned it, but it means the food probably won’t be as fresh because there’s not enough turnover. Now, if you go into a place at an off hour, and there aren’t many customers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if you’re on the early side, you should see signs of activity in the back, like they’re at least expecting a good crowd. If even the kitchen is dead, and there’s a skeleton staff, something is up. Perhaps the place is on its last legs, or it’s a drug front.

There were two employees in Cozmic Café when my family went there, at around 5:30 on a Sunday evening. One person was working the counter, and there was one in the kitchen. There were no other customers. When I was trying to find items on the menu I could imagine my kids and me eating, another guy showed up. I let him go first. Big mistake. Every single thing he asked for they were out of. For five minutes straight they shot down everything. Finally he just asked for a smoothie and the cashier was like, “We’re out of bananas, but I could try to think of something else to thicken it with.” It was like the Monty Python cheese shop skit. That place wasn’t just empty, it expected to be empty.

Does décor matter?

Of course the matter of décor depends on who’s dining and what they value. I was shocked, around a decade ago, to discover that regular people, even some of my friends, don’t overmuch care about food. This doesn’t mean they don’t like dining out; they enjoy a good scene, a friendly wait staff; pleasant decorations. In the flip side, there’s a lot of great food to be enjoyed in nondescript settings. I don’t personally worry too much about décor, unless it’s a celebratory meal or a date or something. (Yes, I still date. But it’s always the same person.)

Really bad décor, though, can be a good warning sign. If the place isn’t clean, or the aesthetic choices made suggest that the person running the place is an amateur, or a whacko, you should pay close attention. Or, if the décor feels like a theme park, that could be your tip that the restaurant is owned by a giant conglomerate, which might mean the food will be engineered rather than crafted.

Cozmic Café is a fascinating case study. The space has so much potential; it’s a great old building with fixtures, a cool upstairs area, and best of all an actual cave that you can sit it. (It’s in Placerville, an old mining town.) A restaurateur who knows what he’s doing could do amazing things with it. But the Cozmic folks have hung really bad art everywhere. The paintings were evidently designed to be disturbing, which is fine in a gallery I suppose, but while we’re eating? This was classic amateur art, just a couple steps up from Napoleon Dynamite’s. Kind of a fantasy theme, the Hobbit faerie shtick, but taken in advanced, edgy, vaguely pornographic directions, with a little dash of menace, and also sci-fi elements like a space station here or there. I got the impression these “artists” or perhaps “artistes” were guys who tried to get jobs with Kincade but were turned down for lack of technical skill. This made them bitter so, without actually developing the technical skill they lacked, they lashed out with art that makes you go “ew.” It’s the kind of art, come to think of it, that’s daring you to admit that you’re thinking “ew,” though that would be admitting you’re unsophisticated and lack the intellectual equivalent of facial hair and tattoos.

Why bad art in restaurants matters is that it can indicate poor judgment on the part of the management. If they do their aspiring artist friends a favor by giving over their restaurant as a gallery, what does this mean about the cook staff? Could this “amateur night” mentality extend to the kitchen? Would they hire, say, a hapless pal who was fired from Denny’s for incompetence?

While I was laboring over the menu at the front of the Cozmic, my wife, kids, and mom were looking around the restaurant. My kids, who were really scared by the bad art, begged me not to go upstairs. This made me curious, plus I had to use the bathroom. (What about handicapped folks, Cozmic, or whatever you’re calling them? Where do they go?) I went upstairs and it was just more of the same bad art up there. Speaking of which, the bathroom—the one bathroom—was totally disgusting. The toilet was all backed up. I really had to pee, and while doing so I was ready to jump back away from the sudden puddle I might create if my pee actually overran the edge. It didn’t, but it was really close. Perhaps only surface tension carried the day. That toilet was almost as harrowing as the art.

Of course I should have left right then. But this is the kind of counter-service place where you pay in advance. Curses.

Does the staff seem professional?

It’s hard to predict how the service will be when you’re casing a restaurant, but if the person who greets you seems awkward or unprofessional, or if nobody greets you, that’s probably a decent indicator of how well the whole operation is run.

I’m not a fascist about service, and I’ll usually suffer through a bad meal rather than send something back. The last thing I want when I’m trying to enjoy myself is to have to complain, and then endure the awkwardness of watching my friends or family eat—or, worse, not eat—while I’m waiting for a replacement entrée or something. I don’t mind minor inconveniences like having to flag down the waiter or busboy for more water, but if too many things add up it can be a drag.

The counter person at Cozmic was friendly, but seemed a bit hapless. Given that she was 50% of the total staff there, I might have expected trouble. As it turned out, our dining experience was a laundry list of issues. Two entrees came out, then we waited ten minutes for the others. We were sharing food, but didn’t get any extra plates. Or napkins. Or flatware. Nor did we get any water. Each time one of us got up from the table to go ask for something, it took them forever to provide it. It was more like running errands than dining. My younger daughter seemed to get overwhelmed with the futility of it all, and tried to hide under the table. Cozmic Café’s methods, you could say, are unsound (to borrow from “Apocolypse Now”). “Are my methods unsound?” / “I don’t see any method at all, sir.”

Is it okay to abort?

I wish this were a simple “yes.” It’s no problem if you’ve peeked in and/or looked at a menu. But when you’ve ordered? When you’ve paid? When your party is seated? Or when somebody important in the party, such as a chief in your family, really grooves on the place, perhaps due to some strange fetish or from having luckily ordered the only good thing on the menu? It can be tricky.

But remember, this isn’t just like a bad movie or boring lecture. You are taking foodstuffs into your body! This is serious stuff! If the operation is run really poorly, you can be poisoned. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether or not I was technically poisoned at Cozmic Café. Here are the facts. After eating their lousy food, including most of my mom’s and my daughters’ (these are not finicky people but are perhaps wiser than I), I really didn’t feel so well. Each hour after the meal my flatulence increased, in quantity and heinousness, to the point where my wife had to go sleep in another room. That’s never happened before. (Frankly, I didn’t have that much sympathy for her, since she’d dragged me to that hellhole in the first place.) The next day, well into the afternoon, I was running to the bathroom with shocking frequency. I wasn’t throwing up, at least, but then I’ve got a pretty strong stomach. I’ve managed to eat some spoiled food in my day just by dousing it in hot sauce, and I used to scandalize my college roommates by routinely eating stuff they’d thrown away. I’m no prima donna, but Cozmic Café was a hard hit.

So, yeah, choose your restaurants carefully, and don’t be afraid to pull out if you’ve made a mistake!

dana albert blog

Race Report - Everest Challenge 2011

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and some coarse humor.

Introduction

I meant to post this race report last night—I’d already written it for my bike club—but I fell asleep unexpectedly at around nine. My wife found me, sitting up, holding a water bottle in my hand that I must have been about to drink from when sleep overtook me. This was four days after the race. That’s how tiring it is.

Anyway, what follows is my report of the 2011 Everest Challenge California-Nevada Climbing Championship. I hope you’re not looking for a tightly edited perfectly-paced action drama, nor a feel-good bromance, nor a soap opera of who did what in the never-ending Masters 35+ dynastic saga. As usual, and as with life, it’s all about the food.

Pre-race

Three of my East Bay Velo Club teammates and I drove to Bishop in a two-car caravan: Ian and I in his sporty Euro-edition Golf, and Paul in his element in his Element with Rob. (Two others, Jamie and Steve, had gone up in advance to adjust to the altitude.) As we passed through Oakdale we tinkered briefly with the idea of eating at the House of Beef. Next door was House of Tykes. Either you drop your kids off while getting barbecue, or it’s a cannibalistic venue.

As we’d hit Oakdale too early for lunch, we instead stopped later at Priest Station where Paul and Jamie had dined the year before. We had a great table out on the deck and paid extra for Premium Burgers (i.e., grass-fed beef ). Ian and I had mayonnaise with our fries and could tell that everybody—Paul, Rob, those at the next table, and the proprietors—were pretty impressed. In fact, the staff must have decided to keep us around as long as possible to attract other diners, because the service was remarkably slow. It worked, though … by the time we left, the place was hopping.

Alas, because of this delay we reached Bishop too late for the happy hour at Whiskey Creek Saloon. (No, we wouldn’t have any booze the night before the race, but there was discounted food.) It was more important to get in a good spin on the bikes, to sort out our legs after the long drive.

Dinner, therefore, was the free Everest Challenge pasta-feed. Last year, you may remember, was almost a fracas as the volunteer staff unwisely tried to throttle the flow of pasta. This time, none of the rider/diners got any flak. But we didn’t get any sausage either. “In this economy” etc. There was plenty of garlic bread, at least for me. Absolutely nothing prevented the others from taking like ten pieces on their first trip through like I did, and yet I was chided for hogging it. Excuse me, but is this a pre-race meal, or a little snack before a fun run? Are you going to throw elbows or throw tantrums? Anyway, the bread had giant chunks of garlic, and I had three huge plates of spaghetti (on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, this was … free).

Of course it’s a bit hard on the stomach to eat so much. Alas, I was unsuccessful in my normal bedtime evacuation ritual. I was reminded of that old restroom graffito, “Here I sit, my hopes deflated, tried to defecate, but only micturated.” (I’ve cleaned up the language of that ditty for this report.)

By now you’ve guessed the rest: extreme flatulence, EC Edition. It was bad. I slept fine until about 4:15 a.m., and then suddenly was fully bloated with gas, like a large dead hoofed animal that has ballooned up enough to actually float on a little lake until a boy scout with a .22 shoots it and it fricking explodes. Neither Ian nor I could sleep with flatulence of this magnitude. (Rob, in the main room on a king size bed, probably slept like a baby. We’d played Ro-Sham-Bo, odd-man-out, to decide who got the big bed, and Rob won fair and square. Of course that didn’t stop Ian and me from berating him all weekend for being a prima donna.)

Our breakfast stuff overwhelmed the little mini-fridge. The thing was unplugged to begin with and it took it several hours to drop below room temperature. I suppose there’s a commentary to be made about three kinds of milk—regular dairy milk, rice milk, and soy milk—for three guys, but I won’t be making it. We had some cheap yogurt from Smart & Final, a traditional EC destination, and though the yogurt said Grade A it seemed kind of marginal (off-brand, corn syrup, etc.). Who gets the Grade B stuff? Inmates? The military? Rob had a big Coke in the little fridge, and then all our bottles of various energy drinks, and I spent about twenty minutes trying to get the door to close.

So, breakfast. In addition to the iffy yogurt, I had my Uncle Sam cereal, with 10 grams of fiber per serving, less than a gram of sugar, and the consistency of cat litter. It’s probably the second-hardest breakfast cereal to eat (next to Grape Nuts, or “grape pits” as my brother Max calls them). You take a bite and then chew for a couple minutes while you put on sunscreen or pump up your tires. It tastes like cardboard. Very high-end cardboard. Ian, ever loyal to the Crown, ate his Weetabix with its lowly 4 grams of fiber.

In its defense, Weetabix seems exactly like the kind of cereal Wallace and Gromit would eat. Nonetheless, you’ll be happy to know that I asserted my American pride, alerting Ian to the fact that Uncle Sam has been around since 1908, whereas Weetabix is a relative interloper, not appearing on the breakfast scene until 1932. (I gleaned these dates from the cereal boxes.) Of course Ian immediately rejoined that Weetabix was officially recognized by the Queen. Those British are so fricking pompous.

Stage 1 – 88 miles, 14,965 feet of climbing

During Stage 1 I consumed five large bottles of my preferred energy drink and one bottle of the race-provided drink (which is widely rumored among our ranks to cause serious stomach issues that make you look like Moomintroll or ET or something). I also had like four gels. Let me explain how hard it is eating gels during the EC. Lacking any particular muscular strength, I strive to be as efficient as possible. This means not rocking a lot on the bike. I’d like to think my upper body isn’t rigid, but merely still. It was so still during the extra-hot second climb that some sort of strange membrane of air or sunscreen or something was being created between my skin and my sweat. I would only become aware of it when my arm would shift slightly and send the sweat sliding off this membrane and suddenly I’d feel a swish of cool. Being this still, my body sort of reshaped itself into this climbing mannequin, more like a sculpture than a puppet. So when I tried to access my jersey pockets, my arms were so stiff I could barely reach anything. It was like trying to get a finger to bend again after it’s been in a splint for six weeks. The tops of my pockets seemed halfway up my back. I got gel on my number, gel on the other stuff in my pockets, residues of gel I couldn’t get out of the package draining down into puddles in my jersey … it was a mess. I also had a half banana someone passed up. Oh, and I had a giant mouthful of bile that I had to re-swallow after I half-barfed. That kind of sucked.

The last climb was crazy. A storm was brewing (though without coming to fruition), which hampered the accuracy of my bike computer because it uses barometric pressure to calculate altitude, and uses altitude gain plus speed to calculate my power. In certain sections there was a terrible headwind, which made it hard to keep the bike moving given my not-so-low gearing. These sections gave me my most inaccurate power readings of all—it read like 90 watts when I had to have been putting out over 400. I held back on the non-windy sections to save energy for the windy ones, which ended up being less frequent than I’d feared. Thus, I sort of loafed for much of the last climb—not a problem, since the second stage of the race would certainly use up any surplus energy I carried forward.

After I finished Stage 1, atop its final climb, I had like eight Cokes. Not eight cans, but eight cups filled by the volunteers, who are all distance runners who volunteer here just to be cool. Now, when it comes to booze, I’m careful not to fall prey to the “bottomless cup” model, where it’s hard to modulate your intake and you might end up downing, say, a pint glass of bourbon without realizing it. Discrete units like bottles of beer are much safer. But with soft drinks, especially after a ride like that, who cares! Worst case scenario I get too much caffeine and can’t sleep … but then who can sleep after Stage 1 of the EC anyway?

All the same, I switched to ginger ale at some point. My throat was so parched I couldn’t talk, but boy could I burp. After a liter or two of carbonated fluids I could talk again, though by that point I was busy gobbling quesadillas and Reese’s peanut butter cups and potato chips. There was chicken soup, too, with noodles. I have figured out what’s so strange about the EC soup noodles: they are never boiled, but rather thrown in to non-boiling broth. So they’re both crunchy and soggy at the same time. You could probably pay big bucks for such a novel thing at a fancy restaurant, along with lobster foam and quail eggs and such.

Jamie won the first stage among the Masters 55+! We’re all very proud. Not only that, but based on when his category started, he was actually the very first rider—out of 335 total—to finish. Nate English was glued to his wheel at the end.

They switched the course around this year, swapping the first and last descents. (This was to eliminate pelotons in the one residential section of the course.) The new course had about ten fewer miles of racing, most of which were downhill. This meant it was hard to compare times from last year to this year. Since my main goal with this race is to be faster each year—part of my effort to battle the ravages of age—this difficulty of comparison was kind of a bummer. Still, I was almost an hour faster on Stage 1 this year so I’m pretty dang stoked. Here’s the course profile with my heart rate and power:

For the data nerds among you, here are my climbing stats (power and heart rate):

- 242 watts at 155 bpm on first climb;

- 239 watts at 157 bpm on second climb;

- 215 watts at 150 bpm on last climb.

Note that these are "dog-watts"—that is, they're based on my rate of vertical gain, my speed, and my weight (f=mgh) without considering wind resistance, etc. That 215-watt stat is particularly off (i.e., low) based on the headwind and the stormy sky.

Dinner was, once again, at the little Italian place. I have done some special research this year and can actually tell you the name: The Upper Crust Pizza Co. No, this isn’t the Boston chain with the award-winning TV commercial. (Who ever heard of such a thing? The only TV commercial that deserves an award is a really short one, like under a second, or maybe a beer commercial with really hot babes.) We went to the one-off Upper Crust whose domain name is up for sale.

As always, we started with a pizza as appetizer. Steve celebrated his EC Rookie status by choosing the ‘za: we had the, dang it, what was it called? Something silly like the Ranch Hand or Wrangler or something. I tried to find the place’s menu online so I could get the name of our pizza but I only came across a two-star review from a guy name Jesse G. who complained, “they put way too much cheese on the pizza for my taste.” What a pussy. Hey Jesse, why don’t you go ride 117 miles over three mountains and then get some pizza. Too much cheese? Hell, I was salting my pizza! Just for the salt! I was craving salt. I’d have eaten a whole stick of salami if it had been provided as garnish, which come to think of it is a pretty good idea.

On a pizza called the Ranch Hand you’d expect toppings like hardtack and tumbleweed, but it was a classic: mushroom, sausage, pepperoni, something else. (I can’t remember the fourth topping—I guess I ate too fast.) Then we had pasta. I heavily promoted the chicken Marsala and two others had it. Jamie had something that looked exactly like it but wasn’t, apparently. I will publically apologize to Rob for not warning him that it was a cream sauce. It never occurred to me to classify this as a cream/non-cream dish. Just that it was chicken, and pasta, and fattening, and actually this time the pasta was a bit overcooked but dang, it was good anyway. So was the oddly spicy cream of mushroom soup. I’m doing EC again next year just to eat at Upper Crust again.

After dinner we had to go to K-Mart, America’s Favorite Store, so Ian could buy some earplugs. Why earplugs? Because my flatulence had kept him awake from 4:15 a.m. on the night before. (When he first complained about this, I thought he said his own flatulence kept him awake from 4:15 a.m. on, and I thought, wow, what a coincidence, I was gassy too at that time! And I started to wonder if, like female roommates end up on the same monthly cycle, guys sharing a room might start to have synched-up flatulence. But no, it was just me doing the flatching.) Ian purchased some Hearos, despite his misgivings that the attenuation chart and noise reduction info on the package didn’t cover flatulence. I told him not to worry because my concussive blasts were doubtless much louder than the norm anyway.

Back at the motel, Rob studied an impressive legal textbook, and I couldn’t help but feel sheepish about the fact that, though cycling may be enough for some of us, others are actually getting somewhere in life, making something of themselves. It didn’t help that I was pretty much brain-dead and struggling just to transfer my race numbers to a clean jersey. I mean, here Rob was deep in thought processing complex ideas about law, while I was somehow managing to pin my number not only to the jersey but to the bedspread. When I was finally done, and Rob had realized he wouldn’t get any studying done with me forgetting every thirty seconds to shut the hell up, we headed out to McDonalds for some freedom fries. We brought some back for Ian. Look at this happy customer.

Stage 2 – 88 miles, 14,070 feet of climbing

During Stage 2 I drank four bottles of my preferred energy drink, about a bottle (two halves, really) of the race-supplied beverage, and a bottle of water. It’s hard to take on a bottle of water during the race because you don’t want to use up limited water bottle cage space for a non-caloric beverage. So during the hottest stretch (90+ degrees) of the third pass I rode along holding the bottle of water, drinking greedily from it, like Landis in that famous Tour stage. It didn’t work as well for me. (Maybe it was the testosterone, blood transfusion, and Jack Daniels that worked so well for Landis.)

Oh, and I had three gels and a half-banana. I didn’t want the banana—the very idea of eating it made me want to hurl—but it was a little kid volunteer offering it up which was so cute. Once I took possession of it, of course I wouldn’t waste it. That’s just how I was raised. So after carrying it for half a mile or so I choked it down.

I was fricking dying on that last climb. It which gains more than 6,000 feet over 20 miles, and I’d blown up before even reaching it. I was nauseated and weaving and fighting off despair. My heart rate was stuck in the 130s, sometimes dipping into the 120s. I was afraid to look at my bike computer’s mileage reading: to know how many miles I had left would be too demoralizing. At one point I saw the 6,000-foot elevation marker, and was elated because somehow I’d missed the 5,000-foot marker and thought I was still below it. But the elation didn’t last long as I realized being at 6,000 feet wasn’t actually that great of news: I still had over 4,000 feet to climb. During this climb I only passed one guy in my category. That gave me a little bit of a morale boost, because at that moment I hated him even more than I hated life. This was the kind of suffering that I wouldn’t wish on anybody except maybe the other Masters 35+ riders, all of them , damn them.

I don’t know how I made the summit without losing my shit entirely. When I crossed the line I thought I was going to burst out crying. Its’ the kind of bike-induced misery that—now that it’s over—I wouldn’t trade for anything. A real Vision Quest kind of suffering. The kind of torment that forges you, like heat-treating a frame, as long as you survive the process and don’t come out warped like a damn Cannondale.

After finishing I had a bunch more Cokes, but really couldn’t touch anything else sweet. I did eat a whole bunch of the feta, spinach, and mushroom quesadillas. Actually I couldn’t tell if they were mushrooms or olives because the feta was so salty. Let me tell you something about salt: it’s good for you. I’ve been telling people for years that it only raises your blood pressure if you have a genetic predisposition for high blood pressure. I’ve been contradicted on this point so often I was starting to doubt myself until Rob volunteered the very same fact. And he’s got like a Ph.D. in some related field. He said he used to get muscle cramps as a kid because his well-meaning mother fed him a low-sodium diet, and then when he moved into the dorms and started eating their salty food he never had another muscle cramp. And I’ve never had one either. I eat salt like crazy. And my blood pressure is, well, good enough. If I had some more of those feta quesadillas right now, I’d eat them recreationally even though my body is probably pretty much back to normal.

Looking back at my heart rate and power stats for the second stage, I see that I wasn’t really as slow on the final climb as I’d feared. Here are my stats for Stage 2:

- 244 watts at 146 bpm on first climb;

- 224 watts at 140 bpm on second climb;

- 214 watts at 138 bpm on last climb.

Compare those to the stats for the first day, and compare the graphs, and you can see how much the first day took out of me! I was pleased to learn that, meltdown notwithstanding, I was 3 minutes faster on Stage 2 this year than in 2010.

We all had a great time in the race, and then a great time descending for twenty miles back to our internal-combustion rolling saunas. We all showered in Steve’s room (he stayed an extra night—brilliant!) and then headed over to Erick Schat’s Bakery in Bishop—an EC tradition. I got the last two slices of rye bread with my famously “not lean” pastrami sandwich. They’d run out of rye bread the previous year, too. What is it with these people? They do make good food though. Rob got two sandwiches: a turkey sandwich and the Mule Kick. Somebody always gets the Mule Kick, doubtless because of the catchy name, but I’ve never seen anybody order it a second time. At least Rob had the balls to admit it was a terrible sandwich. I don’t know how a place that makes such a killer pastrami sandwich can also make something lousy.

Now, I’d asked Rob about his sandwich purely to gather material for this report, but of course the others made it out like I was hinting around for a handout. As much as I denied this, I couldn’t convince Rob and soon I’d inherited one of the pieces of bread from his Mule Kick, with a bunch of Dijon mustard, and some cheese. Why does Dijon mustard exist? Just so men can show off that they can handle a spicy mustard that tastes like ass, if ass were spicy? Dijon is to a sandwich like hops is to beer: it turns a flavor into a pissing contest. “Pardon, monsieur, mais avez-vous du Grey Poupon?” / “No way, dude, I’m an American! I like French’s mustard!”

The trip home

On the way home we stopped at this little restaurant in Groveland we ate at last year. Pizza. Now, last year they had some weird quirk with the menu where a one-topping pizza cost like $5 more than a plain pizza, and yet the super-combo with like five ingredients was only $1.80 more than that. I was hoping to exploit that loophole this time, but they’d closed it up. But here was something new and just as weird: to get a single topping on a 16-inch pizza cost like $5. But to get a single topping on an 18-inch pizza was only a buck. How did these guys come up with their prices? A Ouija board? We didn’t care. We went with the 18-inch pepperoni.

Rob announced, shockingly, that he wouldn’t be having any pizza. He said he had heartburn. I’m pretty sure that almost any female would have said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Since I’m a guy, this didn’t occur to me (at least not until later); instead, I tried to convince Rob that pepperoni was really good for heartburn. When this failed I asked the waitress if we could get Tums as a pizza topping. She said, politely, that we couldn’t. Rob had split pea soup with ham and I could smell it from here. He said it was pretty good but oddly not that salty. Easily fixed.

I got home just before midnight and when I put the dodgy Smart & Final yogurt in the fridge, the crappy wire shelf flexed too much and dumped the yogurt container on the floor where it burst open. The cat, ominously, gave it a sniff but declined to lap it up. My motor skills were shot and I was barely functioning and it seemed to take forever to clean up the mess. I got the towels too wet and was just smearing it around and my god, the Everest Challenge is so hard. Be sure to join us next year!

dana albert blog