That ride I did last Saturday with Lindz was awesome. 58 miles of beautiful scenery between these tiny towns in Texas: Sealy and New Ulm. Towards the end it got really hard with the wind and hills, but the weather was amazing.

I randomly took today off work. Then I ended up going to a public meeting for some public officials who were voting today to remove city and area funding from bikeway projects around Houston. I signed up to speak, me and 24 other people. So when it was my turn, I got up there, pulled the microphone down close to my mouth (I'm short), and said "Hi there! I'm Acorn and I'm a bicyclist in Houston. Etc." It was great! I was very nervous, but I had to go. 2 peeps from my bike team were also speaking. And I had just randomly decided to take today of all days off. SO, the vote was scheduled for today. I left the meeting early. Turns out, they decided to postpone the vote for another month. Public policy is such a strange concept to me. You've got all these rich fuckers in a room, making decisions that affect YOUR life. I want to see my city's bikeways improved. I've been to Holland and Belgium and Germany, I've SEEN how it's supposed to be. You don't NEED a car over there, it's great! Here, in my city, if I didn't have a car, I'd be so screwed. I live 17 miles from my job. I have biked to work. Once. It was absolutely horrifying and scary and took forever because you have to avoid highways, you have to find semi bike friendly streets. During rush hour. Scary.

Then I took my mountain bike out for a ride, it was perfect weather today. I rode maybe 12 or 13 miles. I'm going to ride my mountain bike again tomorrow as well. I'm meeting my bike team peeps at 7:30.

I made a layer cake tonight, I was craving cake! Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Box cake and icing in a can. Perfect.

But first, I must tell you that I went to the grocery store on my way home from the public meeting thing and spent $65 on produce. I didn't even buy that much stuff, food is getting more and more expensive nowadays. But I gotta have my fruit and veg, man. I got this HUGE container of spring mix for salads. Last Saturday after my ride, Richard took me out to dinner. I got a salad and when they brought it to me, it was way bigger than I thought it was going to be, and I was all, "How the fuck am I gonna eat all this salad?!?" So I took 1 bite and it had this awesome carrot ginger dressing and I fucking SCARFED that thing fucking DOWN man! And THEN, I ate a whole entire entree after that.

I took a mini nutrition class last night after work, it was really informative. What I learned is that during a ride, all you should have is simple carbs. If you eat fat and protein, your body wastes energy trying to digest it, and you don't get calories from the fat and protein while you're riding. You get it way later. So it's carbs carbs carbs during the ride. I hate goo, it makes me sick. So tonight I made my own goo, sorta kinda. I mashed a banana with honey and added ginger and cinnamon. I'm going to try it tomorrow whilst riding.

For dinner tonight I made us a salad to start and ended up making this awesome dressing. Richard's sick tonight, he ate some bad egg rolls from Jack n the Box last night, so I wanted to make him something that would help him out. Well, first thing I made some fresh squeezed OJ for the both of us. Then I made the salad, but it's really the dressing I want to tell you about! I juiced a whole orange, half a lemon, some honey, and a little salt, and that was it. Amazing on that fucking spring mix with some mild onion and cherry tomatoes. Then I roasted some broccoli with salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Then I made bean tacos on flour tortillas with some pico de gallo I made fresh, a bit of shredded sharp cheddar. In the beans, I mashed them up, added some water, cumin, coriander seed, a little bit of taco mix, and garlic powder, a bit of salt. YUMMY! I love vegetarian meals.

Then the cake, man, for dessert. I splurged on the calories because I know I'm going to burn a lot tomorrow.

Remember how I fell off my bike the end of September and went to the ER, etc? Well, I fell really hard on my right hip, and it's STILL numb. Especially when I am lying down in my bed at night. I'll lay there, and it'll start to go numb. It sucks. I'm middle aged. 36 is middle aged. I'm half way to 72 years old. Things on my body don't work like they used to. I don't heal as quickly.

I've been using soap on the weekends after my ride to wash the sunblock off. I'm not opposed to soap, I'll say it again.

I've got a joke for ya:

What did the egg say to the boiling water?

Answer: "It's gonna take me minute to get hard, I just came out of this chick."

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