BOOM BOOM

8:44 on a beautiful May morning. 

The shuttle Atlantis falls across our coast at over 400 miles per hour, leaving behind her final BOOM BOOM to rattle our windows one last time.  25 years of service, now in the past. 

And the tears flow freely down my cheeks

It is not the first time a shuttle has brought tears to my eyes. 

I cried when the second shuttle launched and I realized the word "fleet" actually applied. 

I cried the day I brought the Chick home from the hospital, holding her up to the TV to watch the first woman Ride into orbit.  Tears flowed partly in envy that day.  I missed by a decade being the flea to jump out of the jar.  But more so, much more so, I cried with joy.  Here was proof irrefutable that this girl-child, twelve hours old, did not have to be born a son to be allowed opportunity in this new world.

We moved permanently to the Space Coast the next year.  I cried, feeling priveledged to see such a sight, every time a shuttle rode piggy back over my little shoebox house, heading home to our thick Florida atmosphere.  My home.  My atmosphere.

And we all cried, unable to look away, watching the pieces of Challenger fall from a winter blue sky.  

I don't have any personal attachment to the shuttle.  Not really.  Living here, everyone knows someone who does, of course.  Friends helped design it, program it, launch it, promote it, and put it to bed when it came flying home.  Northstar, Tomcat, Inspector Gadget, Shooting Star, Gadget Guru, customers from the bike shop, folks from the bike club.  There are so many here who can lay rightful claim to being a part of the incredible wonder of putting a reusable spacecraft into low earth orbit.

My own attachment is purely emotional.  It is a part of my very personal view of the world, my own internal conviction about the future of the universe.

I remember standing in Nancy Kreplin's back yard, hiders and seekers alike stopped in their tracks, eyes open wide to the sky, watching Sputnik go over. 

I remember being in a red plaid skirt on the cold floor of the school hallway as our third grade class sat out an air raid drill. 

I think back to 7th grade, adjusting the antenna just so, to watch Spock and Scotty, Uhura and Captain Kirk. 

I remember the summer night a few years later when Neil Armstrong left his famous footprint. 

I think of the tears of hope and joy when the shuttle became a fleet and when a woman became an astronaut. 

I remember the wonderours realization that there might actually be a "Starfleet" one day. 

May 26, 2010.  Today.  I tell myself the future, and the sky, aren't going anywhere.  And if it seems for the moment that neither are we, well that's only temporary. 

Tearing up again, sorry.  

Atlantis is heading for the barn.   

Pineapple (Toothpaste Optional) Sorbet.

When The Chick was here for mother's day, she gave me a ride to Publix.  We bought, among other things (like hot dogs!), a beautiful, huge, sweet pineapple. 

Well, I bought the pineapple. 

Not local, says she. 

Well, not very local, says I. 

Costa Rica.  Closer than say... Hawaii?  

Anyway, I wanted to overcome any and all disapproval with a beautiful smooth pineappley dessert.  Another day, since she couldn't make it for dinner that Friday night. 

Another month actually, since she flew to Colorado the next day.  

I never made sorbet before, but it turned out to be super simple. 

There are a zillion recipes online, but most of them go like this:  blend fruit & sugar or simple syrup, freeze for a few hours, stir, and freeze again.  No need for an ice cream maker or anything more complicated than a metal bowl to freeze it in. 

(Although I really love using my food processor and look for any chance to use it, my growth-happy waistline and I have not given in to any such urge to add ice cream maker to the list of appliances I love to use!) 

The first recipe up when you google Pineapple Sorbet is one from Cooking Light magazine.  The recipe mentions using mint sprigs as garnish. 

Which got me thinking. 

Which, of course, led to just a tiny deviation from the posted five star Pineapple Sorbet recipe.

Which led to comments like, "What do you call this?  Toothpaste Sorbet?"

Note Bene to self:  When choosing to add mint extract because there aren't any fresh mint leaves available, go easy.  A quarter teaspoon is too much.  A drop, a hint, might have been better received.

Pineapple (Toothpaste Optional) Sorbet

(The original recipe says to use a small pineapple.  Nah....)

1 huge beautiful Costa Rican pineapple

2 T. lemon juice

1 cup plus 2 T. sugar

Mint Sprigs (optional)

Mint Extract (very optional)

Preparation:

Cut pineapple into 2 inch pieces.
Place pineapple and lemon juice (and mint extract, if desired) in a food processor. 
Process until smooth. 
Add sugar, process 1 minute until sugar dissolves.

If you don't have an ice cream freezer, use a covered metal bowl.
Freeze mixture 2 or 3 hours, or until it is hard on the outside and slushy in the middle. 
Remove it from the freezer and whisk until smooth. 
Return to the freezer, covered, for 4 hours until firm.

Eat it plain, top fruit salad with it, blend it with rum.

Or, if heavy on the mint extract, gargle with it, maybe. 

Or sigh, go back to Publix for another huge beautiful pineapple, and try again. 

Only this time, unless you are looking to impress a die hard Crest fan, extract the extract.

girl stuff

OK who saw Kathie Lee and Hoda do their show with no make yesterday?

Yeah, I didn't see it either, but there were enough news segments and recaps that I felt I did.

Thanks to you KL and H!  You've convinced me.  I will try wearing make up again!  It irritates my eyes, but hey what's pain and possible blindness when the "face" of reality can cause such irritation in the eyes of others?  If the two of you can look that rough without make up, what chance to do I have with my bike shop clothing and bag lady hair? 

Eyeliner!  That's the ticket, girls! 

(Lots and lots of eyeliner.)    

Verb: It's what you do!

Three in the afternoon, lunch at the desk.  Organic peanut butter on whole grain bread with half a banana on top.  Sounds OK, right?  Maybe to some, but it seems a carb extravaganza to me.  Sticky.  Salad free.  An indulgence. 

Setting the coffeemaker up to gurgle is the necessity. 

It's quiet; the cats are out of sight, and also the crazy bird that's been diving at their heads all week.

I don't even have a car to tempt me to errands.  Besides, they're done; the bike handling the light weight chores of bank deposits and quick stop at Publix. 

Swam a little too.  It's good to soak the head when it weighs too much for your shoulders.

So then. 

What do you think of the title, "Verb: It's what you do!"?  I thought it was quite clever. 

That's why I stole it. 

Stole it from Tim Lane, the Fit Net guy. 

Every day a paragraph, often a history lesson with some clever segue to fitness, arrives in my email.  Words.  Fitness.  Two of my favorite themes. 

(To subscribe, send a blank email to join-fitnet@lists.ia.gov)


Anyway, a quick recap of  Mother's Day, with perfect Florida spring weather being the highlight. 

(Apologies to Big Sister #1, up in NYS, for bringing up the weather.  They had SNOW yesterday.)

Easy as falling off a log.

Here we are back at Cross Roads to start off Mother's Day with a morning ride.  That's Krafty looking for his glasses in the grass, after going off the right side of the log.  JediJosh is at the top, ready to start his approach.  

Both these guys are totally fear-free!

TriLady was there - maybe for her last ride on the Fuel?  Her very own Superfly should arrive Monday.  Popeye rode three loops and ran a fourth as fast as I rode it!  And of course, the dynamic duo of Krafty and JediJosh, Crossroads virgins, took to the roller coaster immediately.


(Inspector Gadget didn't make the early up.  A young man parked nearby overheard me on the phone with him and said, "Inspector Gadget?  You know him?  Engineer?  Does crazy stuff to the wheels on his Fuel?"  That's the Inspector, all right.  The bike world is a small world, yes?) 


Anyway, no more picture taking, but should have, because Popeye's grill back at home yielded some fantastic chicken, and yes!  Indulgence!  Hot dogs! 

OK, nitrate-free hot dogs, but still!  Hot Dogs! 

Winging it, the Chickenless Chick concocted a Mother's Day Daiquiri martini/thingy with rum/guava/pineapple/andwhoknowswhat.  Yum! 

And, as if that weren't enough, she also brought me a Mother's Day present.

She knows I've been wanting this one for quite a while!

No, Mother's Day Dinner wasn't from the book.  I didn't get to page through that until today. 

But the grilled chicken was simple food.  The simplest.  No planned meal, this!  Just off the cuff and onto the grill.

Simple Grilled Chicken.

2 chicken breasts, sliced lengthwise to make 4 thin pieces.

(It's what you do when you have 3 people and only two chicken breasts, right?  Besides, it cooks faster.)

Organic garlic salt

Coarse ground pepper

Grey Poupon mustard

Dried rosemary

OK, so it's fun to get out mortar and pestle and smash the rosemary up!  Or just buy it already crushed.  Mix it with garlic salt, pepper, and mustard, spread it on the chicken, and grill away.

And serve it with hot dogs (!) and a Pasta-Banzo Salad.  (So named by the Chick.  Is she like, clever, or what?)

About 2 cups each:

Pasta, chilled in ice water, and drained

Lightly cooked broccoli, chilled in ice water, drained and chopped

Tomatoes, chopped  (We got lucky!  One tomato plant survived the crappy winter and is now producing like crazy!)

1 can, or 2 cups, cooked garbanzo's, well rinsed

a couple tsp. capers

a handful julienned sun dried tomatoes

Sun dried tomato and caper pasta salad dressing (or any good OO&V dressing.)

Toss it.  Serve it.  Eat it with grilled chicken.  Hot dogs (ok, nitrate free and wrapped in multi-grain flatbread, but still!  Hot dogs!) on the side. 

Bike.  Gift.  Grill.  Indulge.

No nouns allowed in this clubhouse!

Caloosahatchee Catch Up

Remember the Dukes?  Flattening the hills, straightn'in the curves?


Honest to goodness, I really thought that camelback at Caloosa was a million miles high.  Soooo... maybe it's twelve feet?  And with my head five feet off the ground, plus ripping down through the brush off the side, made it seem higher?  harder?  

Anyway, cameras just seem to take all the scary right out of bike stuff! 

And just to prove it, Cap'n Bligh sent a photo mini tour to share of the Caloosahatchee trail.  Some of it's scary, though you'd never know from the photos, and most of it's not.

But it's all fun.

Caloosahatchee Camelback

Photos give no sense of the OOMPH needed to get yourself up & over these little lumps of landscape.
 

Then, it's a bit of ridgeline and a few miles of just plain whoopy swooping,

until you come to...

The Far East

  

Enter the Dark Side.  Reminds one of Dagoba, it does.

Your training incomplete it is, young Jedi.
 

Especially if you think you can ride this section without putting a foot down like those old Jedi bike warriors, Popeye and Cap'n Bligh!

Photos - bah humbug!  No sense of white knuckled edgy drops or dips quick enough to shoot a rider into the exact same tree as a year ago.  Hey, that scar on my shoulder was fading, I needed to renew it.

 

As I MAY have mentioned, this place gets a tad MUDDY when it rains, so the very smart folks who tend the trails have made some conveniently placed bridges for you to pop up onto and ride over the low spots. 

If you happen to drop your front wheel off, no problem, the back wheel follows pretty well.  On the other hand if your back wheel drops off first... 

Here's a secret. 

If you're really chicken - like nobody's this chicken right?  But if you were, you can get through by riding to the right of the first two bridges and left of the third one.  But only if it's April, when the course is counter-clockwise. 

Of course, if it's May and you're riding clockwise, then stay right, left, left.  

As if anyone would need to do that. 

And if it's muddy?  (Have I mentioned it can get muddy?)  

Oh well.  Ride it or wear it!

 

3 Bridge Trail

Wet or dry there's no ride at Alva without a happy ending.  

You either get a long dippy ridegline and camelbacks, or you get to cruise the sweeping turns of the southern field back to the parking lot.  Um, is it May yet?

Sailor 

One thing's for sure, no matter what the camera does to the dips and the humps of the trail at Caloosahatchee, it just can't flatten the smiles.

             

****************

Remember our "dignified" first place chain ring plaques?

They have a nicer ring to them now!

Sun Dried Tomato and Caper Pasta Salad Dressing

Yesterday there seemed to be an Italian craving going around. 

We had discussed and dismissed the Cross Florida ride.  Next year hopefully, there will be better weather and we will have had more long rides under our wheels by May. 

Probably because I still held some small fantasy of doing it anyway I said, "OK, if you were riding a hundred and seventy miles tomorrow, what would you be doing to prepare for it right now?"  

Popeye instant response was, "I'd be eating chicken parmesan!"

That became the theme of the afternoon.  When his brother called to ask for ideas about their parents anniversary party, I didn't hear much of the conversation, but somehow the words "chicken parmesan" came through loud and clear.

All this and a trip to Pane Vino is well and good, except that yesterday I had made pasta salad in anticipation of dinner at home. 

And this particular salad was wearing the BEST pasta salad dressing EVER!

Caving to the craving, we drove to Pane Vino and Popeye had his best ever chicken parm.  That place is another story.

Today's story is this dressing - even if I did have to wait to indulge!

(I'm not sure whom to credit for this - I found it in my recipe notebook, probably jotted down from Barefoot Contessa or Giada, the only cooking shows I can stand.  It got changed a little anyway, of course.)

Sun Dried Tomato and Caper Pasta Salad Dressing

Pulse in a food processor:

1/4 cup julienned sun dried tomatoes, packed tight

1 clove garlic

2 tsp. capers
3T. red wine vinegar

6 T. Olive Oil

salt, pepper

Toss with some pasta and lots of veggies.  This one has peas, tomatoes, carrots, orange bell peppers, kidney beans.  I like broccoli too, but our garden broccoli has finally given up after a phenomenal winter growing season. 

Pasta Salad with Sun Dried Tomato and Caper Dressing

More YUM than a Kentucky Derby ad!

Cross Roads Quidditch

When you're zooming across an overpass on an interstate, like I-95 for instance, or the Florida Turnpike, do you ever wonder what's going on 20 feet below your car?

Yeah, me neither. 

Unless I am at the exact spot where I-95 and the Turnpike cross one another in Ft. Pierce, Florida. 

Because, under your flying metal steed of highway horsepower, swoop metal steeds of a different propulsion. 

Especially on the weekends.  

This 4.2 mile fat tire roller coaster is usually referred to as the Ft Pierce trails.  Once in a while you might hear some old timer - like me - call it Cross Roads.  (Because well, it's where 95 and the turnpike cross, right?)

I can't say whether it's strictly legal.  All I can say is, we found a couple older websites referring to it as "soon to be legal." 

There was certainly no indication anywhere in sight that one shouldn't enter, park, or ride. 

So that is exactly what we did.

As a matter of fact, on this overcast Sunday afternoon, we had plenty of company at the trailhead.  Most of that company was a group of really loud ATV riders roaring around on their own separate patch of dirt. 

Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to a couple of humble cyclists pedaling quietly off to one of the best flowing mountain bike trails in Florida.  And that's just the way we like it. 

Yep. 

Quiet.  Low key.  Stealth. 

That's us. 

But once you're in, there's no one around but the critters - and the cars overhead - so whoop and holler all you want.  And you will probably want to - quite a lot!

 

In this section, "The Dance" is on the other side.

One dances over the palmetto roots, that is.

This trail is in the most unlikely of places, on the disturbed land that is the underbelly of two major highways and their exit ramps.  Four miles of well-marked, hard packed singletrack twists and glides through woods and swamp; crossing, and crossing again, under the overpasses. 

bridge abutment

Cross Roads trail is by far, the closest I'll ever get to playing quidditch.  When it's dry, it's pure magic, swoopy and dippy.  And when it's wet, the magic is there, just muddy and slippery. 

By my third time around, even I have stopped shaking, and I am swooping like Harry Potter on a new broomstick.


The trail is constantly in flux.  It's never been the same way twice.  The old teeter totter is gone, and a wooden bridge has replaced the long-ago log crossing.  A few ramps and lots of log piles remain to test your oomph at surprise intervals.  

Sometimes water filled,

and sometimes just filled with prickers.
(Ask me how I know that.) 

 Bulldozers come, and ATVs, but so far the bike singletrack has held it's own quiet ground. 

The trail evolves endlessly with rising waters, hurricanes, or just plain wind. Trees fall, new paths go around. When it floods, new trail appears on higher ground.  When it's dry, new swoops materialize in the gullies.

Dip when dry.  

I don't even know if I should name the mtn bike club that maintains this trail.  Hey, it could be legal by now, for all I know! 

Might not be, though. 

But if you go, give them credit in your heart.  And if you see them there working, be sure to thank them.  Or better yet join them.

They took what would have been wasted land and made it into a mountain bikers dream - wet or dry.



Directions:  On the south side of Okeechobee Rd. (70), find the off-ramp for the turnpike.  There is a dirt road between the off ramp and the Holiday Inn Express.  Take it, heading south for about a half mile, to the trailhead.  Check for signs of legality or non legality and decide to ride accordingly.