Trash Talkin

This weeks Mike vs Jenny weight loss challenge took on a whole new twist
of competitiveness. In the past the weekly winner would get something
trivial for their prize such as being the one to choose the Friday night
DVD but this week the stakes got even larger.

On Saturday mornings we do the dreaded weekly house cleaning and the
worst part of the routine is mopping the floors. Jenny and I hate it so
much we usually do the mopping together. So this week the winner gets
out of their mopping duties.

I know this doesn't sound like much but the thought of getting out of
mopping has brought out the competitiveness in both of us. In fact, the
trash talking at our house has been kicked up to the level of the fellas
playing street ball.

"I'm gonna lose so much weight I'm going to have to run around in the
shower just to get wet"

"You mopping skills are so bad I'll probably have to come down and
supervise while you mop ALL BY YOURSELF"

And the list goes on and on.

Jenny even went so far as to threaten to make me a cake on Thursday
morning and leave it for me to eat. Lucky for me she didn't follow
through.

This new motivation actually helped in my cycling because I started
doing intervals again on the trainer this week. Not much fun but very
effective when you get out on the road and have to deal with rollers.

Well, this morning was the weigh in of truth and I lost a pound. The
problem with that is Jenny also lost a pound so we tied.

We probably shouldn't do a double or nothing because I might resort to
the sugar free jello diet like the fat cyclist.

That wouldn't be pretty.

The Worlds Best Pancakes

A couple of weeks ago I posted a list of “You know you’re a cyclist when…” which included

You know you’re a cyclist when you mentally log every meal as "good fuel" or "bad fuel"

Today I’m going to share with you a secret recipe for some of the best pre ride fuel known to man.

Whole Wheat Banana Pancakes!!!

These are so good they could fuel an entire ride over the Alpe d'Huez and back without even breaking a sweat.

Rumor has it that Chris Carmichael used these pancakes as a secret weapon in training Lance Armstrong and the UCI currently has these pancakes under investigation as a performance enhancing substance. Coincidence? I don’t think so!

This recipe will take you about 15 minutes to assemble but it’s worth the work.

Ingredients you’ll need.
2.5 cups of Whole Wheat Flour (no, this isn’t bleached white flour it’s coarse whole wheat. We are weird so we grind our own but you should be able to find this at the grocery store. The coarser the better.)
2 cups of Milk
1 Egg
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil or Apple Sauce if you’re ultra healthy
2 Tbsp Molasses or Honey (Molasses is way better but Honey will also work)
2 Bananas (new or old and freckled, it doesn’t matter)
1 Tbsp Cinnamon

Next get out two medium size bowls. One for the wet ingredients and another for the dry ones.

Put the Whole Wheat, Baking Soda, Baking Powder and Salt into one of the bowls. Once you have all of the ingredients in there stir it up with a whisk. Trust me you’ll want to do this. Clumps of Baking Soda in a pancake don’t taste very good.

Action Photo of the Salt Addition

Getting out the clumps

Now, add the wet ingredients to the other bowl in this order. Milk, Egg, Oil, and Molasses. If you add the ingredients in this order the Molasses won’t stick to your tablespoon because it just had oil in it.

Once you have all of the wet ingredients in the bowl mix them up really good with a whisk. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl good because the molasses tends to collect down there like it’s afraid of the sun.

Another action photo - high whisk cadence is important

Now, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl and mix it up.


You’re just about there except for the bananas.

Peel the bananas and place them on a plate. By the way, Jenny just informed me that unpeeling a banana is not what I thought it was. Who knew, I guess if you were to unpeel a banana you would have to put the peels back on then duct tape it back together. I suppose unpeel ranks up there with unthaw and irregardless. Good thing I didn't put that in this post.


Now take a fork and mash the bananas up until they are the consistency of slime. Don't worry though it's a good slime. Once you’ve got a good pile of banana slime on your plate add the cinnamon to it and stir it into the banana slime. At this point it won’t look very good but it does wonders for the pancakes.



Now slide your banana/cinnamon slime off of the plate into your pancake batter and mix it up really good.

You’re ready to cook the best pancakes in the world just like you would any other pancake. I cook them at 350 degrees on an electric skillet.




This recipe will make 12 - 4 inch pancakes.

If you get industrious and make these before people get up at your house they will wonder downstairs and ask you what smells like banana bread. These pancakes smell incredible and taste just as good.

Here are a couple of variations in eating them.

Traditional: Topped with butter and maple syrup. This is good any time and I’m sure this is how your grandmother would have served them.

Ultra Healthy: Topped with applesauce. Still tastes pretty darn good and cuts the calories way down over the syrup route.

Maple Bar: Topped with peanut butter and syrup. This doesn’t sound very good but when peanut butter and maple syrup are mixed together they give your pancakes a maple bar flavor. This is so good you’ll be hooked for life after one bite.

These pancakes really rock and rank up there with PB&Js as the best cycling food ever. You should give them a try when you have some time before a ride. I also make them on Sunday mornings while the family is getting ready for church. For some reason I have an incredible urge to go for a bike ride every Sunday while I’m at church. I’m sure it’s the pancakes.



If you end up trying these pancakes leave me a message and let me know how they worked out.

Enjoy.

Best Ride of the Year (So Far)

Here's my recipe for the best day of cycling in 2009 so far.

Change sunglass lenses from amber to charcoal
Take off back fender
Leave thermal underwear in their drawer
Wear just a t-shirt under a light jacket
Bake at 55 degrees under clear blue skies until legs are burned to a crisp

This time of year riding in the sun without even a hint of rain is quite the anomaly but that is what I got to do last Friday and it was great.

Since Jenny had commitments in the afternoon I headed out for a solo ride around Granite Falls. This is a great rural ride with plenty of hills and not near enough descents. Funny how it always works out that way. The conditions were so great that I let out a couple of “Wooooooo-Whooooos” just for good measure on my ride. I just couldn't control myself.

About 20 miles into the ride I was passed by another cyclist which at the time really startled me because I was the only person around for miles and deep in cycling thought when he passed me. I hate to be passed so I attempted to at least catch up with but my legs just wouldn’t obey (I’m working on that). To make matters worse about 5 miles after he passed me he passed me again. No he didn't lap me, he stopped to fill up his water bottles at a park on the side of the road and I noticed him as I rode passed the park so I knew he was going to pass me again. I felt a lot like the lone breakaway rider sensing defeat as the peloton bears down on you. He was so much faster than me I knew he was going to pass me again. So, I had to just wait for the imminent pass to happen. At least he gave me a nod of approval as made his move.

Toward the end of my ride I started to run out of gas. Luckily, I had a gel in my seat wedge so once I sucked it down I was good to go for the rest of the ride. Gels work like magic and if you have the right flavor they are also magically delicious. I had a strawberry which isn’t my favorite bit it did the trick. I haven’t bonked on a ride in a long time. It’s amazing what you forget when you haven’t done a training ride in a while. I guess that’s why they call them training rides.


Animals Spotted
Cows
Sheep
Squires
Coyotes
Dogs
Cats
Horses

None of them chased me!!!

Miles Ridden: 42
Elevation Gain: 1782 feet

The Power to Ignore

Take a look at the picture above and try to guess what is going on. From the looks of it you might think that any one of the following situations is taking place to my daughter.

Bracing for an earthquake
Migraine headache and double earache
Trying to block out her siblings while they attempt to serenade her to sleep
Practicing the duck and cover maneuver in case of a nuclear attack

Any one of those choices would have been a pretty good guess but you would have still been wrong. Here’s the scenario in the picture.

Our house has enough bedrooms for each of our kids to have their own room which they enjoy but when it comes to bedtime they just can’t stand sleeping alone. Maybe that means that they actually like each other or I guess it could have something to do with the boogie man. The jury is still out on that one. They sleep in each others rooms so much my older daughter keeps a mattress under her bed so she can pull it out for her siblings. A couple of weeks ago my daughters spent the night together and as my older daughter has to get up a lot earlier than my younger one she set her alarm and turned it up really loud.

When the alarm when off my older daughter smacked it around until it quit making noise and headed off to take a shower. Little did she know that she had only hit the snooze button and that the blaring alarm would go off again in 8 minutes. After the 8 minutes of peace and quiet my younger daughter was startled awake by the alarm. At this point she had two options.

1. She could have reached up and turned the alarm off.
2. She could have just ignored the alarm and tried to sleep through it.

Being the youngest child in a family of 6 she did what came natural to her. She curled up in a ball, covered her ears, and ignored the alarm. She wasn’t able to go back to sleep because it was too loud but she did a pretty good job of ignoring it.

At the time, I was working downstairs and I could hear the alarm all the way down there. I thought for sure someone would turn it off but it went on and on. After several minutes of listening to the blaring alarm the picture above is what we saw.

It still makes me laugh that my youngest daughter could somehow ignore the alarm clock for all that time curled up in a ball. I guess being the youngest child gives you great powers of ignoring things that are bothering you.

She’s got some skills!!!!

Tour of California - Rain Advice

This week is the Tour of California bike race. Bike racing is by far my favorite sport to watch on TV. Johan Bruyneel described it best when he compared bike racing to a multi day rolling chess match. It certainly is a chess match but this week there has been an added element of difficulty with all of the intense rain that the riders have had to endure. Who would have thought that rain would be a huge factor of the Tour of California.

As someone who tolerates rain 9 months out of the year I have some advice for Lance, Levi, Thor, Mark, and Floyd on how to read the weather forecasts and what all of the different rain variations really mean. I’ve also added some possible racing tactics just for fun.

Drizzle
This is a term for a very light, fine rain. Not really enough to get you very wet but just enough to be really annoying after hours in the saddle. Racing tactic advice, convince your cycling foes in the peleton that the drizzle collecting on their bikes is adding needless weight and the only way to shed this weight is to stop and squeegee their bikes off. When they stop to squeegee make a run for it.

Showers
This is your normal run of the mill rain but it comes and goes in spurts. This rain usually lasts for half an hour or so. Racing tactic advice, sneak up behind your rival teams and tie knots in the sleeves of their rain jackets. When the rain hits and the riders put on their rain jackets you can make a surprise attack. Although pro cyclist can ride incredibly well without hands the surprise of not being able to put their jackets on all the way should gain you at least 30 seconds on your rivals.

Rain
In contrast to showers, rain is steadier and normally falls constantly for hours on end. Racing tactic advice, since no racer would ever have a fender on his bike it’s important to position yourself in front of your chief rival and spray him in the face with rain water. While employing this tactic the racer should seek out as many muddy puddles as possible thus adding dirt freckles to his rivals face. It’s just the right thing to do and it will make for an unforgettable interview after the race.

Well, that basically sums up the different types of rain that the riders will encounter on the Tour of California. I’m confident that if these race tactics are employed your team will not only win but it will be a tour that will be talked about for years to come.

Some Times You Just Get Lucky

Last Sunday morning before breakfast I wandered out the front door and snapped this picture from our driveway of the sunrise. Honestly, I didn't alter this picture with Photoshop and it really didn't look this great in real life. I think I just got lucky. I wish this happened more often.

A Great Valentines Day

Yesterday morning Jenny surprised me with the Worlds Best Cake for Valentines day. If you haven't had this cake before you really shouldn't try it because no other cake will ever compare to it once you've tried its yummy goodness. You'll be ruined for life. Once I started eating it I couldn't stop. Today the only thing left in the pan are some crumbs and I'm really tempted to start on them next.

We also went for a bike ride later in the afternoon. It was one of the best Valentine Days ever.

I would have needed to ride a double century to work off all of the cake I ate during the day.

I'm thinking that Jenny is going to clean up in the Mike vs Jenny weekly weight loss challenge. That was a shroud move Jenny. I'm just hoping Mama Mia isn't involved in the prize winnings.