Continuation of a popular theme...

I knew I'd been missing something. Beer! In Portland Maine, for the second day in a row, we ran into a couple in a red Volkswagen, wandering around New England just like us. They had a beer-map, with brewery locations listed for the area. We found out that yes, there were many of these in Portland, and yes, we were invited to accompany them. The first place we visited was Allagash, named for a river in northern Maine and specialising in Belgian-style beers.



Allagash bottles their specialty beers in 750 ml bottles with corks. This bad boy does the corkin'.



Beer goggles! Haha get it? I'm hilarious. And stylish.

A block from Allagash was Geary's brewery, which isn't as widely distributed and who's beer I'd never tried. They were closing for the day but agreed to a short tour. It was the best brewery tour I've had! Our guide Steve was not only a brewer but the engineer resposible for laying out the whole place.


Claire and Ravi next to open fermetation tanks at Geary's brewery.


Steve uses a condenser coil to serve us beer from the tank.



Steve next to the hop percolator. Wort is pumped through this thing to mix it with hop juice. Steve was an amazing source of beer knowledge.



Guess which hand is mine? We spent the next few hours hanging out in town, exhausted from the extensive sampling.

We've reached Acadia.

Maine is amazing! It reminds me of the Northern Midwest, if it were on the ocean. That is to say there are lush forests of pine and hardwood, lupines, blueberries, black bears, rolling hills, rock outcroppings, and little lakes hidden everywhere. Andrea always knows I like a place if I try to compare it to Wisconsin, so I'm going to say that the Maine harbor communities remind me of Ashland, Bayfield, and La Pointe. It's a little fancier in some places, and the Maritime atmosphere makes it unique. We've had both lobster and chowder and are going to repeat these experiences. Pictures will be posted soon.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire were beautiful, and we'll post about them later, but the big news is that we just entered the last US state of the tour. It's kind of sad actually. I've been looking forward to the end, and now I'm not so sure. Oh well, at least it's rugged coastline and nature from here on out.

Cthulhu fhtagn!*

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." - Call of the Cthulhu


One of H.P. Lovecraft's homes in Providence.

Everyone who knows me realizes I'm a tremendous geek, so it should be no suprise that we couldn't visit Providence, RI, home of the cult horror fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft, without poking around the dark corners for some other-dimesional creatures or nameless terror. Tragicly there is no historical center or Cthulhu giftshop, but a little googling turned up a map for a Lovecraft walking tour. This made for an entertaining afternoon hike through historic College Hill, the old part of providence where Poe and Lovecraft both hung out and drew inspiration for their scary stories.



Click here for our photo set from the walk.

On of the high-points was eating gigantic sandwiches at a shop on Benefit Street. They had every ingredient listed on chalkboards, overwhelming my hunger-addled brain in the same way the Lovecraftian cosmic horror maddens any mortal who tries to comprehend it. Anyway, here's the sandwich that Andrea ordered.


That's avacado on on there, not a tentacle.

*Cthulhu waits dreaming. I've been so tired from traveling lately that I'd love to join him in the city of R'lyeh for a while.

A good kind of sore.

It was hard to leave New York, but the time had come, so we loaded the bikes this morning and flowed with the sea of Manhattan traffic untill it faded into the Bronx, thinned and stretched into Yonkers, and then we were in Connecticut.



We rode eighty-eight miles between Brooklyn and New Haven, making it the longest day of our trip to date. The continuous sprawl doesn't hurt our speed; banal suburban landscapes urging us along untill we're pacing the traffic. My legs ache like growing pains, or like a good day of running around the lawn as a kid. I have renewed enthusiasm to ride.



Just outside of Stratford my wheel made a sound like a coil of bailing wire had been sucked through the fender. I haven't figured out how, but the blade from a pais of scissors pierced my tire and was rattling against everything as the tube deflated. A tyvek boot solved the problem. I plan to ride this one for the rest of the trip, despite the damage. I've seen numerous pairs of broken scissors on the sholder before this, but the omen has gone unheeded until now. Who leaves broken scissors in the street anyway?

LUPA

Our friend, Shawn, who has been making so many appearances on our blog lately, is an old friend from Chicago. He left us about 3 years ago, moving to New York to work in the Restaurant business. He is currently cooking at Lupa, one of Maria Batalli's restaurants. You know, Mario Batali, one of the food network's celebrity Chefs, the red haired Italian Chef, from Iron Chef America. Although Shawn slaves away 10-12 hour shifts in kitchen, he had never actually eaten there. When he invited us to come along with him, even though we are on a budget, we couldn't refuse.



The full name of the restaurant is Lupa Osteria Romana. I asked Shawn and our server, Elizabeta, what a Roman style Osteria is and they both described it as being a less formal establishment with a bar on one side and a few small tables. One can order a cafe or cappuccino at the bar and perhaps a few small food items as well before sitting down. So in essence, an Osteria is more like a cafe. Lupa, being more formal, resembles more a trattoria or tavern style restaurant, and is an Osteria in name only.

Lupa is located near Washington Park, home of the famous Washington Park Arch. The restaurant itself resides on a small and cozy side street. The atmosphere is warm and earthy. The walls are painted a burnt orange color with a beautiful Mahogany Bar lining the left wall and dark shelves containing their wine selection on the right. The atmosphere is very welcoming and unpretentious.



We decided to make lunch reservations for Friday at 2:30. We made a quick pit stop to pick up some beer before arriving. Shawn said it was customary for fellow coworkers to buy beer for the line cooks when coming to eat as a token of appreciation.

We arrived and Shawn quickly started introducing us to everyone there. The staff was incredibly friendly and very excited to see Shawn come in as a customer. We were seated immediately and the menus came flying out. Shawn and I had discussed how we wanted to go about ordering. I love sampling as much food as possible, but Shawn felt ordering a la carte was better then the sampling menu. We decided to do a la carte family style so we could sample the specific things we wanted. We all agreed the best person to choose the items would be Shawn, since not only is he is intimately involved with menu, which he cooks 5 days a week, but we also felt a little intimidated by the menu which was predominantly in Italian.

The food was served in three courses; the antipasto, the primi (pasta course), and the secondi (the entrée course). Shawn had been telling us how they do all their own butchering and curing of meats, including many different sausages and prosciutto.

For our antipasto course, we ordered the Grande under the carne section, so we could get a sampling of their in house cured meats. The Grande was served with four slices each of Prosciutto Di Parma, Coppa, which is cured pork shoulder, and Salumi, a small round salami. It also came with a bowl of sliced Lingua, which is beef tongue, and finally 2 slices of Testa, also known as headcheese. Beside this, we also ordered Tuna with Cannelini beans, Marinated Eggplant with Mint and Radicchio with Anchovies. In addition to all of this, the chef sent out an Escarole salad with walnuts, red onions and pecorino.



The prosciutto, salumi and coppa were all very traditional. They were good, but nothing out of the ordinary. The Lingua was very good. I have had tongue before and I remember it being very chewy. Lupa's Lingua was very tender with a surprisingly sweet flavor. The tuna had a good flavor but was a little tough and over cooked. My favorite was the marinated eggplant. It had excellent texture being still slightly crisp and the balance between the slightly acidic lemon flavored marinade with fresh taste of the mint with the subtlety of the eggplant was amazing.



I wanted to be open minded about the Testa aka, head cheese. Headcheese is made of the left over portions of meat from the pigs head cooked in Gelatin. I have always heard stories of my Austrian grandfather making headcheese every year when he made sausage. He loved it, but my mother said everyone else in the family hated it. I tried it both on its own and on bread. I just didn't like it. While the flavor of the meat itself was nice and pungent, I couldn't get over the gelatinous consistency or taste. It just felt as though I was eating mucousy fat with meat chunks. I wont be testing out the testa again.

Here I am trying the Testa the first time. You can see how well I'm enjoying it.


For the primi course we sampled three different kinds of pasta dishes.



I first tried the Bucatini All' Amatriciana, which is a long hollow noodle, like a mix of a macaroni and spaghetti noodle. It was served with tomato sauce and a fried meat (the name eludes me) cured similar to prosciutto but made with the cheek of the pig. Ira criticized it for being too heavy, but I thought it was delicious. The salty meat mixed with the sweet of the tomato sauce created an excellent balance. This balance I found to be missing in the next pasta dish, the name of which also eludes me. It was a traditional spaghetti noodle with the same meat as the first pasta dish, this time cooked in an egg cream sauce. The sauce was incredibly rich and savory. Together with the pork, it felt too salty, but was still very good. Lastly, I tried the Linguine and Mussels. This dish was very nice in its simplicity. The sauce was prepared with the liquor of the mussels with just a bit of butter and lemon to give it body. It was served over the linguine with the mussels and a few slices of jalapeno peppers. The peppers gave the flavor just the right zing to keep the taste from being too boring in its simplicity. I felt the sauce and noodles, paired with the muscles for a bit of sweet and the peppers for some zing worked quite harmoniously. Ira, who always prefers hot food, liked this dish the best.



The secondi course, or entrée, we had Saltimbocca and Trout. Saltimbocca, which is made of Veal, prosciutto & sage, literally is translated to “jumps into the mouth”. It was incredibly delicious and rich. The prosciutto giving just the right amount of seasoning and texture to the delicate veal. The trout, which was served whole, fried in a light breading with crushed capers, was a bit of a disappointment. The meat was not as tender, feeling slightly over cooked and definitly under seasoned. The subtle flavor of the fish was nice, but the dish didn't jump into the mouth as the previous dish.

before:


after:


The entrées were accompanied by side dishes of charred asparagus, which were nicely crunchy and fresh, potatoes served in a fried pancake style and sea beans. I had never heard of sea beans before. Sea beans also known as samphire is a type of seaweed. It is naturally very crisp and salty from the seawater, so it was simply served with butter and was really very good.



After all this food, as you can imagine, we all felt pretty destroyed. When Elizabeta came back and introduced us to the desert options we all felt as though we had better pass. However, when Elizabeta came back to the table, she was bearing not the expected bill, but four spoons, which she dispersed around the table with a parting smirk. Next two beautiful dishes appeared at our table. One plate held a white cream custard with a black berry sauce and garnished with fresh black berries. The other plate presented us with chocolate dipped gelato of cherries and truffles, served with a chocolate cherry ganache.





Both were delicious; the first was light and creamy, and the second dish was rich and sumptuous.



Along with these two dishes, we were also brought four large shot glasses holding a white liquid Shawn jokingly referred to as Slurpino. The glasses held a mixture of lemon gelato, Prosecco (an Italian white sparkling wine) and vodka. The sparkling wine gave the gelato a light and crisp taste and the vodka helped tame the sweetness. Marcus, bowed out of eating the deserts due to a lactose intolerance, so I just had to help him finish his drink as well as my own. Shawn particularly was busting the buttons from his shirt, both in pride of the food as well as from being bloated.



By the time the meal was over, 2 1/2 hours had elapsed. My stomach was feeling distended from all the food we ate, and I realized I was feeling pretty tipsy from our final desert, which turned out to be far more alcoholic then it tasted. All in all, we had an amazing meal. I have a tendency of feeling slightly awkward and self-conscious when in a fine dining experience, but having Shawn there to explain everything, made it so easy. Shawn's coworkers were all incredibly friendly and helpful which lent to very comfortable and unpretentious meal. We even got a quick tour of the kitchen afterwards, which was very exciting to me.



Although the bill was the equivalent to the budget of multiple days, it was totally worth it.



Thanks Shawn!

The Dominican Experience

In my previous blog, I spoke of our ride up to Washington Heights neighborhood, which included the getting lost in the Bronx debacle. We weren't just riding for riding sake. We had a higher purpose, food! Shawn was leading us north to meet up with our friend Dana, to sample what turned out to be an amazing Dominican restaurant.



With the help of Dana and her fluent spanish speaking skills, we navigated our way through a menu full of Caribbean tasties such as tostones (fried plantains) and mofongo con purco (a mountain of mashed plantains and pork). Being from a tropical island, they love plantains! Their true specialty is pollo (chicken). We ordered a whole chicken, roasted rotisserie style as well as sides of ensalade de aguacate and rice and beans. We drank Presidente Pilsner Cerveza. The bottle reminded me of the only beer we had in Ecuador, which had a copper label reading only Pilsner. You could get Heineken some places if you were lucky, but in most places the only beer was Pilsner.



Everything was delicious. The beans were left whole with a more liquidy sauce. The chicken was tender and falling from the bone. It was served with a lime garlic sauce, which complimented the well-seasoned meat with a tangy sweet and sour zing.



The tostones were fried just enough to be crunchy but not too greasy. The mofongo was a happy medium between having a nice mashed texture without being too starchy or too slimy. It was served with an excellent slightly sweet tomato based pork sauce, which complimented the more savory flavor of the fried pork and plantains.


(Although Dana appears to be disgusted by the Mofongo, she is really disgusted that we haven't started eating it yet.)

We had a great time. With Dana ordering for us, we were saved the awkwardness of attempting to communicate in broken spanish. We ate family style which enabled us to have more or less of anything we particularly liked or disliked. I ate everything with gusto and felt totally destroyed afterwards.



The price of five hungry youngsters eating to the point of destruction, all the above mentioned foods with two rounds of cervaza only cost $10 each. What a deal! Especially when you consider, this is New York!!!

The Malecon Restaurante on the corner of 175th and Broadway gets a happy pat on the pocket book, a contented growl from my overworked intenstinal tract and three delightful yum yums from my tongue.

Afterwards, Dana took us to a benift for the Washington Heights Cultural Center. Their space was a very interesting multi-level gallery space.



Musical performances where being conducted on the first floor and a display of local artists photography and paintings were visible in the lofted second floor space.



We drank more cerveza and mingled, but did not stay too long because our huge dinner was causing a food coma induced sleepiness.

City Riding is Like a Video Game

Riding in the NY IS SO FUN!! Video game action. You've got to maneuver through the streets with cars all around you, pedestrians coming at you from all sides, dudes pushing falafel stands in the bike lane, pedicabs (bicycle powered cabs), all while rubernecking to the left and right to view all the sights.



New York drivers are not that rude, they are just really aggressive. In Chicago and elsewhere around the country (especially on the west coast), if you inch into an intersection, and get in front of a car, they will always stop, with different levels of resentment, to let you pass. They don't want to hit you. Here, you can inch in front of a car, and they just keep coming. You have to back off or get out of the way. So, it's not as easy to run red lights here.



Yesterday we rode the whole length of Manhattan from the lower east side, before the numbered streets begin, all the way to 185th street in Washington Heights, the neighborhood at the tip of Manhattan island located above Harlem.



We got lost at one point, and ended up in the Bronx. How do you get lost on an island and end up getting off the island. Well, I don't really have an answer for you. But when your friend (Shawn)



who is new to NY is leading the caravan, and gets directions by asking "which side is the water supposed to be on" and the answer is the left, and we are on an island surrounded by water on both sides, you know you will end up in the Bronx...the south Bronx. we asked some policemen there, where "Broadway" was, and they point back the way we came, laughing.



"white kids gettin lost in the Bronx" ha hahhahhaaa. They gave us excellent directions, and we got back on track.

So yesterday we got to ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan to Harlem to the Bronx (accidentally) back to Harlem and then up to Washington Heights. On the way back, Shawn and I rode along riverside drive on the west side of the island and got great views of the George Washington Bridge and Jersey Shore.

Its Impossible To Go To Bed Early In New York

We've been in New York now for a week. Its really gone by fast. We've been having a lot of fun just hanging out with different people. We have a bunch of friends who have moved here from Chicago or other parts of the Midwest to hang out with, and they have introduced us to some of their friends so we've never been at a loss for something to do or someone to hang out with. At first, this fact was allowing myself to feel really cool. Last night I met this girl from the UK who was here traveling by herself. She was telling me what a great time she was having, how much she was doing and how many cool people she kept meeting. This made me reflect that there is always something to do in New York. While we are lucky to have friends who live here, we would still be busy little bees going around seeing all kinds of amazing stuff even if we didn't know anybody because you just can't get around it. Everywhere you look, there are masses of people and something going on. This is a very colorful city both literally and metaphorically.



This is a fast city.


a view of 5th avenue

Although we've been doing some touristy things, we've been mostly just hanging out. We've been staying with Nora and Jeff, who have been amazingly hospitable and have let us crash at their house all week. We generally have a rule which we instated at the beginning of the trip that we do not stay in any one place longer then 5 days. It seemed 5 days was the number when the welcome started to wear out. Our hosts would change subtly, becoming slightly less gracious for wanting their regular life back without our shit all over their house, and we ourselves would start to get antsy and want to get back on the road. After making this rule, we have only broken it twice since. Once in San Francisco where we stayed a week with Trevor and Camille and now in New York. Both couples, Trevor and Camille and Nora and Jeff have been incredibly amazing to us in terms of allowing us full reign of their homes and personal freedom to come and go at will. Both cities are so amazing, I don't see how anyone with the ability to stay as long as possible could leave before a weeks end.



Nora and Jeff had a really fun BBQ last weekend. Nora and Jeff both being from Wisconsin, had gone home in the past couple of weeks and brought back brats. Of course to us Midwesterners, Bratwurst is a staple. Here in NY, it is more of a delicacy. So they invited friends over, fired up the coals and spent a lazy afternoon cooking up the imported brats as well as other food items different friends brought over.



A massive downpour could have disrupted our entire day, but Ira came to the rescue and erected a tarp structure across the patio and it saved the day (and night). Thank god he had so much practice on this trip, he has finally become truly proficient.



We got together with our friend Katie for an afternoon of drinking beer.



Later in the night, she took us to her friends birthday party which was being hosted in a daycare center.



We drank many beer and then raced around on small trikes. It was fun. I won both races, although due to a drunken race official, first place was awarded to the person who came in dfl (last place) so I was robbed of one of my trophies. Oh well. I still beat Ira both times and that's all that counts.



We've hooked up with our friend Anita a couple of times, which is always nice. I love hanging out with her because she is very calm and this helps me to relax. Paticularly in this frenzied city, she takes everything in stride. We've been hanging out at her apartment, which she is lucky enough to have to herself, as well as on her roof. She has a great view of the Chrystler building which I think is the most beautiful sky scraper especially by night.
Our goooood buddy Marcus also came up from Richmond to hang out and is staying with Anita.



We've also been hanging out with our friend Shawn a lot. He is an old friend from Chicago. Ira and he used to wrench together at Rapid Transit. We've been riding around town and eating lots of food which I will tell you about in other posts because it would take up too much space here.



All in all, I heart the big apple.