The Strange Tale of Solomon Jones

A new story to go with the new semester (which I am not participating in because nyah, I don't wanna). Also because I am lazy and now it looks like I'm going to have graduate, low GPA or no. Which...is terriyfing. Absolutely terrifying.

But on to the fic. This began as a very late night chat fic with the Captain as we killed time waiting for Steam to load. He needed a haircut and I was feeling exceedingly silly. Enjoy it in the spirit in which it was written.

--*--*--*--

On the morning of February the 23rd, Solomon Jones opens his eyes and curses. He cannot see, can barely breathe, and the sound of his alarm clock is unmistakably muffled. The Curse of the Poof has flared up again. Solomon Jones staggers across the room, blinded by the Curse. It is flaring up in shorter intervals, especially since he had started seeing the Mad Korean for an antidote. He doesn’t have a choice, though. Not after what Ines Hernandez did to him the last time he had seen her for the cure.

Whole Wheat Soda Bread & Other Problems

In the interest of keeping up with my bread-making (and my utter failure at it) I took a few steps backwards in the Bread Zone and went back to the basics.

In this case, soda bread.

For the unitiated (and me) soda bread is pretty much one of the easiest breads you can make outside of the boxed bread machine ones. Most of the ease comes from the fact that it takes no yeast, so there's none of that horrible waiting for the dough to rise and then the punching down and the kneading... Possibly I am too impatient to make good bread, but I digress.

Anyways, soda bread is ostensibly The Easiest Bread since all you need is the ingredients, a baking sheet, and an oven. Of course, the first time I made soda bread it was both crumbly and far too hard for human consumption. Don't ask me how I accomplished this as I have no idea.

But this time I followed the instructions found in Paul Hollywood's 100 Great Breads, combined all of my ingredients until there was no free-floating flour in the bowl (a process that took far too long so I added more milk...oops?), made a ball of bread, smushed it down, cut a cross in the top and popped that sucker in the oven for the prescribed 25 minutes.

In retrospect, substituting sour cream for buttermilk may have turned out to be a mistake as the reaction between the baking powder and buttermilk is a main part of the dough but...

No bread I make can be anything but fraught with problems, and this one was no different.

I exulted at my bread dough looking like bread dough as it went in the oven and retired to my laptop with a mug of tea and Bruce Springsteen's new album.

An untold amount of time later, my dad popped his head in the room and asked me how much time the bread was supposed to cook for.

"25 minutes," I said, removing one of my earphones. "The time left should be on the microwave timer, since I didn't hear it beep..."

My father cocked one eyebrow at me.

"The microwave says 23:03 and it hasn't moved."

I felt color leave my face, jumped out of my chair and ran for the oven. There was my bread, looking like bread. I know the rule about impatient bakers and undercooked foods, but I had to do something, so I popped the oven open and poked the bread.

The problem with bread is, unlike a cake where you can poke it with a knife, there really isn't a way to know when it's done. So I shoved my finger into one of the cracks and deemed it "uncooked...probably" and gave it eight more minutes.

When the alarm dinged this time, I went and removed my bread from the oven. It didn't look any different from the last time I checked but it was slightly less squishy.

Somewhere in my life I must have read something about bread because, unbidden, the thought came to me, "Isn't the way you test to make sure bread is done to knock on it? If it sounds hollow it's done..." Since I had nothing else to go on, I knocked on my bread.

...I'm not sure if it's true advice, but knocking on it gave me a relatively hollow sound so I let it sit on its cooling rack.

It turned out a little crumbly, a little dense, and a little saltless, but overall I can say this is my first succesful bread.

My brain decided to take this slight success and run with it, so I have a baguette and a brioche lined up to try tomorrow.

...oh boy.

On Baking, Bread, and The Precious

I've been baking.

On its own, that statement is not a cause for concern. Or rather, not much concern.

I've been baking since I was very little, at first helping my mom out, and then making a total mess out of the kitchen All By Myself. A few years ago, however, I started baking in earnest. This is right around the same time I started knitting again as well as sewing. In all honesty, I think I probably picked up handicrafts again as a tribute to my grandmother who passed away last year and also as a form of procrastination. Regardless, I do a little of everything but baking is one of my new loves.

I have slowly been acquiring gizmos and whatsits over the course of a few years and I have an interesting collection now...I think. Some Williams-Sonoma cookie cutters - the Marvel superheroes faces and the Star Wars vehicles - some pretty nifty food colors, all sorts of muffin tins, a cookie-scoop, and The Precious.

What is The Precious, you ask? Why my good fellow:

Me and The Precious at my birthday last year.

The Precious is the 6 quart capacity, bright red,  KitchenAid Stand Mixer I received for my birthday last year. This year one of my goals is to add the tengwar found on the One Ring to it in order to more properly connote its name, but until I do, that's just what I call it.

C'mon, you knew exactly what I was referring to when I said the tengwar. ...^^it's this.

So of course, upon receiving The Precious the first thing I did was baptize it in mocha and chocolate.

I'm not going to lie, having a stand mixer is a marvelous step up from using a hand mixer and my own brute strength. Paramount among the awesomeness is the ability to leave the mixer running while I melt/whip/add things. It just smooths everything out. ...I love my mixer, okay?

The problem with the Precious is it doesn't really help me with bread. I've decided that baking a decent loaf of bread is right up there with making a passable Apple Pie on "Things I Want to Do" but it's been...difficult. To that end I picked up a copy of 100 Great Breads from the Barnes and Nobles at school when I went to the bookstore to buy socks...long story...

Unfortunately, the man is a master baker and I just started making bread without the Bread Machine so mine came out all lumpy and weird. :| Going to try soda bread until I can make passable loaves.

Anyhoo. Because I made A Commitment to this blog and its general upkeep, I've decided to go ahead and start keeping better track of the things I bake. I won't make any promises as to the state of the pictures I'll take (synching my phone for pictures is enough of a hassle) but I will be doing more upkeep. And as soon as I figure out how, there will be a nifty "Baking" tab at the top of the blog where these posts will be housed.

But for tiding over, here are some pictures of stuff I've baked lately.

(Left to Right) Apple Pie, Vanilla cupcakes w/ chocolate comic book sayings, Kahlua cookie bowl with ice-cream, mocha cupcakes, apple cinnamon muffins, Star Wars cookies and blue milk.

What I've Been Up To

I have been working on Part Deux of what I'm referring to in my head as "A Week in the Life" since...well pretty much since I put up Part the First in...(checks blog) oh my God, January?! Yikes. In my paltry defense I have been having a doozy of a time with the ending to Part the Second (tentatively titled "Monday's Minotaur" which...yeah). I've re-written the pivotal transition scene five times and I'm still not satisfied. It starts out on a bus and I want to keep the action on the bus in order to keep the story condensed, but (in typical Cell fashion) the characters have gotten all carried away and now want to do things like "walk around the city" and "pretend they're detectives" and...ugh.

So, I'm onto my sixth attempt at finishing this piece and I am thisclose to just crashing the bus they're on and being done with it. "Rocks fall. Everyone dies."

In the meantime I've been doing other things, paramount among those was the reformatting of my computer which was infected with Loki's Own Virus and needed to be completely wiped in order to be useable. The fun part about the "Google Redirect Virus" (also known as "Alureon" which is an awesome name for a craptastic thing) is that it doesn't let you use Google. You go onto the site, it doesn't recognize your Google ID, then when you click on links, it takes you to some scam pages. The virus also disguises itself as a driver and hides in your registry, pushing out little tendrils of evil into your machine and just really mucking everything up.

So. Full-on reformat it was. A three day process. But it's done now and I can finally get back to work. Or, you know, as close to work as I ever get. So, rather, Endless Procrastination and WoW.

What I was doing prior to deciding I needed to write something this Spring Break.

I've also been watching movies and TV Shows because, why not. So. A running list:

•  Chronicle: the found-footage movie about teenagers getting super powers and then Screwing Everything Up. I saw this with the Captain on Valentine's Day this year and it was very, very good. I thought I was getting tired of the found footage movie but this one was masterfully done and the story was so engrossing that I was riveted the entire time. Although (spoiler) I was kinda upset that the black guy died first...as usual. He looked like the famous Jett Jackson so, bummer.
• Sherlock: the BBC series with Benedict "Voice of Smaug" Cumberbatch and Martin "I'm F-in' Bilbo" Freeman. So amazing. They've thrown Sherlock Holmes into the modern era complete with Google searches and cellphones and all the problems those bring to a retelling of Sherlock Holmes. Yet the raport between Watson and Holmes is excellent and the show shines even as it exists in the murky shadows of London's streets. Plus:

Look at this excitement. A murder's just been announced, after all! ;)

• Being Human: the BBC version. I watched the first three seasons of it on Netflix last year while I was wracked with insomnia and enjoyed it tremendously. The show is pretty much everything I like wrapped up into one foul-mouthed, gory show. Urban supernatural? I'm all over it. Well-acted? Done. Character development and plot-driven story-telling? And how. While season 4 is a completely different animal (now there's a Prophet Child and Plans for World Domination) at its heart, even with a new cast, there's still just enough of that "three supernatural friends try to make it in a world that doesn't believe in them" that I'll keep watching. And there's the fact that it's very often hilarious:


• 



• The Woman in Black: I saw this in the theater with the Captain and I'm pretty sure I gave him a bruise. I don't scream in scary movies, instead I gasp and cut off the circulation of whomever I happen to be sitting next to. When Bilbo turns into evil, troll Bilbo in Fellowship of the Ring, I squeezed my brother so hard, he had little finger-shaped bruises on his thigh for days. But yes, this movie was everything I like in a horror movie - it had the Victorian gothic sensibility, the creeping fog, the over-bearing air of Evil and the threat of Terror around every corner. Plus a few fun mind games and creepy children. Mixed into all of this was a more modern horror element and the mix of the traditional and the new worked together to really make this movie absolutely wonderful. I'd watch it again. Preferably with the lights on, though.
• Downton Abbey: oh this show. I'm so addicted and I have my mom, sister, and dad hooked on it too. With a little time and judicious application of the war scenes, I'm sure I can get my brother into it, too. Little did I know when I heard the guild whispering of it on Thursday nights that this show would take over my brain as it has. Attempting to describe it is like trying to describe that book Ishmael. The one about the talking gorilla? You say that and people automatically tune out even though the book is excellent. Explaining that it's essentially a soap opera set at the turn of the 20th century in an English manor house and what happens to the family and the servants is a really good way to turn people off. But. It's amazing. First season's on Netflix. :) Also? Dame Maggie Smith. You can watch for her alone:
• 
• 
• The Adventures of TinTin: I missed the first part of this movie, but I really loved the part I did see. It's so pretty and the story is rollicking and I just had so much fun. Completely awesome. I'll have to procure it at some point in the future so I can see how it starts, but regardless, it was really entertaining.
• Immortals: I have a color-theory about this movie that is very long and needs its own blog post to describe, but I enjoyed it. A gorgeous movie in the slow-mo style of 300 and that ilk. But though the story isn't quite up to par, it's certainly worth watching for the pretty. (And the color theory) (And what they're saying about man and bestiality and the horror of war). Umm... I only enjoyed this movie because I analyzed the heck out of it, apparently...

I've also been to the ballet to see the ballet I'm named for ("Giselle") and now I want fanfiction...I know, I'm a horrible person. And, in other news, the 6 Nations Rugby Tournament is back. I'm probably going to get around to writing out the rules for those in my family who refuse to believe it has any.

So that's what's been occurring in my life these past few months. I am utterly failing at New Year's Resolution number 3 (keep to a blog-writing schedule) but I'm going to do my very best to do better.

Until next time when I'll (hopefully, please God) be bringing you Part Deux of The Story That Isn't Working.

Back I go... to the pain...I'll let Elijah speak for me:

Jason Stenham & the Tuesday Unicorn

Finally, finally wrote something. I might...at some point... write up a thing about the crushing depression I suffered last year and how that made me just drag myself around the house in Despair and Angst and Nothing Good came of it. But! It's a new year and a new season and new things have happened and
I.
Wrote.
Something.

My God, it's not even an analysis of the works of late American authors. It's honest to God fic.

Yay!!

Click the link below for the story.

Just watch this, okay? You won't regret it...

This is an absolutely gorgeous short film that manages to be heart-breaking, beautiful, and about the wonders of technology all at the same time.

But just watch:

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

The Sparkly Underwear of Life: A Metaphor

I am wearing sparkly, orange underwear today.  

Bear with me, I swear I’m going somewhere with this. 

I am wearing sparkly, orange underwear today and they improve my mood. 

Let me back this up. 

When you’re young, you do things because they make you happy. Like…running through your backyard in a bathing suit covered in mud just because it feels awesome, or listening to ELO on repeat because the lyrics tickle that happy place that resides just east of your heart but above your belly-button. 

Stuff like that. 

When you get a little older (I am saying this relatively because I still listen to “Mr. Blue Sky” on excessive repeat) that turns into “silly stuff” that has to be “left behind” because it’s not “seemly” (and apparently we are all also straight out of Regency England. Again, bear with me). 

Here’s where the underwear come in.  

It’s an old trick us gals learn right around the time life starts getting a little impossible: even if everything sucks today, at least you know you’re wearing cute undaroos. The point isn’t for anyone to see them, it’s for You. Capital “y” and everything. You know that underneath it all, you’re garbed in the protective power of Captain Planet panties or perhaps the sexy, lacy filigree that makes a lot of women stand straighter in their pencil-skirts. If we are wearing awesome undergarments, we can’t get brought all the way down. 

So today, my sparkly orange underpants kept the dismal qualities of Tuesday a nice distance from my brain. Even when things were going wrong - spreadsheets not opening, the SSA giving me a hard time over the phone, people not returning email - even with all that going on in the background, I knew that beneath my sensible brown slacks there was a glittery surprise that no one but me knew about. A brightly-colored, anti-corporation set of undies that laid down a cover fire of Awesome on the Suck that was my day. 

So. Sparkly, ruffly, crazy-colored underwear are what do it for me, but this is a trick I think everyone should utilize.  

What is your personal secret-weapon against the doldrums of life? Is it a cat gif that you hide on your desktop, taking a peek at it when things get unbearable? Is it the Hershey’s Kiss at the bottom of your coffee mug? Perhaps you wear a set of neat socks to work to stave off the impending cloud of Corporate Doom.  

Whatever it is, always remember to have your “sparkly underwear” in that Toolbox those corporate types are so eager to have you bring places. Sure, bring patience and understanding and a knowledge of Windows Office Suite. But don’t forget your metaphorical panties, because trust me, they make getting through the day a lot easier sometimes.

Sitting is Killing You

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Let's Talk About Rugby

Rugby might be more fun to watch than American football. I'm sorry, America. Really I am.

In the scrum of my heart, I will always hold a special place for the game who's rules I learned at my mother's knee (American football...it's a complicated story). But learning about Rugby slowly over the course of the BBC's coverage of the 6 Nations tournament this year has really opened my eyes to the awesomeness of the game.

Before BBC America's coverage this year, my only exposure to rugby was listening to my cousin back out of our WoW raids because he had to go to his roommate's rugby games. And there was the one time we stumbled on a game in progress in Stanley Park in Vancouver...but that ended... interestingly...

Anyways, BBC America did us all a favor this year and played some of the games for us Yanks. What a treat.

The captains for this year's 6 Nations Tournament

My main problem with American football has always been that the game just takes way too long. The players spend a lot of time standing around on the field, waiting for the game to start, or restart, or for a referee to explain a penalty, or for the kicker to get his stuff together, or for an injured player to get up, or for the quarterback to make up his mind.... Basically there's a lot of standing around.

This is what a football game looks like. People standing on the field.

I've always wished that football games would just play all the way through. Rugby does this. None of the 6 Nations games I watched this year went over their 80 minute running time. The players roughed around on the field for a 40 minute half, took a break, and then finished up with another 40 minute half. 80 minutes of non-stop action. Beautiful.

Even when there are injured players on the field, the game doesn't stop, they just play around them.

Rugby is essentially the brutal older brother of American Football. The brother that doesn't screw around with protective gear or elaborate rules, he just likes to pound on people and run around with a ball. The first game of rugby I watched had a guy jump in the air and put his cleats in another player's face. The cleated guy was bleeding all over the place as they walked him off the field, the game continuing behind him, and the player who did the kicking? Kept going and I'm pretty sure he scored.

Cleat. To. The. Face.

The reined in feeling of American football is a detriment to the sport. These are powerful men who should be able to bludgeon each other. The game is essentially an evolution of the gladiatorial sports where people used to kill each other in front of crowds. It's stylized war on the field. But it's a war with its teeth removed, hampered by the addition of so many rules, so many penalties, and so many pads.

So many.

Rugby is the less evolved version of this, its basic features apparent in our dearly beloved NFL, but its evolution seems to have stopped right after "killing is wrong" but before "let's put on so many pieces of plastic we no longer feel the hits."

If this seems to be a disservice to our football players, it's because it is. If our players ran at each other during a kick-off instead of away from each other, I think we'd be closer to the game's potential. But right now watching a game of professional football is just watching grown men who are being paid a lot of money run around encased in plastic. Sometimes they get to touch the ball. Most often they stand there and watch as the ball is set up for another down. And another. And another. The monotony is tiring and ultimately boring.

At least in rugby everyone jumps on the man with the ball and when the ball moves to the next guy, it starts over, a slow painful crush of men making its way down the field. But at least it's a crush of men in constant motion. And their little shorts are a lot cuter than those football cropped leggings of awful.

See? Shorts.

Not that there's nothing wrong with rugby. It's really disorienting to watch what seems to be a slapdash game when you're used to the slow march of a professional football game. The announcers, rather than explain what's going on, seem to just comment on the team's standings or on what the referee has said in the past rather than give poor, clueless me an idea as to the strategy of what's going on or even just an overview.

I learned more from the few post-show reviews tailored to us American viewers than from watching each of the games in its entirety.

Ultimately, I won't turn down watching a game of football. It's a part of my heritage and I do like that I at least know what's going on. But after the season is done, I will definitely turn over to the rugby league and watch as men pummel each other down the field.

Plus, the eye candy is so much better when they're not wearing helmets. :)

BzzAgent Review: CoverGirl Lip Perfection

I recently joined BzzAgent and got my first free sample, CoverGirl's new Lip Perfection line of lipsticks. I got two colors: Fervor and Sweetheart.

Fervor is the color I requested as it's the one closest to my own lip color. I don't often wear lipstick (gloss is more my speed... chapstick is even closer) so I was excited to try it.

Here's my sample stick. It lives in my bag with the chapstick, I like it so much.

Overall, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the quality, color-last, and even taste of this lipstick. If I apply it in the morning, the color lasts all the way through lunch and is pretty much still there even after I eat. And maybe I am new to the world of lipstick, but the fact that the lid clicks into place is awesome. Checking the price on Google, it looks like they're going for around $5 which is a steal for a lipstick that works really well.

The CoverGirl claim, that you will have more beautiful lips after 7 days, is the only thing I haven't really been able to confirm. I have been wearing the lipstick consistently, but, like all lipsticks I wear, I've found that ultimately my lips dry out and crack leading me back to my gloss as opposed to reapplying Fervor. I don't know if that's just a by-product of my stupid-dry skin or if I'm the 1 out of 10 the claim isn't true for, but this isn't enough of a  reason not to use Lip Perfection.

Overall, I give this product 4.5 out of 5 stars. The quality, color, and clicking lid more than make up for the product's shortcomings.

An Anglo-Saxon and a Prose Poem walk into a bar...

...and you end up with these.  They're on the same subject, what we in The House have been calling "The Great Prune of 2011."

Tangled with twigs, twisted trees deepen

Grasping the ground, giving for no one.

Invasives shrieking, inglorious agony

Pluck and pull them, piercing thorn strikes.

Welts well to life, workpants no comfort

Deep held dreams dragged from darkness,

Roots ranging outward, reached with violence

Cut and culled, crawling vines cast down.

War has been waged, we wonder who won.

----

We go to war with the garden while I still have my coffee mug warm and fragrant in my hand. We begin the battle armed with clippers and workpants, gloves and shoes, the rattling wheeze of a chainsaw, the dead calm of Miami February breaks.

The invasives put up a fight, a battle hard won. We are marred with scratches, cuts, bruises. Lines of red that will not go down, welts where our legs were subjected to the stranglehold of a plant I cannot identify. We pluck them screaming from the Earth, mandrake roots and deep vines. Tiny squirming insects roil from dirt that has gone too long unfurrowed.

Immigrants, we uproot them to make more room for the natives. Cut their stems, dig up their roots, our feet press against stumps as our backs press to oaks until we have the proper leverage. One last push, someone rides the stump, afternoon sunlight filtering through hair matted with the sweat of a battle too long. One last effort, a concerted try bracketed with the cadence of a sailing song and the trunkless yields, fallen. We cast them wilted and diminished in ramshackle piles, they who only wished to reach for the sun.

I jump, grasp the low-lying vines and hang, suspended between destruction and flight.

Biking Miami: An Amateur's Memory

One of Miami's Ghost Bikes, commemorating a cyclist killed on the route. This one is by the Bear Cut Bridge and it yields a moment of silence when passed.

Let me explain something about bike rides with my father:  he and the rest of his team think they’re in the Tour de France. I’m allowed to say this. I am forced to watch the Tour with the rest of them come July every year. I think for my father it’s penance for making him sit through the SuperBowl.

But regardless of the personal habits of the members of the 25^th Parallel cycling team, nothing prepared me for a Sunday morning ride down to Key Biscayne.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a wimp. It is a long, far ride, approximately 40 miles round trip from my house down to the Last Homely La Carreta on the Key. The morning dawned cooler than we had expected, forcing me to turn around and put on a long-sleeve shirt beneath my cycling jersey before we left. I ride a Specialized with clip-less peddles, so I borrowed some bike shoes in addition to gloves. Sunglasses on, GU in my back pocket, tight shorts clinging to me far too tightly for before-seven-in-the-morning, and we are off, moving forward with the reassuring click of shoe clips nestling into their proper peddle slots.

Things I’d Forgotten I Hated:

1. Clips that don’t make a sound to let you know they’re in place.
2.  Falling over on a bike that isn’t moving.
3. That strangled laugh my brother makes when he’s trying to hold it in.

Across US-1 we can see another group of bikers waiting for the lights to change. They too are chafing at the bit. I wonder where they could possibly be going this cool, dewy morning. When the light changes, we are off, speeding across the mostly deserted roadway and sparing no more thoughts to the other group. My brother and my father know the back roads like their shoe size and we make good time, my dad pushing us to keep a nice, even 15 mph speed.

Things I’d Forgotten I Hated:

1. Trying to keep pace with 15 mph when all you want to do is 13.

2. The difference between those 2 mph

3. Road bumps.

We barely see anyone else on the roads. Sunday mornings are reserved for the dedicated, it seems: joggers with intense gazes fixed always ahead of them, people with iPods pushing strollers that come with handbrakes, cyclists pinned in the aero-position, flying down the street in a whip of color and the high whine of a quickly-moving bike chain.

Things I’d Forgotten I Hated:

1. Bikers who don’t announce they’re coming

2. Falling off a stopped bike into oncoming traffic.

3. The inventive curses of bikers forced off course

It isn’t until we come around the corner, leaving the dark, quiet area above Alice Wainwright park that you can really see them. The peloton in all its glory. 

Miles of bikers, lycra-clad backs all hunched in a familiar shape, the garbled sounds of conversations that whip past too quickly to hear more than a few words. It is a glorious, colorful riot and it is all over the road.

The last lane to the right of the causeway has been left open for the bikers since new legislation passed, and we ride through with impunity, aware now of the rush of cars that has been strangely absent from our trip so far.

There are 4 of us in what feels like a pace-line cobbled together from misfits, but we buzz down the road, keeping to the edge while more and more bikers speed around us.

A giant group splits around us like a wave against a rock and we are surrounded for what feels like forever, stuck in the center of a peloton that appears to have no end.  They take off down the street, easily 50 of them, probably more, helmeted, clipped, laughing men and women who take up 2 lanes of traffic as they begin their climb of the bridge.

From far away it looks like a horde of multi-colored ants has started an ascent of the Causeway, and I cannot begrudge motorists and police officers who claim to hate bikers. At this moment, as they swarm up the side of the bridge, impeding traffic and ensuring that everyone sees them, I hate them too.

They cut off a bus, and we shake our heads as we prepare to begin our own ascent of the Causeway. “This is what gives us a bad name,” someone says. No one disagrees. My brother is unleashed, sent to take the bridge to his full potential while I follow along, clicking through my gears until I am at least resistance, sitting back in my seat and counting light poles until I reach the top.

And then I am flying.

Things I’d Forgotten I Loved:

1. The sound wind makes when it rushes past your head at 28 mph

2. Knowing that it’s just your weight and pedaling that are making you move as quickly as a car

3. The back side of the Bridge.

When we get to La Carreta, we stop for a quick break. I eat the things I’d put in my pocket so long ago this morning and listen as all around me bikers laugh and mingle and take a break. The garish colors of jerseys are spread like the detritus of a tropical flower shop all around the tiny restaurant’s parking lot. The bike racks look new and are completely full of Pinarellos and Treks, Specialized, Felt, Cannondales; rows of bikes everywhere, leaning up against legs and trees and the sides of the building. In the plastic chairs that make up La Carreta’s outside seating, bikers lounge and throw their heads back with laughter and sheer delight as they sip their early morning cafecito.

We need an allen wrench and the man sure to carry them is not riding with us today. It’s alright, though. Key Biscayne is a biker’s economy on Sunday mornings. An allen wrench appears almost instantly when we call into the crowd. How could it not?

Water bottles refilled, helmets re-situated, we set off again. Back toward home.

It’s a biker-eat-biker world out there, but it’s pretty worth it.