Getting It Off My Chest

I've been a busy little consumer bee over the last several days. Here are some things and places worth noting, categorized for your convenience:

Foods | Beverages
-Vegetable Masala Burgers* from Trader Joe's. Phenomenal. Thanks for the tip, mom.
-Heirloom tomatoes* from the farmer's market
-Synergy organic & raw Kambucha mushroom drink* from Berkeley Bowl or Whole Foods - there is something magical in this drink! But just the pink flavor. The "reds" (raspberry, cranberry) will do in a pinch. The others? Tres scary.

*I am not a vegetarian!

Sundress Shops
-Juniper Tree. Lake Merritt, not Berkeley. Amazing prices for really cute and quirky apparel.

Massages
-Becky the Wonderaccupressurist. Relief! The chiropractor had treated me on multiple occasions, resulting in a serious, debilitating, and most likely inoperable medical condition that I have taken the liberty of coining "jacked-itis." Look out JAMA. Unfortunately, I was back-jacked two days before the athletic endeavor for which preemptive treatment was sought, and I wasn't back-Becked until a week after. It was a long week.

Punctuation (not actually consumer-related, but I thought I'd throw it in):
-The Vertical Slash, if that's what it's called (see "Foods..." heading, supra). But the semicolon still holds a special place in my heart.

Cycling Clothing that Isn't Quite Right, For Cheap
-If you have emaciated wrists, size five feet that are improperly labeled a size seven, and you happen to share common ancestry with a marsupial thereby eliminating the need for functional pocketry, the Pearl Izumi Outlet (Vacaville) has a huge selection just for you, AND it's conveniently located on the drive home from the Death Ride! No. I didn't do all 5 passes (why does that always have to be the first question?). But I'll have you know that I had 3 passes in the bag by 11:30am and I could have done the 4th. I just accidentally managed to miss the entire backside of the mountain that the 4th was on. The shortest pass of all. A mere 10 miles and 2,000 feet of climbing total, out of 129 miles and 15,000 feet. I still did over a century! But there it is. There's always 2008.

And this brings me to another Death Ride mishap or two...

So I'm cycling along, after having completed my first 2 passes well ahead of cut-off times, and my bib number is flapping around on my back. It's flapping because the guy who'd helped me re-pin it to my back at the summit of my last mountain pass had done a poor job. And the reason I needed help re-pinning it to my back was that I'd incorrectly pinned my number to my chest that morning. I went up a mountain like that! Twice! Mortification! Anyway, the reason why I needed to fix it ASAP is because every time you complete a pass, you ride by some guy who affixes a sticker to your bib (which is normally on your back) to show you did it. But these guys were totally freaked out about how to place the sticker on my chest. It's like your worst prom moment, over and over. And it pained me. Literally. Some guy had to slam his thumb into my chest as I rode by! Anyway, fast forward to present tense. So I'm riding, my number is flapping, in poorly re-pinned fashion, on my back, and I'm wondering how I'm going to do 3 more passes when my back is absolutely on fire (see chiropractor comment above), and just then the Cutest Cyclist Ever rides by me.

CCE: Hey, I just wanna let you know that you're down to two safety pins.

Idiot Girl, Suddenly All Smiley, And About To Start Flirting: Thanks!

CCE: Oh, and you have a bug in your teeth.

Yeah. But things turn around a bit shortly thereafter. I stop at the aid station at the base of pass #3 and ask for ibuprofen. They say they're not allowed to dispense medication. But then the lady sidles over to me and whispers, "I've got some Tylenol in my bag if you really need it." I must look pretty pathetic. But I need something stronger. So I thank her anyway for her kindness, and limp over to the next rider I see, an Oakland Yellowjacket, and I ask him if he happens to have any. He looks at me and says, "will 800 milligrams do?" Angels sing, clouds part, and I gingerly pick out of his Ziploc baggie the biggest horse pill of happiness I've ever seen. Oh, but then that's when I proceed to mess up on the course.

OK, back to the bib misplacement. I roll into the finish 13 hours after the start, immediately running into Marty, the seasoned cyclist that I'd started the ride with at 4:45am in the pitch black of pre-dawn morning. Of course I'd assumed he hadn't noticed my faux pas because it was so dark when we started! So I start telling him the story, and he's all, "oh I knew it was on wrong. I didn't want to say anything." Thank you, CCE, wherever you are. Now at least one or two of my ride photos might be bugtooth and bib-misplacement free...