Last Days in New Orleans and Bumming around Boston

The last couple of days in New Orleans were pretty fun and loaded with good eats. The city is jam packed with restaurants and I wanted to try as many as possible before returning home to the Boston suburbs. So, in a futile (yet delicious) attempt to try every New Orleans restaurant, a friend and I went to Franky and Johnny's one night, and then I had Crabby Jack's and Dat Dog the next day (as well as some more Angelo Brocato's to get my gelato fix before leaving for Boston). The day of my flight, a teammate and I went to Surrey's Uptown to order their popular banana pancake. My teammate mentioned that it would be a really big pancake, but I didn't quite believe him. I later found out that for $6.50, this pancake is quite the behemoth! It kept me full until I got home 12 hours later, and a spoon is used as a size reference in a picture below.

Gator nuggets at Franky and Johnnys

Shrimp po boy at Franky and Johnny's

A friend's mother made some very good Vietnamese style noodles.

Alligator sausage from Dat Dog (the bun is the size of my forearm)

Po boy from Crabby Jack's

Crab cake from Crabby Jack's (best crab cake I've ever had)

St. Joseph chocolate almond gelato from Angelo Brocato's

You can actually see a whole almond in the gelato!

Banana pancake from Surrey's Uptown

Money shot

There hasn't been much to do here in Boston, save for enjoying the (essentially) unlimited funding for my ice cream habit and trying my hand at baking. Oh, and food coloring (I put it on everything now). Below is a picture of the banana-less banana bread I baked this week. The banana flavor comes from some Jello Sugar Free Banana Cream pudding. The banana bread wasn't that bad, except for the funky chemical aftertaste (I'm trying to get rid of the giant bag of Splenda on top of the refrigerator).

A friend and I went to grab sushi the other night, and we got a free dish since he's a regular there. I ordered some sushi, but the dish that absolutely blew my mind was the Idaho maki, which is a finely crafted sweet potato tempura roll. Win. A day later, we went to Subway, where we got raspberry cheesecake cookies, and then to the grocery store to pick up Cracker Jack boxes. There are still awesome prizes inside, and I was definitely hit with a bout of nostalgia when I opened the first package.

Pretty win-tastic, but it could use a bit of tweaking.

Legendary flavor

The first thing I did with my new box of food coloring was drop some blue dye into cottage cheese.

Banana-less banana bread!

Red snapper

Tekka maki, Idaho maki, and inari

Assorted sushi that a friend got

Raspberry cheesecake cookie from Subway

Money shot, per usual

Strong nostalgia was strong

Until next time, folks.

Couch Surfing in New Orleans

Hey everyone,

Finals are over, and with that there are some fun updates to share with the world. First and foremost, the team had a meet and greet with Tulane University's president and athletic director the other day. Allie couldn't be there, but the two gentlemen in khakis were quite impressed when they found out that she helped pull us to a victory at Conference Championships and that she was racing at Nationals as we spoke.

Tulane Cycling meeting with Tulane's president and athletic director

After the meeting, I went home, threw on a t-shirt and joined a friend for gelato at Angelo Brocato's. It's just one of those places that you have to revisit before going home for the summer. After finishing my gelato, I had to order a spumone wedge (in Italian, spumoni is plural and spumone is singular). I saw a bag of broken cookies for sale on my way out, so I bought it and munched at the treats on the way to the fly. When all was said and done, I had accidentally [eaten] the whole package. Whoops.

Tartufo gelato

Spumone

Enjoying the spumone

Bag of assorted Italian cookies

It was one of those "you-just-can't-put-down" types of snacks.

Saturday provided some free time for a nice little stroll through the city once I checked out of my dorm. (I'm currently couch surfing at a good friend's house while exploring New Orleans.) So with the camera battery charged and some loose cash, another friend and I walked to a variety of places in the city and had a fun time being touristy. A notable place we visited is called Meltdown Popsicles, and they make the best frozen fruit treats you'll ever taste. They were so good that we had to backtrack to get more. Absolutely worth the walk.

Beautiful abandoned church I found in the city

New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

St. Louis Cathedral

Ceiling of the cathedral

Old burial site (inside the cathedral)

Meltdown Popsicles!

Yes, that's a boom box (and a mime).

Later on in the day we walked over to Whole Foods to pick up some lunch. The chicken and vegetable potstickers at Whole Foods weren't half bad, and they packed a tasty punch that couldn't quite be matched by the insane supply of oats and peanut butter that I've been trying to whittle down since April.

Chicken and vegetable potstickers for the win!

Oh, by the way, happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. You are the reason I wasn't able to get my fix of eggs and hash browns at the local diner this morning (long wait times). That being said, it's your day, and thank you for carrying us to term.

Final Exams and the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Hey folks,

My apologies for not updating as frequently as usual during the past few weeks. Here's an extra long post to make up for the lack of cycling/food that you've been so patiently awaiting:

Three weekends ago, Tulane Cycling set up a tent at this year's Tour de Lis and got quite the positive response from the general public. We volunteered with the event's setup the day before, so we pretty much had dibs on any tent we wanted. The team set up shop at one of the tents in front of the stage, and lots of people came up to us asking about our team, its goals, and where to buy t-shirts and jerseys. We were pretty excited about the next week's conference championships at Texas Tech, so that's what we talked about while we shot the breeze with the locals. We also had flyers that directed people to our Tulane Cycling website, where there is information about our next kit order.

The Tour de Lis is a charity event, and it was very heartwarming to see such a great turnout by all the runners and cyclists in the region. One older woman came by our tent and talked to us about Tulane Cycling and the delicate balance between school and racing. The entire time I was thinking wow, this is a really nice lady and she has a lot of passion for this event. As she walked away we noticed a LIVESTRONG "I AM A SURVIVOR" tag on the back of her jersey. The game doesn't stop at survival; this lady was right there participating in the event with her husband. She's a real trooper.

Lots of people came up and asked about how to get a jersey.

Team photo

He has no idea of what to do with the fried Twinkie.

Trek Bikes had their lines of road and time trial bikes available for test rides!

A week later we were on the road to Lubbock, Texas, to pedal hard and represent Louisiana at Conference Championships. We saw some intense wild fires on the 16-hour drive there, and one team actually inquired as to whether the road race would be cancelled on Saturday morning because of the smoke. All of the races went on as scheduled, and nobody complained about the smoke, from what I heard. The road race went well, and it had a pretty fast downhill. I actually got up to 41.4 miles per hour on that downhill before seeing an ambulance at the bottom that was about to leave with a rider who crashed on the course. I slowed down a bit and continued through with caution. We later discovered through another cyclist that the rider who crashed was a high schooler participating in the weekend omnium. We hope he's doing okay with that broken collar bone.

That evening's crit went well even though the course was L-shaped. Yes, L-shaped. What is this, Formula 1? Anyways, the course layout grew on us as we raced and we came out of Saturday's races on top.

Sunday's team time trial was quite intense (probably my favorite race of the weekend, although it had a grueling 9 mile course). My time trial team consisted of four riders, but only two needed to cross the finish line before the final time would be taken. That meant one thing for me: I'd be riding off the front for as long as possible so my other teammates could carry on towards the finish. I did exactly that, and my teammates were impressed with a 26-27 mile per hour average for the first two miles, especially for someone who had just gone from Category D to Category C the previous day. The course contained the same downhill as the road race, and this time I kept my hands off the breaks to reach a maximum speed of 42.9 miles per hour. Sweet deal.

By the way, we won conference championships. This is quite an incredible accomplishment for a first-year team. The phone call from our university president was pretty exciting, but after hanging up we had to pack our bikes and get right back on the road towards home. 16 hours of bliss (also known as team bonding) would pass before we were to arrive back in New Orleans.

Smoke from the Texas wildfires

My first mesa (hadn't ever been to a desert)

My side of the room

I catted up to Category C for the race weekend.

After the road race

After the time trial's final climb (13% incline)

Allie got a conference award as well

There's the team's award, champions!

A good friend was in town after conference championships, and we were able to catch up over breakfast during the early part of the week. By the way, whoever kept everything bagels from me all these years should be reprimanded. They just so happen to be my new favorite breakfast food.

Easter Weekend was pretty relaxing. I was able to ride every day, and a friend and I dined at Ignatius Eatery to start the three days of university holiday. The restaurant had the best bread pudding I've ever tasted. It was better than a Cinnabon, without a doubt. Saturday involved a nice evening walk to Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro for dessert. It felt good to savor the Bananas Foster Cheesecake after that morning's training ride. Easter Sunday's ride went pretty well, and a teammate and I visited a friend at La Dolce Nola, a gelato place over in Metairie. They had Peeps flavored gelato in addition to the Cadbury Creme Egg flavor (I got the largest size available that wasn't a pint). Later that night, a friend of mine came over to visit and surprised me with an Easter box, complete with cookies, Fun Dip, and Tootsie Rolls. Can anybody say nostalgia?

Bananas Foster Cheesecake for me

A friend's Dulce de Leche & Praline Cheesecake

This was quite the Easter treat, to say the least.

You can see the bits of Cadbury Creme Egg in it!

A friend surprised me with an Easter box!

Tulane University's final exam week begins this Friday, so there will be a lot of studying from this end. Hopefully my professors aren't out to get us this year.

Until next time, folks.