Biking Lot of Means Eating Lot of

This weekend was the First Annual Borough Bike Ride, starting with Brooklyn. I started at home, and rode down to meet Rohit, who was renting his bike on 96th st. We picked up my mom and Gery, and headed downtown to Warren St, cutting across to the Brooklyn Bridge. Worst idea ever, since the walkers don't understand the concept of staying on their side of the bridge and the bikers get all belligerent and start yelling (Oh, wait, that would be me). When we finally made it across, we headed straight across to Cadman Plaza towards Carroll Gardens. We had a plan, kind of. That is, Rohit had made a list of all the tasty food in every neighborhood that we'd be cycling through, and depending on what we wanted to stop for, we would. Including unanticipated stops. Such as our first one, the Henry Street Bakery. At this point, I'd already biked over 10 miles and was ready for breakfast. Rohit and I shared a croissant and an iced coffee, Gery had an apple turnover and an orange juice and Mom had a macchiato and a Spinach-Cheese Boureki. All very flaky and tasty. Onwards!

We biked through Carroll Gardens and Smith Street, hitting the Park's Slope at 5th Ave and 5th st. Willy's Dawgs was our next stop, where we shared the house special, a "mutt" an all beef hot dog in natural casing with mustard, relish and sauerkraut. Right next door, at Nibbles and Nosh, Mom was tempted by the Trinidadian roti, so we shared one with chicken. The consensus was, too many potatoes, not enough chicken. Their samples of chocolate chip cookies were divine, though. While waiting, we also noshed on some samples of tofu rolls- suffice to say that these were not very good, but they were free! Sated for the moment, we rolled on over to Prospect Park, enjoying the downhill ride through the South exit, where we took Ditmas Ave towards the Ditmas Park neighborhood. We ride through Hassidic Jews out for a walk, through little children holding the leashes of very big dogs and amazing free standing houses. On our miles long ride down Bedford Ave, the houses changed from amazing and large to smaller and not as impressive, but still cute quite the same. We biked. We biked. We biked. Finally, arriving at Sheepshead Bay, where we have gone deep sea fishing a few times and never caught anything but some nasty looking RobinFish. We were going to stop at Il Fornetto, but were turned off by the fact that the restaurant had valet parking and we were rather hot and sweaty. Though, there was quite a show at the rear ;) Mom remembered a rather tasty Greek place where we had shared some seafood the time before and we sought it out- Yiasous, a lovely little place on the main drive with views of the bay. We locked up our bikes, taking care to keep our eyes on them and ordered Taramasalata, a huge mixed salad with feta cheese, olives, red onions, tomatoes and cucumbers, an order of calamari and saganaki. We had a bottle of crisp white wine and chomped down. The setting was wonderful, the weather was wonderful and the fact that we truly earned all this food made everything taste that much better. Fat and happy, we continued on our way, this time up Ocean Parkway, where there was an actual bike lane to take us back to Prospect Park, this time the other way, so we hit the really big hills. Through Fort Greene, with a stop at Cake Man Raven. Alas, when we got there, their cupboard of slices was bare and there was no way we were going to carry a whole red velvet cake home, however good it was, so we just made do with a bathroom stop. Until, I saw that a birthday party was going on upstairs, with a cake that was too large for the few people attending it. I asked, politely, if I could buy a piece of cake from the partygoers. "Are you kidding?" they asked. "You can't buy one. You can take one." So off I went merrily (Happy Birthday Linda, fellow Leo!) to share my loot with my fellow bikers. Boy, were they happy. And boy, did we get daggers shot from other people who were just dying for a slice of Cake Man Raven's Red Velvet Cake! We gobbled it up, got back on our bikes and headed towards Williamsburg, with the sun just starting to go behind some clouds. We made it to Radegast Beer Garden, tied up the bikes under a construction awning and hit the garden, which was in full Saturday night swing. We ordered beer (A white beer for me) and some other stronger beers for the others and an order of fries. We decided that we would have to make a trip to Bohemian Beer Garden the next day, which we did. At the end of the night, it was too dark to bike home, so we hopped on the L train, headed up 8th Avenue and had yet some more food- leftover pizza from Full Moon Pizza in Arthur Avenue and red velvet cake. My theory? Bike lot of: eat lot of.