Egg sandwiches, cookies, english muffins with jam, bagel with coffee and French toasted doughnuts. Ah, delicious, ridiculous snacks: one of the finer points of early season outdoor riding. Riding snacks are special, special because they are pretty much free food, unaccounted for. Yes, even the French toasted doughnut will be consumed and processed post-haste for that little but of extra snap on the final stretch home.
Riding snacks are personal, especially homemade ones; everyone adds their own special touch. I prefer cream cheese and jam slathered on two pieces of whole wheat bread, however my housemate has been known to make a sandwich of ham, peanut butter, jam and an egg to top it off. Yes, eating on the bike means eating weird. We’re not going for taste so much as piling on as many things that our bodies need during a ride into one, strange sort of pseudo-sandwich. Still, this is not as weird as being on a veritable IV drip of some sort of mix and various packets of gel once racing season gets into full swing. Yes, that counts as weird. If you step back for a moment and think like a normal, non-cycling human being, you’ll realize that pounding six packets of berry-flavored snot in an hour is not usually considered normal eating.
So for the moment I am savoring making my own snacks, but while creating your own on-the-bike delicacies is a special ritual nothing beats riding to snacks. I love everything about riding to snacks. That final push up the last incline after slogging around for two hours somewhere in the snowy hills of Massachusetts, to find yourself at a quaint country store that serves the most delicious (to my befuddled, tired brain) coffee and pastries you’ve ever had. Of course once I’ve gorged myself on whatever wares they may be serving and am feeling a bit more human I usually also notice that the employees of the store, and also many of the patrons are giving me the weirdest looks I have ever received in my life. If you ever want to feel like a freak, all you really need to do is walk into a coffee shop in mid-March in full cycling garb, including leg warmers with your sponsor on your shins, and full coverage booties.
Personally I think it’s hilarious. People try to glance at you out of the corner of their eye as you waddle to the bathroom on your cleats. Clip, clop. Small children stare at you with wide eyes, their mouths gaping. We must look like Martians to them. The employees glare at your with annoyance and mild disdain as you earnestly ask them, ‘Can I leave my bike in here? I don’t want to leave it outside and I don’t have a lock.’ For all of this strange attention I may as well have walked in with a mohawk on my helmet. I don’t care though. If they are serving snacks, damnit they are going to serve them to me.
So really, this all boils down to the proven fact that I love snacks. I will make them myself, or I will face a form of public humiliation to obtain them, it doesn’t really matter to me. However it’s probably good I’m a cyclist, because if I wasn’t boy would I be large.
