Getting Ready (by Rachael)

This post is being written by Rachael (aka Rae). I will be writing future blog posts here as well. I've changed the font a bit so that my 'voice' and Eric's can be visually differentiated pretty quickly.

We'll be leaving for New Orleans in a hot minute. We are gathering gear, maintaining our bikes, and ordering the last minute things we think we'll need. After changing our bike chains (which reinforced the stereotype that girl spatial reasoning is crap concept that practice improves spatial reasoning performance) and break pads this Sunday, we did a wee bit of hill riding followed by a simulated post bike ride meal.

As Head Chefs, Shira & I prepared to cook on the stove we'll be using for most dinners on the road. Our goal with this meal was to determine if we have sufficiently large pots for preparing meals for four (we determined that we can rather easily prepare enough food using two pots). To make the experience as authentic as possible we shopped at Right Aid to purchase the food to be prepared.

Dinner consisted of macaroni & cheese made with two pounds of elbow pasta and the only cheese accessible -american cheese singles. This might sound gross but it ended up working a lot like Velveeta. Okay, it still sounds gross. We added a can of tomatoes and had a gourmet experience worthy of the road. The can of green beans intended for the mix was consumed cold while we were boiling the water for pasta. My family might disown me for saying this- but those canned green beans were really good! I'm feeling a lot more confident about preparing vegetarian meals that are palatable and nutritious.