Off to San Francisco

This is the end.  After 1.5 years of travelling, seeing beautiful things, getting married (!), and generally having a great time, it’s finally over.  We’ve moved into our new rental house in Oakland, and are getting ready to head back to work after Labor Day.  We don’t know what awaits us from here on out, but maybe sometime in the future we’ll get to do it all again!

Go Congress–Tacoma

This year, Go Congress was in Tacoma, WA.  Congress was fun; I rode my bike a lot and hung out, while Kristen won most of her games.  We again played pair go together, and went 1-1 at the second worst table.  At least we didn’t get beat by a 7 year old kid.  But we won the pair go costume contest!

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Rainier as seen from Grand Meadow

Kristen and I headed up to Seattle early before Go Congress started.  The idea was that we were going to hang out with our friends Brian and Cathy for a day, then all head up to Mt. Rainier together to do a quick 1-night backpacking trip.

Kristen’s hip started to hurt on the way up to Seattle, and the next day she could barely walk or move around.  It was probably the worst it’s ever been.  She decided there was no way she could do a backpacking trip in that condition, so I drove her to the start of Go Congress in Tacoma and headed to rainier on my own to meet up with Brian and Cathy.

I’d never been to Mt. Rainier before.  It’s really quite spectacular.  I don’t think there’s anything like it in the continental US.  It’s incredibly massive and glaciated, especially up close.

Brian, Cathy, their two friends, and I met up at the base of the mountain, and shuttled our cars for the one-way trip.  Our hike was mostly be downhill, and passed through the spectacular Grand Meadow on the second day.  We camped near a creek the first night, and went for a short hike/rock scramble up a gully into the descending fog.  The next day, we hiked out through the meadow, which lived up to expectations.

I’d really love to go back and do some hiking around Rainier.  The terrain is so varied and beautiful.  Hopefully Kristen heals up quick so we can do it.

Elk Grove

The Bonneville Salt Flats

Matt and I tarping the trailer to take to the landfill

We drove from Aspen to Elk Grove via Salt Lake City.  On the way, we really only stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats to take pictures.  It was pretty surreal – white salt everywhere and blinding light bouncing off the glassy surface.  We couldn’t actually go on to the salt, though, since they were filming a car commercial.

The drive through Nevada was nice.  I expected it to be sort of a wasteland, which it was, but it was also really beautiful.  There were plenty of interesting mountain ranges (duh, since we were in the basin and range territory), and the scenery was pretty calm and pleasing to the eye.

Our plan for Elk Grove was pretty simple – finish the trip up comfortably, go to Go Congress in Seattle, and find a rental house in San Francisco.

Oh and one other thing – Kristen really loves to clean her parents’ house when she’s there.  She considered this visit to be potentially the last time she’d have a solid few weeks to clean, so she set out on the ambitious task of blowing the whole thing up.  It was The Great Purge.  We went room by room, separating everything we found in every nook and cranny into donate vs. keep vs. trash piles.  I had to rent a 4’x8’ U-haul trailer to haul multiple loads of trash and recycling to the landfill, and a huge load of donations to Goodwill.  It was tiring, but the house looked great by the end, and should be easier to keep organized in the future.

Finding a rental house in San Francisco was more difficult.  The rental market in SF is even worse than in NYC.  Not only is there way more demand than supply, but the rules work differently.  In NYC, housing is first-come, first-served.  So the first qualifying applicant for a rental unit gets it (the purpose of this is so the landlord can’t racially profile people).  In San Francisco, the landlord gets to take lots of applications and review them all, so timing is less of an issue, but you feel like you’re on The Bachelor.  Plus, a lot of people here seem to hate pets.  I can’t even remember how many times we heard people tell us “we love cats, but one tenant’s cat peed on the floor and we had to re-do all the hardwood for $10,000”.  Who are all these cats that are peeing on floors?  Our cats have never peed on the floor.  When we finally found a landlord that was willing to consider pets, we had to get references for our cats.  Thank goodness our apartment in NYC had hardwood floors, and the management company there was able to say no damage was done to the unit when we had our cats in it.  That’s how ludicrous this was.

Anyway, we finally found a fantastic house in Oakland, right near Ben and Trisha.  It has a full, furnished basement, and is really nice.  We’re excited to move in!

Aspen

Kristen with the Maroon Bells

Aspen Mountain, the town of Aspen, and the Roaring Fork Valley as seen from the top of the Ute trail

Part of the 7 Castles, up the Frying Pan Valley

We drove from Boulder to the Aspen area.  We AirBnB’d an in-law apartment on the bottom floor of a house up Frying Pan Valley, which is in Basalt, CO (about 30 minutes from Aspen proper).  We weren’t sure how it would go, but the place was GORGEOUS.  The apartment was very nice, and the hosts were very accommodating as well – they invited us to hang out and use their hot tub, and recommended several things to do.

The plan for our 3 days in the Aspen area was pretty much just to check everything out and do some hiking.  First, we headed to Maroon Bells, which are always touted as the most photographed mountains in the country.  We did a hike back to a lake near the bells, but the view was honestly better further back.

We also did a hike up the Ute trail, which is famous among local (and not so local) fitness freaks.  It’s a very steep, switchbacking trail that you pick up right in the town of Aspen, and ascends up the side of Aspen Mountain.  People time themselves to see how fast they’re able to go up.  Anything under ~30 minutes is considered a good time.  I got up in about 22:30, and Kristen was about 30 seconds behind.  We were definitely feeling the altitude – we were pretty winded at the top.  But wow was there a great view.

Afterwards, we walked around the town and got some ice cream at Paradise Bakery.

On our last day in town, we decided to do a hike in Frying Pan Valley, into the rock formations known as the 7 Castles.  They do indeed look like castles – cliffs of red rock that look like spires and battlements.  It was a very nice hike, ended at a waterfall at the back of a red rock box canyon.  I had no idea Aspen had Colorado Plateau-like scenery.

Boulder

From Chicago, we were headed to Boulder to visit Maggie again.  It’s a long, pretty flat drive, so we decided Kristen would be better off skipping it to save her the back pain.  She found a cheap plane ticket from Chicago to Denver, so I did the drive solo.

Honestly it was kind of nice.  I split the drive over 2 days, and stopped for the night in Omaha.  I listened to all of “The Endurance” book on tape, which was very interesting.  And the states I drove through were quite pretty.  Iowa is hillier than I expected, though Nebraska flatter and more boring.  I really didn’t mind the solo drive, though when I finally arrived in Boulder I was pretty exhausted.

Kristen was waiting for me when I arrived (she flew in earlier that day), and we had a fun couple of days with Maggie.  We did the hike up to Mt. Sanitas, walked around town, went to a very interesting guitar trio concert up at the Chautauqua, and I cooked some ratatouille.  We really love hanging out with Maggie, and love Boulder as a town – there is so much to do right at the foot of the mountains, and the weather is about perfect in the Summer.

I’m really glad we got to spend so much time with Maggie over the past year and a half.

Chicago

After leaving Detroit, we drove to Chicago to spend a couple days with Karoline and Wentao.  It was a fun long weekend – we went to the Morton Arboretum (where Karoline works) and rented bikes for a spin around the gorgeous premises, we went downtown to walk around the city and visit some of Karoline’s favorite shops, we went for hot pot in Chinatown, and Wentao taught me how to make those amazing Chinese pork dumplings wrapped in banana leaves!

Detroit

Us at Joe Muer’s with Tenny

The rest of our time in Detroit was mostly spent hanging out with family.  It seemed like everyone we knew wanted to have some one-on-one time with the new bride and groom!

Tenny took us to Joe Muer’s in the Renaissance Center, which was fantastic.  My mom, dad, Cara and Julie Greenberg were also there.

Aunt Muriel and Uncle Bernie took us to Lelli’s.  We were with them for a good 5 hours or so, mostly telling jokes and having a great time.

Phyllis and Gerry took us to dinner at Pepino’s in Walled Lake.  We had delicious planked whitefish and a great time chatting with them.  I don’t think I’d ever been out with just Phyllis and Gerry before, so it was really nice to talk to them one-on-one as an adult.

The Sterns and Cicurels also took us to a great Italian restaurant in Rochester.  I think the fam filled half the place up, laughing and chatting all night.

And finally, on July 4, we had a BBQ at the house, and Jan and Gary came over for a fun evening.  I cooked steak and they brought delicious ribs.

So we had a very busy, but very fun time in Detroit.  We were sad to leave.

Walloon Lake

The sun sets over Lake Michigan

Waterskiing on Walloon Lake

My second cousins Kathy and Richard Lenter invited Kristen and I to come stay at their house in Northern Michigan for a few days.  The house is on Walloon lake, which is gorgeous.  I have fond memories of visiting them when I was younger, during trips to Harbor Springs.

We spent 3 days at the house.  The weather was perfect, and the lake was very warm.  I’d forgotten exactly how nice Walloon Lake was.  Kristen went for a couple swims, we went kayaking, did some waterskiing, and toured the lake on Kathy and Richard’s boat.  They were very gracious hosts, and we decided we’d absolutely love to go back there soon.

Fishing on Lake Erie

Cooler full of walleye

Reeling one in on the Finlander

My dad and a friend of his chartered a fishing boat on Lake Erie one day while we were in town.  In recent years, my dad has become a bit of a fisherman, taking periodic trips up to Northern Michigan to fish for steelhead and salmon, and then scheduling the fly fishing trip in Jackson Hole.  So of course, I was excited to go and see what it was about.

Chartered fishing trips are a little odd, I found out.  It’s certainly fun to catch all those fish, but it was a much less “active” process than fly fishing (my dad confirmed he prefers fly fishing).  The boat captain baited and set the lines (we couldn’t do it because the boat used a complicated system with something like 12 rods at a time), and as the guests on the boat, it was our job to reel the fish in when they bit.  That day, the walleye were biting like crazy.  We hit the catch limit of something like 8 fish per person within the first 1 or 2 hours of the planned 5 hour trip, and it was a blast reeling in fish after fish.  We were back home in time for lunch.

That night, we invited a bunch of family over and cooked a mountain of fish in various ways.  We sauteed them, grilled them on cedar planks, “oven fried” them (the runaway favorite), and prepared them using a few other methods I can’t even remember.  Walleye are very, very delicious.  What an excellent day!

Detroit Reception

The spread

Hanging out outside

A few days after returning to Detroit, we were set to stay with my family for about 2.5 weeks, during which time we were going to host our second wedding reception.

The reception took place at my parents’ house in West Bloomfield.  We had decided to do a full middle eastern spread for lunch.  Every time Kristen and I visit Detroit, may parents ask “what do you want to do for dinner,” and the answer is always the same: “Middle Eastern.”  So of course we were going to throw a middle eastern feast if given the opportunity.

My mom put together a list of all the best dishes from various local eateries.  Tabbouleh from Anita’s in Ferndale, shawarma from Al-Oumara in West Bloomfield, and grape leaves, hommous, and babaghannouj, and even some chicken skewers from other far flung corners of the city.  My dad and I ran around all morning picking it all up.

And wow was it great!  The food was delicious, and it was fantastic to have our whole extended family all in one place; I think 50 or 60 people came to visit us that afternoon.  Some I hadn’t seen in many years, and a few people Kristen had never even met.  Plus, Steve, Barabara, Karoline, and Wentao all came in for the weekend as well, so they got to meet the whole gang.

Algonquin Park Canoe Trip (Fail)

In the canoe on Rock Lake

Kristen and all our gear

We planned a 4-day, 3-night canoe trip in Algonquin park (in Ontario, Canada).  I went to Summer camp in Algonquin park as a kid, and we used to take these fantastic multi-day canoe trips.  I figured, when else in our lives would we ever get the chance to go to this obscure park, to do this obscure thing, in a particular middle-of-nowhere I happen to have some memories of?  Never.  That’s the answer.

The closest town to Algonquin park is Huntsville, ON.  We drove in and spent  a night at the Motel 6 (which I don’t recommend by the way) after buying some backpacking food at the local supermarket.  The next morning, it was raining pretty steadily, but the forecast called for it to be nice and sunny for the next 4 days, so we were excited.  We headed into the park to pick up our rental gear – a beautiful fiberglass canoe, tent and sleeping bags, and some massive trip packs we would use to carry our gear and food across “portages”, or short trails in between lakes.  Just as we were loading up the car, the sun broke through the clouds and the day was glorious, if a little humid.

Our planned schedule was to launch the canoe at Rock Lake, then spend our first night at Pen Lake, our second night at Henry’s lake, third night at Louisa Lake, and then complete the loop and exit again at Rock Lake.

We launched the canoe around 3pm or so, and paddled along gorgeous Rock Lake.  There were great views, and barely any other people around.  We managed our way through the first portage over to Pen Lake, though the mosquitoes were a bit annoying.

After launching again on Pen Lake, the clouds started to gather again, so we decided to look for a campsite ASAP.  The map showed one on a nearby island (and Kristen loves islands), so we decided to head over to it.  On the way, we stopped in the middle of the lake to purify some water (deep water is generally cleaner).  After a few strokes, an un-fixable part of the filter pump broke.  Crap.  Now we’d have to use gross iodine tablets to purify our water for the remainder of the trip.  Then it started to rain.

We paddled frantically to the island campsite, and thankfully the rain began to let up, and the air was still.  We dragged our stuff up onto the island and made camp.  Almost immediately we were mobbed by mosquitoes and black flies.

Black flies are these tiny little bloodsuckers also commonly called no-see-ums because you can’t even see them while they’re destroying you.  Their bites itch worse than mosquitoes, and bleed.  Kristen is allergic.  When we were in Brazil, she’d gotten a series of black fly bites on her feet, and they swelled up so badly she couldn’t walk.

They were coming through our head nets, up our pants, and down our shirts.  We sprayed ourselves with 40% DEET.  They bit us through it.  We put on gloves and rain jackets, and long underwear.  We tucked our pants into our shoes.  And they bit through everything.  We had blood streaming down our faces from the bites.  But finally, we finished setting up camp, and got into the safety of the tent.  We should have been cooking dinner, but neither of us wanted to go back out there.

We discussed the situation.  We had no water pump, the weather forecast appeared to be incorrect, and we were getting absolutely destroyed by black flies.  Ugh.  Did we really want 3.5 more days of this?

It was around 5:30 or 6pm.  We decided we had just enough daylight left to tear down camp and paddle out.  So we did.  And on the way out, we were greeted by the sight of a mama and baby moose hanging out in Rock lake!  In all it was quite a pretty paddle out at dusk.

Back at the car, we again were mobbed by black flies while unloading the canoe.  It was inevitable.  We left the canoe at the launch, and headed for the Best Western, where we slathered on anti-itch cream and took ridiculous pictures of our bites.

The next morning, we returned all our gear (the people at the canoe rental place were not the least bit surprised to see us), and got the hell out of Canada.

On the way to Detroit, Kristen gently told me she was right.  “You were so excited to go on that canoe trip, how was I supposed to tell you that going into the woods in Canada in May was a terrible idea?”

Montreal

Schwartz’s deli, serving Montreal Smoked Meat

Pig odds and ends at Au Pied du Cochon

The next stop on our road trip was Montreal.  It turned out to be a pretty serendipitous trip, too.  Ben, my best friend from high school, and his wife Betsy were going to be in town at the same time we were planning to be there!  Which was perfect, because they are in the midst of having a baby and buying a new house to make room for said baby, and so were not able to attend any of our wedding reception parties.  We were very glad we got to see them.

Montreal is a very nice place (at least in the Summer).  Kristen had been there years before, but I had never been.  When we asked friends from the area for recommendations on what to do, their lists kept coming back filled with restaurant recommendations.  Ben and Betsy had the same experience.  It turns out that the best thing about the city is the food.

And so we ate.  After we arrived at our absolutely tiny rental apartment (complete with scary old elevator), we headed out to meet Ben and Betsy for dinner.  They took us out at Au Pied du Cochon (At The Pig’s Foot), which was one of the better dining experiences of my life.  It was the type of place where they serve every part of the pig in gourmet fashion.  Kristen and Betsy were a little leery of some of the odder organs and parts, but Ben and I dug in.

The next day, we woke up early and walked around the Plateau neighborhood, meeting up with Ben and Betsy to get breakfast at a Montreal style bagel shop called St. Viateurs (the bagels are baked in a wood oven, giving them a crunchier crust).  I liked the bagels a lot.  Sure, they’re different from New York style bagels, but they are delicious.

Afterwards, we spent a few hours walking through a street fair in the Plateau, and ducking into some little shops and boutiques.  For lunch, we tried the Montreal smoked meat at Schwartz’s deli.  The restaurant was very similar to Katz’s deli in NYC.  It had the long deli counter, the menu on the wall, the pictures of celebrities up everywhere, etc.  Montreal smoked meat itself appears to be very similar to pastrami, and we all thought the sandwiches were pretty comparable to the best NYC pastrami (i.e. very good).

From that point, we needed to walk off the meal, so we headed toward Old Montreal, which looks a bit like Paris, but smells yeasty (there is a huge Molson brewery nearby).  Kristen stopped for a coffee while Ben and I looked at some cool old poster prints.

At that point, it was time to say goodbye to Ben and Betsy.  They had reservations that night at the famed Joe Beef restaurant and had to go get ready, so Kristen and I walked around a bit more on the riverfront.

That night, our last, we were grounded a bit in our assessment of Montreal food (which to that point had been 100% incredible).  We went to the bistro L’Express, which was recommended by several friends.  It was good, but not great.  So normal restaurants do exist in Montreal!

Boston

After leaving NYC, we planned a short road trip en route to Detroit (for our next wedding reception party).  The first stop on the road trip was Boston.

We were set to stay with our friends Becky and Dan, who live in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.  I had been to Boston only one time before, so I was totally thrilled with how charming that part of the city is.  The architecture looks authentically colonial, the cobblestone streets are horse-drawn carriage width, and ivy climbs the walls everywhere.

On the way in, we stopped for a visit at the MIT campus in Cambridge.  We figured I got to show Kristen around Princeton a week earlier, and now it was time for her to return the favor.  And I have to say, the MIT campus is nice.  When I walked through there years ago, I remembered only seeing the bland concrete block buildings (like the library and one or two of the dorms), but Kristen took me through the beautiful academic building, which has a huge grassy courtyard that felt much more “college-y” than other parts of the campus.  That, plus some of the other interesting buildings (like Toon Town) definitely changed my mind – the MIT campus is in fact quite nice.

That night, Becky and Dan took us out for a walk around Boston Common (where it rained for the exact length of time it took us to find and buy umbrellas), and then out to a cool restaurant/bar downtown for a delicious dinner.  They were fantastic hosts all the way through – though it was brief, we really enjoyed staying with them!

NYC

The outdoor space at 34 Berry

Rob, Nicole, and Kristen

Keenan the bartender

After a week in California, Kristen and I headed to NYC for a week and a half.  The focus of the trip was to set up for and have our NYC wedding reception/party, but given that we are moving out of the city, we also wanted to see our good friends and visit our favorite haunts.  Our time in the city can be divided into 3 parts: pre-party, party, and post-party:

PRE PARTY

When we first arrived in NYC, we stayed with our friends Rob and Nicole, at their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  This turned out to be perfect, both because we got to spend a ton of time with Rob and Nicole, but also because their apartment is located very close to our wedding reception venue.

Most of that first week was consumed by party planning and set up (securing the food – BBQ from Fette Sau and some fantastic salads from Cara’s friend Erin, finding helpers – Cara hired some of her friends for us, renting chafing dishes and plates, etc.).  We did manage to do a bit of sightseeing and reminiscing, though.  We took a trip down to Princeton for the day, had dinner at the restaurant where we’d had our first date, went out for my birthday, and went for some long walks and bike rides.

THE PARTY

We had the wedding party on the roof deck at 34 Berry, the apartment building where Cara’s (and our) friend Stacy lives.  Our original location (the roof deck at our old building in NYC) fell through, so Stacy saved the day.  The space was perfect, and my mom and Barb Kasprzak help decorate it with flowers the morning of the party.  Keenan bartended, and he devised a drink that was extremely popular, using some (way too) spicy vodka we had infused earlier that week with chili peppers, kiwi, and lime.  And everyone seemed to appreciate the food we served: 3 appetizer salads, ribs + pulled pork + brisket from Fette Sau, and an Argentine-style steak I cooked up on the outdoor grill.  For dessert, we picked up a few small cakes and cupcakes from what we think is the best bakery in NYC – Two Little Red Hens.  Delicious.

About 50 or so of our friends showed up, and it was great to see everyone.  This seems to be the main function of these sorts of parties – they work as an excuse to get lots of people together you’d normally have to see individually.  Plus, one sort-of-planned consequence of having 3 parties is that we get to actually spend time with individual people at each.  Sure, tons of different people came up to us to say hi, but we got to have several actual conversations, to taste all the food, and to relax and enjoy ourselves.  I get the feeling that “real” wedding receptions don’t offer that kind of intimacy with the guests.  We are very happy we did it this way.

POST PARTY

We had booked a rental apartment in our old building (The Monterey) to stay in for a few days after our wedding party.  This is why we initially planned to have the party on the Monterey roof deck.  But as it turns out, renting out apartments on a nightly basis at the Monterey is against the terms of the lease (as we had initially suspected), and so they freaked out when we mentioned we wanted to have a party on the roof.  I guess the people who had the lease on the apartment were scared we would draw too much attention to their rental operation.  Regardless, we were “checked in” to the apartment we rented the day before the party by an extremely shady and sleazy property manager, who kept telling us we were not allowed to use any building facilities, and that we should lie if the doormen asked us who we were.  Ick.  We really wanted to call the whole thing off, but we have such great memories in that building, we just had to stay there.  And in the end, we had a great time.  We walked around our old neighborhood, went to Central Park, I did a couple bike rides, and we enjoyed the views of the city from the roof.

One thing I will say about NYC: we forgot how cramped everything is.  After being away for a year (and in the rural middle of nowhere at that), it was sort of a shock to remember how small the spaces are (apartments, restaurants, etc.), how busy the sidewalks are, and generally how congested it all is.  It took us a few days to adjust.

In all, we had a fantastic time in NYC.  The wedding party was really the perfect way to say hello (and goodbye) to all our friends there, and our time before and after the party was the perfect way to say hello (and goodbye) to where we used to live.

The Pentadecathlon

Lake Tahoe – the lake immersion competition

Mini golf competition, pre-injury

Occasionally, my group of friends from college gets together.  Usually it’s a ski weekend or a bachelor party.  But this year, we got together somewhat on a whim, and rented a house on Lake Tahoe.

The idea was to stage a weekend of Olympic-like competition.  After significant email banter, we agreed to try and complete 15 individual events.  The technical name for a 15-event competition is a pentadecathlon, hence the name of the weekend, the inaugural PentaDeca.

The winner of each event would be awarded points (3 for first, 2 for second, etc.), and the overall winner would get bragging rights and possibly a trophy.

EVENTS COMPLETED

- Long toss (football, baseball, frisbee, basketball)

- 50m sprint

- Lake immersion (who can stay fully immersed in Lake Tahoe the longest)

- Mini golf

- 2-person kayak race in Lake Tahoe

- Gambling (everyone starts in a casino with $50 and has one hour to make as much money as possible)

- Beer pong

- Single beer chug for speed (single elimination tournament)

EVENTS ABANDONED

- 3 on 3 basketball

- Ultimate frisbee

- 4x50m team sprint relay

- Beer boot chug

- Rock paper scissors

- Asshole (card game)

- Who can get the most random high-fives from strangers in a day

- Arcade basketball (pop-a-shot)

All in all, the competition went very well.  We completed way more events than anyone initially expected.  And besides a few pulled muscles, the only real injury of the trip occurred when Ben shanked a hole in mini-golf, threw his putter in disgust, jumped in the air, landed funny, and sprained his ankle.  An old lady then proceeded to make fun of him for injuring himself at mini golf.

Oh, and against all odds Johnny won.  He gloated a lot less than usual though.  Maybe he’s becoming an adult.

How to make Argentine asado

Again, there is not a lot of information on the internet regarding how to make an authentic Argentine asado.  So I’ve decided to document what I’ve learned.

The asado is actually fairly simple.  It is a barbecue using hardwood coals (typically mesquite), using a grilling surface that you can adjust up-and-down, to dial in the cooking height over the coals (and therefore the heat).

The hardwood imparts an incredible smoky flavor to the meat.  Coals are sold pre-made in bags (called carbon), but it is generally thought that the commercial coals do not provide the best flavor.  Instead, most Argentines prefer to generate their own coals by building a hardwood fire and waiting until the wood begins to chunk apart and burns itself into a smoldering pile of coals.

Step 1: make the fire.  This is boy scout campfire stuff, nothing special.  I like to get the whole infrastructure of the fire built before lighting it.  I typically start with some cardboard kindling, then some smallish sticks arranged in a teepee around it to get the fire going, and then arrange a log cabin structure out of mesquite logs (or leña) around that.  The logs are typically about a foot long, and I have found that splitting them first makes the whole process go a lot faster.  In the picture below, I have built two separate fires in order to generate a ton of coals, since I am cooking lots of meat.

Lots of argentines seem to like to keep a secondary fire going in the corner of the grill, usually a teepee.  They will keep adding new logs to it in order to generate new coals.  That’s a fine idea if you’re cooking for a long time, but honestly I find it unnecessary, as it adds a lot of work.  Additionally, our grill does not have space to create a secondary fire (many do, usually off to the left of the cooking area).

Step 2: prepare the meat.  After the fire has been lit, there is not much to do but wait for it to burn down for about 30-60 minutes.  So I typically spend that time getting the meat ready for the grill (or preparing a salad, or drinking mate, or whatever).

Argentine cuts of beef are different from those in the US.  They come as huge slabs, not steaks.  I usually buy a kilo or two of a few different types.  My favorites are called falda (flank steak on the bone, cut fairly thin), and vacío (an adjacent cut of flank steak, often very long and tapered).  I find these to be the most flavorful cuts, that also hold up well on the grill.  Two other famous cuts are Costilla (a very long strip of short ribs) which I don’t like because there just isn’t a lot of meat on the thing, and matambre (shallow subcutaneous flank layer), which is super thin and easy to over-cook.  Matambre de cerdo (pork) can be quite tasty, though.  I’ve also come to appreciate that tenderloin (filet mignon), while prized in the US, sucks.  It has no flavor and too little fat.

Side note: my argentine friends tell me that they will typically combine only the long cooking cuts (vacío, matambre) or the short-cooking cuts (falda, costilla) at one asado, so they will be done at the same time.  Mixing say vacío and falda at the same asado (which I do frequently because they’re my favorite) is more difficult.

In addition to meat, I usually cook a whole chicken (sliced down the middle and butterflied), and some sausages (typically the Argentine version of chorizo).  Argentines will also usually add in some morcilla (blood sausage) and possibly some tripe (tripa gorda), sweetbreads (mollejas), or intestines (chinchulines).  Though if you speak English and are reading this, those probably don’t apply to you.  We cooked tripe and intenstines the other day and Kristen almost threw up.

In order to prepare the meat, trim it of egregious excess fat (a fair amount on there is OK, but the big chunks should go), and add the spices.  Spicing the meat is extremely important in Argentine barbecue.  Here are the list of the spices you will need:

- Coarse salt

That’s it.  There are no marinades and nothing exotic. Just smoke and salt.  Go ahead and salt the absolute hell out of the meat.

It doesn’t matter if you put too much on.  The meat will take up what it needs, and the rest will fall off.

Thicker cuts should also have some slices made into them, to speed cooking.  Just make some lateral slices about half or 2/3 the way through the thickest parts of the thickest cuts.  This allows the whole piece to cook at a more constant speed (which is a serious issue for tapered cuts).

Step 3: prepare the coals.  After a while, the fire will burn down to coals.  You may need to help the process along, making sure all the logs are exposed to the fire, and breaking up the bigger coals.  Two tools are typically used to move the coals around – a shovel and a poker.

Once the coals are ready to go (glowing red, with white ash, not too big), spread them in a layer on the bottom of the asador.  You don’t need any thickness – a thin layer will do.

The coals shown above are in the final stages of preparation, but have not quite been spread thin enough yet.  I also threw on a couple of new logs (smaller ones) to make some extra coals.

It’s important to remember that once the coals are ready, you need to start cooking ASAP.  The coals are going to turn into ash pretty quickly, so your time is limited.  And unless you want to build a secondary fire, you need to get it done with the coals you now have.

Step 4: load up the grill.  Drop the grill grate to within ~5 inches of the coals and let it heat up.  People say the grill is at the proper height if you can hold your hand at about grill level for 5 seconds before having to move it.  Arrange the meat over the coals.  You can pack it in as tightly as you want.  I typically arrange the longer cooking time stuff (like chicken) over the biggest coals, and spread the coals quite thin below thinner cuts.

Step 5: cook until it’s done.  Turn the meat as needed.  You’ll probably need some intermittent re-arrangements of the coals as they burn down and hot spots become cool spots, etc. as well.  Argentines seem to like their meat scorched to beyond well done.  I’ve had it chewy before (which was bad).  But I find that somewhere around medium-well works very well for these cuts.  The combination of good fat marbling plus the salt on the outside keeps the meat very moist all the way to well done.  You can’t do that with a tenderloin.

The meat above is shown just after being turned once.

The sausages are typically done first, and are offered to guests as an appetizer of sorts, to be made into sandwiches called choripan (literally chorizo + pan).

Some additional notes:

- Some people like to squeeze a lemon over some of the pieces of meat while it’s cooking.  The acid supposedly makes the meat more tender, though I find it to be a very mild effect.

- You can also throw a couple of onions onto the coals, theoretically to impart some oniony flavor into the meat.  Again I find it to be very mild if detectable at all.

That’s it!

Quebrada de Humahuaca

Hill of 7 colors – Purmamarca

Serranía del Hornocal (taken from 14,300 ft)

Kristen with the ‘sand art’ mountain at the Abra de Condores pass on the road to Iruya (taken from 13,100 ft)

Late afternoon at the Espinazo del Diablo, on the border of the Puna

After the bike race in San Lorenzo, we drove up to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, the most famous attraction in Jujuy province.  The Quebrada is a long valley, named as UNESCO world heritage site as it has been populated for over 10,000 years and has substantial Inca heritage.  It is also very close to the Bolivian border and the well-known altiplano (called the Puna in Argentina), and as such, everything there is to do in the Quebrada is at a pretty high altitude.

Our base of operations was in Tilcara, right in the center of the valley.  We stayed at Cerro Chico hotel, which is a very nice collection of individual cabañas just outside of town.  Our guidebook was pretty low on Quebrada detail (besides simple descriptions of the towns in the valley), so we were very grateful when the eccentric Frenchman named Nour who runs the hotel gave us the run-down on the best stuff to see.

We had a total of 2.5 days in the Quebrada:

Day 1 – we woke up the first day and got to breakfast right when it opened, at 8am (it was fantastic, by the way, with croissants imported from Buenos Aires – I guess that’s what you get when an eccentric Frenchman owns the place).  First stop was Purmamarca, home to the ‘Cerro de Siete Colores’, which seems to be on every postcard of the area.  The town itself was sort of underwhelming, though the artisan market in the square was the largest and cheapest we’ve ever come across.  We did a quick 3-4k hike around the hill, which was really stunning, and had lunch in town.  Afterwards, we began to drive up to the Salinas Grandes (salt flats).  But during the ascent up to the 13,700ft pass that leads to the Salinas, we both started to feel some altitude sickness, probably around 12,000ft.  While it was probably 80% psychological and 20% physical, we decided to turn around and head back to the valley.  (The guidebook said the Salinas weren’t that great, anyway).  We stopped in the town of Maimará to see the famed cemetery, and returned to the hotel.  Nour told us to rest for the remainder of the day, as we were likely still acclimating.

Day 2 – we woke up with a renewed drive to go see some awesome stuff.  After some more amazing croissants, we made our way up to the town of Humahuaca.  Nour had recommended we stop at every settlement along the way, but we don’t really care much for towns, so we only stopped in one, Uquia.  Uquia is known for really only one thing – it’s church, with paintings of various biblical figures holding muzzle-loaded rifles.  No pictures were allowed, which is a shame, since the pictures were hilarious.

From there we drove straight to the town of Humahuaca.  On the agenda was the Serranía del Hornocal, which Nour described as the best thing to see in the whole Quebrada.  It was not in any guidebook, nor in any review of the region we had ever seen, likely because the viewpoint was at 14,300 ft at the end of a long, bumpy road.  As such, it was just what we were after – incredible sights in remote places.  We saw only one other car on the road.

Today we were prepared for the altitude.  No way were were turning back today.  Kristen had taken some Diamox, we had a thermos full of coca tea, and we had begun chewing coca leaves on the way in (an ancient remedy for altitude sickness).  I started getting woozy at around 13,500 ft, but we soldiered on to the view point.  It was all it was promised to be – expansive views of an entire mountain range with crazy colored bands of rock running through it (red and purple for iron and arsenic, green for copper, etc.).  After we gaped at the incredible landscape for as long as we could stand, Kristen decided to see how many push-ups she could do at that altitude (50 it turns out).

When we got down, it was lunch time, but we weren’t hungry.  I guess altitude saps your appetite.  At that point we were debating what to do with the remainder of the day.  We had been discussing staying an extra day to make the trip to Iruya, a very remote village at the end of a gorgeous dirt road.  But as we were way ahead of schedule for the day, we decided to just go ahead and head toward Iruya that afternoon.  We decided on the way that if this was our last day, we also wanted to see the Puna.  So instead of driving all the way to Iruya (which we were told was ‘a one-picture town at most’), we drove up to the 13,100ft pass on road leading up to it (which we were told was not to be missed).  It was incredible – there was a bald-topped mountain that looked like sand art, with pinks and reds strewn about, and a gorgeous view into the valley where Iruya was located.  Afterwards, we high-tailed it up to the town of Tres Cruces, on the edge of the Puna, and within 20 or 30 miles of the Bolivian border.  We took in the desolate sights of the Puna, as well as a crazy rock formation called the Espinazo del Diablo (huge spine of the devil), and headed back to Tilcara, thoroughly exhausted.

Day 3 – on the way out of the Quebrada, we stopped again at Purmamarca, at Kristen’s request.  She spent 2 hours at the artisan market, while I read a book (the areas in the Quebrada are known for car break-ins, so I stayed with the car.  Which was fine with me.)

This was our last real adventure in South America, and we’re very glad we went.  The Serranía del Hornocal was definitely on our list of top 5 most spectacular things we’ve seen in the past year.

How to prepare mate

There is a lot of very poor information on the internet on how to properly prepare mate.  Maybe it’s because mate preparation is so ingrained in Argentine culture, it simply needs no explanation.  Who here over the age of 4 doesn’t know how to prepare mate?

We screwed it up a bunch of times, until we finally were taught the right way by our Spanish teacher Edgardo.  When done poorly, mate tastes like bitter dead grass, but is pleasant when done correctly.  So in the spirit of sharing the wealth, below I’d like to lay out a beginner’s (or gringo’s) guide to preparing mate:

Step 1: get your supplies.  The word mate refers to two things – the herb itself, used to make the tea, and the receptacle (gourd/cup) in which the tea is made.  Mate preparation involves three pieces of equipment – the mate (drinking gourd/bowl, traditionally made of a hollowed-out calabash gourd, but can also be made of wood or plastic, as ornate or simple as you like), the bombilla (a stainless steel straw with a filter at the bottom), and a hot water source, like a thermos or water boiler (I’m using an electric hot water boiler here, though Argentines will use a thermos both indoors and out).  Brand new mate gourds need to be cured, a process which involves filling the thing up with hot water and some mate herbs, letting it steep for a while, then letting it dry out in the sun for a day or so.  You may need to repeat a few times.  It should be green on the inside and well coated with mate residue when dry.

Step 2: fill the mate up with the tea herbs, about 2/3 of the way or so.  Here I’m using a commercial mate that’s infused with peppermint-like herbs (more typical of say the Córdoba region).  Our favorite types are CBSé for infused mate, and Rosa Monte Seleccion Especial for straight mate.

Step 3: clear the herbs of powder.  The herbs always have some powder in them, which will go through the filter and taste gritty in your mouth.  In order to clear as much out as possible, wet your hand with water (you can lick it if you’re not near a sink), put it over the top of the mate gourd, and shake vigorously up and down.  Wash off the powder that sticks to your hand and repeat a few times until there does not appear to be too much powder left.

Step 4: turn the gourd on its side and shake the herbs to the bottom side of the gourd.  Insert the bombilla on the top side of the herbs, with the filter touching the lowest point of the gourd, then turn the whole assembly back to right-side-up.  The key here is to have the herb pile at a nice angle, with the high side of the pile near the drinker, and the low side away from the drinker.  If you do not insert the bombilla, the herbs will all slide back down to the bottom and the pile of herbs will be flat – the bombilla keeps the herb pile at an angle.  You will pour the water into the low side of the pile, where the bombilla filter is located.  This is so only the bottom part of the heap of herbs gets wet, while the high side stays dry.  Then, as you drink, you can constantly wet new, fresh herbs near the top of the heap.

It should also be noted that after this step, the bombilla never moves.  You don’t swish it around in the gourd, you don’t raise or lower it, you don’t twist it.  The bombilla and mate gourd are now one unit until the drinking is done.

Step 5: add water and drink.  Water temperature is very important – 140-160 degrees fahrenheit or so is optimal.  If the water is too hot, the herbs will taste extremely bitter and unpleasant.  Pour the water slowly into the back, low part of the herb heap, where the bottom of the bombilla is sitting.  You don’t want to fill it up all that much – the top 1/3 of the herb heap should be dry.  You should get maybe 2-3 sips of tea before more water needs to be added.  Once the flavor starts to wane, you can shake down some of the dry herbs at the top, or just wet the upper part of the heap.

A last note on the mate ritual – if there are multiple people sharing mate (which is common, though the last two times we did this at least one person got sick due to sharing of germs), the ritual goes as follows:

- One person is the primary mate preparer, usually the owner of the gourd.  He is responsible for preparing the tea, and refilling it with water when it goes dry.

- The primary person prepares a gourd, then passes it to around to each person in a circle, one at a time.  Each person individually drinks until the mate is out of water, at which time they pass the gourd back to the primary server.

- After he has refilled the gourd with more hot water, the primary server will hand it to the next person with the bombilla facing them.  This can continue for hours.

- Don’t say ‘thank you’ (‘gracias’) unless you’re done.  When the server passes you the gourd, you don’t say anything, just drink.

Kittens

Calico kitten peeks out from the logs

Black kitten eating some delicious food

A few weeks ago, we were driving home in the evening, and a black cat raced across the road.  Kristen spent 15 minutes trying to trap it so she could feed it and take care of it.  The next day, she bought a couple pounds of cat food to try and lure it to our house.  That’s how much she misses our cats at home.

So a few days ago, she was excited when we noticed an adult calico cat walking around on our back patio, peeking in on our asado.  We threw it some extra bits of meat and bone, and it seemed pretty happy.

Then, a couple days later, Kristen was absolutely floored when two baby kittens (maybe 3 months old) showed up on our back porch and appeared to be living in the logs under our asador (BBQ).  There were incredibly cute!  One was calico, the other black.

They were extremely afraid of people, yet over a number of evening and morning feeding sessions (Kristen made a mix of milk and cat food), they seemed to be getting pretty comfortable with Kristen, and would let her come close.  She couldn’t have been happier.  She fed them and kept them safe by chasing away dangerous foxes.  We started making plans to catch them, take them to the vet, and raise them until it was time to leave in May.

But after the 3rd night in the wood pile, the mom came back.  It was the same cat we had seen at the asado.  We haven’t seen the kittens since.  We think the mother cat located the kittens in our wood pile after she received some asado meat, thinking it was a good, safe feeding spot for them.  But maybe she noticed them getting a little too comfortable around us?  Or maybe we scared her and she protectively took the kittens away?  Regardless, it was a bit of a tragedy after how much fun we had with them over those 3 days.

Kristen still leaves food out on the sill and checks the wood pile periodically, hoping they’ll come back.

Bike race–San Lorenzo

At the start line

On the ‘Elite’ podium – Jeff took 4th!

We met Jorge Delgado at our first bike race in Cafayate.  After the race, he told us he was organizing another in San Lorenzo (the wealthy suburb outside of Salta).  So of course we had to go.

It turned out to be another ‘rural bike’ format – almost all on dirt roads, and a little pavement.  And it had a lot of climbing (1500 feet worth over 28k), which is great for me (at least when I’m in shape).

I again had to race in the ‘elite’ category, so I was up against the fast guys.  The race had a mass start, so all categories started together.  I was near the front at the start, but the yellow line rule did not appear in effect, and I was a little sketched out when tons of people swarmed around me and were passing in the oncoming traffic lane.  After a few kilometers, I found myself near the back of the pack when the elite guys at the front attacked.  I had to time trial around the slower groups to catch the break, burning matches along the way.  But there I was!  I was excited that finally my fitness was to the point where I could stay in the mix.

The race was more or less and out-and-back, 28k in total.  The first 14k were all uphill, and I was able to assert myself to stay with the chase group (two or three guys broke off the front and I couldn’t match the surge).  And even better, two of my Cafayate companions were up there with me.  After the turnaround at the halfway point, the race was mostly down and flat.  I tried to organize our chase group into a rotation to catch the break.  But about half the group had no idea what was going on.  I realized it’s hard enough to organize an assortment of road racers into a paceline, so what hope was there for a crew of MTB’ers?  A couple of the guys were sketchy, some surged, etc.  But yet it actually went OK, and we were able to put some time into the few guys up the road leading into the final climb.

I didn’t have a very good concept of where I stood by the time the final climb came around.  I guess I’m not used to being near the front at the end of a race.  The finish was also deceptive, with a large climb followed by a flat section, and a short push to the line.  I burned myself on the large climb, thinking the finish was at the top, and was out of gas.  So I churned my way in, feeling pretty good about staying with the group.  A few minutes later, I heard my name over the loudspeaker.  Huh?  It sounded like they were announcing the Elite podium.  Turns out I got 4th in the category, and about 8th overall!  Ezekiel (a Cafayate friend got 3rd), and another Cafayate racer had placed 3rd in Masters 40+.

I even got a trophy!

Afterwards, the Cafayate crew organized a small asado in the park nearby the finish, so we got to toast our results with some delicious BBQ.  What a great day.

Santa Maria bike race- Campeonato Local (Circuito de San Jose)

Start/Finish arch at the Circuito de San José

Jeff doing warm-up laps behind #1, the eventual destroyer of the field

The Cafayate crew (plus some guy and his dogs) back in town after the race

After the bike race in Cafayate, I got invited to participate in another in Santa Maria.  I didn’t know what I was in for.

I had offered to drive some racers from Cafayate up to the race.  We rigged up a trailer to carry our bikes and were off.  I generally hate driving with a trailer, but it was by far the best way to go with 6 people in our 5 person car.

When we arrived, it was clear this race was of a different class.  There were true cyclists here.  By that I mean people whose bikes were multiples more expensive than their cars.  We saw beat up 1980s trucks with $10k imported Cannondales on them.  Probably 25% of the riders were warming up on trainers.  Several teams were represented.  Lots of guys were wearing skinsuits.  I was soon told that Santa Maria is known to have the best cyclists in the country, and that several riders that had represented Argentina in the recent Panamerican Championship would be competing.  Yikes.  This race was legit.

The course was cross-country style, which around here means narrow trails and a lot of sand.  I’m not a bad technical mountain biker, but I’m a bit timid.  My first pre-ride of the 3km course revealed a super sketchy descent on the back side.  It was about a foot wide, carved into the side of a steep hill, which meant that if you hit your inside pedal, you were going down the hillside.

I was again racing in the ‘Elite’ category, and we were scheduled to ride 6 laps of the course.  From the gun, the Panamerican representatives attacked.  The group shattered almost immediately, and I was over threshold within 2 minutes of the start.  Our first time down the sketchy descent, two guys in front of me and one in back crashed down the hillside.  That was it for my race.  I was totally freaked out for the next couple of laps.  I stopped often to let faster, fearless racers pass, and was able to calm myself down and ride mostly alone, trying to simply enjoy my ride (since I was no longer really racing).  The fastest racers lapped me at the end of lap 2 of 6.  They were FLYING.  It was incredible to see.  By my fourth lap, I was settled in and riding the descent with confidence.  It was just in time to see the winner finish.  I had lost right around 2 laps in an hour of racing.  The winner (a Panamerican representative), appropriately assigned the #1 bib, absolutely destroyed the field, winning by several minutes.

Yeah, I got dusted, but I had a great time in the process.  Lots of guys pulled themselves from the race after they got lapped, which for most of us was within the first 20 minutes of racing.  I thought, “no way I drove an hour and a half to ride 20 minutes”.  Afterward, we packed the bikes back on the trailer, and I got to give an interview to a local TV network!  Being the only foreigner that ever shows up to these races has apparently given me mild fame in the local cycling community.

It was again great fun, and I’m glad I got to experience a top-level cross country mountain bike race!

Kelsey and Matt Visit

Kelsey and Matt inside the cave at the start of the waterfall hike

Climbing up to an off-trail viewpoint at the start of the Quebrada de las Conchas

Quilmes as seen from near the top of the mountain

Matt, Kelsey, Jeff, and Edgardo preparing for the asado

When we were in Patagonia, we met a lot of other travelers.  Many were young backpackers and wanderers who had never really had jobs yet.  Most of the Americans were post-college grads, sleeping all day and drinking all night.  Others were relatively old people (in their 40’s to 60’s).  So we were surprised when we met another couple in their late 20s/early 30s who had put their careers on hold to travel.  We got to talking with them in Bariloche, at the top of the Cerro Catedral hike.  Matt is a civil engineer and Kelsey is an occupational therapist.  They’re from Seattle, they were in their first month of a year-long world trip mostly hiking and climbing, they were engaged, and planning to get married during their year off.  Just like us, but 8 months earlier!  We gave them our contact info and told them to give us a call if they happened to come through Salta on the way to Bolivia.  And they did.

In all, they stayed with us for 4 days:

Day 1 – after Kelsey and Matt arrived in the early afternoon, we took them on the hike to the cross above town.  We also took Puebla, a german shepard owned by our friends John and Lindsay, with us on the hike.  The ride to the trailhead is a little bumpy, and Puebla threw up her lunch in the back of the car.  Yuck.  We spent the next few days dealing with that one.  Despite that, we had a very nice hike.  Even Puebla seemed to be enjoying herself.  She’s a great trail dog.

Day 2 – The next day, the 4 of us did the waterfall hike.  Lindsay had shown us the way a week before (the trail is not obvious, and first-timers typically need to hire a guide).  It’s a really great hike – fantastic canyon scenery, and totally different than anything else locally.  That night, Kelsey and Matt cooked for us.  They made great pizzas from scratch using their own beer dough recipe, which was a treat after avoiding the awful local ‘pizza Salteño’ for the past few months. 

Day 3 – The third day, our friend Gabi came along.  We drove out into the Quebrada to see all the local sites.  We did some extended versions of the usual hikes, including one improvised walk that ended up on a high overlook over the quebrada.  On the way back, we stopped at a roadside stand selling ‘pan casero’ (homemade flatbread similar to naan), and ‘vino patero’ (homemade wine).  We had always wanted to stop at that place, but usually when we’re in the Quebrada, we’re in a rush, or just want to get home.  As it turns out, the bread was delicious, and Kelsey and Matt bought a couple of bottles of the homemade wine, which was also very good.  We’ll be going back to that stand for sure.

Day 4 – When Kelsey and Matt arrived, they told us they had never had authentic Argentine asado.  So obviously we had to have one.  On their last day in town, we decided to go to Quilmes in the morning, and set up the asado in the afternoon.  I had never been to the Quilmes ruins, which are quite famous across Argentina (and is the namesake of the most popular beer in the country).  We hiked to the top (actually I turned around most of the way up after I started thinking about the exposure of the rock scramble we were doing) and got great views of the valley.

That afternoon, we set up the asado.  Our Spanish teacher Edgardo and his fianceé Daniela came as well, and Edgardo showed me the authentic Argentine method for making the asado, which involved using a hair dryer to fan the flames of the fire (I was laughing really hard at this).  Nevertheless, the meat came out perfectly, and Kelsey and Matt couldn’t believe how delicious the meat was using just salt and a hardwood fire.

Kelsey and Matt left the next morning for Bolivia, and we were sad to see them go.  We have a lot in common, and hope the rest of their trip is as great as ours has been.

Cafayate bike race–Carrera de los Pioneros

The start/finish arch

Kristen on the podium

Our first bike race in Argentina was such an experience that I wrote an article about it, potentially to be distributed (or published) in the NYC cycling community:

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I moved to New York in 2005 alongside several friends from college. By 2009, most of them were gone, and I was living alone. A co-worker was a road racer, and he suggested I buy a bike. A few months later, I was on NYVelocity and had a whole new group of friends. Not that this is a secret, but cycling (in particular the insanity that is known as bike racing) is a fantastic way to meet people. Wherever you go, there are surely cyclists, wishing they had someone to train with.

History repeats itself. Which is how I ended up on a street corner at 8:30am, on a Sunday, in rural Northwestern Argentina, trying to find the 1^st Annual Desafio de los Pioneros 60km mountain bike race.

Let me back up. I’m currently taking a year off from work, traveling around the world with my wife Kristen. For the past few months, we’ve been living in rural Cafayate, Argentina, trying to learn Spanish. Aside from our Spanish teacher, we didn’t have too many ‘local’ friends in town. But we had mountain bikes. Pretty decent ones, actually. We’d tool around trying to find whatever local trails and rides we could, with mixed success. Then one day our Spanish teacher told us he’d met a guy at the gym who was organizing a mountain bike race in town 3 weeks from now. There would be a preview ride of the course this Sunday – would we like to join?

I thought I was done bike racing in 2011. I love riding, but I also run and swim and hike now, too. But the draw was too much – when else would I have the chance to compete in a rural Argentine bike race?

So I went to the preview ride. It turned to be just me and one other guy. And the course was . . . unexpected. For a town that’s in the front ranges of the Andes, the course was dead flat, a circuit on the valley bottom. And it was half on asphalt roads, half on rough dirt farming roads (way rougher and sandier than Battenkill) – sort of like a road race that required a mountain bike. And so I learned that there are two types of mountain bike races in Argentina – Rural Bike (XR), and Cross Country (XC). This course was thoroughly Rural Bike. In any event, the other guy (Nicolas) and I chatted in Spanish for the full couple hours it took to ride the course. Now, my Spanish is pretty good. But it’s often hard to have substantive conversations with locals since I talk somewhat slowly and use odd words. But Nicolas had nowhere to go. He was stuck talking to me for 2 hours. Luckily, he was a tolerant guy, and we had a great time chatting.

And so it began – Nicolas and his buddies would be our first real local friends. He invited me to join him and a couple other guys for some weekday trail rides. And maybe some long weekend rides into the mountains. He assured me: “no somos locos. Pero nos gusta mountain bike.”

3 weeks of training does not prepare you to race bikes. I did my best to simulate an abbreviated cycle - training 6 days a week, stepping up from endurance to tempo to sub-threshold training, long rides with Nicolas on the weekends. I lost 5 pounds and my legs got significantly bigger (it’s funny how fast your body remembers), but I wasn’t really there. And what’s more, I had no idea how good everyone else was going to be.

The day of the race came. Nicolas had told me to be at registration at 8:30am, since the race was set to start at 9:30am. When Kristen and I showed up, there was nobody there. And I realized I had mis-translated. Nicolas had meant Argentine 8:30, which is sometime between 9:15 and 9:30.

As other racers began streaming in, I got to size up the field. I had been curious about this – in the middle of nowhere, were the guys on $10k bikes going to come out of the woodwork? It turned out that nope, they weren’t. A few guys from nearby Salta were riding imported Cannondales and Giants, but for the most part the racers had a mosaic of locally made frames of all ages and states of repair (I was riding a locally-bought Zenith Astra). This would be truly interesting – in the States, I had always assumed that the strongest guys could have won on just about any bike, but now I was going to see firsthand if that was true.

Kristen and I seemed to be local curiosities – two Americans wearing slick-looking custom kits, come here to race in the middle of nowhere. One guy asked me if I was a pro. I had to explain that no, the sponsor listed on my shirt was in fact a food truck that serves Belgian waffles. Which was difficult, because they have neither food trucks nor waffles in Argentina. He asked me if it was like McDonald’s but on the street. I said no, it was more like the guy on Rivadavia street in town who makes chicken in his old oil drum grill on Saturdays, except if he served pancakes with peanut butter on them. I think I made myself understood.

They had insisted I race in the ‘elite’ category, which was a bit scary. There is no Cat 1/2/3/4 in Argentina. There are only Elite, Masters 30+, and Masters 40+ (plus a handful of other categories like Veteranos, women, first-timers, children, etc.). Apparently if you’re under 30, you’re assumed to be mighty, which sadly I am not.

The start area was surprisingly typical. There was an announcer on the mic (doing his best Latin football voice, rolling his rr’s as hard as possible), and terrible dance music playing (in Spanish, though with several well-placed English vulgarities). The pre-race announcement included such instructions as “beware of donkeys and horses in the road”, and “the pace vehicles will do their best to clear stray dogs out of the way, but be careful anyhow”. I don’t recall having to sign a pre-race waiver of liability.

Kristen had ridden to the start with me to watch the race. She hasn’t been riding much as she’s had some back issues that sometimes flare up on the mountain bike. She noticed there were no other women in the race and started to get antsy. I told her it was a bad idea, but she registered. We’re married now, I guess this is how it goes. The crowd loved her – she got the biggest cheer out of anyone at the start when the names of the participants were announced. Apparently women’s cycling isn’t terribly popular out here in the docks.

The race format was mass-start. All entrants from all categories rolled out at the same time. We were neutral for the first 1k or so, until we were out of town. At that point, all hell broke loose. The guys in the back started to swarm, and the guys at the front attacked. We were still on a paved road. Imagine the frenzied start of a road race where someone attacks from the gun, except the 5s are mixed in with the 2s, everyone is on mountain bikes, and there is no yellow line rule.

I stayed near the front as best I could. My front wheel was bumped several times, as the attacks and surges at the front began to wear out the weaker rides, who began to swerve. Several times a small group broke off the front. Each time, I joined up and tried to convince my fellow break-mates to rotate, or at least organize, but they didn’t seem to understand. The 3 or 4 guys who had attacked were sitting up. I figured they were mountain bikers and simply didn’t know how to race on the road. But after about 20k, it became clear that what was going on. The 3 or 4 strong guys who had initiated all the breaks started to survey our latest small group. We had a significant gap on the main group behind. Apparently the strong guys liked what they saw (which was the rest of us panting), and they took off. They had been attacking to tire us out! I didn’t see them until after the finish.

By the time we had reached 25k (on bumpy dirt ‘ripio’ roads now), I was beginning to get dropped from the chase group. The surges had burned up many of my matches, and the pace of the group was too much given my little training. I was in no-man’s land for a long while. I got passed by the Masters 30+ group, and was finally able to hold pace with one of their stragglers.

He dragged me for the next 15 or 20k, and dropped me on the final sandy section (which was actually a riverbed). I had decided to keep my tires pumped way up (40psi), since the race was 50% on asphalt, and as such had zero traction in the sand. I had to run through it, and then did an awkwardly out of practice cross re-mount, which turned out to be crotch destroying as well.

Once we hit the asphalt, I was in my element. I got into a tuck and time trialed (well, limped actually) in to the finish, passing several guys along the way. Who even knows how far back I finished, and who even cares.

My friend Nicolas ended up 2^nd in Masters 40+, and Kristen of course won the women’s category as she was the only entrant. For that, she was given a humongous trophy, which was cool because she made me carry it back home and everyone in town thought I had won it.

As a final point, I’d like to note the infrastructure of the race. Each field had a pace moto (I know because I got passed by 2), and there were at least a couple other motos with passengers videotaping the action (they seemed to be particularly interested when Kristen bonked yet refused a ride to the finish). There were several neutral feed stations handing out water and oranges (which were a nice thought but impossible to eat while riding at full blast on a dirt road). It was honestly as well organized as any race I’ve been to, which I suppose should come as no surprise given that the rural culture is such that friends will drop by and work a few hours in a buddy’s shop or store, no questions asked. Some guy at the side of the road offered Kristen a croissant at one point because she looked tired. It seemed like the whole town was pitching in.

And the finish was no exception. The wife of a racer had cooked up two giant vats of delicious corn stew (called “locro”), which was served to all race participants (and seemingly to anyone who happened to be standing around near there). It was a real rural Argentine ending to my first rural Argentine bike race (of which there should be more, as I was ambushed at the finish by other race organizers asking me to come ride in their races.