What? 100 Miles? No Big Thing

I know that there's been collective breaths being held throughout the world of the internet while waiting for the result of my 100 mile bike ride held exactly 10 days ago. Well, tense internet-world, hold your breath no more, because the following is the answer you've been waiting for:

It was pretty cool, but sort of hard... Yea, overall it was fine.

Whoa, did that just blow your mind? Did I just use totally boring, nondescript words to describe something that's super crazy? Definitely.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the day came, and the day went. We got onto our bikes at about 6:30 in the morning, and then we were on our bikes for a long time, and then it was over. Nobody (me) hit a wall like last year, nobody cried or went crazy, and all in all everyone felt fairly strong the entire ride. This whole thing basically went down without a hitch, and because of it, the story of Dustin, Ben, and Erin's century ride is extremely boring and ultimately doesn't have any twist to it.

We began the ride at exactly 6:38am, and were cruising. Around an hour in, however, Ben got a flat tire. We ended up stopped for about 35 minutes, and were back on the road. This was literally the most crazy thing that happened all day.

We made a plan before the ride that we were going to spend no more and no less than 5 minutes at each rest stop, but we were going to completely blow by the first stop (17 miles in), as it wouldn't be open yet (the rest stops opened up at 8:30, and there was just no need to stop at that rest stop that early on in our journey). This plan opened us up to making the best time we could make early on, when we would be able to go faster, as we wouldn't have the disadvantage of extra mileage working against us. We were completely successful in abiding to this rule, and even decided at the last stop that we were going to ignore it. This resulted in us achieving our goal of under 7.5 hours. It took us 7 hours and 15 minutes in all, which we were all super thrilled with.

We met up with our adoring fans (the fan section grew considerably this year!) at mile 71. If there was a point at which any of us was dragging this year, this was it. I was sucking wind pretty badly at this point, although not to the degree that I was last year at mile 90 (I considered myself to be 'dead' at that point last year... Whenever I look back on it, that's the terminology that I use). I took some ibuprofen, chugged some Gatorade and pounded a banana and some Fig Newtons and we took back off. The next 30 miles were pretty amazing.

In a strange way, I somehow got stronger as we approached 100 miles. Maybe it was the Ibuprofen, maybe it was support, maybe it was a lot of other things, but I could have seriously biked another 50 miles after the 100 that day. I'm not sure how much in agreement Erin & Ben would have been with me on that point, but I did feel amazingly fresh. The whole story basically ends with us finishing the 100 miles and then eating some pizza.

So yea... Second Century -- Demolished.

We'll be gearing back up again towards the end of the summer for the Seagull Century, so stay tuned to the blog for that training stuff -- That'll be interesting for us, since it'll be completely different than the CASA River Century, and it's in my hometown of Salisbury. I plan on mostly continuing the sandwich blogging, too, so keep checking in for that nonsense.

Pre-Race Sandwich Week

This Saturday is my second-ever century ride. It's for this reason that I didn't put a lot of effort into turning the sandwich world on it's head this week. To be fair, I made an awesome sandwich. Borderline historical sandwich, even. But considering the thought and effort that I've been putting into sandwiches for the last 2 years or so, this was pretty run-of-the-mill.

I constructed this week's sandwich with two goals. The first goal is the same as it always is: Make a sandwich that is both fulfilling to my appetite and also delicious. Check. The second goal, unique to this week, was to create a sandwich that took advantage of a few extra ingredients that were lying around from sandwiches past.

Like I said before, this wasn't rocket science sandwich making, but it turned out to be a pretty monstrous, and successful, sandwich. I took my go-to Wegman's whole grain white bread, and spread a bit of mayo on it. From there I built the tower: Wegman's Jim Beam Deli Turkey, Sharp Provolone Cheese, hot red pepper relish, pickles, tomato, lettuce. The ingredients were run-of-the-mill... The combination was anything but.

Gotta hand it to Wegman's on this one (cause I never do...), that Jim Beam turkey is delicious. For the first time in 3 weeks, I'm not going to declare the sandwich I'm currently eating as possibly the best ever... But it was damn good. Took a little while to make, not in a complicated way, but more in a way that assembly line products tend to do. There are just a lot of components to this sandwich, and it was a little time consuming for something I end up eating in like 150 seconds.

Anyway, successful sandwich... I score this as a 9/10... Very enjoyable.

I Just Won Sandwich Making

When brainstorming sandwich ideas, what I like to do is set a challenge for myself. This isn't meant to set myself up for failure or anything, but more because I feel like true greatness cannot be fully realized without hardships or difficulty. Would Michael Jordan have been so great if he didn't have to defeat Isaah, Magic, Clyde, Ewing, Stockton & Malone? For those who do not understand this analogy and are also not capable of reading between the lines, like, at all, the answer to this question is a resounding no.

In the past I have challenged myself to create sandwiches by venturing outside of what I consider to be traditional breads. I've also challenged myself to create sandwiches that are completely vegetarian. This week I decided to challenge myself to construct a sandwich that was mostly centered around fruit. To be fair, this is not a new idea, as this is a challenge that I also set out to conquer last summer... I've found myself repeating this challenges, but in all honesty, who cares, cause I'm making delicious sandwiches.

The idea for this weeks sandwich came from a delicious salad that my wonderful wife made recently, of which apples had a starring role in. Apples have a great sweetness to them, and I decided that if I could successfully incorporate them into a sandwich, then I would have a tasty meal on my hands.

Mission accomplished. I hate to say this two weeks in a row (because it diminishes how serious I am when I say this), but this may be the best sandwich I have ever made. I took sliced oven-roasted chicken, melted a generous portion of swiss cheese on top of it, and then sliced up an even generous-er portion of both golden delicious and granny smith apples on top of that. On one slice of my toasted Wegman's Honey & Apple Oat bread (total win here, by the way) was Dinosaur BBQ sauce, and the other was a thin layer of mayo. Like I said before, I think this could be my crowning achievement in sandwich making. I can't wait to make new friends so I can make this sandwich for them at an undetermined time in the future. Obviously the arbitrary scoring system rates this bad boy at a 10, but that's only because the meter goes no further than that (Maybe I'll put in an 11... Not sure we have the technology for that). Either way, this week was a rousing success.

This weekend Erin, Ben and I are going to be headed to Mount Vernon on our 62 mile 'rest' ride the weekend before the race. With the race only one week away, I feel good.

83 Mile Training Ride

This weekend I took a trip out to West Virginia with Ben and Erin to both simultaneously knock out what would prove to be our longest training ride, and to also get away from the DC area and it's absolutely atrocious biking conditions. On Friday night after work we drove to Martinsburg and stayed with Ben's hospitable family for the night and headed out at a slightly-more-reasonable-than-what-we've-been-doing time of about 7:00 am.

The route was mapped out in order to incorporate some of the track that is used for the actual CASA River Century, and that was another reason to why we made the trip out to West Virginia. As far as weather and temperature goes, Saturday was ideal. I think it was probably as cool as 60, and about as warm as 70-75. With most of the trip in the shade, the conditions for long-distance biking were as good as it gets.

We made some incredible time. We exited the driveway from Ben's house at exactly 6:54, and returned at exactly 1:22, meaning that we banged out a good 83.5 miles in 6 hours and 22 minutes. Considering that we would like to finish the century ride in under 7.5 hours, this time bodes well for us... Another hour and 10 minutes to go 20 miles may be on the quick side (especially considering that by the end of this ride we were slowed down considerably), but given the fact that water and food will be more plentiful, I think it's reasonable to think that we can speed up that time a bit more on race day.

This trip was a huge success... Although we couldn't get this ride done in under 6 hours (this became sort of our goal for a while after a torrid start to the ride), I'm still very pleased with our time. It's amazing to me how much more these West Virginia rides are about the actual ride and less about everything else (hills, traffic, stress). I find myself noticing the physical ailments a lot more on the West Virginia rides because there's no big-time mental issues associated with the rides. When riding in DC, I find myself mentally exhausted from dodging cars, stopping at stop lights, and trying to figure out directions. West Virginia is a really nice change up from that.

Philly Cheese-steak Sans the Steak Part

The central idea behind me devoting a good amount of my blog towards sandwich creation is one of health. While it's true that it may be healthier to eat salads for lunch everyday, what would eventually end up happening would be that I would go out to lunch once, maybe twice a week to get away from eating something that's not filling or particularly exciting, rendering my salads-for-sandwiches swapout useless. I figure that, although my sandwiches may not be the healthiest things in the world, they are probably a good enough downgrade from some of the other much-worse alternatives out there that it more than makes up for it being less healthy than other sort-of-healthier alternatives (does that make any sense at all?).

So I figure the when I introduce vegetarian subs into the fold, that should mean not only am I being healthy by way of this post's initial paragraph, but I'm also being healthy because... Duh, vegetables! (You will realize that this sandwich ended up being not super healthy, but... duh, vegetables!)

The last vegetarian sub that I made last year was an unquestionable success. Hell, it may have even been the best sandwich that I've ever made. The vegetables that I chose for this sandwich are the same, but the makeup is wildly different. Whereas last year's veggie sub was done sort of in an italian style (pesto, mozzarella), I chose to take a decidedly American direction with this week's sub. I give you the Philly Cheese-steak inspired veggie sub (I haven't actually come up with a name for it).

I sauteed a mixture of regular white and baby portabello mushrooms on Sunday night in preparation for this sandwich all week, and in addition cut up some red onion and poblano peppers, throwing them all into a pre-toasted sub roll with melted ultra-sharp cheddar cheese... As always, these delicious and adequately priced items were all purchased at my local Wegmans. The combination of flavors was awesome. After a good 15 minutes in the toaster oven, this sub emerged with a crispy outer shell and a gooey melted cheesy center. It was incredible.

Every week I wait until either Wednesday or Thursday to take pictures. The reasoning behind this is because I commonly tweak the construction of the sandwich for either taste or structural reasons. This week I began slathering Dinosaur Bar-B-Que sauce on the sandwich both before and after heating, and in both instances the sandwich was just a mess. Delicious, but a mess nonetheless. After a few disaster trial runs, I decided that I should just cut my losses, and use the sauce (by the way, the absolute best BBQ sauce in the world, I mean this stuff is like crack) as a dip, instead of as a part of the sandwich.

Arbitrary scoring scale ranks this sandwich as a 10/10. Yes, a perfect score. This sandwich was a top 2-3 of all for me... What does it mean that 2 out of the top 3 are all vegetarian subs? I don't know, probably nothing.

70 Mile Stress Ride

This is gonna be a quick one.

This past weekend proved to be yet another week were Ben, Erin & I were unable to get completely together on a long ride. We had what was thought to be a stellar route mapped out, but yet again life (or flat tires) got in the way of the foolishness of training for a century ride, and we ended up split up between Saturday and Sunday.

Ben took the Saturday slot, and crushed it. In 5:08 he traveled 70 miles, and that is some pretty good time, probably better than any time I've ever made. Erin & I hit the route on Sunday and didn't fare quite so well. We clocked in at an unimpressive 7:20, but to be fair a lot of that time was spent making unpredicted stops. I would assume that if those stops weren't made, and we were both firing on all cylinders that we would have banged out this route in close to 6 hours.

This route was brutal no matter how you slice it, though. This is one of those classic 'uphill both ways in the snow' sort of things that your grandparents tell you about... Only it was biking, and instead it was 70 miles. It was also stressful to no end, as it's the first real road ride we've done during this training. I forgot how shitty it is to bike on roads in the general DC area. It was not fun.

This week's sandwich post coming soon!

Worst Sandwich Week Ever

This week's sandwich roots were noble, and complimentary again towards the city of Buffalo. For the second week in a row I decided that I would pay homage to one of the best food cities in the country, but this time I chose to construct a Beef-on-weck sandwich... Much lesser-known to those outside of the city of Buffalo, but certainly not less important.

The beef-on-weck, to those unfamiliar, is a very simple sandwich that has German roots, but was ultimately invented in Buffalo. It's simplicity is in that it is roast beef, thinly sliced, placed on a kimmelweck roll... Horseradish is also acceptably thrown into this for those who feel adventurous. When made properly, this is a wonderful sandwich, both in it's taste and in it's unapologetic simplicity.

Something I had not counted on was the fact that this is almost primarily a Western New York delicacy (did you not read that Wikipedia article I linked?!?), and therefore when I purchased the kimmelweck rolls at my local Wegmans in Lanham, MD, I was disappointed in the very un-Wegmans like staleness of the rolls -- This was not a bread product that they normally sold a lot of. Determined not to let this get to me (and driven by the promise of giant sandwiches filled with meat), I decided to make the sandwich happen anyway. The following is a chronicle of the next 4 days of lunch.

Monday: Though fairly stale, the insides of the roll prove to be surprisingly fresh. The roast beef is very rare (perfect for this sandwich), and the week's 'Potential Lunch Enjoyment Outlook' (PLEO) is scoring off the charts.

Tuesday: The rolls are rock hard already... Very un-Wegman's like. I decide to take a 'wait-and-see' approach to the rest of the week's sandwiches. Still very good... I decide to soften the roll up in the microwave, and although it's mostly in that weird partially-hard-partially-soft-definitely-too-hot-in-that-microwavey-sort-of-way, I eat the sandwich anyway. Hard to knock this sandwich, even though it's less than ideal.

Wednesday: This is the day that I set the kitchen on fire. Attempting to soften the roll for a second day, I toss it in the microwave for a 30-second soften, and leave the kitchen to retrieve the camera (for those all-too-important blog screen shots)... I return to see the microwave on fire from the inside out... I have set the roll on fire. There is something primal to human beings when it comes to fire. There's nothing more exhilarating than creating fire where there was none before, and equally there's nothing more terrifying than accidentally creating fire when there was never intent to do so. That's why I shrieked like a little girl. In probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me at work (the setting of the fire, not the shriek... Although that didn't help), I created a lasting impression both in the minds of my co-workers, and more notably in the kitchen at CPI -- That shit smells terrible, and remains to this day.

Thursday-Friday: I bring regular bread. This is the part of the story that's not interesting.

So yea, rough week on the sandwich front. On a brighter note (followed quickly by another disappointing retrospective negative note), we have a 70 mile ride coming up after being unable to complete last week's ride because of a rainout. We've got 3 weeks left of training before the century ride in West Virginia... Pretty crazy that it's all happening this quick.

Buffalo Turkey: An All America Wrap

For this week's sandwich, I chose to pay homage to a place I would consider my second or third home, and that place is Buffalo, NY. Commonly known for many things (snowy weather, disastrous Super Bowl results in consecutive years), I think it's safe to say that the most well-known export out of the city of Buffalo is Buffalo Chicken. I decided to play off of this awesomely delicious food this week, and in order to keep it a bit healthy, I chose to replace the chicken with turkey, and to make it a wrap as opposed to a sandwich.

The wrap is surprisingly simple. I slap some oven roasted deli turkey meat (Courtesy of my local Wegman's), and top that with some crumbled bleu cheese, lettuce and tomato. On top of that I employ a generous lathering of Franks Buffalo Sauce, and wrap it up with the culinary dexterity of someone who has not only gone to Subway sandwich making school, but in fact someone who has graduated with honors from Subway sandwich making school.

The wrap ended up being mighty tasty. It takes a bit of time to construct, but I think the payoff is well worth it. I'm surprised as to how filling it is, considering that a bulk of the fill-factor is veggies. I rarely bring this topic up in my blog, but I have to point out the fact that I chose one of the worst pairing side dishes to go with this sandwich this week. Although the pears are delicious and perfectly ripe, they don't work well with the buffalo turkey taste. The pears are very bland when tasted in unison with the buffalo taste, and it's been somewhat disappointing. Welcome to Dustin's new blog -- 'Telling you how fruit you've had a million times before in your life tastes'

All in all, this wrap was a success. I wouldn't consider it the best or worst I've ever had, but it's been enjoyable all week. I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get around to making a wrap (about a year and half of this blog, really), but I do think I hit it out of the park. I'm also glad I was able to refer to Buffalo as an 'All America City' in a clever title-themed way. Arbitrary Scoring Scale? I think it gets an 8.5/10.

This weekend? JEOPARDY! And then a 70 mile ride. Things are heating up.

When I Stop Blogging...

A lot of information comes out all at once -- Envision a sandwich blog version of a pinched hose... I'm sure this is a common exercise for most.

Last week's sandwich was a re-run. This was partially because there were fewer days in the sandwich-eating week (Good Friday was off for us), but also because the egg salad sandwich was a success the week before, and I was interested to see if I could improve on it (I did! -- Less soupy, more eggy, and overall better proportions of ingredients). Also, I was lazy and totally did not want to come up with a new sandwich idea last week.

This week's sandwich is a PBJ. I'm losing my sandwich mojo -- What with coming back from Buffalo (woo Buffalo!) on Monday and another bout of laziness, I have officially made this sandwich hiatus a two week event. While this is a fairly disappointing thing for me, I hope to make it up over the next few weeks when both training and sandwich making should be kicking into high gear.

Speaking of training, much in the same vein as the sandwich-making, it has been as far from consistent as it really could be. Unfortunately we've had up and down weather, making commuting to and from work difficult to be consistent on. I'm still holding strong at around 50%, which I guess in early April isn't a terrible percentage.

Two weeks ago Ben, Erin and I embarked on a 50 mile ride on some familiar bike paths. Unfortunately the bike gods (bike path gods?) chose to negatively effect the ride and wrecked havoc on Erin's tires. She got out on her own the next day, but she was missed on the ride. In true 'one-persons-shitty-day-is-another-persons-best-day' style, I happened to feel better than I believe I'd ever felt on a long ride. Although I ended up exhausted after a 'mere' 50 miles, I felt fresh and solid the entire ride. If I feel that way for the century ride, than I will feel sorry for every bike riding record ever set.

Last weekend, as previously noted, I went to Buffalo with my wonderful wife for Easter. I went all-in on getting a really good ride in while there. I went and bought a bike rack at REI. I constructed a really gnarly ride along the Riverwalk. I was ready... Unfortunately for me, Buffalo at 6 AM in early April is, for lack of a better phrase, balls-fucking cold. Because of time restraints (Oh no, I had to go to Duff's... Poor me...), I wasn't able to get out there at any other time. So yea, I missed out on some serious biking, but I can't say I feel regretful about it.

The Fan Favorite

People have asked me how I come up with my sandwich ideas (trust me, this does in fact happen). The truth of it is that it's different depending on the week. Sometimes I have an idea formulating in my head for a few weeks before it actually plays out in sandwich form. Sometimes I wake up on Sunday morning (when I go shopping) without having considered it all week long. This week was an example of the former. I have been spending a good deal of my past couple of weeks dedicating my mental energy towards college basketball, and so I woke up on Sunday, after a devastating loss for Syracuse with a question that I didn't have long much time to answer. What's the sandwich for this week?

The answer to the question turned out to be a pretty good one, and ended up not seeming to be hastily thrown together, which was a big surprise. I decided on a whim that since I hadn't made an egg salad sandwich yet that I would do that. I googled 'spicy egg salad' and literally worked off the first recipe that I found. I would have added the link, but I'm unable to find it at this juncture.

I went surprisingly off-path from the recipe, adding in red pepper and a spicy peppercorn mustard (courtesy of  fellow trainer Erin), and played around a bit with the amounts of different ingredients. What came of this experimentation, I'm proud to admit, is a wonderful egg salad unlike any that I have ever had. The pepper, peppercorn mustard, chipotle chili powder, onion and celery added a ton to this salad, and it turned out to be a somewhat spicy, but completely delicious concoction to be thrown between two pieces of toast.

This sandwich became a fan favorite at Charles Products. Many tried it, and almost all spoke highly of it. One co-worker even went as far to state that it was the 'best egg salad' she had ever had. Whoa, shit just got real, son.

The arbitrary scoring system pegs this sandwich at a 9/10. I'm not sure if I even could make this egg salad again because, to be honest, I sort of winged a lot of it. I'm very pleased with how everything came out, and I'd love to have it again, but I'd make a couple of minor changes to the construction. Taste-wise this is a great egg salad, but it could use some salt/pepper, and probably a higher ratio of egg. I'd also like to tone back the liquid components a bit, as it is a bit soupy for my tastes, but my tastes are particularly anti-soupy, so there you go.

And so, as goes another Syracuse basketball season (R.I.P.), another sandwich week has come and gone (although sandwich switch-up Friday may be in full effect tomorrow). This weekend brings a 17-mile jump in mileage for our training ride, which I would guess is the biggest jump we've ever done outside of the actual century ride. Physically I'm ready for it. Mentally I'm not so sure.

Matthew Henson Makes A Mean Trail

Saturday was the first 'official' training ride for me of the season. Ben had rocked a 30 mile ride last weekend, so I guess I was behind a week in 'Operation Get Ass In Gear'. Ben and I are joined this year by Erin, who was somehow able to keep up with our blazing speed and overall near-perfect ability on a bicycle (sarcasm). Ben, Erin, & I met up around 8:45 somewhat down Beach Drive (a sort of centralized location), and set out on what was intended to be a very casual 35 mile ride.

You may think that the ending of that first paragraph was an ominous cliffhanger. It was not, and this actually was totally a casual and enjoyable ride. We headed north on Beach Drive, and basically took my route to work plus another 6 or so miles (Thanks to Ben for mapping this out), jumping from the Rock Creek Trail onto the Matthew Henson Trail. I gotta hand it to that 'African American explorer and associate of Robert Peary on various expeditions, the most famous being a 1909 expedition during which he may have been the first person to reach the Geographic North Pole', he made a hell of a trail (totally did not make that trail, BTW). It's been probably about a year now since I biked that particular trail, and every time I do I enjoy it more and more. It's smooth, less populated than the Rock Creek Trail, and generally just a lot of fun to ride on.

We made pretty awesome time, considering that we were on bike paths (curvaceous, and thus much slower-going), and made close to the entire 36-mile round trip in somewhere between 2 hours and 2 hours and 15 minutes. This is the pace that we certainly would like to keep up for the century ride in order to reach our target time of under 7.5 hours.

Sandwich Kickoff 2012

I'm only 2 and a half weeks late with my first sandwich post of the year, which, let's be honest, isn't all that bad these days. Besides, I'm sure the majority of readers weren't waiting on the edge of their seats for me to write a blog post about a sandwich. What? You were? Oh, sorry about that, then, I'll get right to it.

I'm in a different place this year than I was last, as far as sandwich creation goes, and I think my very first sandwich of the season exemplifies exactly that. Last year I found myself dreaming about sandwich combinations. I found myself visualizing sandwiches when people were talking to me about things that were unrelated. 

To simplify, I was sandwich obsessed. This year I have a sandwich season under my belt (and after a full winter of not biking or working out, this is quite evident), and I'm not as eager to change the world with new sandwich concoctions. Maybe things will change in the future, but for now I'm content just making delicious sandwiches that only somewhat blow my mind. 

Another thing that I'm saying right now that may prove to be super true or a complete lie is that I'd like to push myself towards more vegetarian-style sandwiches. I'm not going to make this a super strict rule, but I am going to try to make it a bit of a soft-guideline (like how wishy-washy I'm being?). I was surprised to find that many of the best sandwiches last year were on the healthier side, and also in many cases tended to be of the vegetarian variety.

So, with that enormous preface out of the way, I present to you my first week of sandwich creation. This week I took a familiar idea and spun it into a sandwich. I would say that my favorite go-to snack for big-time sporting events (doesn't everyone have one of these?) is an olive oil, sun-dried tomato & mozzarella cheese mixture on top of fresh cut up baguettes. I basically took precisely that and made it a sandwich, obviously with some tweaks. The baguette became a sandwich, and in order to pull in some sort of nutritional value I added spinach. Can I say I nailed it without sounding predictably smug? Who cares, I nailed this sandwich. Then again, I can't exactly say that I went too far out of my comfort zone. I'd certainly suggest this bad boy to anybody who has taste buds exactly like mine. This is a full 10/10 on my arbitrary scoring scale -- No negatives. Easy to make, delicious, fairly healthy, aesthetically appealing (A co-worker asked if I got this sandwich from the bakery down the street... Compliment accepted!)... This sandwich has it all.

On the biking front, there's not a whole ton to report... I'm struggling to get into the mindset that I'll be biking 100 miles just under two months from now. I'm sure I'll get there... The first step will be my first long(ish) ride, which will be Saturday morning. Biking to and from work has become a daily thing, minus a few exceptions, and that will be the last time I mention that unless something significant happens, or I forgot that I wasn't supposed to mention it.

Winter Sandwich Wrapup

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, mainly because there are no pictures, and blog posts about sandwiches with no pictures is sort of a worthless endeavor. Unless you're like really good at imagining how things taste in your mind. If you're good at that, this post is right up your alley.

After spending such a large amount of my money, effort, and time brainstorming and constructing different sandwiches last summer, I felt it was time to take a vacation from the whole sandwich thing -- I was still completely open to eating them, mind you -- I just wasn't going to be putting the same effort into it as I had been for the 10 weeks or so leading up to my century ride. The rest of the summer, and even into the fall, was sort of defined as a sandwich-free era of my life. I was happy to rock the PB&J.

Then in early winter I got antsy. I decided that I needed something a little bit more interesting than peanut butter and jelly, and so I decided to zero in on some sandwiches that I felt could be 'go-to sandwiches.' The following sandwiches aren't the best that I've ever had. Nor are they the easiest. They are the sandwiches that fall into that middle-of-the-road spot. Not too expensive, not too bad, not too difficult. The question I always ask myself is this: I've just finished mowing the lawn for the past hour in the middle of the summer. Along with some Fritos and iced tea, what sort of sandwich will really hit the spot? I don't want to spend a ton of time with this, but I want to enjoy it. These are the three sandwiches that answer that question in the best way possible. As always, these are all items purchased at my local Wegmans.

Sandwich #1:
Ham, Swiss Cheese, 2 Pickles, Mayo on Whole Grain White Bread
Ham's the most underrated of the 'Big 3' deli meats (ham, turkey, roast beef), I'm convinced. Swiss cheese may be the most underrated of the most common deli cheeses as well. If this sandwich was an athlete it would be Jeremy Lin -- Overshadowed ingredients who never get their due, finally coming together to prove the world of sandwich lovers wrong for ever doubting them.

Sandwich #2:
Cajun Turkey, Sharp Provolone, Guacamole, Toasted Whole Grain White Bread
This is a more basic version of a sandwich I created last summer. It's possible this is my favorite of the top 3. Guacamole needs to be a more commonly utilized sandwich condiment, I'm saying it right now. This combination of ingredients is the perfect summer sandwich. Surprisingly hearty.

Sandwich #3(A & B):
Roast Beef, Swiss Cheese, Roasted Red Peppers, Mayo on Whole Grain White
Roast Beef, Provolone Cheese, Hot Pepper Relish, Babaganouj, on Whole Grain White
Until just before lunchtime on Monday this week, the first sandwich listed was sandwich #3. Now I'm almost 100% sure I've changed my mind. Babaganouj is something I had never had until Sunday when I was perusing free samples at Wegmans, and promptly made an impulse buy. This makes the sandwich. In the same style of guacamole, this is a spread that should be getting more sandwich play as a rule. The hot pepper relish is something I'm sure to use more of this sandwich season.

So there you have it -- These 3 sandwiches have been getting the most run this winter. I look forward to rocking out new sandwich combinations this summer. It all starts March 5th, which is the first week that I'll be commuting on bike every day of the week.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

It starts.

March 1st rarely comes and goes with any real significance to most people. There's usually some recognition of the day in much the same way that there's some recognition of EVERY new month beginning, but whatever day of the week March 1st tends to fall on (in 2012, it's a Thursday), it's usually just another one of those days.

For myself, however, March 1st brings with it the promise of and excitement of a new biking season. It brings the challenge of another, faster century ride. It brings new and intriguing sandwich creations. March 1st is the beginning of the summer, in it's essence. When considering the best days of the year, I don't have to go very far down the list to March 1st.

That is the day that I have pegged as the 'end of excuses' day. Starting March 1st I bike to work everyday, regardless of temperature or fatigue, ultimately to build up my endurance for the May 19th CASA River Century. This is the second year I will be putting my biking to the ultimate (at least for me) test with a 100+ mile bike ride, and it all starts on March 1st. This year is not about a culmination of work to finish 100 miles. This year is about making good time in that 100 miles. My intention is to also ride in the Seagull Century in October, with potentially (we'll see) a century ride in the middle of the two. So yea, March 1st is a pretty big-time day for me, as it's the beginning of what should prove to be a pretty huge spring-summer-fall for me overall.

'So what's this post for?' You may be inquisitively asking yourself out loud, shortly before wondering why it is you speak to yourself while reading... There really isn't much of an answer. More just throwing out the information that this blog is up and running again. It was a really huge success last summer, especially from a sandwich standpoint, and I hope that people enjoy it as much this year as they did last year.

Next post to come? 2011-12 Winter Sandwich Wrapup Special.