Memories of Food
MoBikeFed President Rachel Ruhlen is a community blogger for Gatehouse Media. This article appeared Mar 7, 2015.
I'm so relieved at the milder temperatures forecasted next week. I have spent too many days huddled indoors, dreaming of past bicycle rides and imagining future rides. Luckily, I have a good supply of vivid memories of my bicycle trip last summer that I took with my dad to 40 Missouri State Parks.
Memories of food are particularly vivid. I devoured an enormous plate of lasagna at Stefanina's in Troy, MO, eating with Eric, the enthusiastic and effective superintendant of Cuivre River State Park. He got funding from Toyota, which has a factory in Troy, to build an ADA-accessible fishing dock. I looked enviously at the work already in progress after just a few short months, and compared it to the painstakingly slow progress of the FLATS trail at Thousand Hills State Park. (Both the fishing dock and the FLATS trail Phase 1 are now complete.) Stefanina's is a beautiful Italian restaurant in a former Catholic church. The meal was all the more memorable when Dad suddenly yelled out, scooted his chair back, and clutched his leg. We looked at him sympathetically and without alarm-- we knew he was suffering a leg cramp, a charley horse, a severe shooting pain in his calf.
Weeks earlier, when we reached Bennett Spring State Park, Dad had more than a charley horse. His leg refused to hold his weight at all. He leaned on me and limped into the dining lodge. I savored every bite of the almond-encrusted trout, and the chocolate cake dripping with chocolate sauce.
I had some kind of dessert every night. For the first 3 weeks of the trip, I had toasted 2 marshmallows every night. Then the bag was gone and I didn't buy another. I had had enough marshmallows. I developed a salivation reflex when I saw golden arches. I dipped french fries in my snack-size M&M McFlurry while I uploaded photos and journal entries on the McDonald's Wi-Fi. But the apple pizza we shared in Lexington was so sweet that I had a bad sugar crash while we toured Lexington Historical Museum.
We got creative with food. I spotted a tiny bottle of ketchup in a grocery store. When we stopped pedaling and took a break, I ate my boiled eggs with ketchup. We ate half a dozen eggs every day, scrambled for breakfast and boiled for on-the-bike snacks. We ate dozens of bananas, yards of cheese sticks, and gallons of V-8.
For a few days, Dad grilled steak and chicken over the fire and roasted potatoes in the coals. Then he decided cooking that way was too much work. We had a few more restaurant meals and instant food after that.
I wasn't keen on the freeze dried backpacker meals, but they were easy and tasted good enough when I was hungry. At Lake of the Ozarks State Park, we met Tom, a fellow bike-packer who had had mechanical trouble that day and had arrived in the park with a bag of carrots and 6 yogurt-covered raisins for his supper. We gave him as much food as we could persuade him to take, including freeze dried beef stroganoff. Beef stroganoff, it turned out, was Tom's favorite meal.
Food is one of my favorite things about bicycle touring. After a couple weeks on the bike, I have the most prodigious appetite. Not only am I able to eat a great deal, but eating is more enjoyable. Even mundane food takes on a certain flavor when you are burning a lot of calories. It wasn't that I was hungry a lot-- we rarely ran out of food. It's just that I could always eat, and I loved every bite.
Read more of MoBikeFed President Rachel Ruhlen's articles on the President Blog page.
Join MoBikeFed's Advocacy Network
Working together we make a real difference! Join our advocacy network:
Related pages
Archives...
Want better bicycling and walking in Missouri?
We rely on the support of members like you. Please join, renew, or donate today.
- Home
- JOIN/DONATE
- News/Info
- Missouri Bicycling, Running, Trails
- Bicycle Skills and Safety
- Missouri Bike/Ped Law
- Clubs and Organizations
- Bike Shops
- Running Shops
- Bicycling, Running, Trails-related Businesses
- Ride, Run, Walk, Hike, Triathlon, and Events Calendars
- Bicycles on Amtrak
- Maps and Routes
- Trails and Trail Maps
- IBikeMO.org
- Planning a Missouri bicycle trip
- Gravel and Bikepacking Maps & Routes
- Bicycle & Touring Routes
- Advocacy
- Campaigns
- Our Legislative Platform
- Complete Streets
- Statewide Rock Island Trail
- Statewide Trail Vision - Quad State Trail
- Bicycle Friendly Missouri
- Walk Friendly Missouri
- Safe Routes to School
- MoDOT funding crisis
- High Priority Bike/Ped Project List
- Anti-harassment laws in cities & statewide
- Updating the basic bicycle law
- Our Vision for MoDOT
- Our Vision for MPOs/RPCs
- Our Vision for Cities & Counties
- Bicycle, pedestrian, trails plans across MO
- Protecting Vulnerable Road Users
- Vision Zero
- Missouri Trail Towns
- Store
- About