Bagels

Morning Bike Ride

That turned into a walk. The goal was getting some fresh bagels from downtown. I am almost positive this is only like the second time we have ridden the tandem since we have been in Oregon. We took it on our usual early morning route that we use on the mountain bikes, up the hill, down the hill, transit the Link River Trail, ride along Lake Ewuana and pass through downtown on the way back up the hill to home. The nearly 3 mile long Link River Trail is all gravel, but this should not be an issue for the tandem because we rode that Lock to Lock Ride in Augusta last may and the gravel portion of that was a lot nastier than this stuff.

After picking up the bagels and less than a 1/4 mile later the road suddenly turned rough. Turns out it wasn’t the road, but the lack of air in the rear tire. I hoisted the back of the bike, spun the back tire and Donna found a sand spur embedded in the middle of the tread. I don’t where we picked it up along the route, but I was pretty sure it was the culprit. Even though we carry everything needed to fix a flat, including a nice spare tube, seeing as it was the back tire and we were less than a mile from home we just walked it.

Later in the morning I went to fix the flat, I used the tools and supplies we were already carrying on the bike, but as it turned out we would have still had to walk home. The back wheel came off easy enough, the tire levers popped the tire free easy-peasy and the replacement tube went in fine, but because the rim has a slight aero profile the presta stem didn’t stick through far enough to get the CO2 cartridge inflator on well enough to fill the tire. There was a little Zefal Mini Pump in the trunk bag, but unfortunately that wouldn’t have helped either, somewhere along the line during the cross-country move it got swapped out for the schrader valve model.

I inventoried all our tire repair kits, spare tubes and inflators and created a list of needed items so that there would be enough for each style of bike to have whatever was needed, flat tire-wise, to prevent walking home in the future. Then off to Amazon to buy two CO2 inflators, a couple of patch kits and 4 inner tubes.

As an interesting side note, between us we have 5 bicycles, 2 mountain, 2 road and a tandem, and each and every one rides on a different size tire! My MTB has 29 x 2.0, hers has 27.5 X 2.0, while the tandem rides on 26 x 1.75. Her road bike has 27 X 1-1/8 tires and mine sports 700c X 25.

Magically Moosetery Tour

One of the motoring challenges this year is Wild Animal Statue or Sculpture (life-size or larger) and we were going to use one of the fiberglass art horses still scattered around town, but after some discussion we thought that maybe they didn’t fit the wild part, so we have been keeping our eyes open for other possibilities. Three weeks ago when we did our three city deli bagel taste test drive on our way back from North Carolina on US176 South, somewhere we zipped by a large metal sculpture of a moose. We both noticed it, but didn’t stop because we were over carbo-loaded and just wanted to go home.

This past Saturday we decided to take a road trip back up to Greenville to go to Greenfield’s Deli to get some more of our favorite bagels. And seeing as we were nearby, we decided to go and find that moose statue. The both of us could see the statue in our minds eye and knew it was somewhere along US176 between Landrum,SC and Flat Rock, NC. Not that I minded the extra 80 or so miles of driving because fully half of it would be on windy two-lane US176 up and down the mountain between those two towns. We were relatively sure it was just outside either Tryon, NC or Saluda, NC, but as it turned out it was nowhere near them, it was nowhere we could find along that route.

So either we both had the same visual hallucination or it was a real moose grazing in the grass as it migrated back to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Bagels For Breakfast

We like bagels and really miss the ones we used to get when we lived in New Jersey for those two years. After living in South Carolina for several years we adjusted to just live with the ones from Dunkin Donuts. Whenever we would travel we would seek out a shop that sold “real” bagels, so now we have gotten kind of snobbish about them and will only eat those.

For a while we were satisfied from the one we got from a chain called Bruegger’s that had a store in Lexington, SC a mere 50 miles away. These were fine until we discovered a place called Joey’s NY Bagels in Hendersonville, NC on a trip to see my sister. The bagels from there elicited memories of those from Jersey, so we have stopped going to Bruegger’s.

A hundred mile round trip to Lexington and back for bagels wasn’t bad, but a 330 mile round trip to Hendersonville and back would be nuts. So we started looking for someplace closer that had “real” bagels. We found a place in Greenville, SC (a 220 mile round trip) called Greenfield’s Bagels & Deli. It is really too far away for frequent trips to just get a bagel for breakfast, but we’ve combined it with looking for some Motoring Challenge points and have been a couple of times.

Yesterday we decided it was time for some bagels this weekend. We were planning another Greenville trip, but I decided to look around for something else in the state that might be closer. Charleston and Hilton Head on the coast had promising bagel bakeries, but they were both further away than Greenville. Then I found a place called Corner Bagel Bakery & Deli in Anderson, SC. This place is a little under a hundred miles away one-way, not that many miles savings over Greenville, but Anderson is a much smaller town so traffic will be better and we won’t have to get on the Interstate at all.

We each got a toasted bagel and one each in a bag to go at the Corner Bagel Bakery & Deli. I thought it was not too bad, but Donna said it was barely Bruegger level. “Well,”I volunteered, “Greenville and Greenfield’s Deli is only about 30 miles away. You want to go there?”

So that is what we did. Because we had our own bagel in Anderson, we just split a toasted one in Greenville and then also got a couple more to go. I told Donna that I thought that this bagel was better than our previous gold standard, the Joey’s in Hendersonville. She informed me that I was nuts, Joey’s was better. “You know,” I said, “Joey’s is only about 40 miles away?”

“Let’s go,” she said. So we did. Here we split another toasted bagel and had them bag up a couple more to go for each of us. While eating in Joey’s NY Bagel’s store Donna decided that just maybe I was right about which one was best. We brought home at least one bagel from each place, so maybe we will have to figure out a way to do some back to back blind taste testing…

The triptych above shows the interiors of all three places we ate a bagel at this morning. From left to right: Corner Bagel Bakery & Deli in Anderson, SC, Greenfield’s Bagels & Deli in Greenville, SC and Joey’s NY Bagels in Hendersonville, NC.

Once More Unto The Breach

Cool Vehicles - New Beetle Convertible

Ever since we took possession of this silver Miata we have been wavering back and forth as to whether we wanted to start all over again doing the Moss Motoring Challenge because of the different car or just let it go.

When we went on our usual Sunday morning bike ride yesterday the many puffy clouds were turning pink and orange with the sunrise and this got us thinking about the Sunrise “Destination” photo requirement for this year’s Challenge. So I suggested that we should get up early when we head to Lexington for bagels on Labor Day and if there is another interesting sunrise that will be a sign that we should start the Motoring Challenge again.

When we left the house this morning the sky was just starting to lighten up. By the time we had driven the few miles to the spot we had picked out for the sunrise photo we could tell there was not a single cloud in the sky. Well, that’s that, I guess we won’t do the Challenge with the CTBNL.

We have owned this Miata now for 27 days and Donna has yet to sit in the left seat, but on the way home she says, “I think it is about time I tried to drive this thing. Pull over here.” She was pointing at a stretch of asphalt along the side of the road that had no apparent reason for being there, except maybe as a spot to park cars with For Sale signs in the window. The one car for sale this morning was a VW New Beetle convertible. As I was stopping, Donna said, “That’s a cool car from another country.”

So, as my good friend King Henry V said, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

Motoring Challenge II Points Today 4, Total So Far: 4 points.

Bagel Run

Destination - Cemetery

We drove to Lexington to get bagels for breakfast. We have come to the conclusion that we just can’t live with the store bought or Dunkin Donuts version of a bagel, so we have been pretty regularly (once a month) driving to Bruegger’s Bagels to get something that more resembles the real NY/NJ bagel.

On the way back we stopped and got a couple of Motoring Challenge points, the Cemetery above and a Sign with Bullet Hole(s). Even though the total trip was a hundred and twenty miles I only counted half that towards the miles driven, because that was only half the reason for the trip.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 146

Motoring Challenge Points 3, Approx Miles Driven 60
Totals So Far: 38 points & 800 miles

All Over The Map

Car Show - Mustangs, Music & More

We were all over the map yesterday in the Miata. Driving somewhere over 300 miles, like the last two Saturday’s trips to Savannah & then Athens that involved something like 300 miles of driving, we are considering it training for our driving vacation that is coming up.

For breakfast we drove to Lexington to the closest to us Bruegger’ Bagels. The reason for this destination was two-fold, one, breakfast, and two, bagels for breakfast for the next couple of Fridays when we bike ride to work.

We then killed a couple hours at home before heading back out to go to M3, a fund raiser for the band at Midland Valley High School in Graniteville. The M3 was for Mustangs/Music & More with part of the more being why we were there, a car show (see above.) Another part of the more was food vendors and we thought we might get a bite to eat, but there wasn’t any shade available to get out of the heat, if we did buy something there.

In what turned out to be my biggest misstep of the day, when Donna suggested Firehouse subs for lunch, I thought we should just continue a little further west to go to the one in North Augusta instead of heading back to Aiken.

That Firehouse Subs was very busy and it was taking so long to even get our order placed that both of us separately, to ourselves, though maybe it was time to find another lunch spot. Just about the time one of us was going to say something aloud, I got to the cashier.

After eating we walked down a couple stores in the strip shopping center to a Dollar Tree to get the three alternate prizes for the MMC’s Bug Splat later that night. We shopped a bit, picking out some cheesy prizes somewhat related to the name of the award and headed to the check out. There we were greeted with another long line, anchored by a woman with a cart full to the brim. This time when we thought to ourselves maybe it was time to go, we both took action simultaneously and headed for the door.

On the way home we made a quick stop at the Dollar Tree in Aiken, right next to the Firehouse Subs I should have driven to, where we got those same cheesy items and were in and out in less than 3 minutes. We then had a couple hours to hang out at home, have some dinner before driving back over to North Augusta to drive the 40 mile loop to Edgefield and back swatting bags out of the night air with the nose of the Emperor.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 41

Motoring Challenge Points 1, Approx Miles Driven 30
Totals So Far: 80 points & 3385 miles