Burrito Law

The last few days have been the first reprieve from the heat in a long, long time.  This last June was the hottest EVER on record, with multiple days in the 100s and almost every other day in the 90s.  Now it’s POURING!!!

Sort of.  Off and on.  The riding is still good and it’s warm out.

Reprieve is a word I’ve never used before in writing, or in life.  I didn’t spell it right at first.  It was warm this morning, but it’s been raining and thundering for a couple hours now.  Man, this is the most boring blog post I think I’ve ever written.  Ughhhhh.  It’s like a ride you go out for half heartedly, feeling dead tired from the day before and the power just isn’t there but god damn it you’re going to force this stupid ride to happen anyways!  And then, after an hour and a half of terrible sensations and sluggish pedaling at 75 rpm, you finally break through.  The legs are there, you can climb, you no longer have that feeling of almost bonking that you had the hour before.  You no longer feel the dire need to turn back home and eat more breakfast.   You can at last get on with the workout and stomp the hills once more, which will probably lead to overtraining.

My newest roommate, Michelle, is an Australian triathlete.  She’s from Darwin and she says the word “heaps” ALL the time.  Like, she uses that word heaps and heaps of times throughout the day.  Heaps and heaps is key.  Also, Australians and New Zealanders both pronounce the word “fillet” like stupid people, pronouncing the T extra hard.  As in: Fill-it.  Like, “I want a fill-it of fish.”  It’s really hilarious.  One more hillarious thing: this Australian commercial talking about how you shouldn’t SLEEP on the road at night.

One last hilarious thing: this New Zealand commercial about drunk driving (Geoff says this commercial is legend in NZ for all its classic quotes.  I can’t understand most of the words, but it sounds really funny regardless.)

Michelle moved to Boulder a couple weeks ago to train with her new coach.  Unfortunately, her coach ended up having a mental break down, thought long and hard about ending his own life, and kicked Michelle out.  So she ended up here, the Homeless Boulder Athlete Hotel.  Sadly, everyone is moving out of the HBAH house within the next week.  The two non-athlete roommates, whom I never see, already left.  They took their food with them, except for a bunch of spoiled stuff in the fridge.  One roommate had THREE containers of the expensive Greek yogurt in the fridge, with one of them being completely full and unopened.  You can imagine my excitement.  In juxtaposition, you can imagine my intense rage when I found out that said yogurt was one month past its due date.   KENNETH MAD!!!!  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s wasting food.  If there’s a second thing I hate, it’s not getting to eat someone else’s food because I waited too long.

Kim  and Michelle are moving out next Friday.  They’re both moving into a place Kim and I signed a lease to last month.  Since I won’t be living there until October, Michelle is taking my room until then.  It has a pool.

I won’t get to use the pool this summer though, since I won’t be here.  I decided to race in Belgium again this summer and into fall.  I leave right after Cascade on the 25th of July and get back on October 11th.  You might be wondering how I managed to pull this off, since it does cost money to fly across the world and live in a foreign country for three months, even if you’re living in a run-down shack and stealing potatoes for sustenance.  On top of that, I haven’t been working at Ras Kassa’s for the last month, since they couldn’t work around my race travel schedule any longer, so I had to find a way to fill the monetary void with odd jobs and my new mistress and savior, ebay.  Turns out there are droves upon droves of people that want to buy my old crap.  MY old equipment??  Yeah, surprising…and scary.  But I had full disclosure on everything I sold, and luckily all my buyers have ended up pleased with what they’ve bought, which was mainly old HB clothing, some half broken wheel sets, shifters, and other odds and ends.

The training for Cascade is going really well.  I sold my SRM, so I don’t know for sure, but I FEEL like I’m going well anyways.  The other day I crushed a huge set of the death sprints that Wise Guru Coach Sammy ‘The Far out Sea Lion’ Johnson has me do somewhat pretty frequently.  I did 20 of em on the hottest day of the week.  It was a blistering 110 on the road.  Luckily some guy had put out a big Gatorade cooler of water by the side of the road for all the cyclists (which was just me that day) going by.  I filled my bottles three times.  That was one of the most painful workouts on the bike this year.  And I had to tape a stupid alarm clock to my bars to time the intervals, since my SRM is gone and the little bike computer I got doesn’t do timing.  At one point during a rest period I realized that the second hand on the alarm clock got stuck.  I thought some of those 30 second sprints went by extra slow.  I cursed at the clock and banged on it to get it going again as its hands melted and bended in the heat.

A few days later, Morgan, Geoff, Kim, and I met Tricia down at Water World, a water park just north of Denver.  I rode there from Boulder to build up a good sweat.  Tricia had bought matching flowery swimsuits for Morgan and I.  I’m not sure, but I think we had more dudes looking at us than ladies.  We didn’t care.  The water was cold and the slides were steep and fun.  And on top of that, Morgan and I looked Fabuloooouuuuuus!!!!

That pretty much covers all the trivial things I’ve been up to.  Now onto the important subject: burritos.  As many of you know, I’ve adopted a new Twitter handle (KPburritos), with the goal of documenting the burritos I’ve eaten this year.  I don’t have a lot of followers, and half of the followers I do have are comprised of burrito restaurants scattered across the country.  But, despite my current unpopularity, having this Twitter handle has made me somewhat of an expert on burrito knowledge and rules.  If there was a court case involving burritos, I would definitely qualify as an expert witness.  My price is three burritos per hour.

Anyways, I’ve been taking a poll in regards to what qualifies as a burrito.  Since I’m leaving for Europe this summer, my burrito consumption is going to take a big hit (all they eat in Belgium is turnips, beef, and chocolate covered turnips).  Stupidly, I got off to a slow start this winter, so my goal of 300+ burritos this year isn’t likely to happen.  But in order to boost my numbers before I leave (so I have a good number to beat next year), I’ve been consuming more burritos this past month than normal.  Of course, I have to try to stay light for bike racing, so most of my burritos are a tortilla wrapped around some mix mash of vegetables and egg.  I’ve received quite a few complaints about this, as some individuals don’t think veggie burritos qualify as real burritos, but as wraps.  But you don’t need bean, rice, meat, or cheese for a burrito to be a burrito!!!

In my expert opinion, the word “wrap” is just an invention of the White Man’s, designed to give a burrito a more “dignified” and high-class feel for those Caucasian prickle pusses that turn their noses upwards at the “unclean” and “barbaric” cuisine of the country to our south.  Me, though?  I’m no hatter.  I call it like it is.  Anything with a tortilla enclosing something within its shell is a BURRITO, not a wrap.  If I want to make an Asian stir fry and wrap a tortilla around it, voila it’s now a burrito.  If I cook up some mushrooms and broccoli by themselves, it’s just that: mushrooms and broccoli (ewe).  Enclose that within a tortilla and douse it with some Valentino’s extra hot hot sauce…now you’ve got yourself a meal to be excited about: a burrito, a burrito you’d happily let slide down your throat, lubricated with a nice film of hot sauce, a burrito you’d be glad to be associated with, a burrito you could be seen in public with, a burrito you’d be proud to call son.

Now, some of my critics might say, “Hey, Kennett I know what you’re up to.  You just want to classify these “fake burritos” (really just wraps) as burritos so you can get your tally up.  You’re a cheat, a liar, and a terrible human being.  I hope you get killed by a cement truck on your next ride.  No, actually I hope you just get crushed and paralyzed from the eyes down by that cement truck, so you’re forever unable to eat another burrito again in your life.  You disgust me.  You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being, you prick.  Do us all a favor and jump off a very tall bridge, you burrito fiend.”

To that, I say…wow.  You’re a pretty intense person.  I’m sorry I upset you so much, but I understand completely, for I share your burrito enthusiasm to the T.  You’re passion for burrito law is profound and, for that, I applaud you.  But alas, it’s flawed.  I beg you to reason with me, for I have outside evidence that I’m going to quote.  Yes, I’ve decided to bring external facts to my argument.  I know that’s not the tried and trusted method for proving a theory, as we all know that just by simply writing your own opinion you automatically become an expert in that particular field, but I’m going to do it anyways.  My highly reputable source claims that, “A burrito (US English /bəˈritoʊ/, Spanish: [buˈrito]), or taco de harina,^[1] is a type of Mexican food. It consists of a wheat flour tortillawrapped or folded into a roughly cylindrical shape to completely enclose a filling. (In contrast, a taco is generally formed by simply folding a tortilla in half around a filling, leaving the semicircular perimeter open.)” (Wikipedia)

Note: it says absolutely nothing about what constitutes the filling.  All that is required is that the tortilla shell be closed, and not open, which would obviously be a taco.  DUH! Hahaha, like that needs explanation!  Um, hellooo??  Jeeze, I mean how stupid does wiki think we are that they need to explain that to us?  Oh man.

By this burrito gold standard stated up above, even a PB&J tortilla, folded and completely closed up, counts as a burrito.  I had two today on my ride, which helped bring my yearly total to a whopping 74 burritos.  Sadly, I think this is way below my life yearly average.  In high school I sustained myself probably with at least 75% of my calories consisting of burrito calories.  Next year I plan to start it off right.  This was sort of a practice year.