Corinna organized this Alleycat as a part of Bike For the Brain and, well, one thing and another...
Unseasonably cool weather probably scared off one or two fair weather riders; Rockfest was going on; it was too early in the morning for most of the Cool Kids; there was another cycling event that day that was probably more appealing to your average roadie.
The nice thing about under-attended events is the swag-to-rider ration gets really favorable. And we had fun holding hands across Missouri (the event that dictated the ridiculously early start, before the crack of Noon), and while the one rider who showed up nominally won the riding contest and Em, by default, the pedestrian one, Corinna is planning to reschedule it for an evening when we can get a field to really compete. She has the manifest already worked out, the only problem is the spoke cards I made have the date on them.
So date to be announced, y'all come to the mulligan for this event, alright?
Then, after we didn't race, we went over to the drop-in center at Truman for the spaghetti lunch. We were all hungry, and the food was good, but this was a meal intended for fifty people and we were five. Even with help from people using the center, we ended up carting off an embarrassment of leftovers.
I was impressed by how Em reacted to the joint. This drop-in center is basically a facility for the mentally ill: a few of these folks behave and speak in ways that are just about guaranteed to make you uncomfortable until you have a chance to get used to it. Reading Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidempic I have to wonder how much of that is illness and how much is side-effect, but Em didn't just take it in stride, she really seemed to enjoy the people she met there.
The sign on the building calls it 'behavioral health' as if psychosis were just a bad lifestyle decision. I'll grant you, some bad lifestyle decisions lead to debilitating mental illnesses, but it's a bit of a stretch to call, say, a command hallucination a 'behavior.'
I'm sure 'behavioral health' is a big improvement over 'asylum' or 'booby hatch' from a stigmatization standpoint. And the place offers some really important amenities like a few bays of computers where someone can check their email, fill out only job applications, etc., shower facilities, and a place to get a square meal.
Anyway, from there we had to get to Em's high school for her choir concert and I had pizza to make for dinner. Corinna did some grocery shopping and her pick for a high-protein pizza topping turned out to be a small pork roast. I have this grill, a 'brazier' according to its label, that my Dad used when I was growing up, and it has a rotisserie setup. So I rolled the dice and put the roast on a spit over coals while we went to the concert.
The concert was very good but on the long side. Or maybe it seemed that way because my kid's numbers were over at the beginning. And then, there was an awful lot of chatter in the audience, a pet peeve of mine. I sometimes wonder if people don't even really realize that a theater is not like a TV in the living room: there's more than just you and nobody can pause or rewind shit.
The motor spinning the spit fell while we were gone, so the roast was rather unevenly done when we got back, but I was able to finish it under the broiler while heating the pizza stone.
Kind of a late supper, but the pork when on a purple crust with Alfredo sauce and there was a plain cheese on blue crust. Since I've actually used bleu cheese as a pizza topping this visual bothered me: how can you have a plain blue cheese pizza? Next time I'll have to get a nice ripe Gorgonzola to put on this color of crust, maybe with bacon, figs and caramelized onions. Haven't made that one in way too long.
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