Alice suggested my mom start juicing, and sure, everyone knows about juicing, but what makes this so blog-worthy is what Alice does with the pulp.  If you’ve ever juiced before, you know there is a lot of fruit and vegetable waste.  What do you do with it?  You can throw it away, you can compost it, or you can cook with it.  Alice came up with a great way to use the leftover pulp in Quinoa patties.

We went to the farmer’s market and Trader Joe’s to buy all the ingredients.  Alice only uses organic fruits and vegetables when she juices.  We bought:

- 4 bundles of kale

- a bunch of beets

- a bag of lemons

- ginger

- 2 bags of apples

- 2 cucumbers

- celery

First, we juiced the vegetables, including the beet greens

Cucumbers and celery yield a lot of liquid so it’s good to mix that in between other vegetables to help flush out your juicer.

All the vegetables juiced yielded this pulp

We juiced the lemons and the ginger separately, since we wouldn’t be using that pulp for the quinoa patties.  Then we cored the apples and Alice kept that pulp to make applesauce with later.  I didn’t realize that apple seeds are poisonous to humans, so make sure you core them first if you plan on using the pulp.

This is our end result of juicing -the pulp we will use for the quinoa patties, the pulp that will be composted, the pulp that will be turned into applesauce, and of course, the amazing juice itself.

Next, Alice cooked quinoa in her own homemade vegetable broth.

She mixed the quinoa with the vegetable pulp and added some egg replacer (to keep the recipe vegan) to help the patties stick together.  You can also add avocado to help the patties stick together.

Then she formed them into patties and baked in a 450 degree oven for 20 minutes.  The patties can be frozen for later, and the mixture can be used for other things.  I used mine in a stir fry and it was really good.  It’s a very filling meal, it’s all protein and fiber, so it completely fills you up but you don’t feel sluggish after eating it.

Thank you Alice for this awesome recipe!

Well, today my mom received a very nice letter in the mail that said, ‘Don’t worry, your wallet is safe.’  Someone from Aden Food Market at 351 Bedford Ave. found my wallet in the street and they kept it for me!  Everything was still in my wallet, from my cash to my 2 recent summonses from the police.  I tried to give them some money to thank them, but they wouldn’t accept. 

Thanks so much to the Aden Food Market for finding my wallet and keeping it safe!!!

I decided to bring my road bike instead of my touring bike, because even though I planned to do some touring and would be carrying everything on my bike, I wanted to bring what I thought would be the best bike for the race.  I found a really awesome seatpost rack, the TransIt, that was rated to 25 pounds.  It attached really easily, with only 4 bolts, and Billy at Bushwick Bike Shop said it could probably handle a lot more weight.  Billy hooked my bike up with new handlebar tape, cross lever brakes, a new chain, and fit me to the bike.  It felt so awesome to ride away from the shop that day with everything running smoothly on the bike.  I was ready to go to Poland!

Photo by Jose Morales

It was an awesome day of racing and bbq’ing, and Brean and I won tickets to compete in the Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWCs) in Warsaw, Poland!

Photo by Jose Morales

Continental Tires sponsored my ticket to Poland, and when I found out I was going, I was so excited, I decided to stay for a month!  I had never been to Eastern Europe before and didn’t know when I would get a chance to go back, so I decided to make the most out of it and stay for a while.

I have to give an enormous thank you to Squid and Continental for making the trip possible for me!  It’s incredible to have support like this.

I flew into Warsaw this afternoon, put my bike together in the airport, and rode into the center of the city. It felt really good to ride out of the airport on my own power after having been in that plane for the last 9 hours.

Warsaw is awesome.  On the ride from the airport, no one beeped at me.  I don’t think I’ve heard a car beep at all yet.  The city seems very laid back but vibrant at the same time, with a bunch of people out on the street walking around and eating outside.

The qualifying race is this Saturday and the main race is Sunday. I’m expecting it to be between 3-5 hours each day.

This is my first video in a series of messenger profiles I am working on.  I hope to have one posted every week.  I was going to wait to put this one up, but it’s Hiromi’s birthday today!

Happy Birthday Hiromi!

This year we’ve got:
new challenges, including regional challenges and ways to challenge 2-milers on other teams
new Clif Bar gear including cycling caps and bike seat covers
new stats powered by Good Magazine

Last year, The Red Team won the challenge for Trips for Kids, which received $50,000 from Clif Bar!  This year, we are riding for the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, which advocates for safe walking and bicycling to and from schools, and in daily life, to improve the health and well-being of America’s children and to foster the creation of livable, sustainable communities.

We can show our kids that motorized transport isn’t the only way; we can show them the joy of getting somewhere under their own power, and experiencing their communities in a direct way.

So join the 2-Mile Challenge’s Red Team and commit to putting down the car keys and taking your bike out instead!

Visit 2milechallenge.com and sign up!

About a week before the race, I got back on my Squarebuilt and felt great. That bike is incredible.

On Friday night, I went to Affinity Cycles and Second Chance Saloon, where pre-registration and goldsprints were being held.

I got this list of checkpoints

We were told that checkpoints could appear on multiple manifests, and so had no way of knowing how long the race was going to be – we could be going up to 1355 Park Ave. 3 times.

I met up with Erik the next afternoon so we could ride to some of the checkpoints and make sure we knew where they were.

I particularly wanted to check out the 79th street boat basin, because the bike path along the west side gets tricky when the highway elevates and I didn’t know what westbound streets connected to it.  It was good we checked it out because we saw that a path went down from a small traffic circle on 79th street to the bike path along the river.

We headed back to The Grime Store, where a bunch of racers had already gathered.

Aias was out, doing his first alleycat in a while.

Finally they moved us over to 62 Pike Street, which is where we would get our manifests, and start and end the race.  After some back and forth between Victor and Marc who were arguing over where to start the race, the racers followed the man with the manifests and went to Marc’s secluded starting point.

We all sat down like good little racers and were given pens and told not to ride crazy and not to hit anyone or be a jerk at checkpoints.

The manifests were handed out and Marc said we’d have a couple minutes to look it over.

The first manifest was these checkpoints:

200 North End
641 East 13th St
315 w 38th
W. 79th st (Boat Basin)
1355 Park Ave
62 Pike

I found Erik in the crowd and went to discuss routing.  We decided to go up the West side and then come down the East side, starting with 200 North End and ending with 641 E. 13th St.  We were talking when suddenly the countdown started and everyone was OFF!  Monstertrack XII had begun!

I made it to 200 North End pretty quickly and got my manifest signed by Josh and Fox of Clementine Couriers.  Then I made a really dumb mistake and got on the bike path rather than the highway.  It was one of the first warm days of the year and so the path was full of families.  I saw Doug around the meatpacking district, sprinting up the highway, and wished I had taken that road instead.  I was able to cut over to 10th ave. around 23rd St and saw Craig from Boston and Jordan, who I had met at last year’s NACCCs.  We wound up riding the rest of the race together.  City Bikes was next and then it was up to the boat basin.  I was glad that Erik and I had checked it out because rather than taking the bike path up, I knew I could get to it via 79th street.  The checkpoint workers were actually on 79th st, not on the bike path next to the river, so that definitely saved me some time.  Then we zipped over to 1355 Park Ave. and then came down to east 13th street.

It felt good to be riding with Craig and Jordan.  I usually race alone – I’m not quite as fast as some of my guy friends, and I don’t like to rely on other people for navigating.  If I make a mistake in routing, I would rather it be because of my own error than because I followed someone else.  Craig and Jordan could have definitely gone faster than me, but they were out of towners, so didn’t know where they were going.  Craig was really good at stopping traffic and we pacelined together on some of the avenues.  I wound up yelling directions at them for most of the race, ‘LEFT!’ ‘RIGHT on 42!,’ ‘GO GO GO! MAKE THAT LIGHT!’

We made it back to 62 Pike St. to hand in our first manifest and get our second.  Marc and Amanda Hagy were manning the table, checking manifests and keeping racers in line.

The checkpoints on the second manifest were
601 w 26 st
W. 79th st (Boat Basin)
12 Cherokee Pl.
919 3rd ave
1101 6th ave
62 Pike st

I got a quick visual layout of the checkpoints in my head and decided to go up to 6th ave first, then 3rd ave, continue on to Cherokee Pl., then cut across to the west side to the boat basin and back down, finishing with the 26th st checkpoint.  We ran into Lucas Brunelle and he rode with us for a while.

Here I am coming down the west side, just past the Javits center, and heading to the end of the second manifest at 601 w. 26th St.

Heading back to Pike Street for the third manifest, I was dreading seeing 1355 Park Ave. listed as one of the checkpoints.  I didn’t know if I’d have it in me to make it all the way up there and back at race speeds.

We got the third manifest and I was relieved to see that it only went as high as 200 5th Ave.

125 Broad st
28 Laight st
200 5th ave
175 Stanton
62 Pike

We went down to Broad St. first and I didn’t want to get stuck navigating the financial district to get to Laight St., so I came back up South St. and was trying to remember what street would cut across west.  Mess Kollective doesn’t have clients in the financial district, so it’s rare that I go there and I don’t know the area well.  I wound up going back past 62 Pike St. and everyone heckled me that I was going the wrong way, but I made it to Laight St, with Jordan and Craig coming in just in front of me.

I was really tired at this point and it was hard to keep pushing myself.  I kept directing Craig and Jordan, our race was almost over, and it helped to have them there to motivate me to keep going.  We went to 200 5th next and then down to Stanton.  Craig asked me for quick directions to the end so he could sprint it out, going for first out of town.  I was totally spent by this point.  I made it to the finish, to cheers of ‘FIRST GIRL!,’ handed in my manifest, sat down, tried to talk to the cameras, and desperately looked for something to drink.

I’ve never been so tired after a race.  My throat started cramping up and my lungs ached.  My legs felt fine, but I had never experienced throat cramping like that.  It was probably because of all the yelling.  It took me a few days to feel normal again.

I came in 12th place overall and was proud of how I finished.

Working at Mess Kollective definitely helped prepared me for this race.  We don’t have a dispatcher, we claim runs amongst ourselves, and figure out our own routes, so when I got those manifests, I felt really confident in being able to route myself.  I talked to Erik after the race and he said when he got the third manifest, he didn’t even look at it, he just went straight down to 125 Broad St.  He knew that checkpoint hadn’t shown up in any of the manifests yet so went straight there.  I was pretty impressed by that.

All of Mess Kollective finished in the top 3, with Erik coming in 5th, me in 12th, and Aias in 18th.

Big thank you to all the organizers, checkpoint workers, photographers, and companies that donated prizes.  It’s awesome to get to be a part of Monstertrack for so many years.

Photos by

Jose Morales
JC Ramirez
Justin Craig Roth
Cycleangelo
Courtney Gamble
Amanda Hagy
Stephanie Wowk