Monthly Archives: September 2013

In honor of Chris Horner winning the Vuelta, I ate this???!!!

Exploding Cheesy Chicken Sandwich from Jack In The Box, a worthy follow-up to their infamous tastes-like-cigarette-smoke Bacon Shake
Exploding Cheesy Chicken Sandwich from Jack In The Box, a worthy follow-up to their infamous tastes-like-cigarette-smoke Bacon Shake
Chris Horner, the winner of the 2013 Veulta (Tour of Spain) race at almost 42 years old, has long been known for his preference of snickers, In N Out burgers, pizza and fries over anything healthy. So when I saw the opportunity to try Jack In The Box’s new “Exploding Cheesy Chicken” sandwich, how could I refuse?

I should have refused.

That “thing” was ghastly. Gross. Disgusting. A piece of chicken in there somewhere, supposedly with two fried mozarella sticks on top of it (which had a taste and texture like no mozarella I’ve ever experienced; they looked so suspicious that I tried just a nibble and quickly removed them), smothered in something that appeared and tasted like a mayonaise/cheese combination (equally gross!). I have no idea what the green flecks were. Scraped everything off and ate just the chicken. I figured the chicken would have been fried enough to have a nearly-impermeable coating of crusty grease that would keep anything else away, but sadly no. This “thing” was the personification of a nightmare Gordon Ramsey might have if he were to be on his feet for 5 days straight on crack. I won’t debate evidence that that’s not a hypothetical scenario.

Why offer something like this? Simple. Because you can’t make this stuff up. Nobody would believe it. Like the Bacon Shake. It’s a culinary joke, with Jack daring you to come along for the ride. I can only wonder what they might come up with next. Perhaps the RKB, which stands for something super-secret but they let slip out through an unauthorized tweet that maybe it stands for Road Kill Burger. And it just might be. No shortage of possums around.

Spectacular up on Skyline; wrong day for camera to screw up!

kings_09_12_13_1200I wouldn’t say the day started great; last night I didn’t get to sleep until maybe 3am; one of those nights where you get anxious about things, including the need to get to sleep so you can get up early and ride, and you just have to kind of lie there until you finally konk out. You know the drill; you start to rationalize that there really isn’t that much difference between just lying there with your eyes closed and actually sleeping. But doesn’t matter; I’ve been through this before, and getting up when you’re supposed to and riding somehow seems to reset your clock and you end up feeling a whole lot better than you should.

It was Thursday so up through the Park; nothing fast today (thankfully) but I did get ahead of some, even ahead of Kevin for about 3/4 of the climb until he started picking up speed and past me within sight of the top.

The top. Oh my was it beautiful up on Skyline! The fog was just above the road, up in the trees, and the sun was coming through at exactly the right angle to create rays of light for almost the entire distance along Skyline. And no pictures to show it, because the video camera on my bike (my not-so-faithful Hero2) decided it didn’t want to record. All I’ve got is an Instagram photo I took at the top of Kings, and that was primarily to show that I wasn’t the last one reaching the top.