So as you can see, we a had a busy, fun, food-filled weekend — Mom and Dad came over for dinner on Friday, we hosted a potluck graduation party on Saturday, and I did the baking for a brunch on Sunday! I’ll fill you in on the details (and links will appear on this post) as I get the time to write things up, but until then, enjoy the spread, more or less in chronological order:
So I agree, the title is particularly confusing, as it should be since it has very little to do with food. The 15 mph, or mile per hour, refers to roughly how fast a bicycle rider can ride. Mary and I have volunteered to crew for a team of 4 riders attempting to ride across the country in Race Across America, or RAAM for short. So we will be driving behind a rider for about half the day at that incredible pace. Our team is called H4, or Holy Rollers Hammering for Habitat Homes.
So mentioning that 4 people are riding across the country may sound a bit strange, challenging, and nuts but I don’t think it is quite as obvious why we are nuts for helping them along the journey. First I must point out that this is a 4 person relay and the riders will take turns riding. Essentially there are two smaller teams of two rider and two crew. The two mini teams will switch off every six hours. We will be crewing for Raf and Michelle who very likely will switch off every 1.5 hours while our team is on. Just to summarize to this point 24 hours a day for 9 days at least one rider will be riding on our three thousand mile journey.
So that isn’t so bad, spending 12 hours driving each day right? Well that is until you reallize that when you let the other team take over you have to get groceries, gas, supplies, drive 100 miles ahead to where you will take over again, and most importantly attempt to get as much as 3 hours sleep while you have the chance.
Along 2 vans, one for each mini team, we are hoping to have an RV which can be used as a traveling home base for us. I say hoping because we are still in search for some wonderful people to step up and help out.
Now that I have painted this glorious picture you may be wondering why in fact we volunteered for this. Well then answer is relatively simple…WE ARE NUTS!!! No, not really. As it happens it will have been almost 2 years exactly since we spent our honeymoon traveling east to west across the country to our new home in Sunny California. I have been daydreaming about getting the opportunity to do it again. The second reason is Mary enjoys cycling and owns two pretty fancy road bikes herself, one of which she lets me ride occasionally. She picked up this nasty habit from her father who did an olympic triathlon last year. Lastly we are doing this because we love the charity which is the Peninsula Habitat for Humanity.
This event is also considered a mission even for our church. As a church including both this event and a silent auction our goal is to raise over $50,000.00. That is no chump change my friends. All (thats 100%) of the donations collected will go into the hand of the Peninsula Habitat for Humanity and more specifically the Lincoln Ave project in Redwood City. If you are able, and I am sure many of you are, we would be extremely touched if you could donate some of your money to this cause, time into any local Habitat for Humanity build, or any other way you see fit. If you do donate online, please select “VPC Race Across America” so we know if we reached our goal.
Just to close it out, I am sure we will write more about this as time goes on, but it may be on our new catch all blog. We will also put a banner up between the first and second post and/or a picture in the sidebar. Thank you very much for bearing with this non-food article, although I did mention groceries 
So, once again, my posts have become very sporadic. No, I haven’t forgotten about you (all 2 people that read this blog), but I’m preparing for my candidacy review, which will occur on May 1. (EEK!!) In the meantime, hopefully Matt will be contributing a few posts, since he’s the one doing most of the cooking around here lately.
And don’t worry, as long as everything goes well, I plan to make up for lost time in May by cooking up a storm. So, keep checking up on Matt, and I’ll talk to you again in May!
Sorry! I’ll be back next week….
Barbara over at Barbara Bakes tagged me for a meme. This is the first time I’ve been tagged. Usually I don’t like this general type of thing since it reminds me too much of those emails that tell you that you must forward them to at least seven thousand people or terrible things will happen to you for the rest of your life. But, since I’m new and haven’t really shared much about myself yet, I decided I’d go ahead and participate this time. So, here are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.
So here are my five things:
1. By day, I’m an Applied Physics graduate student at Stanford studying biophysics. (If you really want to know more about what I do, click here. Be warned: lots of techno-speak may follow, possibly causing narcoleptic-like reactions. Click at your own risk. )
2. Our blog is actually written by a husband-wife duo. We both do the cooking and photography, I (Mary) do pretty much all the writing, and Matt deals with the technological side of things (so complain to him if something is broken :-D).
3. We moved to the San Francisco Bay Area only about a year and a half ago, and we think it’s a fun and exciting place to eat!
4. We also got married about a year and a half ago. In fact, we graduated from college, got married, and drove across the country to our new home, all within about 6 weeks in the summer of 2006.
5. The origins of our love for food and cooking are pretty different. I learned to cook mostly from watching my mom (and dad and grandmothers). Matt also learned some cooking skills from his mom, but he really began to take an interest in from camping trips spent cooking on an open fire, from his many years in scouting.
And finally, the blogs I’m tagging. These are all blogs that I’ve found pretty recently and am enjoying getting to know. Mostly other Daring Bakers (completed my first challenge this month … more news on that later this week!) Participate if you like, or not.
1. Susan at IMMAEATCHU
2. Vi at L’Atelier Vi
3. Jessica at What’s Cooking in the Orange Kitchen
4. Emma at The Chef and the Photographer
5. Joy at Joy the Baker
