If you want to write a blog post from scratch...

…first you have to create the universe. That’s the bit of wisdom I garnered from this gem of a video featuring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking.

Yes, I realize my geek is showing.

Still finding it difficult to blog. After all the tagline above says clearly this blog is about bike-riding, rock-climbing, beer-drinking and yoga, amongst other things.

Sadly, I am not riding much. Not climbing at all. Barely able to do the most mediocre and basic yoga. But worst of all? I have been reduced to drinking gluten-free beer.

Oh I know everyone and their mother is doing the Gluten-Free thing. In fact Fred Meyers (Pacific Northwest version of Safeway) has GF tags on “safe” options. Some stores even have whole Gluten-Free sections. It’s nuts! (Nuts are GF, just FYI.)

Now, let it be known. I am not much of a follower. I don’t give a rat’s ass what the cool kids are doing. It’s long been established that I am too square to be cool, and too cool to be square. And yet. Who ISN’T doing the GF thing? I heard about it a while ago and thought: Fad.

But then lately I’ve been noticing how much less energy I have, how long it takes to recover from anything, horrible sleep patterns, and chronic inflammation. Injuries that once healed quickly take forever. But mostly, I noticed when I eat processed food I feel like I’m going to give birth to a loaf of bread. A big one. Whole. Through my navel.

Gross, is it not?

Yeah, so. I decided to TRY IT. This GF thing. Every freakin’ naturopath and holistic MD I know recommends it. Personally I wonder if they’re not getting kickbacks from the International Tofu Foundation and Organic Broccoli Consortium.

I’ve been wheat free for a month. Except that one night at Steve’s party with the fried chicken. Oh my god. How can you NOT eat fresh home-fried chicken? Well, The Guy suggested I should just put the tasty, crispy, deliciously spiced chicken skin in my mouth, chew it up, get the taste of it, and then spit it out. He went so far as to demonstrate. But no… I persevered and ingested no fried chicken. You have no idea how hard this was. The Deschutes Time Trial Festival is easier than the discipline required to just say no to fried chicken. People teased me, egged me on, but I’ll be damned if after a month of drinking wheat-free beer I’d be brought down by a freakin’ piece of chicken–white or dark.

. . . . .

Beer. The final frontier. To boldly go where no brewer has gone before. THAT, my friends, is what gluten-free beer is like. In other words, it sucks. I was extremely excited when I discovered Oregon brewer Deschutes Brewing Company’s gluten-free beer: Krystal Weisen. I even met friends for a pint or three, telling myself it was okay. Maybe even good. You know… for GF beer.

And then, these so-called friends, they finally burst the bubble. They broke me from my reverie, and shattered my illusion. They were ruthless. After all, do real friends let friends drink beer that tastes like hot dog water?

. . . . .

Take a New York hot dog cart. Pull out one of those dirty, foamy, disguting pans of grey water the dogs have been boiled in, and chill. Add a golden-ish beer-like hue. Serve in a frosty cold imperial pint glass. Call is Krystal Weizen cause it sounds palatable, but still… Hot dog water. Bloody hell.

I am hopeful I will return to bike-riding, rock-climbing, radtarded yoga, and proper beer-drinking, because a) wine is fine but twice the price, and b) life is too short to drink bad beer.

More so than being hopeful, it is my INTENTION to return to my passions with renewed vigor. On that note, I leave you to ponder your own intentions and invite you to share your gluten-free horror stories (or success stories) with me at churchofbike@gmail.com.

I would also invite any beer brewers to seriously hook a sister up with GF beer that tastes better than hot dog water. Seriously.

p.s. The pictures inserted in this particular blog post are just random selections of snapshots I like. No reason other than that.