Columbus Again

I hung out in my room this morning getting some more work done on the pictures and doing some laundry. I wanted to stall a bit so that when I went into town I'd grab lunch and start riding.

Which is pretty much what happened. Lunch was at a sandwich shop, a fried green tomato BLT. Pretty good, but overpriced.

Got ma Felt 75 and rode to Fort Benning. Checked out the National Infantry Musueum there, which was interesting. Rode back and arrived just at 5pm in time for dinner. 25 miles all told.

Dinner tonight was Mario's, the mediterranean place I had spotted on Monday. The cook is a greek lady by the name of Sylvia. I ordered some baba ghanouj with some trepidation as previous experience with "mediterranean" restaurants in strange places usually indicated a lot of canned food was involved. My interest was piqued when she said it wasn't ready yet and she'd have to prepare it if I wanted to wait. I did. She also convinced me to try moussaka a kind of cheesy eggplant casserole, something I'd never had before. When the ghanouj arrived I knew I'd made the right decision. It looked freshly made, which I confirmed later to be true, and had chunks of eggplant in it and an excellent flavour. I asked how she made it and she said you take 1 long eggplant (usually known as "asian" eggplant) and poke holes around it (presumably with a fork). Then rotate it over a flame until it's done (before it completely melts, probably when the skin is crisped, but the insides aren't completely liquified). Then peel/extract the insides, place in a food processor with garlic, lemon and tahini. Blend and serve with extra virgin olive oil drizzled over the top. Yummmy... The moussaka was excellent too, layered eggplant, potatoes and ground meat with cheese on top. She mentioned using some cinnamon in the meat. All around excellent and I may just have to go back there. There aren't many places open for dinner, so I won't feel guilty if I go back one more time this week.

The ride was fun, though quite painful. My knee continues to hurt quite a bit, and my butt was extremely sore from the previous two days. I think I've ridden my last on that wonderful bike, I need some time to heal up before CRC.

Otherwise it was a fairly uneventful day. Tomorrow afternoon the ITT rep is supposed to swing by between 1pm and 3pm so we can sign our time cards. Hopefully we'll have some good news about next week's CRC.