Food

I think I forgot to blog before about how I've started biking. My bf has biked to work for a year now, and is a huge advocate of biking everywhere and forgoing the bus or car. Not b/c he's super-green or anything, but b/c he doesn't have to wait for buses or deal with all the people on buses, and cars are too annoying to park in the city. He's been trying to get me to do it too, but I've been resisting b/c the last time I rode a bike, I was maybe 8, with a hand-me down bike with a banana seat, no gears, and no brakes. I tried riding his bike a couple years ago and almost slid into the bay (we were in Foster City on the trail, and yes that's an exaggeration) so I was very uncertain of the whole idea.

He finally talked me into it, though, and to make sure I stuck with it, bought me a bike for Christmas. The first weekend after getting the bike, we rode through Golden Gate Park both days of the weekend (after riding back and forth down the Panhandle for a while). The second weekend, we hit the streets and ended up biking to Sports Basement and to get ice cream in the Mission...and to get dinner all the way up at the Helmand Palace at Van Ness and Green... Totally wiped me out but made me a lot more confident of riding on the street. So, the next week (I think, I don't *think* I'm skipping a week) I found myself biking to work.

Except for one day last week where I was trying to follow my bf past two buses and a truck, the first bus started to pull out but stopped when she saw us, I shied away from the bus, and ended up getting caught in a cable car track and took a big spill on Market St, it's actually gone fairly smoothly. I ride with my bf always, which is good b/c 1) he knows where he's going and 2) he can signal while I'm not yet comfortable taking a hand off the handlebars. We've started taking Mission St to work the last couple days so I don't have to deal with dodging buses while cable car tracks loom to my left and freak me out. And I feel good that I'm getting some cardio in every day, whether I go to the gym or not.

Tonight, we were trying to find somewhere to eat dinner we could bike to. Being as how I don't bike uphill well at all, I was trying to keep it somewhere relatively unhilly to get to, which rules out most of SF =P. The Mission is flat from SOMA, though, so I found us Poc Chuc, a Mexican/Mayan place on 16th between Shotwell and S Van Ness that gets great reviews on Yelp. It was quite good! The food isn't presented in a way that seems in accordance with the prices and description in the menu - more like a plate of home-cooked food that doesn't look that elegant - but it was very tasty. By mentioning we found the place on Yelp, we got free fried plantains (yes!) which were yummy, though served with sour cream for some reason. So not necessary with the sweetness of the plantains. I got a duck dish served on a bed of Napa cabbage with tasty rice on the side, while my bf got a pork chop dish. In both cases, the dishes were just very yummy. It's funny,b/c the menu makes it sound like it's going to be another one of those midrange fancy-ish restaurants where the food looks pretty and might taste good, but it's not. I also got a really yummy huge horchata for $2, while my bf got a watermelon agua fresca he said was ok but didn't taste as fresh as the horchata. I think we'd very likely go back. Not the cheapest dinner but one of the better dinners we've had. There's some good food in the Mission.