Challenge completed...Well, mostly anyway

What did I do?

It is now three days later and I am finally able to start looking forward to food again. Good thing since it is Thanksgiving day and I will be frying turkeys in just a few hours.

As usual, the challenge I designed last summer was much more difficult than I expected it would be. Actually I had no idea in advance what my taco capacity would turn out to be. Now I know. While I still think that 38 tacos in 38 hours is possible, it can only be done with careful planning and even spacing through the time. In the case of my challenge, several logistical problems and bad decisions limited my intake to 31:

1. Each morning started with a long ride without many taco places available along the route. So I got a late start (worse on Sunday) and had to eat that many more per hour after that. I also didn't get to take advantage of those morning miles to burn off the extra calories.

2. Saturday morning, the seventh taco was at a Tex-Mex place. Bad idea. The cheese was heavy and something like velveeta. I also decided to wash it down with a pint of spicy bloody mary. Somehow this sat worse in my stomach the rest of the day than all the salsa combined.

3. Sunday morning, Megan and the kids came along for the first part of the ride. I did about 30 miles over the hilliest section of the route (including the ride up Mt Bonnell) while towing two kids in the bike trailer. My thighs were pretty much spent by 1:00.

4. I didn't consider that most of the taco trailers just serve breakfast and lunch so many were closed in the late afternoon and evening. I also didn't consider that many of these trailers are run by traditional catholic Mexican families who go to church on Sunday morning. So it was tough finding open trailers on Sunday. Many of the ones that had been recommended were closed.

I am off to the Thanksgiving campout now, so I will write more and post the pictures later.

Here's one of my distended belly on Saturday night with 19 tacos down in the first 15 hours:

Click here for the entire challenge write-up