The tour begins

I could give you some cliches about journeys of 1000 miles, but I won't.

The kickoff has been pretty well planned out. Fitness is good. Weight is probably a little high, but will be fine.

What will I miss about the real world?

- easy Internet 

- short distances 

- not having to camp

What am I looking forward to?
- not having to set an alarm to wake up
- going to sleep so easily from being tired
- feeling like dots in a landscape painting

Flight is in the morning.

I'll be instagramming through Edmonton. 

So you want to ship your bike to Canada (from the US)

When bike touring internationally, you're often advised to take pains to bring the bike with you on the flight. It's certainly not a sure thing.

Pros:
- the bike for the most part is going on the same path and same schedule
Cons:
- airlines have differing rules for what you can check in, and varying fees for large heavy boxes. 
- air travel policies are always changing, so publishe advice is always going to lag behind

The alternative is really expensive shipping, compounded by potentially tricky customs situations.

In the recounting below, I'll list dates in bold to give you a sense of how things progressed. Obviously, getting your bikes to your start point on time is critical.
Our tour was slated to start from Jasper, Alberta on July 31st.

Mid-May

I contact bike shops in Japser about receiving our bikes and building them up in anticipation of our arrival. There are two shops that I can get ahold of, and one seems more legit. After some back and forth, I get a tentative agreement to receive 3 bikes in the last week of July to be built up by 7/31.

2 bikes are shipping from Boston; 1 is coming from Atlanta.

Mid-June

I check with my local bike shops about packing up the bikes and doing the shipping for us. Both shops adamantly refuse to ship to CA, citing unpredictability with Customs as the main sticking point. So I know that I'll have to take care of getting shipping myself.

We consider the following options:
A. ship directly via standard shipping services (FedEx, USPS, UPS, etc.)
B. ship using BikeFlights as a middleman
C. check in as baggage

For the shipping options, we'd ship to a bike shop and have the bikes built up, waiting for us.
For the checked-in option, we'd build up ourselves once we arrived in Jasper. At this point in my bike maintenance career, there's no fear of assembling the bikes; it's just a few hours' time to factor in.

On our prior tour, it had cost about $100 per bike to ship from Boston to Seattle. In my head, I expect that to be about double to ship to Canada. My gut was that Option C would somehow be more expensive than that. So I pursue A and B.

BikeFlights conveniently has a dropdown for various bike box dimensions. The Touring Bike option is 56"x10"x32". I decide to use that size as a comparison point when shopping.

USPS was right out -- it refuses those box dimensions for shipping to CA.
I'd read in a couple of places that UPS was the roughest on packages. Having no hard data but not wanting to take any risks with our rides, I didn't look further.

So down to FedEx and BikeFlights.
Using 56x10x32 and 60lbs (very generous, even including box weight), I got the same prices from FedEx's shipping calculator and BikeFlights. I took this to mean that BikeFlights was going to use FedEx as the actual courier.

BikeFlights lists the shipping option for its estimate as "7 Day Ground." In subsequent calls with BikeFlights reps, I think I heard "International Ground" used for this option.  In any case, this was all the same thing -- FedEx International Ground.

At this point, I have the full shipping plan specced out:
1. local shop packs bikes
2. bikes picked up by FedEx via BikeFlights
3. Jasper shop receives bikes and builds up
Keep step 3 in mind.

6/30

I go ahead and make a reservation with my local shop to receive both Boston bikes on Tuesday 7/5 to be packed and ready by Friday 7/8. Naturally, I ask for 2 boxes.

7/5

Drop off both bikes.

I follow through with my order on BikeFlights to set up shipping and pickup for Friday. The price hasn't changed since a few weeks ago.

Here (and everywhere else previously), I set the value of each bike to $500. If I recall, one of the estimators placed a special exception on items with declared value over $500. I decide in the case we have to buy new bikes to tour, the gap in value is an acceptable risk.

Later that night, I get an email from BikeFlights asking for more information to finish setting up the shipment.

What is your shipping purpose? Please choose from the following: 

Sales and Purchases: Applies if you bought or sold the item(s) you are shipping.

Gifts: Applies if you are shipping a gift. 

Warranty Returns and Repairs: Applies if you are sending item(s) back and forth for repair, return or warranty service. 

Personal Effects: Applies if you are shipping these personal items because you are travelling or moving.

We noticed you have chosen a Ground shipment between the US and Canada. When you ship a bike or gear for personal use between the U.S. and Canada while on vacation and travel, Express services such as International Economy or Priority must be used for your shipment.  Ground shipments may only be used for Commercial shipments such as sold items, repairs/returns and gifts. 

In red text is where it starts going downhill.
I definitely recall there only be one shipping option available when I set up the order.

I reply to the email, stating that the bikes are personal effects and asking how I should select the other shipping options, given that I couldn't from the website.

7/6

I talk to a local FedEx office about my shipping options through them. They sound less sure about what I need. They hand me their Commercial Invoice form. There's like 50 fields to fill out, and the folks in the store don't profess any expertise in how to fill it out. They make it clear that they don't know what happens once the package arrives in CA and enters Customs. What fees will be charged, etc.

Still not having heard back from BikeFlights, I call them up. Apparently, they didn't get my reply. I send it again, and the rep confirms that she sees it.

I get her help walking through setting up the order the way it needs to be. So she tries to set it to International Express (the cheaper of the two valid options). The reason I never saw other options is because International Express and Priority disallow boxes larger than 52x9x29. 
The BikeFlights website failed me here by not asking about the nature of what I was shipping*.

I ask the rep to quote me 2 52x9x29 boxes (a standard road bike box size). Just under $500. Ok, up from $400, but I can still stomach it. I also get a quote for those two boxes and a smaller box for wheels, if the shop can't keep it to just two. $600. Ok... now it's getting way more than I expected.

I call up the shop and break the news. I tell them to try to get it in 2 52x9x29 boxes, and to put the overflow into the smallest box they can. The shop is confident they can do it in 3 boxes, but doubts it for 2.

* Now that I look at the shipping page again, I see this warning when I try to reproduce what I did:
"Alert U.S. and Canadian Customs only permit sales, repairs and gifts to ship Ground. You must select Int Economy or Int Priority to ship your bike as personal effects when traveling."
I don't recall that warning from before; it might have been there. I think it'd be much more appropriate to provide a dropdown to pick between personal effects or commercial and to flat out reject an attempt to use International Ground for personal effects. That would have spared me a lot of trouble.

7/7

The shop calls and confirms they found the boxes and can get it done with 3 boxes, though given the size of my Soma Cazadero tires, the 3rd box will still be 52x9x29. Yeesh.

I call BikeFlights again.

I ask the rep if, given how much this is going to cost, if everything is going to work. If, because BikeFlights has specific experience with shipping bikes all over the world, that they know how to deal with declaring things properly and filling out forms appropriately. She reassures me that the process BikeFlights uses works and that they will work on the customer's behalf dealing with customs.
Comparing the seeming lack of knowledge from FedEx (though it was just branch employees) and the confidence of BikeFlights, I decide it makes sense to pay more by sticking with BikeFlights to make sure there's no problems at Customs with my shipment.

International Express happens to be 5-day shipping, so I have the rep push back the pickup date to Monday 7/10 to give the shop more time.

The rep oks the new shipment setup and says she'll send me a new order that afternoon instead of modifying the old one. She stresses that I should fill out documents and send in my passport information that evening if possible.

In the evening, I look for an email from BikeFlights confirming the new order and new documents, but I don't see anything. I reply to my old order email thread just in case.

7/8

Having not heard from them, I call BikeFlights and get a different rep. She confirms that there's notes in my existing order to make the new order, but that the rep didn't follow through on that work. I get pretty pissed when I hear that, especially in the context of being told I would be taken care of and guided through the process.
This new rep finishes the reorder work, and I get the new order and the documents in email.

What I need to fill out for BikeFlights is their Personal Goods Form. When I read through it, my face darkens a bit. It's basically field-for-field the FedEx Commercial Invoice form, with some extra fields for things like itinerary and photos of your bikes. Yesterday, I was like, BikeFlights knows what they're doing, they have a special recipe for minimizing trouble with FedEx. Now I'm like, if I'd seen this form earlier, I'd have known they're just copy-pasting into FedEx forms.

I call once more. My sole question is whether I need to declare the fact that I, the shipper, don't own both bikes that I'm shipping, and whether I should provide my friend's passport information. I want to be 100% honest with Customs.
This rep hems on it a bit, initially tells me to put my friend's info on the forms, and then decides it'd be less hassle/fewer flags raised if we go with just my info. My confidence that BikeFlights has all the expertise is at a new low. The only consolation is that they're open Saturday and Sunday, so I can bug them if something else comes up.

I fill out the Personal Goods Form and email it back to BikeFlights. I include:
- just my passport info, not my friend's
- pictures of both bikes. The bike shop offers to let me pack stuff more in there, but I'm so paranoid at this point of getting caught out somehow that I refuse. So the two pictures accurately show everything in the boxes
- day by day schedule for our tour, noting that we are following a prescribed route but that it is an unguided trip

7/9

I get the FedEx shipping label PDF in BikeFlights email in the morning. Looking at the contents removes any doubt that the Personal Goods Form and the FedEx Commercial Invoice are the same thing.

I get 3 shipping labels for each box, and then supplemental information to go behind the master label. The shipper will open up the clear plastic envelope and work with the forms over the course of the shipment, apparently.

I bike over to the shop to hand them the labels. The 3 boxes are ready, and the shop lets me slap on the envelopes and labels myself.

The friend in Atlanta is thoroughly discouraged from shipping, having heard about what's been going on with my shipment.
In talking to him previously, we'd weighed canceling the shipping order and flying with the bike boxes. I'd passed on that because I didn't have enough details to know if that'd be a safe choice.

By now, with the shipment already scheduled, it might still be possible to ship only some of the boxes just to cut down costs, if checking in one box on the flight might defray costs.
But recall step 3 above: Jasper bike shop builds up the bikes. If we took some boxes on the plane, the shop wouldn't be able to build the bikes up. They'd just be stuck holding our boxes until we showed up, maybe charging a token storage fee. My honor wouldn't let me consider that as an option.

7/11

Monday comes. I don't hear anything from the shop, but I'm not nervous.

7/12

I check the FedEx tracking number and see that not only have the bikes been picked up, but they're already in Memphis.

7/13

Email the Jasper shop to give them a heads up that the bikes are coming. Neglect to mention that it's just 2 now.

7/14

In the morning, I get an email from a FedEx CA representative:

Please advise if these bikes were fumigated prior to shipping.  Please advise what event these goods are coming into Canada for.  Please advise if these goods will be shipped back to you after the event.

I spoke to the recipient, and they are not aware of this shipment coming into their location for you.  At this point, we cannot clear these goods through Canada Customs.

This is the very first time I've heard anything about fumigation. Once again, my ire is directed at BikeFlights. They're supposed to help me with this stuff. I hate getting caught off guard.

Further down in the email is part of the back and forth between this FedEx agent and BikeFlights. I can't quite make out what's going on, but it seems that in some cases, the owner needs to clear the goods in person at Customs. In others, it's ok with proper paperwork for the shipper to clear on the owner's behalf. This line sticks out:
"It is against Canada Customs regulations for any broker to clear personal effects shipments."

I reply back to the FedEx rep, being vague about the fumigation thing, and saying that I would check with the bike shop what was going on.

Anyways, I call up the Jasper shop. They say an hourly employee must have answered, because they did see my email that the shipment was coming.

I see this email back from the FedEx rep:

Do you have the name of the bike tour?  Do you have a contact name at Vicious Cycle?  When does the tour start?

I will have to check with Canada Customs in regards to the type of importation, to see if we can clear the shipment on your behalf.  When goods are shipped as personal effects, Canada Customs’ regulations state that the recipient is to self-clear through customs in person, and brokers are not allowed to clear them.  That being said, this is not just personal effects – like luggage that was left behind while on vacation out of country.

I decide to just call the rep. The FedEx phone system warns that it's for employees only, but when I get the rep, she doesn't seem to mind and knows it's me when I bring up the bike issue.
I clarify that our bike tour is not part of any organized commercial trip. Not sure if she cares, but want to be precise. I also tell her that I have an itinerary† that I can give her, which she wants. I email it to her, and she looks it over. I point out that we'll be crossing the border back into the US on bike, just in case that's relevant.
I also mention that she could call the shop and ask for the guy who's been handling my reservation. She asks why the bikes are going there, and I explain that we want the bikes to be built up and ready to ride when we arrive in Jasper.

At this point, she's pretty comfortable concluding that in fact the bikes will be used for the tour in a travel/vacation capacity, and not being sold or something. So she's going to follow up with CA Customs and try to get it cleared.

† At the time of the call, I was pissed that BikeFlights had asked me for that info, but yet it still hadn't made it into the right hands. Looking back at the back and forth between FedEx and BikeFlights, it seems like BikeFlights had atttached all those docs, but the FedEx rep didn't want to see them, because of the aforementioned self-clear in person policy. So if she had opened those docs, perhaps she would have known what the deal was.

After hanging up, I forward the FedEx email to BikeFlights and ask about the fumigation thing. BikeFlights acknowledges and says they will try to get that form, which must come from CA Customs or maybe CFIA (which I saw in the back and forth) - Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

I look at the tracking page, and it's lit up with red all over:

The exceptions are vaguely relevant to the situation, but would be meaningless if I weren't already clued in.

In the afternoon, I get this from the FedEx rep:

Your shop as the receiver did not matter to Canada Customs, so I did not call them.

The good news is that since the shipper provided their account number for billing the duties and taxes, we did not have any further delays about payment, and Canada Customs has released this shipment.  It will go out with tomorrow’s deliveries, but may not get to Jasper until Monday or Tuesday.

Such a relief. I still need to inquire about whether any duties were actually imposed. My understanding is that personal effects stuff might not be levied.

Later that afternoon, I get called by my local shop, saying that FedEx had called them and left a message about my package. I was a tiny bit worried that there was still some loose thread despite the FedEx rep saying it was all good.

At night, the tracking page showed that things were cleared up and back on the move.

7/15

No update on the tracking page.

7/18

After regularly checking the tracking page all weekend, I finally see this in the afternoon:

Guess it had made it there on Friday after all. Just some delays with marking the delivery complete.

General conclusions

While I found BikeFlights staff to be generally pleasant, their responsiveness and knowledge about shipping to Canada (as that's all I have experience with) was pretty unsatisfying. Nothing that I'd hoped to gain from using them really went that smoothly. Armed with a FedEx Commercial Invoice and the completed FedEx shipping labels for this shipment, I'm confident I could reproduce whatever settings BikeFlights deems to be the safest for clearing Customs.

Things I should follow up on:
- fumigation?
- on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? do bikes not count as personal effects?
- duties applied in this scenario

The whole process not only generated a ton of stress, but cost waaay more than I expected. I moved down the shipping path because the initial estimate showed about what I was willing to pay. The final cost was maybe $300 on top of what we were planning.

Having read more on checking bikes in as baggage, this seems like a much more attractive option. Even if it cost about $200 per bike, that's still a damn sight cheaper than shipping like how we did.

Followups

From FedEx CA:

> on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? did they decide the bikes didn't count as personal effects? 

The bikes were declared as personal shipment for temporary importation to be returned to USA by the person importing them.
We can clear personal shipments, but not personal effects for permanent importation into Canada.  There are immigration and status questions which need to be addressed by Canada Customs to the person permanently importing goods.  Since you advised me you were riding the bikes back to USA, and I provided that email as your promise to Canada Customs that this was what you were doing, they approved the temporary importation of this personal shipment.

Cool, so the itinerary was important and ultimately made a difference. The personal shipment for temporary importation status was what I needed; I wish that BikeFlights had helped more with that.

> do you know what duties they decided to apply?  

The shipper declared the bikes as US manufactured, so there were no duties, just GST (Goods and Services Tax) of 5% of the Canadian value conversion, which was taken care of by the shipper’s account.

From BikeFlights:

So there is a CAN personal effects form which we have found does not apply to most of our customers. As far as "fumigation?" Im not sure this is the right word here. We supplement our own personal effects form instead of the given Personal Effects for for Canada. 

> had you heard about this fumigation requirement before? Did you end up getting any forms?

1) Yes we have of course heard about the form but as mentioned it often doesnt very well apply so we supplement our own, with a high degree of success. 

> on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? do bikes not count as personal effects?

2) We set FedEx as the broker for out shipments, again with a great degree of success. We recommend shipping to a residence or business location which does NOT have its own clearance agent as sometimes this can confuse Can. customs; addresses to avoid include hotels or very large businesses. 

> "The good news is that since the shipper provided their account number for billing the duties and taxes." Are those duties charged to me, or to BikeFlights? 

3) We set all international shipments to have any applicable duties or taxes assigned to the recipient. While we are available to assist with clearance ultimately this duty lies with the recipient. 

Dunno what to make of the non-answer about brokers and personal effects. FedEx's answer was more concrete, as it describes exactly what CA Customs actually oked.

Another rep from BikeFlights (the way they set up their Zendesk ticket system and the way they respond means I had several emails going with them):

> had you heard about this fumigation requirement before? Did you end up getting any forms?

1. Fumigation requirement usually comes from foreign countries when they believe soil may be present on items and might carry unwanted bacteria. I have never seen the requirement from the Us to Canada, but Customs Officials may have originally requested it after being confused with paperwork or not receiving all the paperwork.  

> on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? do bikes not count as personal effects? 

2. Bikes do count as personal effects, and usually comes down to the value. It is possible a wrong value or misinformation was taken by Canada Government officials on this package causing strange delays. Often, they view high value personal effects has commercial items. This could be one explanation, however, we did not receive one from Fedex.  

> "The good news is that since the shipper [BikeFlights] provided their account number for billing the duties and taxes." Are those duties charged to me, or to BikeFlights?  

3. Since the Item is personal effects and the proper paperwork was provided, the duties & taxes, if any are charged to BikeFlights Account. For Personal Effect shipments, our policy now, is that we absorb that charge. You will not be billed further for this package. 

This one was much more informative. I followed up about what FedEx said about personal shipment for temporary importation, to see if that's what I (or anyone) should use down the road.

Someone at BikeFlights finally linked me to this about international shipping: https://www.bikeflights.com/international_bicycle_shipping
Pretty good coverage of what the case I needed. Wish I'd read that before. Though still no substitute for making it clearer that non-commercial shipments require International Express.

"they're going all the way"

Going down the Pacific Coast Highway on our last tour, we ran into these two German kids. Pleasant and polite. Gabe asked them one morning what their plans were, and mentioned later --
"they're going all the way!"
At this point, we were maybe 3 days outside of San Francisco, firmly cemented as the destination in my mind. So naturally, I surmised out loud, "oh wow, that's, what, 200mi in one day? Pretty hardcore."

But no, I had misunderstood. The two Germans were on a tour going all the way down to Patagonia. They would be riding for several more months.


Why do a bike tour?

For me, there's two reasons:
- desiging your equipment to do a job, and then seeing it perform its job
- to be out on the open road

It's not all glamorous. 90% of the time, you're seeing the same tree-lined highway or climbing up the same 5% asphalt grade. Often, you're not in a position to converse with your teammates. In those hours, you have to keep yourself mentally occupied as you crawl across the landscape.
But the other 10% of the time, there's some sights that you can't get any other way. There's vistas that will have you saying "holy shit" under your breath. There's weird scenes that you run into, like when we saw the two hobos (one even with a bindle) walking down train tracks with their dog. There's the utter freedom of deciding what you're gonna do and when, like buying a rotisserie chicken for lunch and devouring it in the trees on the side of the road.

In the first week of the last bike tour, I was so obsessed with keeping to a strict schedule and pounding up roads like that was my only job. Gabe and Matt would take breaks to eat blackberries growing off the shoulder of 101. I never joined them.
This time around, I'll be right there with them.

what does T1P mean? who is T1P?

T1P

The first bike tour we did back in 2013 was from scratch. Matt's med school residency program is such that he gets a 4-month break (well, he had to horse-trade with his two co-residents). To fill that time, he out of the blue thought of cycling across the US. Thanks to the real world of aligning schedules, the 3 of us only got 3 weeks, a normal vacation stint. We had to learn how to do bike touring from 0 experience.

We were really afraid of doing it wrong. So when reading advice online, we typically erred on the side of buying the best stuff we could. And since we had nothing to start with, we bought everything -- bikes, panniers, jerseys, camp gear, etc. It was a lot of money.

When we were on the road, we saw folks doing the same tour as us with scraped together but still effective equipment. An old 10-speed road bike won't be as sturdy and won't have nice easy gears for going up hills, but it will get the job done. A trash bag with some bungee cords isn't as easy to use as an Ortlieb pannier, but you'll be fine. I'm not trying to make a statement about the cost of doing a bike tour; I'm just noting that we really noticed how much we had spent to do the tour. In a way, we had just thrown money at the problem, shelling out to get what we wanted.
And that is the origin of the Team 1% name -- that we were spending money to steamroll any issues that came up.

Even though we make fun of ourselves for it, the name is still relevant. Example:
This time around, Matt and I had to buy bikes again. Both of us sold ours in San Francisco at the end of the last tour, not knowing when we'd use them again. We had to rebuy a lot of gear. At least Gabe didn't make that mistake. When it came to sleeping bags, we were on the fence about new ones. The weather might not get cold enough to test our 40/50F bags, but if it did, it would suck.
And so we felt justified in shopping for a light and compact 30F bag.

My old bag was good for 45F, and surprisingly compact, given that I bought it for $60 at a sporting goods store 3 days into the tour [a story for another time]. But I wanted 35F, and I wanted something really light if possible.

I got a Sea to Summit Micro McII. Comparison of the 2 bags, fully compressed:

I know what you're thinking -- it's barely any smaller! The picure does downplay the actual size difference, but you're right. It's not much smaller. It might be all of half a pound lighter. But when you're rolling T1P, it's worth it. Ok, it's not really worth it, but you get the idea.

What did the others do? Matt was really tempted by a <1lb pita pocket style bag, but the ordering time was too long to risk. So he got some ultralight bag at REI. Gabe went for max warmth, eschewing weight and bulk entirely.

Bios

For the T1P South Africa trip, Matt wrote some bios: http://mmian-travel.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-squad.html

While accurate, I think it's always a bit jarring to read someone else's characterization of you.

So here I am to return the favor.

Matt

Matt is the reason this trip and all the other trips happen. He's for sure the most adventurous and the most driven to see the world. For me, the best part of the Odyssey is when Odysseus comes home and sees the familiar comforts of Ithaca. For Matt, it'd be the sailing out and treading onto foreign shores.

As the most ambitious traveler, he defaults to the team leader and organizer. He'll do some delegation, but actually likes to take care of things himself. Can't find someone better to do things right by doing them himself.

Matt's big thing is diving now, I think. I get the appeal -- to be in a different universe with different rules of physics and different species living a strange life. But that risk factor that he embraces makes it way too scary for me. When he signed us up to hike the Drakensberg, he put down our experience level as "climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro or similar." I'll let you guess who's been on Kilimanjaro and who's "similar."

Matt tends to be a little extra, to use modern slang. Always wanting to slot one more thing into the schedule or to skive off to check out this or that. 

Gabe

I would say Gabe and I have more similar backgrounds -- engineering jobs, playing the occasional video game, kind of sarcastic about stuff.

On these trips, I feel like I defer to Gabe for pacing -- are we rushing? Do we need to move on? Etc. My gut is that Gabe has more patience than either Matt or me, and tends to be more stoic. No trip ever goes off perfectly sunny and trouble free, and when there's some raised hackles, Gabe is probably the one to exert a calming, steadying influence on the situation. That's part of why he's the navigator, so the trip proceeds along his pace.

Gabe really enjoys find the humor in random things. In South Africa, it was spotting examples of the country's apparent obsession with puns.

Meng

I'm not a true traveler, in that I am content to see the world come to me through the TV screen. On the flip side, the things I've seen on trips -- those experiences could never be conveyed through pictures or video. You just have to be there. I think that's how I'd boil down the need to travel. If you just have to be there, well, then go there. And then when you're there, eat a ton of food. 

One of my flaws is that I can fall into bad moods. It was pretty bad on the first bike tour, and fairly minor in SA, but that's one of the downsides of traveling, I guess. On a trip to China with my folks, I got a stomach bug for several days, and I was so close to snapping the last few days. Knowing that this is one of my weaknesses, I'm always trying to get a handle on it, trying to make sure nothing boils over.

I'm one of those nerds who obsesses over material things. The bike tour really sets me off, what with having to make a million different choices on equipment. I've spent months tweaking my bike to perfection, so I really hope it shines on the road. I want to reap back all that time invested in setting up my bike in the form of little daily observations that, yes, the bike is handling everything thrown its way.

Hop On and Off All Day

Around Boston, you can see tour buses running around showing tourists historical and significant landmarks. One of the companies boldly advertises with Hop On and Off All Day splashed on the sides of their buses.

And that is what Team 1 Percent will be doing this August -- another bike tour where we travel by bike, hopping on and off all day to see all there is to see.
This time, down the Great Parks North route, starting in Jasper, Alberta and winding over the Canadian Rockies into Missoula, Montana.

Team 1 Percent is the same people who did the Pacific Coast Highway tour of 2013.

Coming up next -- team bios and rationale for touring again.

Key and Peele

I've been reading Judd Apatow's anthology of interviews with various comedians over the years.
The interview with Key and Peele, which I read on the plane, is about what you expect. Peele points out specfically that he got bullied because he was a black guy who sounded white. They say that a lot of their material and unique perspective on culture and class comes from being biracial, from identifying from across a wide band of the spectrum of race and culture in America.

As I was reading, a flight attendant pushed the drink cart down the aisle, pausing on each row with a saccharine "would you like anything to drink?" One guy behind me asked if she could help with the wifi. She turned and summoned over her fellow flight attendant, also black, and gave her a brusque "hey, go flip the wifi switch and, um, wait a minute before you check on it," completely changing her tone of voice.

It reminded me of this BlackPeopleTwitter meme:

To her credit, the drinks flight attendant proceeded to help the man in what I assume was her real voice, somewhere in between her work cant with her coworker and her fake service voice.

first day after Ramengdan

For lunch, I had a banh mi and some pork on rice noodles. And 2 Skittles.
I also had Coke Zero for the first time in... 34 days? It honestly tasted different from what I remembered. Less sweet, more chemically. Not to say that the Ramengdan food was all natural, but it was bland for the most part.

For dinner, I went over to Whole Foods, planning on getting a ton of beets.
I didn't even know what to do with myself when I saw that the salad bar had no beets. How is that possible?

I got some kale with raw garlic, orzo, 2 perfunctory falafels, and a bit of ratatouille. I also shopped and got some chips and salsa, yogurt, cherries, and blueberries.

I have no idea how many calories it all was. I'd guess between 2000 and 2500. I wouldn't say it distresses me not knowing, but it did throw me off. Several things at Whole Foods didn't have nutrition labeling on them cuz they were store-made. In the past, I've asked about some such items and nobody could tell me what the nutritional info was. I don't care that much, but seems a little weak for a chain trading on a healthy image.

I've gotten one too many compliments at the gym to not keep up the body work. I'm sure I've lost some muscle mass, but I assume most of the 20lbs I've lost is fat. I think I'll target 2000 cals a day and see where that gets me.

Ramengdan 7/20

8.

Last day. Holding up. Not sure what happens tomorrow.

Lunch: chicken, corn

Dinner: oatmeal. That's all I have left at the apartment from the initial supply.

the sin bin

In the course of shopping for other things, I picked up a few things that seemed really delicious. I never ate it during Ramengdan, but still, it was tempting.

- 2 bags of jerky
- bread sticks
- a box of matzos

Lessons learned

• my mental arithmetic is not good as it used to be. I realized that part of it is that I'm trying to take shortcuts, like breaking 190 * 3.5 into 3*200-3*10 + 0.5*200-0.5*10. I'd be easier for me to the think through the multiplication flat out
• in general, it would be a hassle to eat exactly the same number of calories per day. But given food's importance in such a scenario, I'm sure it would become second nature to continously track available calories and consumption rate. It certainly wouldn't be as handy as having a spreadsheet
• my tolerance for the taste of canned foods is generally pretty high
• my tolerance for sodium, not so much. I would feel weird after eating some of the salt-heavy stuff. If the Apocalypse really did go down, I would never get spam or any kind of prepared meat for protein. Even the straight beans had added salt
• the variety I had was pretty good. I can't say exactly how it would extrapolate to the long-term, having the same 10 or so options ad infinitum
• I really missed not knowing what I was going to eat on weekends and popping into random shops to get a snack
• I noticed I would stop on food commercials when trying to skip through ads on TV
• I really missed planning meals in minute detail, working out every dish I wanted. If it was takeout, I'd work out when I wanted to be home, when to place the order, and when to bike over to get it
• Limiting your calories definitely makes you lose weight. That was not my main goal here, but I liked it nonetheless. I view the healthiness of this endeavor as on the same level as those two profs who dieted on McDonald's
• The exposure to food all around me made the whole experience feel more like observing the Sabbath than being in the wastelands. There's an abundance of things that you choose to forego for your own reasons. There is no real psychological break from the availability of food. One Saturday, I saw an Orthodox or stricter couple walking down the sidewalk. The man would check out cars parked on the street occasionally. I guess he was a car guy. He just wouldn't let himself be in one on the Sabbath.

A long time ago, I did a fast just to see what that felt like. I had a diet Gatorade in the morning, a caffeine-free diet Coke in the afternoon, and water the rest of the time. I lasted 72 hours. By the end, I was either imagining food smells everywhere or actually being acutely sensitive to food aroma. I would be sitting at my gym trying to work out while being bombarded with real/imaginary Wendy's #6 wafting down the stairs from the street. The Wendy's was really there, but who knows if I could actually smell that food? 

In this month, I've never gotten to that level of intense hunger. Normal food was all around me. I even ate it a couple of times. Why did I set these rules on myself? I guess just to see if  I could make myself do it. I wouldn't say it was about discipline. It was just about accepting.
I think back to what my mom's college classmate told me about growing up in the Cultural Revolution, in those most destitute times. She said it was never that hard to get through it, because there was no other choice. That's a really remarkable attitude to have. 

Ramengdan 7/19

11.

Tomorrow's the last day. Still not sure how I'll proceed after it's over.

Lunch: Chicken, babybel cheese, vites

Dinner: decided, what the hell, let's eat the gefilte fish. Or it'd sit around forever.
The flavor isn't that bad. I've only had it a couple times before, and I've been avoiding it since. It was fine. I'm sure it would be delicious in a real apocalypse.
Finished with a lot of oatmeal and fishoil gummies.

Ramengdan 7/18

9.

Had to do a video shoot with work today, so brought along granola bars for lunch.

Dinner was chicken and oatmeal.

Ramengdan 7/17

8.

Today is the first day of the last 4. I had thought I had 4 cans of chicken left, but it was only 3.
Lunch: soylent, oatmeal, crackers.
Dinner: tanka bites, crackers.

To have the traditional sweet for Eid, I ate some gummy vites.

Things I have craved

1. french fries
2. Korean fried chicken
3. burgers
4. fish tacos
• just the fish from fish tacos
• just the pickled cabbage from fish tacos
5. spaghetti and meatballs
6. steak
7. pad see yew
8. chow fun, which is really similar in texture
9. hot dogs
10. any sub with a ton of mayo on it. Something from Quizno's, maybe
11. lobster rolls (also with a ton of mayo) http://www.yelp.com/biz/paulis-boston
12. ribs
13. biscuits
14. Thai golden triangles heavily dipped in that sweet sauce
15. spicy nacho doritos
16. stuft nacho from Taco Bell. I hope this is still around when I get out.
17. curry (any curry) on naan
18. fried cauliflower with cumin
19. bowtie pasta with marinara and salami
20. Humpty Dumpty All Dressed chips. I think I might have to find these online and order them. 
21. really ordinary store pizza. The kind that's two pizzas stacked, shrink-wrapped together.
22. a Whopper
23. super thick cut BLTs
24. 100 samosas with a shaker full of cumin
25. the really juicy tomato paste in mini pizzas
26. arancinis smothered in marinara
27. piping hot tamales
28. tomato and cheese sandwich
29. that kind of luncheon meat with peppercorns in it
30. Rami's falafel and hummus
31. hot relish or sweet hots
32. Sichuan shrimp from Zoe's, though of all the things here, it's the one I've thought the most about making myself.

Eid al-Fitr

The day that ends Ramadan is Eid al-Fitr.
Read all about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/dining/eid-al-fitr-recipes.html

I'm not sure I have any sweets in my supply for Eid. I guess I have the fishoil gummies.

Ramengdan 7/16

11.

Big lunch today. A 1100cal can of baked beans and a small stack of saltines.

I now have 1 can of chicken for each remaining day. I could probably plan my meals out the rest of the way. In fact, I'll do it right now:

Friday: soylent, oatmeal
Sat: granola bars, chicken
Sun: chicken, corn, oatmeal
Mon: soylent, chicken

Thanks to the surplus of calories from Hungry Mother and here and there, I think I can get by without eating the whole canned chicken and the gefilte fish.

Dinner: oatmeal and vites

Ramengdan 7/15

9.

Lunch. 500cal Soylent. Oatmeal. Avoiding taking that last can of corn too early.

I still have one whole can chicken to deal with and one big can of beans.

Dinner. Can of chicken, oatmeal, vitamins.

Ramengdan 7/14

11.

Lunch: 250cal soylent watered down twice my usual amount. Much smoother and lighter this way. Shoulda done it like this from the start. The last can of nice white corn kernels.

Afternoon: I was able to scrounge a half sandwich from a board meeting and a banana. Even the tomato on the sandwich was amazing.

Dinner: 2 cans chicken, some crackers, and oatmeal.

Ramengdan 7/13

6.

Had some gummy vitamins and water for breakfast.

Lunch: 500cal of Soylent mixed with maple syrup oatmeal. This oatmeal is way too sweet. I think I'm gonna water down the Soylent a lot in the coming days. I thought I had 8 servings left, but I only have 4. For the better.
Had a few tanka bites.

Dinner: one more hummus packet, canned chicken, more tanka bites after the softball game, and more gummyvites.

8 days left

Remaining supplies:
9x 500cal servings of Soylent
7(?)x 250cal cans of chicken
2x 200cal cans of veg
1x 1300cal big can of baked beans
36x ~150 packets of instant oatmeal
1x 1350cal (if you eat everything) whole can of chicken
4x 210cal packs of tanka buffalo bites
4x 70cal babybel cheeses
hundreds of cals locked up in gummy vitamins

I can do this. But the variety is slimming down.

Ramengdan 7/12

6.

Went to get my haircut today, then Matt called to hang out with him and his siblings. By the time I get back home, it's already 6! I basically have a whole canned chicken as a monomeal. Still have a few hundred cals left to pad out. Probably oatmeal.

I read this grim story:
http://jezebel.com/woman-forgives-husband-for-making-wrong-turn-prepares-1717341344

"Bedwell survived [two weeks] on rainwater, eight pounds of oranges, and a butter cream pie."
She's really lucky it was the rainy season.

Ramengdan 7/11

7.

Light breakfast of some multivitamins and gummy fishoil.

Got some more hummus packets for lunch, and finished off the corned beef hash. Salty.

After I went back into the spreadsheet to correct the servings in the Soylent bags, it turns out that my remaining daily calorie budget is as high as 1590.

Dinner was tuna and oatmeal.

Ramengdan 7/10

3. close call

So a bag of Soylent powder has 2000 cals, and apparently 8 scoops' worth of powder. I was operating on the assumption that 1 scoop was 500 cals and 2, 1000. But no, it's 2 scoops that's 500. Oops. Today, I made the adjustment and had 500 cals of Soylent and a can of chicken for lunch. Scrounged a small squeeze tube of hummus.

For dinner, well --
we have a tradition at work where the interns have to make Spampersand Sandwiches. Cutting an ampersand out of spam and making a sandwich, basically. As the Minister of Cultural Affairs, it's my duty to oversee the process and eat the end results. And boy did I eat. I got a ton of calories, though the salt spike took a while to get used to.
I didn't have anything further for dinner.

Ramengdan 7/9

5.
Breakfast: poptart

Lunch: half can of corned beef hash, oatmeal. The oatmeal was egregiously stickly sweet.
But then -- someone had left out half of a steak and cheese sub, with a sign that it was up for grabs. Heaven in free calories. Scrounging is gonna be a bit boost.

Dinner: I decided to eat those jars of baby food. There was chicken and vegetables, sweet potato and chicken, and pears and raspberries. All delightfully bland, but still better tasting than Soylent. Also got a bunch of vitamins.

Ramengdan 7/8

6.

Scrounged a nice 200cal granola bar. Had soylent and tanka bikes for lunch.

Dinner was chicken, the last of that sunflower seed bread, more tanka bites, and a poptart.

Ramengdan 7/7

7.

The day of reckoning has come. I didn't want to do this, which is why I have to do this, to make this challenge real -- I'm tacking on some days to the end of Ramengdan. I rolled 1 die and got 3. So a mere 3 extra days. This spreads my calories out some more, but I think it'll be ok.

If this were really the post-Apocalypse, could you ever know when relief was really around the corner? In last Sunday's episode of Falling Skies, the focus was finding food, after rationing and starving for days. In the end, they succeed in finding a big cache of nonperishable food, including a sleeve of Pringles. One guy in camp mused that he wondered if he'd ever taste one again.

So I'm adjusting my calories to last me out the extra 3 days. Glad it wasn't 6 more.

Lunch: chicken, corn, vegall
Dinner: vitamins, oatmeal, fishoil

Ramengdan 7/6

3. I think that's the lowest I've rolled this whole time.

Lunch: big can of pinto beans, peas, and some Tanka buffalo bites that came in the mail. Because these meat bites have a known calorie value, I'm gonna swap them in for the deer jerky.

Dinner: chicken, corn, can of sardines. The sardines were good. They took me back to my childhood, where we'd occasionally get sardines in tomato sauce.

Ramengdan 7/5

11.

Had a monomeal lunch of yams, and a sun-warmed caffeine-free Pepsi, since I was visiting friends and having an event.

For dinner, I polished off the spam with some more crackers. Boy, these saltines are really dense, calorically.

Ramengdan 7/4

7.

Patriotic post-Apocalyptic movies for you to try on Independence Day:
- The Postman
- Red Dawn
- Independence Day (not really post-Apocalyptic, but come on)
- Battle: Los Angeles

Tried to go mountain biking today, but the bike wasn't in good shape. Still rode like 15mi, just not really as hard as I wanted. Ate all sciency nutrition stuff before and during the ride.

Dinner was half a can of spam on crackers. Salty salty salty. The green beans, some gummyvites, and corn.

Ramengdan 7/3

11.

I needed a bit of a cleanser after that whole chicken. Oatmeal for lunch.

I'm catsitting over the 4th holidays, which has enabled me to do a bit of scrounging >:o. Today, I took down some leftover roasted brussel sprouts. Not a lot of cals, but a nice fresh vegetable.
Add to that a can of baked beans, and you got a nice dinner.

For late night, I scrounged some downright sinful homestyle kettle cooked potato chips. I think this mighta been too easy, as far as the hardship ideal was concerned. Calorie count is on the money, but I'm saving by using found cals.

At the halfway point, I feel like I've reached a state where I'm no longer excited by the novelty of eating canned foods, and their taste is just average. Not sure if they'll start getting blander as I go on. As for the calories and hunger, I definitely feel hungry, but in abiding the limits I set for myself, there's nothing I can do. Aditya's wedding was 6/13. When I flew back, I weighed myself at a lofty 216, having gorged for Ramengdan.  Hadn't been that heavy in years, maybe college. Today, I'm 200. I'll probably be in the low 190s when I'm through. 

Ramengdan 7/2

9. Decided to crack open one of the whole chicken tins. It's rated for 1350 cals, but does that include the very fatty broth? I ate all the meat, and then had a "matzo" "ball" soup with the broth and some saltines. It was just over the salty line to be truly delicious, but was still good.

Dinner was just some granola bars and poptarts.

Ramengdan 7/1

5. Lunch was a sedate beans + corn soup.

Dinner... was supposed to be acai freeze-dried powder watered into a paste. You know, I just thought this stuff would be sweetish. Instead, it's horribly horribly sour and bitter. I made the further mistake of trying to cut it with a can of corn. I valiently ate must of the corn but couldn't deal with the powder itself. Is this what I have to look forward to with the gefilte fish?

Rounded things out with poptarts and babybel.

Ramengdan 6/30

9. I should really plot these rolls to see if I'm getting a roughly binomial distribution.

1020 cals of Soylent for lunch. I tried to spice it up again with this mustard-flavored honey I found. It made it super-gross when thick. It was tolerable when I really watered it down.

Dinner -- chicken + green beans + carrots. I was undexpectedly fond of the carrots. Then some vitamins.

Tomorrow, maybe another monomeal?

Ramengdan 6/29

10.
Chili and more of that sunflower seed bread for lunch.

I decided to incorporate the deer jerky I have into calorie inventory. Still need to get a better estimate of how many calories it is.

Dinner? One large can of kidney beans.

I have 3 1000cal meals of Soylent left to spread out over 20 days.

Went to Star Market and found a small cache of baby food in jars on the discount shelf. I'm gonna call it scrounged food. 85 cents for 280 cals.

Ramengdan 6/28

5. Woke up really creaky and sore from the ride. Still, feels good.

I ate the beef jerky, all in one go. Only 200cals.
Ton of oatmeal.

I realized I need to eat a lot of gummy vitamins to actually cash in all the calories in my inventory. The other reason to eat those is to get enough Vitamin C, which is lacking in the cross section of tins I have. At least I like gummy vitamins, unlike gefilte fish.

Ramengdan 6/27

6. I went on a 56mi bike ride to Providence with coworker Dan.

We rode the commuter rail back.

I knew it would be tough with the limited cals, but I couldn't really eat up the night before. It was pretty rough despite eating constantly throughout the ride. Still not in my best form this season.

I ate 1200 cals in gels, bars, etc. Worth it. I should really eat more to have my body recover properly, but a limit is a limit.

Taking stock of cals I've eaten and cals remaining, I need to go to 1750 if I want to eat evenly. That'll be tricky given the bizarre assortment of food left. Not to mention the gefilte fish lurking in the cal count.

Ramengdan 6/26

6.

Back on the cans. I feel fairly full off of that feast, so 600 cals for lunch was no sweat.

I have a ton of calories in the for of oatmeal, and I haven't decided if I want to even it out or if I want to have oatmeal-heavy days. Lunch tonight was 5 packs of oatmeal, corn, and chicken. Prettyyyyyy basic.

Ramengdan 6/25

8.

I decided I'd go for scavenging that matzo. Seems fair. More importantly, it seemed fun and in the spirit of surviving in the wastelands.

So how will I spin this whole "eating real food at a real restaurant" deal? I think the scenario I invented is that I'm finally leaving the main survivor camp on an extended mission into the wilderness. I always thought that if I did end up in such a community, that I'd volunteer to become a motorcycle scout. To go out into the wastes and try to find other survivor outposts. To try to negotiate trade deals. I don't even know how to ride a motorcycle, but I'm sure I could learn it if I had to. Roaming the country, sort of like in The Postman.

The story, then, is this: The Apocalypse has happened, we hoarded up all the food we could in the near term, but now we have to figure out how to survive long term. Need to go find farmland, farmers, food crops, that sort of thing. So everyone is disbanding to go exploring. We're gonna have one huge fancy sendoff meal before departing into the unknown.

And I'm gonna drag the rest of my cals with me. Obv, no more outside food after this luxury.

Lunch was the matzo I scavenged and 500 cal of Soylent. I'm going light in anticipation of a feast to honor all feasts for dinner.

Dinner was... amazing. Hungry Mother is almost done, with just 7 services before it closes doors. The chefs were really on their best game tonight. I had the 4 course dinner:
- calamari
- deviled crab
- smoked pork shoulder and some cornbread with sorghum butter on the side
- yogurt cheesecake, which reminded me of Beijing yogurt from my old childhood
Probably 2000 cals or so.

I passed on some desserts with rhubarb in there. It made me wonder, if this were really the post-Apocalypse, if I'd ever taste rhubarb again. As it is, I have it maybe once a year, even though I really love it.

That does it for real cooked food for Ramengdan. Back to doling cals out of the hoard.

Ramengdan 6/24

9.

Lunch -- decided to go in on this exotic halal turkey spam I found in the international aisle. Paired it with a really sourdoughy German-style sunflower seed bread. The bread is one of those things that is not to my taste and will take some effort to finish off.
Oh, and by "go in on," I meant that I thought about this all last night and packed the cans accordingly.

Dinner -- chicken + peas, cold of course. Mildly warm water on instant oatmeal. Nailed the cals limit. Chicken has 45g protein for just 225 cals. The spam is 1020cals but only 42g protein, not to mention 200% of your RDA sodium. Still, you don't always get your choice of nutrition. Some cals is better than no cals. That could be the title of my post-Apocalyptic book.
This reminds me of that hermit who hid in the Maine woods and pretty much ate candy the whole time.

Tomorrow, I'm going to an actual restaurant to eat real food. Yes, I know, such a violation. Hungry Mother in Kendall Sq is going out of business, and I got a reservation when I heard the news, before I'd settled on doing Ramengdan. I have the following thoughts on this whole monkeywrench:
- great opportunity to stock up on protein
- I still have a 3500 cal deficit to close up
- I can prob skip lunch tomorrow, but will I?
- it's probably more realistic to eat real food closer to the start of this than toward the end
- need to come up with a convincing backstory for having this feast fit into my post-Apocalyptic scenario

One more thing came to mind -- can I scavenge? Rooting around looking for a scale at the office, I found a box of matzos with just one matzo left. It feels legit to be able to eat this found food. I'll think about it.

Ramengdan 6/23

Rolled 8. Today my goal was to eat just Apple Jacks and the rice milk I had not opened from before Ramengdan. The idea is that if I have something that needs refrigeration, I eat it as soon as possible to simulate avoiding spoilage. I already cheated on the spam going into the fridge overnight, but I wanted to really keep it honest where possible.

So today I'm having cereal for the whole day. This might have been fun when I was 9, but now I'm really paying for it. The sugar spike is a major departure from the sodium hazes I've been having. Today I'll be under the sodium RDA for once.

Lunch was so unsatisfying. Dinner, less so. Despite being hungry, I didn't pour the sugar dregs at the bottom of the bag into my bowl. I haven't thrown the nearly empty bag out, either. Maybe I'll get desperate?

edit: went to the gym after dinner (suboptimal without any followup cals, I know) and felt pretty good. I guess some kind of cals is better than no cals at all. Good to be on an uptick after that long cold I had.

Ramengdan 6/22

Rolled a 5.

Today, I definitely felt the hunger. Even going easy on the salt today, I end up drinking a ton of water.

For dinner, I finally finished off the spam I started yesterday. Tomorrow I think I'm gonna do the Apple Jacks + Rice Milk as a whole-day meal. It'll be fun, maybe.

Ramengdan 6/21

Rolled an 11, then a 6 for missing yesterday.

Opened up a can of spam (well, store-brand spam). It's 1020 calories with great fat and decent protein content, but 200% of your sodium! I only got into about 1/3 can for lunch. This concerns me a bit, because I have quite a bit of my calorie supply locked up in high-salt canned meat. I think I need to get a ton more of the canned chicken stuff, which isn't quite as salty.

My shopping list looked something like:
5000 cal protein heavy foods
5000 cal oatmeal
5000 cal veg (this will be a crapload of cans)

I ended up getting more meaty stuff and less veg. I got two perishable items to up the risk factor -- this ultra dense pumpernickel and a box of saltines (with reduced salt).
For the real gross-out factor, I got a jar of gefilte fish. Not sure how hungry I'll have to be before I crack that open. Decently hungry, hopefully.

Tonight was the first night that, after dinner, I still felt hungry. Hmmm.

Ramengdan 6/20

Calorie intake is ok, but protein is really problematic. Most canned foods have too much sodium for how much protein they have. Saturday was a miscellany of food.
I decided to decant one of my big bottles of superfood drink. I think I'd taken a sip before Ramengdan started, and this stuff goes fast. I was taking a risk drinking half the bottle, but I didn't end up getting sick.

Tomorrow, I think I'm gonna try to seal the deal and get the remaining calories.

Ramengdan 6/19

Rolled an 8.

For lunch, I brought the corned beef hash tin. 760 cal of super salty (something like 80% of the RDA) minced meat and potatoes. It would have been good heated up. I should try that. As it was, I just felt like a sponge for the rest of the afternoon. The no-salt corn is a godsend, as far as avoiding sodium. I also had a Gatorade protein bar just to try. It was good.

Thanks to a bit of buffer, I had a lot of cals left for dinner. Had the usual chicken+veg stew, then oatmeal. Peaches and cream oatmeal, to be exact. This is the fakest thing I've smelled in a while. I feel like I'm back in elementary school and girls are experimenting with weird fruit perfumes. Also, my "tea kettle" doesn't really bring the water to a boil, so the oatmeal has a wonderful parboiled texture to it.

Re: instant oatmeal --
I got a variety of flavors -- various fruit+cream ones, maple sugar, apple cinnamon. Each packet is 130cal. I always eat at least 2 packets. I've NEVER mixed two flavors together. Even after the apocalypse, I'm sure I wouldn't lapse on that vanity, until it was down to the last 2 packets.

Hunger levels are ok.

I think I need to prioritize what are desirable/tasty foods and what I don't want to eat, so I can mix it up evenly.

unrequited cravewaves

Throughout a normal week, I'll plan out next meals. Like, "I should convince people to do Indian on Friday" or "I could really use some of those chicken medallions at Crave Mad for Chicken."
Now, with only the food supply that I have, those are simply unattainable dreams.

Ramengdan 6/18

Rolled a 10 this morning. Safe.

I had to go to the dentist at 1, so ate a late lunch by my lonesome in the kitchen:
chili, no-salt corn, veg-all (corn, peas, potatoes, ???). The veg-all is kinda gross. I guess I need to stock up on that. The corn and chili reminds me a lot of my diet on the road biking down the west coast. The food didn't taste all that bad, and the TV was on the golf channel. It felt almost indulgent. I think I might have to get more drastic if I want this to be the kind of change of pace I was hoping for.

It was Hack Day, so lots of engineers staying late. A few of us went out to Taiwan Cafe. I just sat there looking at the food and drinking tea. It was a good time, maybe too good of a time if I'm trying to cast myself into some sort of ridiculous Puritan mindset. Sitting at the table and not eating the food is not the most realistic survival scenario. It sorta reminded me of South Africa, in that poor blacks in the service industry could be surrounded by relative wealth but could not indulge in it.

After getting back from lunch, I had a can of chicken and green beans. I promise you that you already know exactly what those two tins taste like. I've found that I have to drink the can water after spooning out all the solids. I don't really mind it, but I can imagine it would be gross to some. I ended up light thanks to doing more work and hanging out more. 300cal "in the bank" for tomorrow.

Finally, I randomized things a bit more. I have some more shopping to get up to the full calorie supply. So I thought, why not leave the exact amount of food I get to have up to chance? I rolled for the last 12k calories with 2 dice -- so I'd get anywhere between 2k to 12k, depending on what numbers I rolled. Got 7, so my final target calorie supply is 55k. I need to shop for 17k more calories. I think I'm gonna double up on some of the meat tins and get the rest in vegetables.

opening a can of chicken

Tonight's protein was canned chicken. As I cranked the can opener, listening to the ever-rising ringing of the can lid, I remembered how my adopted cat Callie used to flip over the moon for chicken out of a can. I would always give her a few bits. As is typical for a cat, she would be in the kitchen mewing within seconds of the can hissing open. That's how I knew she was really sick -- when she wouldn't come running. I miss her a lot.

Ramengdan 6/17

The first day. Rolled a 4. Decided to ease into it a bit with some Coke Zeros for caffeine. As I'm not a big caffeine junky, and I did fine for several months completely off caffeine, I think I'll make it more realistic by avoiding all sodas. Just water, with flavoring if I can scrounge any.

For lunch, I kept up the indulgence theme by making 500cal worth of Soylent. Same familiar vanilla/salty taste. I spiked it with a bit of garum, but it got too salty. Still, can't afford to turn away any calories.

In the afternoon, the Engineering team went out to CBC in Kendall Square to have a hangout before Hack Day tomorrow. I studiously avoided eating anything, but got a diet Coke before the softball game. I definitely felt a little weak, but I think that was from a minor adjustment from getting back on Soylent.

Softball was 7:45 to 10 or so. We got destroyed, but we'll keep trying. I snacked out of my supply a bit.

I rode back and carefully ran the spreadsheet to figure out what I could eat. Dinner was: oat granola bars, oatmeal, a little cheese, a can of chicken, and some leftover drinks I had in the fridge.

I'm not being hardcore about the fridge -- I'm not gonna avoid using appliances to make it fully realistic. I have the fridge just in case, but I'll try my best not to have leftovers. Whatever I open, I ought to finish on the spot. I also have a tea kettle to heat water for the oatmeal.

Overall, the variety of food was pretty high, so I didn't feel like I was being punished just yet.

wanna see 27,000 calories?

This is about half my total calorie supply for Ramengdan:

I've got Soylent at work and several packs of instant oatmeal elsewhere. I still need to buy the other half of the inventory.

Ramengdan

Last year, I tried to observe the fasting rules of Ramadan. Over the hottest and longest days of the year, I didn't eat or drink in daylight. I'd been intrigued by one of the core principles of Ramadan -- taking time to think about being a better Muslim. Well, in my case, just a better person.
I found the experience a bit lacking -- I had no one to commiserate with during the hungry days, and really no fellowship over the course of the experiment. I wasn't sure if I'd do it again.

Over the year, I watched this movie, Letters from a Dead Man. A small group of survivors eek out an existence at the very bleak end of the world. They struggle daily to come to grips with their impending deaths. There's a scene where they eat an extremely small meal.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqk75f_letters-from-a-dead-man-04_shortfilms
At 8:55, you can see the priest sit down to what looks like a couple spoonfuls of chickpeas and 2 olives.

Having always been a fan of post-Apocalyptic settings, I loved the whole movie, but I was especially moved by that meal scene. Not only because of the farewell speech given by a living dead man, but also the sheer frugality required to survive in the face of nothingness.

This month of Ramadan (6/17 - 7/17), I will build up a stockpile of nonperishable food. My daily calorie limit will be 2000. The rules:

• I can eat throughout the day; there's no time rules like Ramadan.
• I can drink as much water as I like
• if anyone wants to share a meal with me, I'll be glad to include them, but it'll come out of my rations
• at the start of every day, I'll roll 2 dice. If it comes up snake eyes, I'll skip a meal that day
• I'll take some multivitamins to try to get normal levels of essential nutrients. I'll also try to balance the fat/carbs/protein calories

Here's a link to my food supply:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sf0Mu9KulieNV-2-Fdoj-rpbimNaGvAZ03bq-yItnyU/edit#gid=0

I pretty much fatted myself up for this challenge, getting lots of cravings out of the way.

I'll be blogging daily to run down what I eat and what my thoughts are as the month goes by.

See also:

• Fallout 3
• Oryx and Crake trilogoy
• Book of Eli
• The Night Land
• When the Wind Blows