Thanksgiving is almost a week gone, but if you're like me the massive pig out and the Macy's Day-worthy parade of leftovers won't soon be forgotten. I'm talking about extra girth, not warm fuzzy holiday feelings.
I ventured onto the scale for the first time in a week and confirmed that I probably should have opted for seconds on intervals, not pumpkin cheesecake. Meanwhile, I'm staring down the barrel of a host of Christmas parties addled with irresistibly iced sugar cookies, ButterBalls, and cholesterol-spiking eggnog. Glug! And the early sunsets this time of year make it even harder to get in a good workout and still feel inspired to cook.
Enter The Feed Zone Cookbook, a recent release aimed at cyclists and other athletes that showed up on my doorstep a few weeks back. Co-authored by Biju Thomas, who has cooked for Lance Armstrong and a host of other notable cyclists, and Dr. Allen Lim, director of sport science for Garmin-Cervélo and Radioshack pro cycling teams over the past four seasons, this 315-page hardback is full of nutrition advice and simple, healthy recipes for athletes. A number of celebrity athletes have apparently benefited from the meals in this book, including Levi Leipheimer, who ends his foreward with this: "Not only did Biju and Allen help salvage a disastrous start to my 2011 season...they actually got me into the kitchen, cooking these recipes."
In late 2010, a team of kayakers including Chris Korbulic, Ben Stookesbury, and Hendrik Coetzee set off to notch first descents on the upper tributaries of the Congo River. On December 7, while paddling the Lukuga River in the Democratic Republic of Congo a crocodile attacked and killed Coetzee (for more details read "Consumed"). Stookesbury and Korbulic immediately ended the expedition, but both kept kayaking. Over the course of the past year, they've launched whitewater expeditions to California's Sierra Nevadas and Brazil's Amazon. This December, they'll return to Africa to paddle unexplored whitewater in Namibia and Angola. Here are the details of that trip.
Who: Ben Stookesberry, Pedro Oliva, Pete Meredith, Chris Korbulic, Alex Nicks
What: A river-running expedition that starts on Zimbabwe's classic Zambezi River, travels north to the Kafue and Cunene Rivers on the Namibia/Angola border, and ends in northern Angola for a first descent on the Cuanza River.
Last week we flew to northern California for Thanksgiving. We go to Sonoma periodically to visit family, and every few trips or so we make a point of driving out to the coast to eat oysters. We haven’t made the pilgrimage in a few years, since our three-year-old daughter was a placid infant zonked out in her fleece sling, so this time we needed an outing that would satisfy rascally toddlers, and not just their bivalve-obsessed parents and grandparents. On days like these, you can either plan the details or wing it, and—being lazy and on vacation—we just winged it. Happily, what unfolded was a practically perfect, serendipitous day on the Sonoma coast.
The way they pick and present the stuff is pretty cool: Instead of just featuring items they like, they tapped an eclectic array of experts and influencers to be “curators” on their site. Jim Moriarty, the CEO of Surfrider Foundation, is one; Brad Bennett, the founder and editor of the very cool product blog, Well Spent, is another. The more time we spent on the site, the more we liked it—especially the slick line drawn profiles. So when they forced us to submit the recommendations of just one editor, we knew we needed to pick someone who would look good stenciled onto the interWeb. There was clearly one choice, Buyer's Guide editor Sam Moulton.
Earlier this year, we watched the trailer to the surf documentary Splinters and couldn't wait to watch the full length movie. We're ashamed to admit we still haven't seen it. The trailer is shocking, and features a violent scene that more than hints at what's to come in the movie.
Splinters is now up for the Best Documentary prize at the The 2011 Surfer Poll Awards, which takes place this Sunday, December 6, on the North Shore of Oahu. If you can't afford the ticket, you can watch the 41st anual awards from Surfer magazine here.Grind TV has a solid breakdown of the films with a chance of winning.
