A combo that adds up to a great weekend. As I mentioned earlier, I have two good friends moving in less than a month -- one to Austin and one to San Francisco. We met years ago participating in the AIDS Ride, and have been cycling together ever since. Friday night I took it easy in preparation for our ride to Piermont on Saturday. This was my first "real" ride of the season -- it's about 35 miles round trip, which is short enough to be doable without much training, but long enough to leave me a little sore. The weather was perfect for our ride, and we made it back in time for our remaining afternoon/early evening activities -- I had dinner with my mom, and the other ladies studied (or claimed to, at least -- they're taking some sort of business-y class prior to starting business school; they keep talking about warrants and convertibles, so I really have no idea what they're learning). I was even able to fit in a nap before they arrived at my apartment, vintage rock t-shirts in hand, in preparation for the evening's festivities. We had tickets to the NYC regional Air Guitar Championship, and we were going in style. We cut up our shirts and got ready to rock out. No, we weren't participating, but we wanted to channel the mood for the evening. What a blast -- we were proud that the winner for the evening was a hard-rockin' chick doing her take on Van Halen's Hot for Teacher. You can see more pictures from the evening here. And if that wasn't enough, we rounded off the evening with some dancing, 80's style, at the Pyramid Club. Damn, I'm going to miss these two. Sigh.

As part of my recovery today, I attended the second annual Big Apple BBQ Block Party. Hey -- I biked and danced my ass off yesterday -- I certainly deserved a little barbecue. The lines were ridiculous, so even though my team tried the divide and conquer technique, splitting off into three different lines, an hour and a half later, we only regrouped with barbecue from two different places -- one had sold out right before we got up to the front of the line. We had a pulled pork sandwich from Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, in Decatur, Alabama, and the beef brisket and sausage from The Salt Lick, in Driftwood, Texas. My favorite was the pulled pork, which was well-seasoned and tender, although I probably would have put a bit more sauce on top. The brisket and sausage were also good, but the sauce tasted very mustard-heavy to me, and I'm not a huge mustard fan. At this point, although we were no longer ravenous, we certainly didn't get our fill of 'cue, so after a quick call to Daisy May's (and a sad discovery that they aren't yet open on weekends), we were off to Pearson's Texas Barbecue on the Upper East Side. Now, I've read that Pearson's is known for their brisket, and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I think I'm just generally not a huge Texas style barbecue fan -- I'm more of a Southern or Kansas City gal. I think the Texans have more emphasis on the smoke, and I prefer the emphasis on the sauce. That said, I did manage to snarf down several pork ribs, and I give their mac and cheese a big thumbs up -- not too goopy and gloppy, with a sharp cheddary kick. Now thoroughly stuffed, I headed home to prepare for my trip to the Legal Assistance Partnership Conference in Albany -- land of lame food, from what I can gather. I'll be there for the next few days, so any food tips are more than welcome. At least the hotel has a gym, to counteract some of today's excess damage -- did I really need those onion rings and the hushpuppies? Yes, I think I did, thank you very much. You can see the rest of the pictures from the BBQ-fest here.