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Gourmet On The Go
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6:30 am
It's 6:30 a.m. The rising sun paints the rolling landscape a peachy pink. Despite a northerly breeze, it's going to be another hot one.
That doesn't faze Dana Santi of Clarendon Hills, Illinois, a veteran of 15 of these late-July treks across the state of Iowa. Already clad in bicycling duds, she checks her Cannondale R500 road bike's tire pressure, slides an already sweating container of cool water into the bottle cage and studies a map of today's route.
Officially, it's 76.5 miles. Looks like mild hills, with a couple of major climbs about midday.
She takes a moment to memorize the answer to a question she knows she'll hear at least 50 times today: "Hey, Team Gourmet, what's for dinner?"
Luckily, it's printed right there on her black- white-and-green team jersey. Tonight's theme is Chef's All-Time Favorites. In about 12 hours, she and her teammates, who hail mainly from the Chicago area, will savor an eight-course meal that includes blackened yellowfin tuna, wild rice with mandarin oranges, and kugelis, a Lithuanian potato dish laden with bacon and sour cream.
She's almost ready. Helmet: check. Sunglasses: check. Bike gloves: check. Wooden spoon: check.
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Crawfish Cheesecake
The spoon that Dana tucks inside a leg of her black Spandex shorts is official cycling gear for Team Gourmet. It's a tradition that if someone calls for a utensil check and members don't have their specially decorated spoons, they must perform KP duty or satisfy the chef's whim, perhaps fanning him while feeding him grapes.
Time to saddle up.
As Team Gourmet bicyclists, 25 of them, depart in clusters of three or four, Wayne Santi, of La Grange, Illinois, wistfully watches. Health problems sidelined his avid bicycling four years ago, but Wayne, Dana's father, still feels the lure of the road. Now he's got other fish to fry.
Tonight's yellowfin tuna, for example.
