We Ride With Susan

All things considered, I want to live. The pain my loved ones would endure is palpable enough for me to never want to die; although I have no fear of death, the love I have for my family—and, possibly more importantly, that they have for me—gives me a firm sense of self-preservation. While I do have a nagging sense of invincibility (despite having never stepped into oncoming traffic, there have been plenty of other close calls), I know eventually my family and friends will have the option to attend a memorial service of some sort in honor of yours truly. Hopefully not for a very, very long time. Hopefully my parents aren't here to scatter my ashes.

I don't want a ghost bike memorial service. I don't want my parents to fly in to whatever city I've been living, to be picked up at the airport by my husband, to find the nearest clean hotel to the area where the incident occurred, to prepare a few sentences to say into a news camera or to a crowd of people they've never seen before and probably won't ever again.

I don't want my friends to gather in the rain and exchange awkward, "How are you?" "Good! Well, you know, considering..." conversations. I don't want anyone to catch cold on my behalf, for cops to stand in the road to direct traffic around my ghost white bicycle while cars, enraged behind them, resist the urge to honk as they pass the lone mourner across the street from the vigil, holding a sign that says, "What's the hurry?"

Susan Hicks was about my age, an academic, friends with my friends. She was following the rules of the road that were made for cars, that drivers of cars throw in cyclists' faces when other ghost bikes are chained to poles, rules they insist would have saved that life. A driver wasn't upholding their responsibility as the controller of a 4,000 pound car, and crashed into a car that became one end of a Susan sandwich, along with the car it had smashed her into.

The problem isn't just this driver, it's that this is a common problem. That cars honk when I ride my bike 28 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone, because they want to drive 55 miles per hour. That the railway crossings to enter the park are guarded by rail yard workers who yell at us to get on the bike path as we are trying to get on the bike path they are guarding against us. That cars yell at us to get on the sidewalk when there is no sidewalk, and when even if there were one, it's illegal and dangerous for us to ride on them. That as we've tried to ride home from work, or just enjoy a beautiful day, drivers have become incensed, have thrown bottles at us, shot at me with a bb gun, and have swerved their cars purposefully into cyclists, righting their destructive ships at the last minute, laughing at this game they play with our lives. That distracted driving is an epidemic, and many drivers text and drive while speeding, even in residential or business areas. That four lane roads, like the one on which Susan was slaughtered, carve through college campuses and cars swerve recklessly from one lane to another, desperately afraid of getting stuck behind a bus. That these memorials happen everywhere, and the news covers them, meanwhile publishing slanderous articles and letters to the editor calling for more restrictions on cyclists, who are responsible for a scant number of fatalities.

I don't want my family to come see me in the hospital, or to figure out how to pay off my debts, or what to do with my lousy stuff. I don't want my sister to have to explain to my nieces that I won't be able to FaceTime with them anymore. I also don't want to call my husband's parents and drop the devastating news that their son was killed. I don't want to go through his belongings and figure out how much is enough of a keepsake to keep, I don't want to think about what to do with the house or the cars. I don't want to have to figure out how to continue on with my lousy, ruined, meaningless life without the love of my life. But I know it's so, so possible. 

And yet, still, people have a place to go, somewhere to be ten minutes ago. We are in the way, and the response to a text is more important than a life.

Indeed, what's the hurry?

There were over 250 people standing in the rain today near where Susan Hicks was killed (which is incidentally where Critical Mass starts), holding candles and hoping they don't catch cold. There shouldn't have been anybody.

Over tea and coffee this morning, my roommate and I talked about our complicated feelings about attending the vigil. How it's important to be there, but that for many people it isn't a place to be political, they don't want politics to be involved. But for a group of people who have been asking for years for a bike lane on that stretch of road, who lost a wonderful young person (though even if she was an asshole and old, it wouldn't make a difference), it is political. Sadness and Anger go hand and glove. It's hard to attend a memorial and not be mad that we even need to be doing this, again. It's a horrible feeling to think that maybe, now that a well-loved academic, a smart and charming white woman, a well-known citizen of Pittsburgh, was killed, things will change. That is a disgusting thought. And as it passed through my raging, sorrowful, idiot brain that wants so much to not be the next one whose name is Sharpied onto a sign next to a white bicycle, the SadMad began to subside, pushed out by the familiar depression that so often takes precedent, and I felt sick to my stomach.

Race Across the West 2015, Vol One

Guys. GUYS. I didn't tell you about Race Across the West.

I later lost this hat in Squaw Valley. Donations being accepted to reconnect me with a hot pink cycling cap.

When I signed up, I was interested in spending a week with my sweetie, who works so hard (I go through phases of working hard and being a bum. Right now I'm kind of a bum) all the time and I don't see him nearly as often as I'd like. We work well together, which is a big plus in something like RAW. I was also excited to see the American Southwest, my favorite landscape, including some parts and parks I'd never before experienced, or had never seen in the day time. I thought maybe I'd get some photos and stories out of the event. I did, and I'm slowly working through the process of organizing them all in my head, as this summer has been such an incredible whirl wind.

Racer coming in!

What I was surprised to gain exposure to, however, was something I'd only thought I knew anything about, and something that didn't initially strike me as all that interesting, frankly. By far the most mind blowing part of the race was getting to experience the gut wrenching endurance of athletes, teammates, and friends, and the personal sacrifice that comes from truly working and thinking as a team.

Last year when Team Phenomenal Hope raced Race Across America (RAAM), the team was made up of a very large crew with two suppose vehicles, an RV, and a media support vehicle; there were four racers who worked in pairs for three or six hour shifts, rotating every twenty minutes for those six hours and switching off with the other pair. This time, we had the two support vehicles and a van of off-shift crew members, and only two racers who raced for roughly twenty minute pulls with no real downtime except at night when they would each ride for longer stretches to allow the other to achieve some version of sleep in a moving vehicle.

It was the hottest race in years, with each day hovering at about 113° with no shade or cloud cover as we pushed through from Oceanside, California all the way to Durango, Colorado. In the Mojave Dessert, sand dunes pushed up against the road way, spilling into the line of traffic and causing chaos as crew teams scrambled to direct their racers out of danger. I was on shift at this time, and it was the middle of the night as the peloton came through, the solo racers RAAM and RAW racers, and some of the RAW teams, the solo racers all bunched together for camaraderie and safety, though their support vehicles were caravanned behind them illegally. Our racer struggled to find a good line in the confusion of so many racers and vehicles, without getting separated from us. We held onto her wheel as she stayed in our headlights, and as called out whatever sand we could see in case we had a better line of vision, able to pull our eyes up the road ahead a bit, to the furthest line of our lights rather than directly under wheel.

morning in Arizona. Hey there big guy.

I believe it was the next day when we went through Arizona and its blazing, unrelenting heat. Arizona is, frankly, a rather unwelcoming state, especially for cyclists, though it does have its unyielding beauty and some kind and generous residents. and I met a couple at a gas station who had left their homestate of California for the first time ever in a road trip to visit the boy's sister in Denver. 

"It's really something out here, isn't it?" I asked the girl while she admired me tattoos and I scanned her scabs with a worried glance. Chuck, my crew partner, had just given her $10 and her boyfriend was scratching a rash and swearing under the hood of their old Durango. 

"This is the worst place I've been to in my life. Everyone is mean, no one wants us here. I just want to make it to Colorado and be done with it." She then took me to her dog, who was tied with a rope to the hitch. I gave him a few pets and tried to calm him down when he started jumping. She scolded him and the pup turned around and bit her on the arm. It started to bleed a bit. I frowned again and asked if I could get her some ice for it.
"This place sucks," she said, kicking her truck tire. "Even pooch hates it. We gotta get out of here." She turned her back on me then just as my racer was coming out of the convenience store in a fresh chamois to start her next ride shift. Life goes on.

Somewhere outside Prescott, I believe, one of the riders started to experience heat exhaustion and mental fatigue. It's hard to watch someone for whom you have come to care deeply sink into what is a dark place in the psyche, knowing from experience that there's no real way to be pulled from that place but to be convinced to do so on one's own, and that's a difficult feat on both sides. Matched with the unrelenting heat and sun, the brutal climbs, descents, and flats, and the basic struggles that come with being a human being with our complications and backstories, it was an immensely difficult day for my rider.

Christmas Circle, California

Her teammate, however, dug deep into that same well of human spirit into which my racer had sunk, and found her own strength to ride through, doing longer pulls without complaint of sign of wear. It was one of the most impressive sites I've ever seen, and I was so proud to be a crew member for Team PH as these two women communicated and worked to support one another during this very difficult shift. At the Walmart in Prescott, we took a team break for some IV fluid, shade, and much needed rest. No one had had a proper meal in a long time so some of the crew members who were on the rest shift set out in search of pizza, only to discover the only pizza place in town was a "bake your own" type of establishment. Someone from the town invited them into his home, a mansion in the hills of Prescott, to bake the pizza there, and ultimately all was right with the world.

My racer wasn't depressed, she was having a mental reaction to being in a physically dangerous situation; however, being a person who lives with depression myself, I was at a good vantage point to talk to my rider who was struggling with moving forward in this very difficult race. Perspective is important. Not only the rider's perspective on her performance, race, numbers, and achievements, but the crew's perspective on how to take all of that into account with the (rather unfair) pressures we put on ourselves—not only as an athlete but as a person—to conquer ourselves, always put out better wattage, faster mileage, more impressive numbers. It's easy to forget to look up from the GPS, and it's just as easy to forget how difficult that can be, and how tricky those numbers can be when they ultimately mean very little. Perspective means the ability to look up and see the fantastic view, and to know that that's what someone is missing, because I've too been a person who was unable to see the incredible mountains and valleys and now that I can, I know how breathtaking it is, how much of my life depends on being able to see it. I'm speaking at once metaphorically and literally here, because our racers were passing through such incredible landscape, and were truly moving along at an impressive clip too, averaging 20mph, and I was fortunate to see all of it from the driver's seat.

After our pep talk and pizza break, my racer took a long pull to give her teammate some much deserved time off the saddle, and put out one of her best rides of the entire race, Garmin-free. I feel fortunate to have been able to be there. While our own inner struggles are different, it validated my own complicated self to put my depression in perspective and to give it meaning. Without that vantage point, I may not have known to kick everyone out of the RV, to give her what she needed, to know that its impossible to replay last year's race but that this year had its own saviors. Instead of ice cream it was pizza, instead of six hours in an RV it was five minutes in a kiddie pool. We take what we can and I understand that, as a person who is constantly working to find out what works and make it the best I can. Isn't that all that any of us can do?

The rest of the crew had the knowledge to administer an IV, fix the flat on the van (which I had kept filled with the bike pump until we were at this stopping point), communicate with our fans and supporters in a cool manner to keep everyone happy and appreciated, and communicate with all the crew members to make sure everyone is on the same page. We each had our roll, strengths, reasons for being there, and I'm proud to have been a part of that. I'm really so proud of everyone involved and have more stories to share, and I can't wait until the next chance to crew for an endurance race. Hopefully I won't be needed past pumping tires, charging lights, refilling water bottles, and driving the van, but it's nice to know we all have our small worths.

RIP Canondale: ridden too hard, put away too wet

After working the support crew for Team PHenomenal Hope's endlessly impressive duo Ann-Marie Alderson and Patty George as they competed in Race Across the West (RAW), I was inspired to finally start riding my road bike again. Road riding in southwestern PA is certainly different than riding in Southwest US, because the hills are much smaller and punchier, the shoulders are much narrower (or nonexistent), and the road surface varies between relatively paved to hunks of asphalt that have been thrown in a general area together to create a relative illusion of the concept of "road." Still, watching them pedal, climb, and descend, and feeling their small victories at having crossed mile markers and personal struggles, made me want to go out for a long ride myself. A week or so home and I was finally settled to hit the pavement (the trails are still too muddy to ride, as it's been raining almost every day for a couple months now). I went to the basement, and found a wonderful science experiment where I though I had left my bike.

You see, something wonderful(ly gross) happens when you get home from a frustrating ride through the slush, snow, and ice and furiously hang your bike in the basement without cleaning it, vowing to only ride your cross bike until Pittsburgh weather decides to play nice. The weather, of course, never plays nice and the bike ends up in that sad basement for seven months (or maybe it was 19? Did I stop riding that bike for a whole year and a half? Well it doesn't matter now, I guess). In the meantime, the salt in the slush will absorb the water and hold onto it like an old lover may hold onto sweet letters from a past he can't quite get past. The salt will then pull that moisture into the depths of the metal and carbon on which it once sat, corroding all in its wake (to pull the metaphor past its necessary use, this would be like that closure-less romance infiltrating all future relationships and current friendships until those companionships themselves corrode into something unusable and unhealthy. Salt, thy art an abuser in love science!).

Nothing moves, everything that should move is fuzzy. The weirdest of all, however, is that the bike is still wet. The salt doesn't just disappear, and being in a Pittsburgh basement, even though we have no leaks, it is so moist here (like, seriously) that the water doesn't have anywhere to go. People, my SPOKES have gummy dewdrops on them. Have you ever seen those fake flowers that have a the illusion of being recently watered? That's why my bike looks like. E. went downstairs to grab my bike for me, as part of the move, and asked if I had already taken it for a spin. There was an alarming sound from the basement when I shouted back No, and upon inspection (attempting to turn a crank), it was revealed to be all entirely seized.

José Guadalupe Posada, bicycles of the dead

Prior to RAW, I had been considering selling my bikes, especially the road bike, to purchase a Salsa Fargo. I was torn about it, because I knew I might want to ride again once I got out west, and didn't want to set myself up for regret. But look how cool this ride is, now that I know it can also take a suspension fork! My bike shop is also a Salsa dealer, so I can get a good deal on it (always an important factor, plus it's good to ride something we sell). Anyway, check it out! Just imagine it with a frame bag, some other stuff (it can hold a growler, for instance), and of course yours truly with a big ole grin). And if you want, feel free to drop some money in my PayPal (kidding, but also, I mean, you can do it if you want to). In the meantime, I have plenty of turf to cover in preparation of my many adventures ahead, and luckily I have another whip that serves me well. 

The Salsa Fargo 2

A Stab In the Dark

There comes a time in every blogger's life where she needs to look at her surroundings and make some assessments. Last night, I stepped on a stick that impaled my foot about an inch and a half deep, leaving just a teeny tiny mark but swelling my foot to about 150% its size. Then, I sliced my hand on a knife my friend Nick Anger made me, attempting lamely to hold it in my teeth like a pirate holding her sword. My eye has also been twitching for about two days.

What do I make of all this? Even Wikipedia offers me nothing but, "no one really knows what causes it, your guess is really as good as ours. Oh wait, do you have any pain in your eye? Oh, no? Never mind, yeah, still don't know. Sorry." The twitching started before the stab wound, before the slice, and after I started the kickboxing challenge, around the time of Easter. So is it holiday stress? Sugar consumption? Not enough time to get everything done, with three days of the week pulled out for family activities?

Personally, I like to blame everything on water intake. Headache? Probably dehydrated. Nauseous? Have some water (and salt). Chest pains? Down some H2O. Muscle cramps? Load up on the good stuff. Eye twitch so easily falls into that. After all, it's basically just a charley horse on my face. So I'm drinking water, infused with some old lime sliced effortlessly with my gorgeous knife. But I also put my feet up after a day of postering and editing an article, and have been watching Bob's Burgers, so who can really say?

The point is, self care is important. Whether that means drinking enough water or taking some time to relax with cartoons. Whether that means punching things or taking a day off from punching things. Whether that means quitting one's job to pursue one's dreams or just eating a balanced meal every once in a while. It's all worth while, and our body will tell us this by giving us an eye twitch or making us clumsy enough to step on a stick or stupid enough to slice our hands open with a knife. Or maybe by placing the stick there to step on at three a.m. to give some perspective on the important things in life.

Water and cartoons.

First day back at the bag

With the sun back in the sky and love in my heart, I was today able to finally get to kickboxing. I knew going into it that I'm not in the shape I once was, that I'm not as strong or as svelt. It's not that I've been scared to go back to class, but there were always excuses — usually decent ones, in my defense, like illness or injury, but also weak ones like not enough time or feeling tired —that I wrongly convinced myself were worth listening to.

But today I set an alarm for an early class so that I'd make it to at least the afternoon class, and made myself go. There weren't very many people there, only 7 plus the instructors. One of the instructors and all the attendees were strangers to me, but I instantly fell into the groove of warming up, smiling through side plank, and feeling thankful for the relief of mere jumping jacks. By the time we got to our first round of jab-cross, I was already tired, but excited to be back at the bag again.

What surprised me was how tired my legs were after the warm-up squats and lung jumps. Typically my legs are incredibly strong and even after an hour round of kickboxing, they're still ready to ride up some Pittsburgh hills or at least take the dog for a long walk. My legs were shaking. When we started kicking, I dug deep into myself and found saved energy even though parts of me wanted to crumble into a ball and lay there for dead.

Between every other round, I ran to my water bottle, my throat dry and desperate for water. "How does everyone feel?" Coach Jenny said as the bell rang after three hard minutes of uppercuts. "Tired!" I shouted back. "Good," she said, "that means you're doing it right."

Strange fact about me: I have a series of situations in which I imagine almost everyone I meet. One of those is in an attack situation. How they'd try to attack me, how I'd counter-attack. I always prided myself on my strength, but moreso my stamina. As class went on, I felt myself losing power like a battery, each punch and kick a bit less powerful, less quick, and each block a bit less accurate. I was disappointed, and again dug deeper to find that person I know I can be, who can fight through pain and come out kicking and punching and screaming. At speed round, I pushed all my pain, all my weakness to the back of my brain and charged at my bag with as much speed and speed and strength as I could muster.

I know I have to keep going to kickboxing class. I want to get back into the shape I was before I dislocated my shoulder. It was over a year ago, but it through my training regimen off so much that it's been difficult to find a new rhythm. I'm thankful I have a place to go that pushes and supports me, and that's always there when I'm ready to dive back in. I look forward to Thursday, and I hope I don't sabotage myself and miss class for some dumb reason like I'm scared of the pain of realizing how weak I am. I already realize that, so the only thing I have to do is face up to it.

Icecapades

Well, the last race of the season was yesterday. Soon we'll be back to reports of my running up stairs and complaining about the cold, and maybe some more boxing or P90X (...we'll see...), but let me just tell you about this one last race first, m'kay?

In classic Pittsburgh style, it couldn't decide whether it was a warm day or a cold day, so it did what any decent weather pattern would do, and gave us the worst of both. Freezing rain, ladies and gentlemen. At 32 degrees, it was the warmest day we'd had in about a week and a half. The course was frozen in unexpected ways for me, being only my second muddy race and my first totally frozen race. The grass, as usual, was as close to velcro as one could find on that course, but it was still slick with the dew that was slowly melting under our tires and the frozen mud we tore up as we skirted around bends.

There were two technical sections of the course, both of which caught me by surprise and one of which caught me by the skin of my knee. There was a felled tree right before a steep run-up. Ordinarily, the slightly more skilled riders could have easily ridden over this tree and maneuvered the sharp right turn to ride up the hill, but the dirt in front of the tree was rutted and frozen, the tree itself was covered in a slick glaze of ice, the dirt that would have been the sharp right turn was an icy sheet covered in a thin layer of deceiving dust, and finally the run-up was slick, frozen mud that denied any cleats from digging in for a firm grip. I saw skilled rider after skilled rider race in front of me, only to get taken down by that sorry piece of dead wood. The very skilled managed to ride halfway up the dirt slope. But if anyone managed to ride it successfully, I wasn't around to see it (and therefore it didn't really happen. I didn't hear that tree fall, by the way, so I think JR just placed it there when he made the course.).

The second technical part of the course was a series of tight switchbacks on pavement. As the rain came down, it made an increasingly slick surface on the pavement. People were falling all over the place. Along my personal journey, I passed riders peeling themselves off the pavement, looking baffled at how this typically trustworthy surface could prove so two-faced and hurtful, or using a chainlink fence to stumble up from the grass, unsure how they managed to get so far off course. In particular, by the pool, we were herded in and out of a gate system. As the race continued, the weather seemed to warm up and the rain let up a bit. It felt in the clear, which is always a bad sign, I now realize. I tried to sprint a bit harder on the straightaways, dig a bit deeper in the grass, and by that dreaded pool entrance, I was cautiously optimistic as I took turn number three. It was my last lap and I had nothing to lose.

Sure as I knew it, I, too, was peeling my own sorry self off the pavement while the single speeder were lapping me for the eighth time, this time instead of cutting me off at a steep and muddy descent that fed onto more pavement and a steep ascent (idiots), they were asking if I was okay (thanks, fellas). I was, but my bike wasn't, and I rode awkwardly the rest of the lap as Mary Boone, whom I'd managed to keep behind me since she was flung like a star across the parking lot earlier in the race when she slipped on some icy grass, passed me and kept me in her metaphorical tail lights.

I didn't win the race, but I tied for fifth in the series with my Scurvy Dogs Racing teammate, Kitaira. I left before the podium, but she was nice enough to hold up a shirt in my honor.

That night, I wore the lowest cut dress anyone has ever owned and went to my friends' beautiful wedding. I drank, I stuffed my face with cookies and salad (I'm a complicated woman), and sure, I was celebrating the brilliant love of two amazing people who were destined for each other, but also, secretly, for my first full race season, my first bike race crash, and surviving my first ice slip of the season with no more than a scabbed knee and a swollen leg.

Today, of course, is 67 degrees.

Road Trip!

Tomorrow I'll be headed to DC for a seminar on women's cycling hosted by Molly Hurford and sponsored by Rose Physical Therapy Associates. Molly came to visit in Pittsburgh this past summer, and I couldn't attend because of.....work? Laziness? Enuit? I think in all likeliness it's because I've been a female cyclist since I was 5, not including Big Wheels, and a lady cyclist since Jr. High. What did I have to learn? The reviews of that presentation were less than stellar, unfortunately, largely because of the questions asked. I feel like us writers put ourselves out there to tell our stories, give our advice, offer feedback, because no one else has. But that doesn't necessarily make us experts. And when someone is a good person, they have the good sense to say, "I'm not a gynecologist, and this might not work for you, but.." before giving a lesson on cramping and numbness. But that can leave for an awkward exchange when the audience is in attendance precisely because their own gynecologists have failed to answer the questions, take the questions seriously, or create a safe space where such issues can be explored.

This time, Hurford is bringing an arsenal of knowledgeable professionals to help break down those barriers to information. I'm sure not every question, nor questioner, will be satisfied, but when in life is that ever the case?

I'm also proud of Hereford for having a poor event and using it as a learning experience to keep on going and have a more dynamic presentation. I'm eager to see what new insights I'll gain from the experience. I'll be sure to report back on my findings, so stay with me.

In other news, E. loves me and made gluten free peanut butter cookies last night, and I'm skipping my race tomorrow in order to go to this conference, so the race to obesity is starting early this winter. It's important to keep ahead of schedule whenever possible. To keep pace, though, I'll be bringing some Vega Protein & Greens shake powder and a few of their Sports bars. I'll be dancing in my car and singing to Bratmobile for the whole five hour drive, so I'm sure I'll work up a sweat.

Can't win 'em all: oatmeal edition

I don't think this story is exactly what that xoJane column is looking for, but: it happened to me. I subscribe to Vega's various e-newsletters, one of which has recipes for different vegan power meals, usually breakfasts. A lot of them are just interesting takes on a smoothie, many of which I already "sort of" do, but last week was a recipe for slow cooker pumpkin oatmeal, and it turned out that I had all the ingredients already in house. Since it didn't quite work out as intended, I won't post the recipe, but you can certainly see it here if you'd like to give it a shot.

I'm thinking now that maybe there was a typo. I certainly should have used my common sense in thinking to modify the 1:4 ratio of oats to water. But I was making them at 1 a.m., as I am oft to do, and wasn't really at my prime. As you may have seen from the photo, these oats look INCREDIBLE. They are in adorable cups, and topped with walnuts, and the lighting is beautiful.

The night I made them, I had an awkward dream that amounted to sitting at my friends' house, who'd just broken up, staring at them as they sat on opposite sides of their couch, and watched the sun set between them out the window. Very long, dull, awkward dream segment. But when I woke up, I immediately remembered the breakfast waiting for me -- put your kitchen to work while you sleep! The Vega post cajoled -- though I was a little confused by the specific lack of warm pumpkiny smell coming from down stairs.

I won't post pictures, because they would make you want to just drive to McDonald's and purchase the least food-like substance available, so safe. The edges of the crock pot were burnt, and there was scummy looking brown water capped with what could have been a kombucha mother, had science failed me. The burnt edges were surprising, considering there was so much water still in the pot. The bottom was also burnt, and there was an oat paste about an inch thick.

I didn't even know what to do with it, it was such a mess. So I did what comes most naturally to me, I let it sit on the counter all day and occasionally looked at it and frowned, and maybe gave it a stir or two. Then a miracle occurred: It became food again. Just like Jesus rising from the dead and exiting the cave, so too were my oats. They were pretty bland for how much flavoring I put in, and a little gooey, but they had absorbed the water and looked edible!

I did what any disgusting human who really didn't want to throw about about $5 worth of oats, pumpkin, and spices would do, I heated some up in the microwave, poured some Vega  all-in-one powder on it, and topped it with a ton of almond milk, some roasted flax seeds, and some chia seeds.

And, I'm not gonna lie. It was pretty decent. I won't make this recipe again, at least not without some serious modification (though I'll post the modified recipe if it works out better).