Whole Foods doesn’t sell Bike Friday Tikits, but I was happy that the one I rode in on fit into their shopping carts. I had been imagining push the folded Tikit with one hand and carrying a basket in the other — this worked out much better and had the second benefit of limiting how much off-list I could spontaneously decide to buy (neither fit in the cart nor would be carried on my back).

I do love this bike.

Now we make carbonara at home regularly, but it’s a version I evolved over the years to feed my kids, and you can think of it as bacon-and-eggs-and-parmesan-and-onions-and-peas-in-pasta. Delicious, yes, but not the carbonara I now know to exist in the real world, in Italy.

So last week, as a special treat, my honey and me finally went to Danny Meyer’s Roman-style Trattoria called Maialino, with high expectations. I’m sorry to say I was deeply disappointed. No photo, but I can tell you the dish looked great. Felt pretty good to the tooth, too. But the flavor just wasn’t there; it was like someone had followed instructions exactly but put no heart and soul into making flavor and love. I was a little embarrassed to be sitting in such a carefully-constructed restaurant with Danny Meyer touches and service, and at the bottom was just not so great food. Not cheap food, either.

Well, I knew it was time to just figure out how to scratch the itch as best we could at home. Even if it takes a few years, I’m willing to work on it. And here’s the first pass, thanks to Milo for the lovely photo:

We did it with just a few steps:

• 2 pounds of De Cecco spaghetti in a lot of boiling salted water
• 8 ounces of pancetta, cubed and fried up in a touch of olive oil and 5 cloves of garlic, crushed
• When the garlic turns brown, pull it out
• When the pancetta’s done (crisped), keep it warm on a low flame
• In a big bowl, beat 6 egg yolks and 2 eggs, plus a pile of black pepper and sea salt
• Put it all together when the pasta is still very al dente (more than you think)
• Add even more black pepper, salt, and the finest parmigiano reggiano you can find (handfuls of it)
• I drizzled a little more olive oil and some pasta water on top

It was pretty dang good and those hungry kids thought so too. Definitely room for improvement, and have to figure out how they coat the pasta with yellow egg and we seem to end up cooking it, but we’ll get there.

It didn’t exactly shout at me, but it was singing with a strong voice. Just don’t try to operate heavy machinery afterward.

Note that this did not work for me until I included the /user/ on the end of the URL. Just follow his directions to the letter. Finding the Calendar ID is a little tricky, but if you select the pulldown menu from each calendar and pick settings from that, you will find the ID buried low down on the page.

Precipitate is open source, works beautifully and fast so far, and has been around for awhile. Install it as a pref pane, let it in, and in a few minutes it adds your Google docs to your local Spotlight index so when you search your Mac it finds them.

I LOVE this.

Cold morning, warm clothing, whey powder power drink and some oatmeal for fuel…felt great getting to work through Central Park and city streets. Even midtown seemed okay, though those potholes seem to be getting worse.

It’s nice to be able to look over your shoulder and see your bike waiting for the ride home.

Just bought myself a copy after it worked flawlessly. Great software is just great. Being able to find a good post about it, pull it down, try it out for free, and then pay for it in a few seconds is so much better than the old days…

Stumbled on this eye catching wall downtown, and it seemed like a good place for a bike portrait.

So this morning I took it out for a maiden voyage, with my son Milo, down to Shopsin’s for breakfast. Here it is on the street outside:

And the riding? I love it.

What struck me was how different the riding feels without gears. There are things I’ve always liked about the lower center of gravity and small wheel size of those bikes, and now with the single speed it just fits together right for a kind of muscular, slow-balanced weave and acceleration. It feels kinda sexy, slinky.

And I found that I could charge up small hills pretty well by getting my weight forward and up over the handlebars (though these were short hills). But for city riding it is totally fun, well-suited to stop/start and sudden swerves to avoid shoppers and obstacles. The fold is really simple and the bike feels very clean without a derailleur, like the internal hubs. No fenders, no rack. The combination of the coaster brake and the hand brake in front are still not super strong for stopping power, but workable. I really like it.

Barcelona, mmmmm.