While I've backpacked a fair amount and bicycled a solid accumulation of miles over the past few years, what I haven't done is combined the two. More specifically, I'm not as confident planning bike trip meals.

Unlike any backpacking trip I've undertaken before, we'll have access to food resupplies almost daily. Bikes travel on roads, and roads indicate towns, and towns indicate dusty rows of dry goods at worst and brimming farm stands at best. Exciting!

The catch is that it will be of uncertain variety. I've whipped up some kick-ass backpacking meals (alright, alright, the most recent was inspired by Krista's divine suggestion of HAMBURGERS!), but all of them have either been on a month-long trip with a mule-packed pantry of tons of staples and spices, or short weekend jaunts where I've been able to plan, pre-measure, and pre-blend ingredients to the nth degree.

I've already raided the spice rack downstairs for salt, pepper, and a few different herbs, but now what about cinnamon, sugar, raisins, and honey for morning oatmeal? Yeast for bread, perhaps? If not, then hummus powder and sun-dried tomatoes come up for vote: not crucial, but chock-full of protein/flavor (respectively), and of the more exotic sorts of food that might not be available in a small logging-town grocery.

There is a 30-second digital video of those fabled hamburgers, on that low-mileage, high-calorie trip that Molly, Krista (my roommate next year, by the way), and I took this past spring break that would put George Foreman to shame. It was cold enough at night in Henry Coe State Park that we had to hold the pan extra close to the stove for extra long to simply cook through the top half of those thick, half-pound hand shaped patties, so close that the pooling grease actually burst into flames. Several times. Accompanied by Krista's native-San-Franciscan-turned-southern-belle accent.

And so the only thing I want to accomplish on this biking trip, really, after hiking up to the rim of Mount Saint Helens or bursting through an hour-long climb to the top of the fogline or screaming down a hill at an official 45 mph, is to parallel the exquisiteness of them charbroiled burgers. Which I really don't think I can do without the sun-dried tomatoes.