Dubai Eats

Eating in Dubai has been...fairly boring. I ate race buffet 90% of the time, which means the same exact meal, every time. It's simply too expensive to eat elsewhere when food is provided. Thanks to being gluten and dairy free, this definitely limited my choices and I ended up eating basically the same thing every day. It wasn't very inspiring.

• Breakfast: 2-3 egg whites and to just try and make it exciting, some pickles, mustard, pickled onions, and capers. I know...it wasn't good and my stomach hated me for it. I'm in no hurry to repeat this meal. Except that I ate it for a week straight. Ugh.
• Copious amounts of coffee and tea until I left for the race. My hotel room had a Nespresso machine and the first thing I did when my alarm went off was to make an espresso. I really should think about installing one of these on my bedside table at home....what's this silliness of walking to the kitchen?! Also, I skipped all faux-dairy products for the week. Eager to get back to coconut or almond milk. Basically desperately. 
• Lunch: I went to a grocery store and bought a few cans of no-drain tuna that were actually quite tasty and a few avocados. Every evening, I would fill up a plastic container with lettuce and some veggies (typically cucumbers, mushrooms, and peppers) from the race buffet and then add in the tuna and avocado at lunch time. I topped with some of my travel oil and vinegar packets. It wasn't exciting but it got me through.
• Snacks: Cashews, almond butter or beef jerky. Not my finest moments. Probably didn't need all those nuts, fats and calories.
• Dinner: Typically a that I would top with grilled (typically with too much oil for my liking) vegetables and some kind of protein.

And that was it. The same nearly single day, especially for breakfast.

So, by this morning, I'd hit a wall. I was staying in Dubai for an extra day to do some additional work and there was no longer a race buffet. I did a fancy dance, a full-on celebration and loaded up my plate. What you see above isn't everything I ate. It got a little out of control, quickly. There was another plate of veggies and then some scrambled eggs. I was so excited for the variety that I couldn't hold myself back.

Tomorrow--I head back to Belgium for a little bit. I already have all my meals for the next week worked out in my mind.

Do Anything as Long as it Feels like an Adventure

Living out of a suitcase and constantly moving around the glove is a lifestyle that wouldn't suit many people. Combine that with your only home being a strange foreign country and I'm basically always living in total chaos and tackling the unknown.

After nearly 10 hours of straight work and more still to do, I snuck down to the beach to read a bit and watch the sunset.

I think a common phrase said within the bike racing community is, "this isn't a job for many could handle, but for those of us who can, we are the luckiest people in the world." 

I'm grateful and spoiled that I have a job where when I tell someone sitting next to me on a plane what I do, their eyes expand and they immediately tell me how jealous or lucky I am. Trust me, I know.

Who knows how long I'll do this for. I'm applying the advice of Neil Gaimon, "I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure and stopped when it felt like work.”

Right now, Dubai feels just right. It's an adventure; it's strange; it's fascinating and I'll be happy to be back on the move come Monday and on to the next adventure.