As soon as I heard about the new Taco Bell Black Taco, I ran out and got one. Rather, I bought two of them and a chili cheese burrito. Excited to eat my new tacos in the perfect setting, I drove around and ate the burrito while looking for the right place. The chili cheese burrito is difficult to eat while driving and I wasted a lot of time trying to deal with this thing. I made it as far as my driveway before carefully opening the first one.

The first batch of Tacos where good. However, I didn’t have the right words to describe them at the time so I decided to make the critique more scientific by getting two more black tacos and a regular taco as a control. This was important work and it could not be rushed or thoroughly conducted during a parked feeding frenzy.

A couple things separate the new taco from the old taco. The black shell isn’t made of blue corn. Rather it is just black, and that is not such a bad thing because its flavor has been refined for years. Next, the cheese is no longer just cheddar. It now contains a delicate blend of Mozzarella, Cheddar, and Pepper Jack cheeses. The intricate flavors of which are further sophisticated by the addition of the hotly anticipated zesty pepper jack cheese sauce.

The resulting taco is cheesy, crunchy, meaty, and spicy. It is better than the original, and it costs less than $1. Viva La Bell.

Oh yea, ride bikes. GT Bikes, and umm, Ray’s is open for the season!!!

The Mohican State Forest trail is an amazing, and the race had a great turnout. The weather was warm at race time and the course was completely dry.

The race came down to a sprint finish. My/Our finishing time for the race was 1 hour 51 minutes. We exchanged the lead several times throughout the race, but in the last few millimeters, Steve took the win. He was riding incredibly well throughout the race and seemed to have the trail dialed. He took a number of new lines that didn’t occur to me. Despite pushing to the limit, we each only crashed once. It was exhilarating to pedal that hard through the woods.

I was very interested in finding out what a fast lap time on the course would look like. It has been a topic of discussion for a while, and I have heard rumors that seem too good to be true. At the race there was a little bit of a problem in that the race didn’t start in the parking lot, but rather a half mile away. Luckily, I compared my computers trip distance to the 1-mile mark on the trail. As I passed it, I had 1.17, which seems close enough. On the return trip, the extra distance probably took us an extra 2-3 minutes. It’s hard to say.