I once saw a video of a rider, training with a team, whizzing along no-handed while opening a pizza box. I’m afraid my bike-handling skills are nowhere near that! In fact, as of July 2024, I can’t ride no-hands at all. But from the time I started doing longer rides; and especially while preparing for centuries; I tried a lot of different things as take-along fuel: miniature pretzels; spice drops; GU-Gels; various bars; and so on. I also experimented with home-made ride food, such as this recipe from Pez Cycling News.

After trying the Pez recipe as given, I started varying the ingredients; and found that I like those bars better when I substitute cashew butter for half or two-thirds of the peanut butter. Unfortunately, cashew butter costs a lot more. (Note: an old print-out of this recipe that I made in 2012 says 1 1/4 c. peanut butter, not 1/4 c. I’m quite sure 1 1/4 c. is correct.) I also like to use currants, because I’m lazy and don’t want to bother to chop dried apricots! The problem with these bars is that they’re nearly impossible to resist when they’re sitting in my fridge. Or even in the freezer! I’ll chow them down ice-cold.

More recent experiments are with rice cakes, as described in both The Feed Zone Cookbook and Feed Zone Portables. I use sushi rice for mine. Of course I’ve tried some of the non-portable recipes, too, and have become quite fond of Simple Biryani.

For hydration I tried various types of electrolyte tablets, e.g. Nuun; and ready-made drinks such as Gatorade. I also had to find a way to take along larger and larger quantities of water. When I had the tricycle and was going on long rides, I could put a big jug of water in the trike’s basket and use it to refill my drinking bottle. (I had a bottle cage put on the handlebars). The bottle of electrolyte drink could go in the basket, too. Once I had graduated to two wheels, though, I had to find other ways. To keep from having to make too many stops to spend money for water, I bought a 100-oz. Camel-Bak. It makes for quite a load on my back, but having that drinking tube sure is handy!