I was supposed to train for this but since I did not have a bike, I slacked. I didn’t even bother asking around or buying my own road bike and I ended up riding 40+ miles using a heavy mountain bike. I have no regrets though as it was part of the whole experience and I enjoyed every but of it.

We started off the day waking up at 6am to get ready and to mount the bikes onto the bike rack of the Camry. I actually did not sleep well at all the night before so I was running on adrenaline and a bit of nerves the entire day. We drove to the Dumbo area to park, just in case we would not find any parking near lower Manhattan. While driving to Manhattan we saw other cars on the road with bikes hanging off of their cars and we knew that they were also headed towards the Bike tour. Why else would you be awake so early on a Sunday?

We got to our designated start line a bit early but it was already packed. At 8:30am sharp, they sounded off the guns and we were headed North on our journey around NYC on a bike. In the beginning it was very packed causing people to swerve and we did see a few accidents along the way but nothing too major. The only real traffic jam we had was up in Harlem (~45min wait) but I heard it was due to not enough volunteers to bring the bikers along the route.

After Harlem we crossed over to the Bronx for a few blocks and then headed back into Manhattan where we rode down the FDR. From the FDR we headed into Queens by way of the Queensboro bridge (I refuse to call it the Ed Koch Bridge) and from there South into Brooklyn. In Brooklyn I was so tempted to ask if we can just take the car home since we were parked right by Brooklyn Bridge but I couldn’t give up so easily! Once we got to the borough, the weight of the bike started to catch up with me and in my head I knew it was only the BQE and Verrazano bridge left. But, those two roads were known for their long uphill rides! I ended up walking part of the BQE uphill like many others, there is always next year.

Once we got off of the Verrazano Bridge we hit the festival and from then on I was all smiles. I knew that it was all over, until… I realized I had to ride to the ferry terminal, wait for the ferry (took about 3hrs), ride back into Brooklyn and then I was home free. Even though the map below shows ~38miles, my friends and I did about 45miles total this past Sunday. Even though we do not want to look at our bikes right now, we are pretty sure that next year we will be out there again.

Where else would you see people surround great smelling food but only take pictures of it and not eat?! While I was there it took so much restraint for me to stop my stomach from growling. At that point I didn’t eat much yet and I was starving. The food that was prepared by the chefs look absolutely amazing. After the shoot we were able to taste some of them and trust me, they tasted as good as they looked.

I am so excited for their next event and hopefully I will still be in town when it happens. I am actually very excited for three reasons, one I get to take photos of food for as long as I want, two I get to eat the food and try new things, and three… I get to see their cute dog again!

Location : Neely’s BBQ Parlor
1125 First Avenue NY,NY

Lets start off this post with me letting you know that I am not a big fan of Barbeque sauce. You might ask me why I would go eat at a place like this, but what can you do when your 10 other friends wanted to meet up there for dinner. It’s not that I hate BBQ, I just prefer to eat other foods haha. Walking in we were greeted by the hostess who let us know that we were the first, we then walked upstairs to the bar area to grab something to drink while we waited. The atmosphere of the restaurant was very welcoming, it felt almost like we were walking into someone’s home. The darker lighting made for a very intimate setting for dinner with friends or family.

There was a lot to choose from on the menu, but I knew one thing that I HAD to order… the deep fried pickles! Funny how on their menu it says “with special sauce” when we all know the special sauce is Horseradish! I was very excited when it came out and dipped the first pickle into the sauce before I remembered to take a picture. But the excitement quickly went away… the breading on the pickle was very thick and it was very hard, borderline overdone. I guess my favorite part of it was the sauce this time around.

We also ordered their Smoked Onion Hushpuppies with red pepper jelly. It was my first time trying out the red pepper jelly and it threw me off. I didn’t like it so I went on to taste the BBQ sauce on the table. There were two bottles, one labeled “Original” and another “Spicy”. The original sauce had a very weird after taste but the spicy, even tho it wasn’t spicy, tasted better.

For the main course I ordered the 12hr Smoked Beef Brisket. The sauce on top of it was pretty good, happy it wasn’t the same as the original sauce but the brisket was a bit dry. The meat was very lean though, but it wasn’t moist. There actually was a bit of a fatty part underneath the fried onions which was a lot better!

People, please take this post with a grain of salt. I am not a fan of BBQ

I wanted to start off easy and did not want to deal with changing light so I focused on the Queensboro bridge that would be in the sun for at least 30minutes. I set my intervolmeter to take a shot every 2secs for about 15minutes. Since I was in Long Island City, I wasn’t that far away but I wanted to get a closer shot of one of the towers so I used my Canon 55-250mm lens. This is where my mistakes came into play.I did not set the focus on the lens to manual. Even though the focus was set to infinity you can not tell but in general, focus should be set to manual or else the shots are wasted. Some of the frames were actually blurry, but I can’t tell if it is from the wind or from focus having issues.

I also chose one of the windiest days to take pictures. Every time the wind blew I actually was pushed around so imagine what my lighter camera felt like. After piecing together the images I got the below footage. Shaky, unusable video =(

Now, because I didn’t want to just throw away these images, I started to look for ways to align images. I ended up aligning through Photoshop, and with 164layers that still took me about 3-4hrs to finish! After alignment, the video was not as shaky but if viewed large you can see the frames where the image was not focused correctly. I guess it didn’t turn out too bad, but I wanted it to be perfect.

Things I have learned and will need to remember :

1. Focus image and then change to Manual!
2. If the day is windy, consider going home
3. Wear more clothes if it is cold =P
4. Avoid having to fix in post because it takes too darn long!
5. Be patient, bring a book

For now, I will leave you with this image I took at the end of the night of the FDR in Manhattan.

There was a place in Chinatown, NYC that made it the best so far for me. I have always seen people only steam the cheong fun but this place also grilled it giving it this hard outer shell. I need to go back there again haha.

After a long workout, what is the one thing you want the most? If you are not a health nut, probably something very oily or a huge portion of meat sounds good right?
This place is known for their Pork Chop over rice and even though a bit oily it is so good. The pork chop is breaded and then fried. It comes with white rice, preserved vegetables, a whole egg, and a whole lotta meat which is great for late night cravings. Sometimes my friends and I would come after a swim or maybe late after snowboarding. This restaurant is open until the wee hours of the morning so it’s great.

I haven’t really tried any other things besides this dish but why would you want to try other things when you know this is going to work out for your stomach? Actually I also recommend their seafood/oyster pancake with hot sauce topping. A good way to end off a long day of sweating =)

Today for dinner my brother, some friends and I went to eat at this restaurant which is located in the Manhattan’s East Village. This restaurant is a very tiny place which consists of bar style seating for about ~15 people. The amount of space between the bar to the wall is probably about the length of two people, so it might not be a good place if you are claustrophobic. Being Malaysian and eating curry all the time, my brother and I are very picky about the taste and spices of whatever we eat. I have eaten Japanese curry before but I knew what to expect, my brother was a bit hesitant.

After sitting down, we were presented with their menu which to be honest looked amazing and the descriptions made the food so appetizing. For my drink I chose their Lychee Lassi which was very good! It came out in this metal cup but it kept the lassi nice and cold. The flavor of the lychee was not overpowered by the yogurt base and vice versa. It tasted almost like drinking pieces of lychee! We made it before 7pm so they had a drink special – 50% of all drinks so I bought this for $2.

For my main course I chose their Berkshire Pork Cutlet curry. They have three levels of spiciness (mild, hot, very hot) and of course I had to try their hottest. For me, it was not spicy at all but then again my taste buds are probably burnt from eating so many peppers. For my friends who can’t eat spicy, they said it was just right.

In the beginning when they set all the food in front of me, I was afraid that it was not enough. There was a tiny pot with the curry and on the main plate, there was the pork chop nicely cut for me and rice that was put into a mold before adding it. After eating all the food, I found the portion was just right. The rice, even though it looked small, was probably 2 cups of rice neatly compacted giving the illusion there wasn’t a lot.

My brother had the Hamburger curry as shown below. I didn’t get to try it out but it looked very interesting so I had to share. My brother is not a small guy so I knew that this wasn’t enough for him, I didn’t want to take any food away from him (pats self on back for being a good sister).

It was my first time trying Paris Baguette so I wasn’t sure what to get. I heard many people tell me that their pastries are very good so I was looking forward to trying some things out. I was looking at their cakes and it all looked like it was dipped in sugar and would be way too sweet for me to eat in the morning. I ended up buying the Orange pound cake and a cup of hot chocolate.

The orange pound cake was not that bad, I wasn’t too wowed by it though to be honest. It was a bit dry but it did taste like orange.

You can’t really go wrong with Hot chocolate either when it is a cold rainy day.

After checking out venues my fiance and I met up with some friends to watch hunger games and then dinner. At dinner we went to a Vietnamese restaurant in Elmhurst that sold durian milkshakes!

I am go glad that my friends enjoy drinking this (besides my fiance… poor guy) and out of the 10 people we ate with, 8 ordered the drink and probably stunk up the entire restaurant. The milkshake tasted so good and it was very sweet. To our surprise they use an entire piece of durian to make one milkshake so we know it was not artificial. After drinking this it made me even more excited for my trip to the Durian capital of the world.. Malaysia.

So I am trying to make a change on what photos I choose and upload. I decided that I am going to keep it more along the lines of food I eat and actual interesting photos I take (I guess the way it should be). Who really wants to see my pictures of cats when I am having one of those days where I have absolutely nothing to shoot?

I’ve decided to make some of my boring 365pictures private, both here on this website and on flickr. This one will be the last one you will see =)

Below is a quick gif of what I got =)