FIRE, WATER, AIR, EARTH

It was with FIRE where we first learned to cook by roasting meat before WATER enabled pot cooking to usher the emergence of cuisine, perhaps at the same time that we discovered to make use of AIR in baking and EARTH for fermentation.

Thus was how Michael Pollan explained cheese on bread to Ada and Trela as they finally kissed amidst the mysterious deaths in Sowie Doly, and a bowl of raw egg on hot rice to Akira and Dr. Masamatsu who were lovestruck in Tokyo but won't say so. 

Meanwhile, Tere and Celso waited for Bene's sunset while boiling Pampanga quail eggs to pair with Agu and Strika's smoked beasts from 17 West African nations as Alvin Russel who is with the devil all the time maraude Knockemstiff for a porch pie, Memo getting bigger with Marta's beans and sausages because nobody knows they're in Llanquihue which is 15,557 kilometers from Singapore where Johnny the Mee Pok Man consumated a necrophilic affair with Bunny the dead hooker.

In Nueva Ecija, the Phantom Bikers welcomed a new era as they shift gears from aroskaldo and mami to Thelma's pinapaitan.

THE MISFORTUNE OF PRIMOZ ROGLIC

For 11 days, the maillot jaune was firmly riveted on Primoz Roglic's back until that fateful day in La Planche des belles filles when it was yanked off by Tadej Pogacar, skin and all, who would triumphantly wear it in Paris as drops of bitter blood etch a nightmare to be long remembered in the cobblestones of Champs-Elysees, to be be told and retold in the manner of Greg Lemond's conquest of an overconfident Laurent Fignon in 1989 and the ousting of Carlo Guieb by tech-savvy Bernardo Llentada in 1991.

Meanwhile in Bakal 2, the harvest from a successful cholecsystectomy garnished a samgyeopsal spread.

Nario Quintana fell first, then Egan Bernal and Rigoberto Uran, with Miguel Angel Lopez and Richard Carapaz providing flickers of inspiration until they too succumbed to Stage 20 despite Tootsie Tomanetz's brisket, Rodney Scott's whole hog barbecue and Rosalia Chay Chuch's cochinita pibil that were offered generously to appease the gods.

It might be that Lennox Hastie's fancy grilled caviar and smoked burrata are just too much that even DCI Roz Huntley was not spared from the curse of the Balaclava Man whose striking similarity to the masked Phanthom Bikers will definitely justify the lynching of PLDT's Customer Service for crimes against humanity.

US AT THE END OF THE WEEK

I am Sam.

And Isa represents what I've been missing in the time of Covid-19 including a college reunion at Fred's Revolucion, lunch at the Original Pares Mami House, and the confrontation in Escolta (and Binondo).

A murderous week concluded in Moscow with the liberation of Rodion and the ascencion of Eseniya while in Marseille, Lucas and Robert regained city hall at the cost of their unborn progeny.  

In London, Superintendent Ted Hastings stood by his obligation to bring down DI Dot Cottan and the rot of London's finest that somehow involved Freemasons in high places, and for which the Kitchen in Bakal 2 laid out a fellowship of pan fried salmon, sinuglaw, chop suey and a quarter of Johnny Walker Black.   

On the second week of Le Tour, Egan Bernal and Nario Quintana cracked in the slopes of Grand Colombier where a feast of minced meat cutlet, pork-wrapped tomatoes, simmered taro and squid, pickled ginger tempura, vermicelli salad, stuffed cabbage, clam soup, sauteed burdock, liver and chives, and soba vanished with their podium aspirations.

The Phantom Bikers wept but they will keep on until the last drop of Mountain Dew, the last morsel of Skyflakes, and the last bowl of arroz caldo disappear from the face of quarantined earth.  

MIDNIGHT DINING IN FRANCE

In lieu of the pissaladiere and salade nicoise, Alexander Kristoff and Julian Alaphilippe celebrated their maillots jaunes in Nice with tako sausages and karaage.

Caleb Ewan sprinted for a neko manma and sake-steamed clams in Sisteron which Primoz Roglic countered with an ochazuke and nokogori a day later in Orcieres-Merlette.  

The flamme rouge in Privas and Lavaur were memorialized by Wout van Aert with offerings of potato salad, butter rice, cream stew and tuna mayo rice.

Katsudon and pickled Napa cabbage powered Alexey Lutsenko up Mont Aigoual but Ilnur Zakarin got lost in the descents because Tsvetkov, Malodementevsk and Zaslavsk apparently don't exist in Google Maps, the method in taming the curves left at the lockers of Nizhny Novgored and Serpukhov that is enough to deliver Loudenvielle to Nans Peters who was greeted with tamago sando and hiyashi chuka at the finish line.

Tadej Pogacar finally triumphed in Laruns which the Slovenians celebrated with yakisoba, nikujaga, light brandy from the poultry, mojito from the corner store and whiskey from the Craft.   

After the opening week and 4 days in the yellow, Adam Yates was briefed over saba shoyiaki, instant ramen and gyoza on the cases against DCI Tony Gates and DI Lindsay Denton, and of Robert Taro and Lucas Barres' revolt because Marseille was left out of the 2020 Tour de France route.

Yates ceded the maillot jaune but we will wear ours until the yellow from our 373 Bikers uniforms fade.