What’s Garmin-Chipotle on, anyway?
“Phew! That’s not even one of my farts! I told you, I’ve got four farts. My Heineken fart, my broccoli fart, my rice-pudding fart and my dairy-creamer fart. And the fart I’m smellin’ right now is definitely not one of mine.”—the late, great George Carlin, from “Napalm and Silly Putty”
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Our intrepid editor at large sniffs out the truth
By Patrick O’Grady
Photo: Patrick O’Grady/Mad Dog Media
“Phew! That’s not even one of my farts! I told you, I’ve got four farts. My Heineken fart, my broccoli fart, my rice-pudding fart and my dairy-creamer fart. And the fart I’m smellin’ right now is definitely not one of mine.”—the late, great George Carlin, from “Napalm and Silly Putty”
Maybe it’s an overreaction to all the bovine iPod People lumbering about, plugged smugly into their color-coded reality-avoidance mechanisms, but I have been paying less attention to our various media of late.
I used to have the local NPR affiliate promoting socialism in the background during working hours, but I’ve kept the office radio shut off for a few weeks now. Ditto the car radio. These 15-second news nuggets the electronic media serve up don’t do a thing for me beyond raising my blood pressure.
Still, a guy who is in the news business, however marginally, can’t remain entirely oblivious. It’s bad for the bottom line. So when I saw in the course of my labors for VeloNews.com that Garmin-Chipotle’s Will Frischkorn had launched a successful break and moved into third place overall during stage 3 at the Tour de France, his teammate Danny Pate had set the early best time in the stage 4 time trial, and the entire team was tops in the Tour through stage 6, I took notice and immediately launched an investigation.
The question: What are these guys on? These Garmin-Chipotle dudes claim to be cleaner than Howard Hughes’ dental floss, but pro cycling teams have more doctors than prime-time TV, and Manuel Beltran didn’t just ring the Dope-O-Meter for sipping too much mineral water.
The answer: Le Burrito, a special Tour-related project from co-sponsor Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Now, given the events of recent Tours, one might expect a foodstuff linked to the race to be chock-full of red corpuscles, amphetamines and testosterone. A main course that would eat your side dish, drink your beverage and steal your girlfriend if you took your eyes off it for a moment.
But Le Burrito appears to be just that — a burrito, albeit a preposterously large one, a fact to which I can attest because I ate one the other day, purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry. Plus as a scientific inquiry in the course of business it was tax-deductible, which means you bought me lunch. Thank you.
Le Burrito is not for the dainty eater. It’s the size of a cobblestone plucked from the Arenberg Forest and twice as heavy, a flour tortilla crammed to bursting with chicken, black beans, cilantro lime rice, mild tomato salsa and guacamole.
If a guy stuffed a couple of these in his jersey pockets after summiting during a mountain stage he’d go downhill faster than the housing market. And if he stuffed even one down his gullet, well, once the digestive process was well under way he might just get a jet-propelled assist on the climbs as well.
So look for the Garmin-Chipotle dudes to continue to do well in the Tour. And pity the poor bastards drafting them.
Was O’Grady’s latest the bomb or merely a one-cheek sneak? Send your lit matches to us at webletters@insideinc.com.