After having my two heart attacks and open heart surgery, I very seldom eat ice cream or sugar. Even with plenty of exercise eating sugar can kill you just like it did Jim Fixx the author of "The Complete Book of Running". I can still remember Mr Fixx talking on TV and radio how you could eat anything you wanted as long as you ran and exercised. He had a massive heart attack while running 15 miles at the age of 52. 

I also remember he ate nothing but pizza and ice cream for 3 months before a marathon run. After the marathon he had to have medical attention. He had the heart attack less than a year after this binge eating to prove his point that you could eat anything as long as you exercised. 

I now might eat a very small scoop of ice cream ever 3-4 months. I now eat 99.9% of only natural, unprocessed food. My snacks now consist of any kind of fruit or vegetable. When it is warm weather and I can get them, watermelon and cantaloupe  are my go to snacks. Sweet with natural sugar. Not only good, but good for you. So after a hard ride or any hard exercise I eat a big bowl of watermelon and cantaloupe.  Peaches, apples, grapes, blueberries, blackberries, pears, bananas, raisins, dates, and prunes make up my snacks when watermelon and cantaloupe aren't available. 

When the weather gets hot it’s nice to have ice cream after a ride.  I love the gelato you get when in Italy!  They have so many interesting flavors.  I don’t like plain vanilla at all!  The other day it was the only choice and the place had a wonderful espresso walnut cake so I had that with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it was delicious!  Mostly in Great Britain I’ve gotten ice cream bars.  I love the magnum bars with my favorite being the one with mint ice cream and dark chocolate coating.  I also like the one with the white chocolate coating.  I also just discovered one with a raspberry ice cream with a coating of white chocolate on one half and dark chocolate coating on the other.  Delicious!

When the weather gets hot it’s nice to have ice cream after a ride.  I love the gelato you get when in Italy!  They have so many interesting flavors.  I don’t like plain vanilla at all!  The other day it was the only choice and the place had a wonderful espresso walnut cake so I had that with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it was delicious!  Mostly in Great Britain I’ve gotten ice cream bars.  I love the magnum bars with my favorite being the one with mint ice cream and dark chocolate coating.  I also like the one with the white chocolate coating.  I also just discovered one with a raspberry ice cream with a coating of white chocolate on one half and dark chocolate coating on the other.  Delicious!

Very interesting, Ms. Anderson.  I don’t recall ever reading such an enthusiastic and elaborate comment from you before.

Yes but I would edit the comment slightly to establish that the ice cream at the end is the reason for the ride. Too extreme a position?

We discussed this over dinner tonight (Italian, but sans gelato) and agreed we disagree (with you, not each other).  The journey is its own reward.  

Dodie agrees with you - the ride is the main event, the ice cream is an add on. Steve, who is more food driven, still maintains that the treat at the end is the reward for doing the ride.

NOTHING BEATS ICE CREAM on a bike ride!!!! :) :)  Hits the spot!!

Ice cream'll get you there.  See below some high-end carbs from late August 2021, triple scoop of lavender and lemon from Balderson Cheese Factory (a very special dairy, deliberately kept secret by us locals) on the edge of the Lanark Highlands.  This rescued me from a hot and muggy day, and saw me through the final 25 hilly kms to my campsite for the night.

In a related vein, Kawartha Ice Cream (from the eponymous dairy in Bobcaygeon) has recently become A Thing, and rightly so -- though when I was growing up, we knew it only as "the dairy".

Good Humor trucks still make regular summertime patrols through my neighborhood here in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC.