Training & Nutrition - What's a good energy source for 6 hours riding?

I'll be riding 6+ hours for 4 days back to back.
What do you usually bring with you for a long ride?
I know water is a must...what else?

I bring Gatorade or some energy drink like that, plus a couple of powerbars. If I need to stop, then I'll get a quickie snack at a restaurant or some place like that.

Koffee

I make a homemade granola mixture. I've posted it on here before. It;s loaded with carbs and it tastes really good. If you want the recipe, I can find it again.

Thanks for the replies. For now, I think I'll go with the off-the-shelfs solution. My biking trip starts in less than 14 hours.

I have no idea if this is a good suggestion physiologically or not, but in those situations I love beef jerkey.

I carry compact, light and climate-resistant Real foods like Fig Newmans (no trans fats) or dried fruit mixed with nuts or roasted soynuts. Energy bars melt, taste like sugared dog biscuits and are teeming with vitamin supplementation that overdose your body even if you don't take a daily multi (and who doesn't)?

I have no idea if this is a good suggestion physiologically or not, but in those situations I love beef jerkey.

Haven't you said this before? :)

Aren't you the guy who takes two legs of lamb along on the ride to snack on? :D

Baked potatoes are great food for an all day ride. Cheap, easy to make, easy to carry, and easy to eat. All natural and loaded with carbs and other good things.

Fig Newtons would probably be good if you can eat them but I can still remember biting into one when I was around 4 years old and finding a big wad of hair inside. Yech!

Two legs of lamb. ; )

Energy sources on rides range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

On long rides, I like starting off with fruit: oranges, bananas, apples or better yet water melon. Later I switch to sweet stuff - usually something without an excessive amount of fat but peanut butter and jelly, cookies that sort of stuff (fig newtons and other newtons work well for me).

I know people who can not handle anything solid. They have good luck with those dissolved packets of stuff like GU.

Many people eat up powerbars but I have always avoided them for stuff that passes as food. I have known some people who cut their powerbars into strips and then dipped them in water and stuck the resulting tacky powerbar strip on their bike so they could peel it off and eat it as desired. I wonder if one gets little bits of road grit, exhaust and small insect life adhering to the bar as a "bonus".

A friend of mine has an anecdote about coming into a convenience store nearly bonked. She had a tremendous craving for sugar so she took washed a 1 lb chocolate bar down with Mountain Dew (a high caffeine carbonated beverage). She said it worked great and she had lots of energy and dropped all her friends and ended up burning out at about 98 miles into the century and limping in.

What do you usually bring with you for a long ride?

For a typical 80+ route through southern Orange County (CA), ~4500' climbing, I will bring:

24 oz bottle is enhanced Cytomax
20 oz bottls is water

2 powder refills for the Cytomax
2 Clif bars
1 Fig Newton

Anything else, I buy. Typically run into a Chevron mini-mart and get cold water. Fill and remix the Cytomax bottle and top off the water. On really hot days (yeah, I know southern CA is not hot compared to Phoenix), I find myself wanting something OTHER than energy drink when I get past 60+ so I sometimes grab a Coke. Then, it's back to Cytomax and water.

My enhanced Cytomax formulation:

1 gallon Cytomax powder (I think this is 8 scoops)
15 Gatorade scoops of Maltodextrin powder
1 t table salt
1/4 t salt substitute (potassium chloride)
1 packet grape Kool Aid
3 T table sugar

This yields a formula that I think is closer to the breakdown in the Endurange Gatorade (salts), has WAY more carbs (almost like drinking 1/2 Clif bar per bottle), and tastes MUCH BETTER with the Kool Aid thrown in. I'm not a big fan of Cytomax Grape; it needs something.

I use 3.5 Gatorade scoops of the above mixture per 24 oz bottle.