Rose, Thou Art Sick

Here's something romantic to tell your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, life partner, significant other or whatever you call him/her/them:

Of course, you would say it only if that person is also a cyclist.  If he/she/they are/is not a cyclist, you might witness aviation history in whatever space you share!

One Valentine's Day many, many years ago, I was riding my bike by the Rutgers campus.  I was flat broke, as I often was (and would often be on many occasions later).  What would I give, or do with, my girlfriend?  I could have made something, I suppose, but I wouldn't have felt right, knowing that I slapped it together in even less time than I wrote at least one of my papers.  And, at that point, my cooking skills consisted mainly of boiling and frying.

While pondering all of the things I couldn't give, or do for, her, I pedaled by the botany lab.  A blur of red, deep red, streamed into the corner of my eye.  Rose, thou art sick.  I'd read William Blake's poem at least a few times, but why was I thinking of it then--with a riot of deep crimson in my line of vision.

The dumpster outside the botany lab overflowed with those flowers.  Roses, redder than any in the Queen's garden--or any upper Madison Avenue florist. Rose, thou art sick.  They probably are not well if they're in that dumpster, I realized.  But they were so, so red, like the bloom of one who grows more beautiful while drawing closer to death. (I'd recently read a Japanese story like that.)  

Giving no thought to what might be keeping those petals redder than Mississippi in any election during my lifetime, I yanked my handlebar and made a beeline for that corrugated steel cornucopia of floral bounty.  I propped my bike and scooped as many roses--their stems still attached!--as I could handle.  I found a piece of twine lying nearby and used it to tie whatever I couldn't carry to my handlebars, top tube and seat tube.

On my way back to my apartment, I stopped by an art studio and appropriated some ribbon, and large vase from a conference room.  Then I pedaled to the language houses, where my girlfriend stayed.

One of her housemates answered the door.  Slackjawed, she darted up the stairs and summoned, it seemed, all the other girls in that house--and my girlfriend.  They watched as I handed her more roses than any of them had seen in their lives.  Oh, and those roses were redder--even if they were sicker.

About the only thing that's the same in my life is that I still ride my bikes.  I have a few more than I had then, not to mention the memory of that day, when I might have made someone happier (and a few of her friends more envious) than I've made anyone since.

I still wonder what kept those roses so red--for almost two weeks after I found them!  Rose, thou art sick.  A few years ago, I looked her up, worried that those roses may have made her give birth to sick children.  As far as I can tell, she remained childless.  Because of the roses?  

They don't seem to have affected me.  I still ride, after all.  

National Ice Cream Day And My First Century

“Buy one cone, get one free.”

I would’ve stopped for that, except that, these days, I simply can’t eat ice cream—or any other dairy product—while I’m riding. 

 

“Free scoop of any flavor.”

What can they come up with that I haven’t already tried?  Mongolian yak butter with wasabi soy nuts?  

“Buy one sundae.  Get second at half-price.”

What’s with all of those ice-cream sales?, I wondered.  Today brought hotter weather than this part of the world has experienced in nearly two years; I couldn’t imagine how special sales or other incentives were needed to sell ice cream on a day like this.

I didn’t take a long ride today, but I felt as if I saw more promotions for ice cream along the way than I’d normally see in a whole year of riding.  

 

Turns out, my perception might’ve been more accurate than I realized. When I got back to my apartment, I turned on the radio.  After mentioning the President Obama'sdate with his daughters, the newscaster mentioned that today is National IceCream Day.

If it sounds like one of those holidays only Ronald Reagan could have declared, well, there’s a reason:  He actually mandated it in 1984, while he was running for his second term in the White House.  Whether that helped him win the election, we’ll never know:  Even though he was good for business (theirs, anyway), I simply can’t imagine that Ben or Jerry would ever have voted for him.

Anyway, finally learning about this holiday three decades after it was decreed, I recalled a moment from my youth. (You knew that was coming, didn’t you?) It happened around this time of year, in the summer after my sophomore year at Rutgers.  I was working two jobs, taking a class to make up one I’d failed as a freshman and doing lots of bike riding.  All of that while living on pizza and “subs” and cheap alcohol. 

One Sunday in July, I decided to go for a ride.  I had no particular destination in mind, but I soon found myself—as I often did in those days—along the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath, on my way to Princeton.  Going there and back would have made for a good morning ride.  But once I got to Princeton, I saw a bunch of cyclists signing up for something at a table, and a bunch more cyclists pedaling down Witherspoon Street. 

“Do you want to ride with us?”

Why not?, I thought.  I signed myself up and paid the registration fee--$3, if I remember correctly—and someone handed me a T-shirt.

That ride was one I’d do again a year later:   the Princeton Century.  A few hundred of us, I think, pedaled from the university campus into central New Jersey suburbs, the rolling farmland in the western part of the state, and across the Delaware River into Buck’s County, Pennsylvania.

In the Keystone State, we rode into a town called New Hope.  It’s sort of like Woodstock:  once an artist’s colony, it’s now home to people who pay lots of money to say they live there.  Then, as now, its main street was lined with stores and cafes that are novel or pretentious or simply way too cute, depending on what you’ve experienced before seeing them.

A few of us stopped in one of the too-cute cafes, which turned out to be an ice cream shoppe (yes, with an “e” on the end)—the first such establishment I ever visited that wasn’t a Carvel, Baskin Robbins,  Friendly’s or an imitation of one of them. 

That shop—I can’t remember its name and, silly me, I didn’t write it in my journal—claimed to make its own ice cream from fresh ingredients.  I didn’t doubt it, as its menu featured all sorts of flavors I never could have imagined.  When I go to a restaurant or café and there’s something on the menu I’ve never eaten or drank before, that’s what I order.  In that ice cream shop, there were at least twenty such flavors.  I picked one of them at random:  Ukraninan Rose Petal.

It was the worst thing I’d ever tasted.  

But all was not lost. I finished the century--my very first--and rode back to New Brunswick.  In all, I rode 137 miles: up to that point in my life, the most I'd ridden in one day.

And today, yes, I gave in to the marketing hype and celebrated National Ice Cream Day.  I didn't try anything exotic:  I went to the Baskin-Robbins around the corner from my apartment and ordered a scoop of each of my favorite flavors:  Cherries Jubilee and Pistachio Almond--on a waffle cone, which was free with the two scoops.

I'm happy.