A Lousy Bike Day
Sometimes I catch myself being so fucking Portland that I want to throw up, and I would, too, if I hadn’t spent so much money on probiotics and kelp (that’s a lie: most days I can’t even remember to eat breakfast). I had one of those moments yesterday, as I was biking the seven miles to our CSA pickup spot, half-listening to This American Life on my iPod while gloating over a week of great political news (in case you hadn’t heard, Alberto Gonzalez got fired for propositioning Larry Craig in a public restroom).
We belong to Helsing Junction, a CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm operated by friends of Ben’s family in Rochester, Washington (20 miles south of Olympia, 100 miles north of Portland). CSA’s operate on a membership basis: essentially, we bought a share in the farm’s harvest for the year. For $22 a week, we get a box of fresh, seasonal organic produce every Wednesday, mid-June through the end of October. And compared to the shitty produce at our neighborhood Safeway, these vegetables haven’t traveled very far, which, at least in theory, reduces our carbon footprint. The great challenge is figuring out how to use all the produce in one week. For instance, how the hell do I cook these? I’m not even sure what they are:
We never know what we’re getting week to week, which is part of the fun, and we can usually fill in any produce gaps by walking the three blocks to Proper Eats.
But I digress. My point is that I should have had a pleasant trip, riding extra high on the self-righteousness meter (tra la la, riding my bike to pick up my organic veggies… look at my chain-oil-stained Levi’s… on your left, ding ding!). However, it was ninety degrees out, and I’d been on the couch nursing a sore throat and wading through (virtual) reams of spreadsheet all afternoon. I’d have happily stayed there, miserably analyzing data, but both of my roommates were working, which meant I was the lone gatherer available to collect our produce. I waited until the last possible moment, still operating on my East Coast misconceptions about when the hottest time of day ought to be, but finally had to get off my ass before someone declaired our share abandoned and confiscated it.
I don’t know if it was the heat, or if there is some kind of mating cycle that happened to coincide with the swampiest day of August, but the early evening air was dense with gnats the entire way to the pickup location near Irving Park. The flying bugs bounced off my sunglasses, and some of the more robust ones actually hurt my face as I biked through their congregations. They kept going up my nose, which made me sneeze and snort involuntarily and caused my eyes to water; when I tried breathing through my mouth, instead, they got sucked down my bronchial tubes. This would have been kind of annoying under normal circumstances, but I was already feeling run-down and crappy, and respirated gnat juice was doing nothing for my sore throat.
Additionally, my rear tire could have used some air, so my bike and I were both dragging. I did, however, make it to the backyard where the boxes of produce are stacked every Wednesday, and loaded all the vegetables into my panniers (this week we got a bunch of spinach, some garlic, two red onions, four roma tomatoes, two cucumbers, an eggplant, four ears of corn, broccoli, two of something that I think is probably fennel, and those three squashy objects pictured above).
The bugs weren’t as bad on the way home, but biking due west at sunset presents some visual discomfort. I was also tired and sweaty, and by the time I was back on Willamette, I could calculate my heartrate from the throbbing inside my throat.
I know: whiner, whiner. There was a silver lining, though– when I got home, I figured out that Otter Pops are long enough to serve as icepacks for your tonsils:
See? If I was really all that Portland, I’d be using herbal teas and healing crystals instead of frozen Kool-Aid.
