eat carolina food challenge day four

This post is part of the week long Eat Carolina Food Challenge where participants are asked to submit a blog post every day of the challenge. Posts from all the other participants are aggregated on the Carolina Farm Stewardship website.

Flat tire — check. Torrential downpour — check. Lightning — got it. Bike basket full of melting ice cream — unfortunately, got that too. With that setup, let’s start today’s post…

It hasn’t rained here for awhile. In what is amounting to a continuation of last year’s drought, we begin our days scanning the weather reports and hoping for the best. Any sign of clouds is cheered, any drizzle welcomed as, well, something at least, a sign that the atmosphere is at least still capable of recycling evaporated water into rain. Yet when it does rain I am usually cursing because I am most likely somewhere on my bicycle. It just seems to work out that way.

I am a bicycle commuter, so it has to happen that the commute occurs no matter what the weather conditions. If it isn’t humid it’s cold; if it isn’t windy it’s burning hot. And since I commute, whatever food I buy must stand up to at least thirty minutes in the elements, just like me.

Today we received a shipment of ice cream from Maple View Dairy. I had my eye on the pints from minute one, and decided to bring home all five flavors. The logistical nightmare for keeping ice cream cool is figuring out how to pack an extra bag of ice in the rear bicycle basket along with everything else. Today the “everything else” included the dishes from today’s lunch, a gallon of water, a package of bacon from Rainbow Meadow, a few veggies and my rain gear.

The clouds had been blackening as the seconds to my departure ticked on. I usually ride really fast, but downpours bring visibility to zero and severely extend the ride time. The clouds made me rethink the ice cream, but the thought of an after dinner bowl full of Carolina Crunch overruled rational arguments.

With everything wrapped up, clouds coming full on and the snap of thunder making its first appearances, I set the pace of a maniac, two wheels smoking, racing towards a dying sun. Perfect.

Then a flat tire. Then the realization that there wouldn’t be time to fix it properly before the storm came in full. Then the irritating thought of putting on non-breathing full-body rain gear in the saturated hot air. It always feels like a punch in the face to greet the humidity with full sleeves and hood.

The rain came hard. My back stung under the fat and fast drops. My glasses immediately fogged, becoming useless for navigation. Visibility was less than ten feet anyway, so I had to ride slowly and carefully. Street drains immediately clogged because it hadn’t rained in so long, the flotsam of a litter bug culture plugging up the grates. In some areas the water was too deep to even ride through. An hour later I was on my porch pouring water out of my waterproof boots (that just means the boots hold the water IN) and checking on my cargo.

The label on the bacon had washed away. The tomato had a soft spot. The gallon of water – well, who cares about that after riding through thousands of gallons of the stuff. The ice cream was the important part of this story anyway, and it had melted halfway. Tragedy and arrogance. I could have sent the pints home with a friend in a vehicle or just waited a day, but I had to have Heath Bars and Butterfingers and caramel sauce bathed in hormone-free sweet cream.

I tried to refreeze the ice cream slowly in hopes of fending off ice crystals. Hopefully it worked, but I’ll let you know after I down a couple bowls of hot homemade chicken soup (made from a Grassy Ridge chicken). Ride on…