UPS Makes a Delivery

This morning Dave was off with his multifarious rakes to go subdue the trails-- I believe he was responding to a Code Brown: possible leaf sighting!-- when we received a package delivered to our door. It was good sized and fairly heavy, addressed to Dave, and it was from Italy.

I never receive anything in the mail, but Dave gets bike stuff. Rivers of bike stuff. Stuff like specialty clothing to be worn while biking: socks and gloves and mufflers and pantaloons and helmet liners and arm bands and toe protectors. Specialty liquids: oils and ointments and unguents and greases. Specialty bits 'o metal: sprockets and chains and bars and flings and torsions. Specialty instruments: ratchets fitting 5/16 inch torsions and toenail clippers to prevent bike toe and flog stretchers to stretch flogs.

So as soon as I saw the package was addressed to him and it was much too large for a book, I assumed it was something for the bike. But I did happen to notice that it was shipped from Italy. Which made sense. After all, I had seen the movie Breaking Away which taught me that Italy was a hotbed of biking activity. So this must be some special Italian torsion. Maybe an Italian sprocket so that now Dave could ride like the wind.

The box also had a packing slip which listed four canisters in various Italian sizes. Huh. This was a new one on me. I wasn't even aware that bikes had canisters. I remember thinking that the canisters might be filled with different varieties of maintenance goo. You know, one type for the wheels, one for the seat, one for the sprockets, one for the flogs. Or just possibly there might be some new add-on which was entirely out of my (admittedly limited) sphere of bike-part knowledge. Canisters. At this point I was actually picturing a Road Runner vs. Coyote- type Acme contraption. Explosive canisters for a Bursta-Speed^TM.

Further reading only confused me. The customs form said only "ceramics." It was making my head explode trying to envision these ceramic canisters attached in some way to the titanium frame of Dave's mountain bike. So I walked away and forgot about it.

A few hours later an extraordinarily muddy Dave returned home having raked and spit-polished the bike paths to a glorious shiny luster. After he had been home an hour I suddenly remembered the package. I mentioned his Italian bike canisters had arrived. I expected him to rush into the bike office and immediately immerse himself in special bike grease in order to perform bike surgery. But his reaction was, "Huh?" It turns out he hadn't ordered any Italian bike canisters.

So we both stared at the box. At this point I was topless having been caught on my way to take a shower. Dave wondered aloud if it was a bomb. I said I should probably go put a top on if it was a bomb. Dave opened the box carefully, almost sure it wasn't a bomb, and found...a card. It was from my dad and his wife. A wedding present. Four kitchen canisters that they bought while touring Italy at Christmas. Four ceramic canisters with blue stripes and lemons painted on them. It was literally the last thing on earth we expected.

I'm really glad it wasn't a bomb.