A Princess, a Pea, and a Sleeping Pad

Below is my letter exchange concerning the leaking sleeping pad from the Cascade Designs. I copied my letter to my girlfriend Yvonne, hence her reply. Start reading from below - it will make the exchange more clear.

From: Boris Itin [mailto:bitin@nysbc.org]

Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 2:58 PM

To: 'Yvonne Lin'

Subject: RE: Cascade Designs Warranty/Repair Order Received

  

Yvonne,

Your love is the most important thing for me. I am ready to sleep on top of twenty climbing partners just to hear these sweet words from you again.

Boris.

From: Yvonne Lin

Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 2:52 PM

To: Boris Itin

Subject: RE: Cascade Designs Warranty/Repair Order Received

I truly love you.

From: Boris Itin [mailto:bitin@nysbc.org]

Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 2:38 PM

To: consumer@cascadedesigns.com

Cc: Yvonne Lin

Subject: RE: Cascade Designs Warranty/Repair Order Received

Dear Fellows,

With a great regret I have to inform you that the repairs by Cascade Designs worked exactly for 1 days. By the second day, my sleeping pad was flat again as we camped in Sierra Nevada. It slowly leaked as I was asleep. Somehow, without waking up, I kept crawling on top of my climbing partner - she was softer and warmer than the ground. To specify: she is not my sexual partner, in fact, she is my buddy's girlfriend. My climbing partner expressed her unhappiness about the situation in a number of technical four letter terms.

So, for the rest of the week, I ended up spreading climbing rope and backpack under my 40F summer sleeping bag.

I am not by any means a princess, my climbing gear is not a pea and the flat sleeping pad is not twenty mattresses.

Still I remembered the corresponding folk tale by Hans Christian Anderson called "A princess and a pea" quite a few times on my last trip.

Oh, well, nothing lasts forever. I guess it's the time to look for another sleeping pad.

Regards,

Boris Itin.

Can We Ban Banning?

Two hundred years fifty ago, Voltaire said, "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

Now, I want to say, "I don't care for what you do, but I will fight the government to death if it tries to ban it."

Why would I fight against all kinds of stupid bans even I am not personally involved? Even if they ban things I don't like or approve of?

An old Soviet joke answers this question: An Armenian sage famous for his wisdom is dying. Many people gathered around his bed to listen to his last words. The sage finally croaks,"Take care of the Jews."
The visitors look confused. They don't have anything against the Jews, not really. But why should they take care about the Jews? It's none of their business. Maybe the old sage's wits are finally gone, they think. "Take care of the Jews," the sage whispers again, "When they finish the Jews off, they'll go for Armenians."

Government is big and united, we are small and separated. We have to support each other against our government. Banning is addictive. Once the government gets the sweet taste of banning it just keeps going banning more and more. Like a leech, the government feeds on our uncertainty, on our moral values, on our fears, on our lack of mutual support.

The government banned smoking because it is bad for our health. It's true, smoking is bad for our health but can't we decide our lives ourselves? (A disclaimer: I never smoked and I always hated the smell of cigarette smoke)

The government saw how easy it was to ban a habit important for dozens of millions of people. The smokers didn't resist because they felt guilty. The non-smokers didn't resist because they felt moral.
The government saw how nobody resisted and it got the sweet taste of banning, of the power over the people.

The National Park and Forest Service in Sierra Nevada and Cascades essentially made it impossible for most people to hike and camp. But we don't protest it, we feel that they protect our nature. Do they really? They brainwashed us to believe that the nature needs protection from hikers and mountaineers. But does it really? The nature needs protection from the suburban development and from  the logging industry, true enough. The mountains don't need protection from American hikers and mountaineers - they are responsible and well trained people.

But the National Park and Forest Service feels the sweet power of banning. Banning feels good.

For the last fifty years the New York State Park Authority has banned rock climbing on all public lands. Tens of thousands of rock climbers live in southern New York but they could do nothing to influence Park Authority. And nobody else helped them - it was none of their business. Where were the Massachusetts and Californian climbers when the locals tried to fight the climbing ban?

When California State parks are banned to public due to the lack of funds, the New York climbers will be at home doing nothing. It's none of their business. Meanwhile the California State Park Service will have to hire more people to enforce the bans caused by the lack of funds.

The New York State Park Authority just banned kite surfing on all public beaches. Kite surfing community isn't so big or powerful but most kite surfers are responsible adults, voters and tax payers. How did Park Authority dare to ban something that is important for the part of the public? Because they knew that nobody would support the local kite surfing community.

New York City banned swimming on New York beaches after working hours. So, now people who work (and pay for all these beaches and bureaucrats who regulated them) can't swim. Police patrol the beaches and arrest people who try swimming. Oh, the sweet power of banning things.

Now, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Service is going to ban climbing on their public lands. Why? Why does a chicken cross a road? Because it can. Because nobody but a small VT climbing community is going to fight them.

Bloomberg is going to ban sugar drinks in New York City. Is it his business to decide what people can't eat or drink? What will the next New York mayor ban?

I just feel sick and nauseous.

Climbing in the North West - the Cascade Mountains

Thursday

I am airborne, like a plague. 

A plane is taking me away from my work, my girlfriend and my friends, away from my fat black cat and from her white belly, away from the city of New York, my immigrant home. 

Middle America leisurely rotates below me. The quiet corn fields glow in the sun. The smooth round cows wander in the fields, munch on the corn and drool on both ends. The locals stately push their carriages along the extra wide Walmart aisles, their children wobbling behind. The warm humid air pulses over the parking lots. The little white churches lead to salvation. The flyover states enjoy their summer. 

The cascade mountains are drawing closer at 600 miles an hour, 10 miles a minute, almost 100 feet per one heart beat. 

Tomorrow my friend Sprax and I will sort our gear, pack our backpacks, exhale the last gulp of car exhaust and start walking uphill.

Friday

It is just too disgusting to write about. I feel like I'm back in the East Coast. The miserable square of 90F x 90% humidity is pleasantly offset by the complete lack of wind. Sprax and I grind our teeth, hike up 2000' and wait for an hour till a sun-baked cliff (the Snow Creek Wall) finally gets into the shade. The thermometer on my watch shows 105F. I stuff it into shade of my backpack and it slowly cools down to 96F. I crawl under some hardy twisted bush and draw on my knowledge of the Kama Sutra poses to hide from the sun. Sprax plays hide and seek game with another bush. Once the sun rolls around the cliff, we start climbing. I have never felt so unmotivated to climb. It feels like a heat-mediated climbing self-rape, if you know what I mean. I hope you do, since I don't. I only remember the disgust.

It is a popular climb by the way, a local classic. 7 pitches of 5.6-5.9 difficulty, a mixture of cracks, corners, face and slabs. I would've probably enjoyed it on some other day. Maybe.

A dirty-white shaggy mountain goat welcomes us to the top. I (illegally) throw it small pieces of a Nature Valley nuts and honey granola bar. The goat sniffs at the bar and refuses to eat it - apparently, it shares my opinion of granola bars.

We hike down a surprisingly tricky descent and get back to the trail.

The high point of the day is splashing in an ice cold river. The water helps me forget.

Saturday

The promised 60% thunderstorms never materialize in the town Leavenworth but they do thunder over the mountains for quite a while. We spend the day thinking about our next route and pestering folks in a climbing store with numerous questions.

I always wanted to do Mount Stuart North Ridge. It's an all-American classic. Grade IV with a few sections up to 5.8 but mostly easy fifth class climbing up a supposedly narrow, sharp and jagged mountain ridge. Officially, it's more than 25 pitches, but most of it is easy going. Climbers with small balls can simul-climb it, the ones with big balls can just solo it unroped.

The biggest issue on Mount Stuart is logistics. The southern descent is easy and safe but the south approach and hike out take forever. All the trip reports describe doing the route in two days with bivying somewhere in the middle. Bivying means carrying sleeping bags, bivy sacks, extra food and water and all this crap. When climbing.

For me, climbing is akin to sex. I do it for pleasure and excitement. There is nothing pleasant and exciting about carrying a heavy backpack.. I've never made love to a woman with a backpack and I am not going to. The same is true with climbing. I don't mind carrying a backpack when hiking or approaching a climb, but I absolutely refuse to drag crap around on an actual climb.If you can't clip it to your harness, you don't really need it. Period. I pick mountains known for better and more stable weather, I wait for a good weather forecast, then I move fast and light. So, far it has worked out.

So, the southern approach is not an option.

The north side approach is much quicker, but the descent is dangerous and recommended only in the early season. By July big crevasses open up across Sherpa glacier; they will be a bitch to cross. Adam, a guy in the climbing store tells us that it should be ok, but he hasn't done Sherpa recently so he can't know for sure. We fidget for a while and finally decide to commit.

Asleep at 8pm. An early start and a long day wait for us.

Sunday

Out of the last 20 hours, we have been moving for more than 19. It's 11:30pm and pitch dark, we are hiking back, down the trail. The four LEDs from my flashlight produce weak unfocused light wobbling in front of me. My brain is dead. My waist hurts whichever way I move the climbing harness. My quads are leaden. My feet hurt. Water plops in my approach shoes with every step splashing around numerous blisters. I would collapse on the ground and fall asleep if not for a cloud of mosquitoes happily buzzing into my ears. Sprax is walking downhill just ahead of me. He suddenly stops and his back looks confused. I join him and we both stare at the river in front of us. The trail ends here. We know that it can't be true. Our dumb brains dimly contemplate the situation. I look at Sprax. Sprax looks at me.

"Idiot Sprax somehow missed the trail." I think.

"I am not an idiot. I couldn't miss the trail," Sprax thinks, "there was only one trail, there should be no other trails. We have to be on the right trail."

We start hiking back uphill. Five minutes later we come to an intersection that we somehow missed. Whatever. I am too tired to feel relief. I just turn left and keep moving my legs. One at a time. Sprax follows me. Our gear quietly plonks on the harnesses as we walk. Tall dark trees loom around us, we could barely see the sky if we actually bothered to look up. As time goes by, I realize that we'll never get out of the forest - we'll just keep walking forever. As I resign myself to this thought, I see a sign board at the trailhead reflecting the light. We are done. We are at the car.

I take my harness off and it slowly falls to the ground carrying 20lbs of gear, climbing shoes and clothing. I just stand there, swaying and holding on to the car. Done. It was a pleasant little hike.

21 hours ago, we parked the car at the trailhead, pulled our harnesses on, attached all our gear to the harnesses, and quickly ran through a checklist.. It was 3:30am, the night was quiet, cool and fresh at 3500' and the life felt good.

Each of us carried on his harness some climbing gear, an ultra light ice axe and crampons, a water bottles, and a 3L sack with a down jacket, few accessories and food.

It was a well maintained popular trail. We half ran half walked uphill for almost two hours. The sky was slowly turning from black to dark blue, then to light blue. The horizon tinged yellow and red announcing the coming of the sun. The timing was perfect. We reached Stuart lake at 5500' around 5am and took a short break. As we ate bread with cheese and ham, we studied the mountain. Its black jagged silhouette cut sharp across the sky.

 

(a disclaimer: this is not our photograph. our photographs sucked)

Beauty is at the eye of a beholder, people say. What is beauty in the eye of a beholding climber? Climbers often describe routes as beautiful or ugly. Typically, a beautiful route is sharp, well-defined, clean and sustained. An ugly route is a featureless maze of loose rocks and dirt with, at best, an occasional interesting move. Climbers, except occasional perverts, like long clear unmistakeable angular features like cracks, corners and aretes. It is a rational preference. Route finding is easier, protection is better, and climbing is safe and interesting at the same time. This is a functional interpretation of beauty.

Is there more to beauty than just function? Most climbers and mountaineers are drawn to clear sharp lines of the mountains. They just like well-defined features more than fat shapeless blobs. Why is it so? Does function influence aesthetics? Or are people simply drawn to clarity of angular geometric shapes and long straight lines and planes?

The North Ridge of Mount Stuart definitely satisfied typical aesthetic climbing requirements. One mile of uninterrupted long clear black line with jagged features and occasional vertical sections led from the scree and the glacier all the way to the top of the mountain. It looked like several thousand feet of happiness.

We continued hiking. The trail led us to a lush romantic looking meadow and petered out. Upon the closer examination, the meadow, like many other romantic and pretty looking things, turned into something different, i.e. a mosquito infested swamp. Like a swarm of groupies after a rock star, enthusiastic mosquitoes chased us across the swamp onto the morraine and up the rocks all the way to the glacier. Occasionally, I would friendly slap Sprax on his back, killing a dozen bugs at a time, like a renowned warrior of old, slaughtering hundreds of enemies with one stroke of his mighty sword.

Finally, a few hundred feet up the glacier, the mosquitoes dropped back, happy and bloated. We put our crampons on and kept moving up the frozen snow for a while. Sprax was moving surprisingly slowly; apparently the points of his ultralight crampons were just too short to provide adequate purchase. As we aimed towards the start of the route, the glacier got steeper and more exposed; we were hiking over crevasses. Like a good buddy, I kicked steps for Sprax in the snow. It was a mistake - I was to experience the full consequences of it only 15 hours later. Let me share my belated wisdom with you, my reader: never ever ever kick steps in the hard snow when you are wearing soft approach shoes.

We crossed the glacier towards a gully and climbed the gully. It led us to a notch on the North Ridge. The sun finally melted the heavy low clouds and swirling fog; they had been making us quite nervous for the last hour or two. Now, the weather was just perfect, the sky was huge and clear and blue, the light west wind moderated the sun's warmth, tiny clouds hang far away at the horizon. In the clear mountain air we could see for many miles, ridge upon ridge of the Southern Cascades. My watch showed 10:30am and 7000' altitude.

It was time to rope up and change into climbing shoes. We opted for simul climbing. We would have around 100' of rope between us, we'd run the rope between rocks, placing occasional gear for protection.With this setup, if a climber falls, the rope catches him. He may break a leg or sustain some other minor injury, but, at least, he won't have a chance to learn how to fly. It would be a long flight interrupted by an occasional bounce - several hundred yards of almost vertical slopes dropped down on both sides followed by steep screes and boulder fields.

I started climbing, weaving around boulders, getting on the top of the ridge, stepping down to bypass harder sections. Sprax waited a bit for the rope slack to run out and he followed me. A hour and a half of joy followed. As I climbed over numerous exposed sections, I felt the exhilarating feeling of walking in the air. At some point, I had to straddle a long narrow boulder on the top of the ridge, since I didn't have enough guts to walk on top of it. I walked along 1-2' wide ramps, made some tricky moves just below the ridge, down climbed a few times into small notches and jumped across some gaps.



(a disclaimer: this is not our photograph. our photographs sucked.)

Finally I got to the bottom of gendarme - a two hundred foot tower - in the middle of the route. The guidebook described it as a more difficult and sustained head wall two pitches long. The wall was too hard for simuling, so I waited for the Sprax. Once he arrived, I started leading the route. Forty minutes later we were on the top of gendarme and switched back to simul climbing. Another hour and a half of a  merry ride on the ridge brought us to the top of the mountain. Sprax had difficulty wiping a happy smile of his face.

As enjoyable as the climb was, I felt cheated: it took only 4.5 hours while the approach took 7.5.

We had our first real break of the day, all ten minutes of it. The descent still awaited us. Most mountaineers are more nervous, and rightfully so, about the descent than they are about getting up. It is on descent that people get lost and confused, try to find a route in the dark, are forced to bivy in a middle of a snowfield or a scree slope for a night, and have many other exciting and wonderful adventures.

I don't like adventures, so we started running down the cliff. We climbed down the east side of the mountain, traversed around the east ridge, dropped a few hundred yards down a small glacier and hiked to the top of Sherpa glacier. Here the fun was supposed to start. The glacier was quite steep, around 40-45 degrees and more than 1/2 a mile long. The snow softened up in the sun and we could see the steps left by another group a short time ago. We put on crampons, grabbed our ice axes and started an endless descent. To walk facing forward would be much quicker but we just didn't have enough balls to do it in soft shoes. So, we faced the slope and started down climbing. It felt like a staircase of many thousand steps hiked in reverse. Brrr.



(a disclaimer: this is not our photograph. Our photographs sucked)

When the angle of glacier slope changes, crevasses often form. Some of them may be small, only a meter or two wide and few meters long, some of them can be gaping chasms dozens of meters across and hundreds of meters long. Snow covers a lot of them in winter and forms snow bridges. Over the summer, the snow melts and some crevasses become impassable.

As we descended 2/3 way down, the crevasses appeared. The trail bypassed few shorter crevasses, it ran along a snowbridge between two larger cracks and ended at the cliff on the side of a glacier. I glimpsed a bright red sling fifty yards below us, at the very edge of a cliff. That had to be a rappel sling. We down climbed the antithesis of a beautiful climbing route - it was a disgusting and dangerous slab covered with loose rocks and dirt - to the rappel sling wrapped around a refrigerator sized rock. We pulled the rope through a ring in the sling, and lowered ourselves on the rope, over and across a large crevasse. From the cliff, we could see how big the crevasses were and how thoroughly they cut across the glacier. There was no way to pass over or around them except for the path we took. However, in few more days, that snow bridge would probably melt and fall apart, leaving the glacier completely impossible to cross.

The snow was less steep in the lower section, and we ran and boot skied to the bottom. By 7pm we were back to the swampland kingdom. In anticipation, I pulled a head net over my helmet. Waves of mosquitoes rushed towards me and crashed over the head net. 

We wondered around the swamp, going north, down the valley. By chance, we ran into a faint trail and followed it for an hour or two. We kept losing and finding the trail till it finally disappeared. I suggested cutting across the swamp over a few low ridges towards Stuart lake valley. The main trail should be there, I figured. The night descended as we kept wandering in the swamp, walking over hundreds of logs, fighting off bugs and getting more and more tired. Finally we broke into a large opening and we were able to see the mountains and the valley.

"Man, I don't know what to do, I am totally lost. I thought that the north was that way and it's actually south," I said in desperation.

Sprax looked around and contemplated for a few minutes. "Let's go across this clearing and uphill a bit," he finally said.

Five minutes later we were on the main trail.

Monday. A Toenail and a Swiss Army Knife.

Late Monday morning, I woke up and dragged myself out of the tent. Surprisingly, I didn't feel so bad. Muscles hurt, of course, and I was a bit slow but I expected much worse.

Then, I saw my left big toe nail. It was pasty white and liquid seemed to splash under it. I touched it. I hissed and jerked from pain. I contemplated. I studied the liquid rolling back and forth under the nail.

"Screw it," I thought and I pulled my Swiss army knife out.

I opened a small blade and stabbed it under the toenail. A thin high pressure stream of almost colorless puss squirted at least ten inches away from my big toe. I tentatively pressed down on the toe. More liquid came out. The pain went down and the nausea subsided. I put the shoes on. It hurt, but it was bearable. It's not for nothing that my dad was a surgeon, I thought.

My right toe was also feeling funny. I sat for a while trying to figure out how I destroyed my toes without even noticing it. Then I realized what happened - NEVER EVER KICK STEPS IN HARD SNOW WITH SOFT SHOES. The snow cools your feet down and works as an anesthetic. So, I lost my toenails without even noticing it. Oh, well, live and learn.

As we had a breakfast in Leavenworth,

we checked the weather forecast in the Cascades - 50% chance of thunderstorms for the next few days. We checked the weather forecast for Squamish - perfect weather till Friday.

"Squamish, Squamish, la-la-la," we sang in the car together as highway 2 rolled under our wheels, "we go to Squamish."

We dropped by to see Sprax's family in Seattle, slept over at his brother's house, woke up at 3am and kept driving to Squamish.

The Incomplete Great Bakery Bike Ride

On Friday, as Yvonne and I discussed our weekend plans, my lovely girlfriend stumbled upon an idea that was as tasty as it was healthy.

"Why don't we choose the ten best bakeries around the town and bike from one to another picking one pastry at every place? I will take some pix and you will write it up." Yvonne suggested.

"What are you waiting for? Choose the bakeries!" I enthusiastically blurted.

Yvonne burrowed inside her Apple delight for half an hour, browsed the internet and came up with a list of 12 French (oui), American, Turkish, German and otherwise-excellent-but-lacking-an-identifiable-ethnic-character bakeries all around town, from 58th and Fifth to Dumbo, Brooklyn.

 

Twice the sun sank into New Jersey and rose out of the East River and Sunday finally came. The British used to say that sun never sets on the British Empire. How come New Yorkers never say that the sun always sets on New Jersey?

Anyway, Yvonne and I woke up, brushed our teeth, goofed off and didn't eat anything, making sure we would have enough space in our stomachs, and finally lead our steel and aluminum horsies out of the apartment by noon.

The weather forecast predicted another sweet summer day in New York:

Today Aug 5

Today's High is 91^°F  and 70% relative humidity at 3:05pm.

It was indeed pleasantly warm on the street, the sun smiled to us from the sky and the tendrils of steam leisurely coiled and rose into the air like playful snakes.

"Great day," I smiled at Yvonne, "we can definitely save on tickets to a steam room". 

We started biking, down Cabrini Boulevard, onto 181st street, across Henry Hudson highway, and down onto the Hudson River bike path. 

Forty minutes and nine miles later we reached Gulluoglu Baklava Cafe - making baklava from 1876 - at the intersection of 52nd and 2nd. The place was packed with people and more than half of them spoke Turkish. Have you noticed something about ethnic food places? The better ones are frequented by the people from the corresponding ethnic group, while the worse ones are filled with the random white American tourists. This rule works particularly well as a negative filter - if the only Indians in an Indian restaurant are the waiters, this place is guaranteed to serve, ehh, an American version of Indian food.

Reaffirmed by the high Seljuk concentration, we decisively walked into the restaurant, got a table and studied the desert menu. The place had five different types of baklava, including, most excitingly, the baklava with sour cherries. 

Now, concerning sour cherries. Like everything else in this world, I change as the time passes. I divorce wives, change apartments, quit jobs, and find new friends. But one thing will always endure - my love to sour cherries, known to Russians and Turks as vişne. Language tells a lot about people. In English, the word cherry comes first; it describes a real fruit. Sour cherries are just sour i.e. bad cherries. They are an inferior product that nobody would eat. It's only acceptable to cook them into pies while adding heaps of sugar and chemicals. Recently, under pressure from Europeans and Asians, sour cherries are being slowly re-branded as tart cherries but it still doesn't sound particularly convincing. For a Russian or a Turk, vişne is a wonderful fruit in its own right. We eat them raw (a lot), cook them, and make wine out of them. In fact, many people -including your humble servant - would rather eat ripe sour cherries than cherries.

Naturally, I ordered sour cherry baklava and a scoop of lemon sorbet to have a sweet and sour desert. A small cup of Turkish coffee finished the magic triangle by adding just a bit of rich bitterness. We sat at the table and waited, hungry and thirsty. Three minutes later the food arrived. I sank my teeth into the baklava.

This Turkish desert often tends to be very sweet and dense but it was not the case this time. The baklava was light and airy. It tasted more like a honey soaked French puff pastry. Slightly caramelized sour cherries inside were tart enough to offset the honey sweetness. The lemon sorbet was tart. I almost felt my throat seizing as the snowy substance melted in my throat.

The Turkish coffee was quite Turkish - rich and dense. I soon arrived to that existential moment that I always dread of - whether or not to take that last sip just above the sediment.

 

As I was eating my justly earned deserts, Yvonne's food arrived. Now, I always knew that my girlfriend was an unusual woman, but I didn't expect that: as a Turkish desert, Yvonne ordered two poached eggs with a yoghurt sauce. 

I have to say that in a strange way it did work out well aesthetically. The yogurt sauce blended with egg white; the bright red and green speckles of pepper and parsley gave the dish something of a childish giggling desert look. Yvonne attacked the eggs mercilessly. The dish melted and disappeared with magical speed right in front of my eyes. 

The waiter clearly liked Yvonne more than me. Which is not surprising for a heterosexual young guy. He brought her a coffee in tiny silver pot.

Yvonne finished the drink in a few minutes and we separated with Gulluoglu, our hunger muted and our souls merry.

As we stepped out into the loving sun rays, the warmth enveloped us into its wet embrace. We mounted the bikes and rode towards the next destination - Momofuku Milk bar. Forty blocks and two miles later, we parked our bikes in the East Village and walked into a hole in the wall. An almost invisible sign Milk hang over a door and a five foot wide window. The door frame was clearly designed in the 19th century since most modern Americans outside of New York City could squeeze through it only sideways. The room inside was slightly smaller than a middle class family tomb in a medieval cemetery. Inside, a girl who looked eerily like Yvonne

offered us the local favorites of the cheddar green apple soft serve ice cream and a crack pie. We grabbed the food and crossed the room (in two small careful steps) to a bar stand next to the window. I sank my teeth into the crack pie:

The pie didn't seem to contain any crack. Instead it tasted like a fresh homemade pecan pie without pecans. The crust was thin and well baked, the insides gooey and sweet but not overly so. It was a reasonable choice if you lived in the neighborhood but it definitely wasn't worth a 2 mile bike ride. Yvonne slowly sipped on her 150ml bottle of British (very) ginger beer while eating her (very) cheddar green apple ice cream. The bottle reminded me how the world has changed since 1950's. Then, underfed people ate small portions of food, drank out of tiny bottles and effortlessly entered hobbit-size doors.

I looked around the bar. It looked like an East Village microcosm. A 7'x7' tenement microcosm densely packed with eastvillagers like sardines in a can. Three kinds of people were present: the NYU students with liberal arts majors, the ex-NYU students with liberal arts majors and one pimply soon-to-become an NYU student with a liberal arts major. Girls, guys and gays, white, Asian, and black (just one), 15-30 years old, trendily dressed in fashionable but inexpensive clothing, skinny and constantly chatting. 

Two wooden benches stood just outside the cafe and the crowd spilled over there enjoying a free sauna day. Yvonne and I finished another liter of water and walked out into the gentle sun. It was so warm that a strong breeze from the south failed to cool our bodies. My T-shirt and shorts were soaked with my own sweat. Accordingly to some of my friends, I was undergoing a detoxification - the gallons of sweat were naturally washing all the poisons out of my body. I wished these friends were here, sharing the joy of detoxification with me.

As we biked towards the next place on the list, we passed Washington Square park. As I glanced there, I was transfixed by the most amazing sight

A mini grand piano was standing right in the middle of an alley and a pianist was playing Puccini. Two large buckets stood on each side of the piano to collect contributions from the appreciative public and a large fountain rose behind the musician's back. Some people listened intensely and some quietly chatted clearly enjoying the music. A park police car slowly drove buy and stopped for a while, engine turned off. Both officers were clearly Puccini fans. The pianist finished playing the piece and announced that he was switching to Schubert.  People didn't mind. An steady stream of $1-$10 bills trickled into the buckets.

I walked closer to the piano. The musician looked slim but surprisingly wiry and strong. Maybe not so surprisingly, actually. I asked him later, during an intermission, how he moved the piano there.

"No big deal, I just put it on the side on this cart," he pointed at 2'x3' wheeled cart, "and dragged it here across the street."

Accordingly to Google, a baby grand piano typically weighs 400-500lbs. Oh, well, no big deal.

Somehow, seeing a piano in the middle of Washington Square park made me strangely proud of being a New Yorker. I generally don't identify myself with groups of people, I lack patriotism feelings of all stripes, there are no sports teams that I am fan of, I don't belong to any party, religion or organization. Still, for the first time in my life I felt this weird pang of pride for belonging somewhere. For being part of a city, where a musician would single-handedly drag a baby grand piano into a park to play Puccini and even cops would stop for fifteen minutes to listen to the music.

Yvonne and I finished our spiritual nourishment and proceeded towards Mille-Feuille bakery, a recently opened but already highly reviewed French place on La Guardia street. We parked our metal horses outside - unlike us they didn't need food, water, or shade and walked into the bakery. Compared to the previous bakery, this was definitely a big upgrade, both in the quality of food and in the looks. Behind the counter stood a tall black girl from Benin who wore a white trilby hat and spoke with a French accent.The girl had a quality around her that was difficult to define - timeless and delicate - reminding me of a 1940's movie star, like a 5'10" African Audrey Hepburn.

Yvonne ordered a passion fruit macaroon, her standard favorite. I looked around for a bit and saw a morello cherry pie. Since morello cherries are one of the most popular varieties of sour cherries, my choice was, well, I didn't have much of a choice. The waitress served me the pie and I happily proceeded destroying it.

The pie reminded me of Spanish architecture - unassuming and modest on the outside only to hide the collection of beauty behind the walls. Inside the simple brown dough, slightly caramelized fresh and dry sour cherries were mixed with sweet farmer's cheese. There was absolutely no trace of preservatives, liquid, pectin to solidify this liquid into goo, corn starch, tapioca, fresheners and all the other disgusting stuff that seems to accompany every sour cherry concoction in the otherwise blessed United States of America. The pie just tasted like fresh fruit and cheese.

For the next ten minutes of happiness, I slowly savored every bite of the pie and sipped on a glass of lemonade. By the way, the lemonade was made out of lemon rather than natural lemon flavor and it contained an absolute minimum of sugar.

Time flies all too quickly when the life is good. The last piece of cherry pie started its travel into the dark insides of my body. Meanwhile Yvonne was talking to the waitress and the latter persuaded my girlfriend to try another desert. Accordingly to the girl, it was their best work - a raspberry croissant.

It did look very pretty, but earlier we had established a rule - no more than one desert per person at every place. But, it looked so pretty. And, it's important to occasionally break the rules. So here it was, a raspberry croissant on a small plate lying in front of us.

Yvonne had an honor of getting the first bite.

Her facial expression was quite explicit. I almost felt jealous - I wish she had this facial expression more often in, ehh, more intimate situations if you know what I mean.

I joined the fray, opened my mouth, stuffed the croissant inside and slowly closed my jaws around it. Yvonne looked at my face and laughed. I wonder if she also felt a pang of jealousy as the feeling of happiness that had nothing to do with her spread throughout me. Before I tried the pastry, I would confidently claim that the best croissant in New York City was chocolate and almond croissant at Maison du Macaroon. But now, I was not so sure anymore.

The damn raspberry thing just melted in my mouth. The little red flakes on top were dehydrated raspberry powder - they tasted like the essence of the berry. The flaky dough was just perfect - rich, light, airy, buttery, blah blah blah, I am not a food critic and I don't know the proper terms but you can just take my word for it - it was good dough. The cream inside was mixed with fresh raspberry puree and it filled my mouth with the sweet, sour, fruity, fresh and custardy taste. The whole thing was like a Platonic idea of a raspberry croissant. Unachievable in its perfection, it was still right in front of me.

More time went by as Yvonne and I slowly savored every bit and morsel of the raspberry delight. But it also came to an end. It took us less than 1000 seconds to turn a Platonic perfection of a croissant into a chewed stinky mess mixed with saliva, hydrochloric acid and a bunch of enzymes. Every man kills the thing he loves, as Oscar Wilde once said. So we ravished and destroyed the beauty of the raspberry croissant.

We said goodbye to the Benin girl and walked back into the summer. Now we faced a choice. I was drawn towards Brooklyn. I felt quite full already and another forty minutes bike ride would be quite conducive to creating more space inside my stomach. However, Yvonne disagreed. She felt like she had enough bike riding in a steam room and she couldn't face going another six miles to Brooklyn. Some people are just so sensitive - winters are too cold for them, summers are too hot...

So, we cut our tour short and started pedaling towards our next Manhattan destination, Patisserie Claude at W. 4th street. In only a few minutes we reached our goal. It was the third small bakery (Gulluoglu was a regular restaurant) that we visited in a row and it was interesting how little correlation there was between the decor and the quality of food in the these places. The Milk Bar was an unassuming hole in the wall selling nice but boring deserts. Mille-Fauille had pretensions and it lived up to them. Patisserie Claude was another hole in the wall, not quite dirty but not particularly clean, somewhat rundown and without an air conditioner. The deserts however did not look all that shabby:

The plum pastry looked particularly seductive. As I was looking at the counter however, I realized that I couldn't take any more sweet stuff. I was just done. I hadn't realized before that it was possible. I always thought that my dessert eating capability was only limited by my financial state. Apparently I was wrong, my whole body was saturated with sugar and tartness and my soul couldn't take it anymore. It was almost a traumatic experience. So, Yvonne and I bought the plum tart, packed it in a small white featureless box and left the place. I was ready to bike home but Yvonne insisted on proceeding towards the new German bakery on 7th Ave. I sighed and followed my indefatigable other.

We didn't even bother to bike. Landbrot bakery, the place of country breads, was only five or six blocks north from us. It was close to five pm but, unlike trade unionized labor, the sun was not going to take off for a hard earned rest. Oh no, it was in working full power. The city generously shared with us all the heat it had absorbed earlier. The fortunate souls caught in the middle of this thermodynamic exchange, i.e. Yvonne and I, perspired with profuse passion.

We passed through Landbrot and immersed ourselves into the welcoming coolness of climate control. We looked around. This was no hole in the world. The spacious two story black and white place was decorated in a friendly industrial style. Warm (not temperature, only aesthetics) wood offset harsh black steel ceiling and white walls. The German dessert menu had a dozen or two of actual desserts, half a dozen sausages, a dozen brots, and a flaming pie. Naturally, there were four German beers on tap and big selection of bottled alcohol.

We didn't even consider ordering a dessert - enough was enough. On the other hand, it was just too hot for meat. A $12 cheese place was the best choice as we enthusiastically agreed. A waiter brought us a two foot long plate with raclette, black label gorgonzola and smoked gouda. The apple butter listed on the menu turned mysteriously into apricot jam, little pickles and fresh zesty horseradish completed the plate. A generous helping of freshly baked Landbrot also arrived.

Yvonne got herself a sparkling Rose wine and I opted for a light beer on tap. Suddenly we realized that we were actually more hungry than we previously thought. So, we happily made each other bread, cheese, apricot jam and horseradish sandwiches. The strange combination worked out amazingly well. There is something eternally satisfying about the perfect simplicity of Good bread with Good cheese. Soon enough, the cheese was gone and only few slivers of rind remained.

Sic transit gloria mundi. And only ashes remain.

We sipped at our drinks contemplating the sweet pointlessness of existence.

And we biked home, patting our bellies swollen with happiness.