I flew out to L.A. for a week and stayed with a friend. We were doing “the healthy thing” that week…trying not to dine out a lot and buy fresh ingredients to cook meals at her condo.
“This trip, we’re going to eat healthy.”
We were going to meditate, exercise and eat right.
It happened at the Westwood Farmers Market in Los Angeles. We had skipped the grocery store and headed to a local farmers market, excited to stock up on fresh vegetables for salads. Then I saw it. Sticking out of a wooden crate. One enormous bunch of celery.
Nothing like I had ever seen in the grocery store. This thing looked like it had been grown in Jurassic Park. The stalks were unbelievably thick. The leafy tops looked like they belonged on a small tree. It was so ridiculously oversized that we couldn’t stop laughing. I had to buy it. It seemed like a great decision at the time. The salads we’d eat. The meals we would prepare.
Until we got it back to her condo. There was just one tiny problem. We couldn’t shut the refrigerator door. No matter how we turned it…upside down or side-ways the door was in the way. We finally got in, diagonally upright. We could not stop laughing. Did we think at the time to chop it up and store it that way? No, we did not. Not sure why. We had celery overwhelm.
So there we were, standing in the kitchen, laughing hysterically while trying to figure out how to refrigerate something that apparently needed its own apartment. It was a real “you had to be there” moment. But one that still fuels new laughs every so often.
We never made one salad. Not one meal, that week Not even breakfast or a snack dip. By the time I left her condo, the celery was still in the fridge.
Don’t ask me where we dined that week…as I have zero recollection of the restaurant names. I only remember carrying this giant bunch of celery through the market while strangers smiled, laughed, and asked where we found it.
Our plans of meditating, exercising and eating right turned into rooftop bars with stems of great wine and staying up late laughing and telling stories.
Travel is funny that way. We spend weeks planning to see famous attractions, museums, and mapping out scenic drives. Yet the stories we tell for years are often the unexpected ones.
The oversized celery stories. The wrong turns and the unexpected conversations with strangers. Things you could never plan for in advance but end up being better than the attractions you pre-paid for, to entertain and enlighten you. The laughs come from the blunders and odd moments.
Now, whenever I travel, I try to visit a local farmers market if I can. And if I buy veggies now, I truly try to eat them and stick to reasonably sized vegetation.
Those moments are simply waiting for you to notice them. You find something so wonderfully ridiculous that it becomes one of your favorite travel memories. For me, it was celery on steroids.
~ Blanche
A Tale From the Window Seat.