Oh hey there, reader. Now that you've reached this nifty little blog, I suppose we owe you a quick explanation of who we are and what we're doing. We, the authors, are two housemates of four - and the random name generator provided by google has named us Donna and Theresa. I'll call myself Theresa, since "Donna" isn't here to argue with me. Perhaps we'll choose new pseudonyms soon if we grow tired of these. Anyway, we are both rising juniors at Cornell, living in Ithaca for the summer. We have had some normal days so far this vacation, but we have agreed that far too many of our experiences are too absurd, ridiculous, ludicrous, or just plain funny for us not to share them with the internet somehow.
Now, if you haven't noticed the bizarre title of our blog or our rather cryptic URL, please take a moment to do so. Those refer to some of our more recent simple adventures, the ones which prompted us to come here in the first place. I think I'll start you off by telling the story of the "basil bust" yesterday, to introduce you to our lives. I'm sure we'll dedicate a post to explaining our main header soon: stay tuned!
Donna and I joined a CSA at the beginning of this summer, in an effort to eat healthily, support our community, and perhaps save some money. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture; basically we paid a few hundred bucks and now we receive a "share" of fresh produce each week from a local farm. Since I have a car, we decided we'd drive out to said farm each week to retrieve our share, instead of shelling out to have our veggies dropped off somewhere marginally closer to our house. Yesterday was Wednesday, also known as VEGGIE DAY. I finished work, then meandered over to the parking lot where I keep the ghettomobile. I swung by the apartment to pick up Donna, and then we began what should be, and to date has not yet been, a very simple errand.
Our CSA farm is located perhaps 20 minutes from our house; to get there, we drive through the center of Ithaca, up around the other side of Lake Cayuga - on one road the whole way. Very simple. However, I needed to get gas yesterday, and foolishly decided to attempt this before picking up our veggies. The gas station I drove to is practically on the way to the farm, so I thought nothing of this small pit stop. But after having filled up the car, making the left turn necessary to continue on to our veggies proved a laughable dream. So, like any obnoxious driver in an enormous station wagon would do, I awkwardly turned right onto East Buffalo Street, home of Ithaca's most poorly planed intersection. Its notable lack of a left turn signal in a region crowded with one-way streets meant that Donna and I got to sit in front of that same gas station, relaxing in a luxurious '92 Camry without air conditioning, for at least 10 minutes. At least my window functioned. The passenger side window is notorious for opening and then refusing to shut without being forcibly tugged upwards from outside the car.
While taking in the scenery of downtown Ithaca, Donna and I noticed several cop cars of various sizes, colors and markings pull into the Trust Company on the road where we were practically parked. To be truthful, we noticed them especially because if they hadn't been clogging up that parking lot we could have turned around there and avoided what would soon become an hour's delay, at least. While we watched excitedly, one officer pulled an enormous grey suitcase out of his cruiser - just like in CSI! We could hardly contain ourselves. I'm sure our fellow rush-hour travelers enjoyed our squeals of laughter at what we assured ourselves was a midday drug bust in the parking lot of a bank. We watched and hoped to see some sort of conclusive sign as to what sort of arrest unfolding in front of us, but learned nothing. I vowed to check the Ithaca police blotter to find out what sort of mischief we witnessed, but unfortunately yesterday's reports are not online yet.
We continued driving around the block for the better part of an hour, until we finally completed our loop and made our way out to our CSA. In typical fashion, we forgot to rubberneck at the parking lot while passing it again.
At our CSA, we received a lovely assortment of kale, swiss chard, napa cabbage, zucchini, spicy greens, onions and basil. The basil was "U-pick", meaning we got to traipse out into the fields and -you guessed it- pick it ourselves. Donna and I aren't exactly farmers, so when we reached the rows of basil, we picked haphazardly. But the smell! That basil smelled absolutely delectable. You could smell the rows of it growing from yards away - and when it was freshly picked, it was intoxicating. We collected our leaves in a plastic grocery bag, like we do for all our veggies, and as we walked back to the car we passed it back and forth, smelling the fresh basil.
"Officer, I swear I'm not high! It's just basil!...Oh shit, we gotta hide this before we get arrested!" we joked. And then stared at each other. You could practically see the light bulbs appear over our heads.
"Before...that was a ....basil bust!"
We still don't know what actually went down on East Buffalo Street yesterday. So far as we are concerned, some teenage punk was selling basil and got busted for it. In broad daylight, no less. What an amateur. We, on the other hand, safely transported our leafy green bounty back home, and evaded all the cops we saw driving past us to assist in the arrest of the Ithaca's Basil Bandit.
