Newsletter Stories

2/5/02
"The Muffin Cups"

Ok guys, for those of you that have been married for a while, you know that there are tests in your marriage from time to time. And usually they come at some of the craziest times for some of the weirdest things. That's what happened to me last Sunday afternoon. I'm not a huge football fan by any means, college basketball is really my sport, but I am a sports fan and the Superbowl ranks right up there in scope of big sporting events. So I'm sitting back watching the game and listening to Mrs. Cyclerides and my daughter in the kitchen making muffins. In the distance I hear, "oh no, we're out of muffin cups!" At that time I knew that it was MY number that was about to be called. Sure enough, the call rang out...Dad, would you go get us some "mini muffin cups"?

Ugh! Here I am, caught between being the subject of Roseanne Barr's next act about a couch growing out of my butt and being the loving Husband/Father that will leave in the middle of the Superbowl to do an errand. Of course, the usual questions came up. Do we need muffin cups now? Can it wait till tomorrow? Why are we getting "mini" muffin cups, since I am taking the time to go, why not get the full sized ones? In a guys mind these are all valid questions. The answers were yes, no, and presentation. There was about 5 minutes left in the second quarter and at this point I was more interested in the commercials than the game anyway, So I figured I could get up there and back in time to see the halftime show.

This is where it gets interesting. I figured I would take this opportunity to take a spin on the bike to make the emergency run for the muffin cups. To make the trip a little quicker, Mrs. C. was kind enough to call ahead and have the 4 containers of 88 mini muffin cups waiting for me at the counter. So I walk in the door and the women says "you must be the husband for the muffin cups". I agreed, gave her the $8.32 and figured things were going pretty well. So I put the four plastic containers in my jacket pocket and was looking forward to getting home for the halftime show. Being in somewhat of a hurry to get back home to see U2 sing words that I couldn't understand anyway, I thought I would try to get home as quickly as possible. For those of you that have read the letter for a while know that I have trouble hanging onto things while riding.

So I pulled onto the street, shifted quickly to second gear and heard a noise that was not recognizable. But at the same time, a sound that I had heard before. Kind of a plastic sound scraping on asphalt. I immediately checked for my cell phone and it was still there. It was actually my booty from the Kitchen Store that had decided to bail on me. I looked in my mirror to find that my recently purchased "mini muffin cups" were now Road Kill. Knowing that the place was closed, I had to go back and try and rescue as many possible.

As I reached the scene I saw that 166 of these cups decided to eject from their containers. It looked like someone had hit a bird and there were feathers everywhere. But fortunately two of the containers were still intact. I did my best imitation of the game "Frogger", jumping in and out of cars trying to retrieve the other two containers while watching the other 166 cups fly up in the air every time a car went by. So I stuck the two remaining containers firmly in my pocket and headed home. Fortunately they didn't need all four containers, they were just stocking up for the future. This is just another chapter in the book of: "The Man With No Saddle Bags".