Cake

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THE TALE OF THE TRAVELING CAKE CONTINUES

It was a beautiful Saturday in April of 2017, when one particular wedding cake and I started the journey from Redondo Beach into the deep Malibu Canyon. My boss and I figured that if I left the bakery with the cake at 9 a.m. it would give me plenty of time to arrive at the venue at the appointed 11 a.m.

As we all know, traveling through the LA area usually consists of sitting in traffic at least at some point, if not more. But since it was a Saturday, I had high hopes that the traffic Gods were on my side.

Unfortunately, they were not. In fact, they wanted to test my patience extra hard that day with a three-lane-closure at LAX due to a crash that involved a burned-out vehicle. My hopes of a punctual arrival diminished from minute to minute, and while the cars in front of me still weren’t moving, I decided to give the wedding planner a heads-up about my delay.

Thankfully, she was not too stressed about it (or she was just good at hiding her real feelings). It felt like an eternity, but eventually cars started moving again, and slowly but surely I was ready to continue my route while the cake was still peacefully sitting in its box.

Now is probably a good time to tell you a little bit about the “transport box,” just for an overall better understanding of the situation. This particular box was actually a bigger paper carton with no lid. The cake was securely fastened onto a round shaped cake board, and then just pushed into the box, the open side facing my dashboard. To my defense, it was not my idea to position the cake like this on my passenger seat. You might know now where this story is going.

I was finally able to get out of the whole traffic mess and to speed up to a decent pace; wanting to make sure I hopefully don’t encounter anymore delays. I kept driving on the 405 north for a while before my GPS told me to merge onto the US 101.

I merged onto the outer right lane, slowing down a bit but still holding a steady speed, about to approach the loop towards the 101 freeway. Unsuspecting, I made my way around it, when suddenly the car in front of me hit the brakes hard, resulting me into doing the same thing.

I knew right away what terrible maneuver I just had done. While pushing my foot the hardest I could onto my breaks, I heard a swoosh sound. I looked over to my right side, and in a matter of seconds, I witnessed the precious 12-piece cake slipping out of the box and straight onto the floor.

I will not be able to tell you verbatim what I was exactly yelling out at the moment since it consists of a series of swear words. What I can tell you is that I started to cry hysterically.

I couldn’t contemplate what was worse: the fact that the cake actually dropped on the floor or that I had to call my boss and tell her about it. Well, since there was no way around it, I picked up my phone and anxiously dialed her number.

When she heard that I was crying, she instantly knew that something really bad must have happened. To my relief, she was very understanding and tried to calm me down, which made me sob even more.

Unfortunately, I still had to deliver the cake, hoping that the florist would be able to cover up the damages. “At least the cake wasn’t supposed to be the one eaten,” is what I kept telling myself to calm me down and to prepare me from having to face a pretty uncomfortable situation, but more on that next time. As for now, feel free to enjoy a graphic image of the described disaster.