The other day I ran over a snake. On my bike.

Wait, it gets worse. I didn't exactly run it over. I sort of turned it into a snake salad in the chain and the gears.

For those of you who are eating breakfast or brunch, I will spare you the recipe. And given that last week I shared with you more details than some of you needed to know about the relationship that my cats have with the moles in my yard, I also want to stress that my wife and I support PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and we're vegetarians. I like animals. Really, I do!

I certainly didn't set out to run over a snake midway up the Lincoln Gap. Nor was it my plan to scare off a couple of extremely nice leaf peepers from New Jersey (more on that below).

What happened, essentially, was this. I was passing a pond about a mile below the western summit of the Lincoln Gap on a lovely weekend last month, and I was vaguely aware that there was a car behind me. This meant that I had to stay to the side of the dirt road. But then I saw the snake: a small, olive green garter snake. It darted out into the road from the brush on my right. Because I couldn't swerve to my left, I zipped to my right -- just enough that I bounced into a rut. Apparently, the snake saw the car, too, and so it zoomed back toward the pond as well. Unfortunately, my wheels were now lower than the road, and when the snake bolted, it went directly into the Snake Sausage Grinder that doubles as my bicycle crankset. It was a million to one shot, I think.

Immediately I climbed off my bike, if only because I didn't think it would be safe to continue riding if I started to vomit. Then, when I saw the condition of the chain and the gears, I walked the bicycle about a tenth of a mile farther up the mountain, where there is a sweeping left-hand turn and a spot where I could assess the situation. The bike was fine. Messy. But in far better health than the snake.

I was staring in disbelief when a very nice couple in a car with New Jersey license plates pulled over.

"Are you all right?" the fellow asked. He and his wife were a casually elegant, sporty pair in their mid-60ss. They could have modeled for LL Bean.

"Oh, I'm fine," I answered. "It's the snake that's seen better days."

And that was when they saw the snake dangling off the bicycle chain. Instantly the color drained from the woman's face. Of course, it might also have been the smell. The snake -- not me, honest -- smelled like feet. According to Joseph Schall, a professor in the biology department at the University of Vermont, this is an "anti-predator tactic." It is also, apparently, a tactic that is more effective against bigger snakes and hawks than it is against bicycles.

"That's a snake?" the woman asked.

"Well, part of one, anyway," I answered. "The rest ... never mind."

They couldn't get up and over that mountain fast enough. It's not often that experienced drivers burn serious rubber on the Lincoln Gap, but they sure did.

A number of years ago I had a dead bat in my woodstove, and I thought that was the most disgusting thing that I would ever have to clean up. Wrong. I was able to dispose of the bat with a spatula. The reptile? It took the garden hose.

Consequently, I'm a little relieved that the bicycle season is drawing to a close in Vermont. I hate to think how long it would take me to clean up the crankset if I happened to run over a moose.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 4, 2007.)

There's been a lot of prideful chatter this fall that New England is the brightest star in the sports universe. Why? David Ortiz (the Red Sox), Tom Brady (the Patriots) and Kevin Garnett (the Celtics). All of that talk, however, misses the biggest reason why we've suddenly become the epicenter of high-pressure competition: Bristol's Amanda Gebo, and her foray this autumn into the cutthroat world of competitive grocery bagging.

Gebo, 18, won the state bagging crown earlier this year at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction, and is training now for the national competition this coming February at the National Grocers Association convention in Las Vegas. Gebo is an 18-month veteran of the Shaw's supermarket in Bristol.

For those of you who live in caves and thus haven't followed the meteoric rise of the activity fans call simply "baggin,'" the sport is a series of speed matches between grocery store baggers. Gebo won in Essex Junction when she faced the sort of challenge that confronted the Red Sox when they were down three games to one to the Indians last month: light bulbs and eggs. That's right, when Gebo marched to the table for the finals, there before were every bagger's toughest opponents, the most breakable orbs in the supermarket. But (imagine some rousing NFL films music here) in 62.3 seconds, she bagged the breakables, as well as the cans and the glass jars and the Oreos and lots and lots of other staples.

Moreover, she didn't just toss the items into the brown paper bags and get lucky that raw egg didn't wind up on the cookies -- and, yes, on her face. "The judges look at weight distribution as well as speed, and then they cut the bags open when you're done to see if anything falls out," the champion bagger explained. Nothing did. Her two bags were almost perfect squares and the weight was distributed evenly between the pair. "The judges said I bagged like I had three arms," she added, which is the sort of compliment that sports pundits haven't even bestowed upon quarterback Tom Brady this remarkable football season.

And now Las Vegas looms for Gebo. And while she thinks she might be nervous, she will approach that competition with the same confidence she brought to Essex Junction. "How hard can this be?" she recalled thinking. "Heavy things on the bottom, light things on top. It's my job."

Actually, it's one of her two jobs. In addition to being a deli clerk at Shaw's (she was recently promoted from bagger), she also works at the Bristol Family Center. Why two jobs? A graduate of Mount Abraham High School, Gebo is saving money for college. She hopes eventually to have a career in special education, preferably working with elementary school kids.

She also has a profound respect for the sport (though she does admit that baggin' is "pretty quirky"). Consequently, although the national contest is held in a city known for late night revelry, she doesn't plan to whoop it up there 24/7 -- even though it will be her first visit to Vegas. "I'll see some shows and I want to eat in the sort of fancy restaurant that expects me to use four different forks," she said, but otherwise she will be focused on the meat and potatoes of baggin'. After all, if she wins the nationals, then she can start gearing up for the internationals -- and she has discovered that she does indeed appreciate the thrill of victory: "Winning (in Vermont) was surreal. It was a jump-up-and-down, goody-goody kind of excitement."

I will let you know what happens in Vegas in February. In the meantime, when we think of the pantheon of New England sports legends this autumn -- when, in years to come, we see in our minds the names Ortiz and Brady and Garnett -- let us be sure to add the name ... Gebo.

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on November 11, 2007.)

When I was a boy, I dreaded Thanksgiving.

The day would begin when my family would venture from our house in Westchester, N.Y., to my aunt and uncle's home in Queens. That meant traversing the Whitestone Bridge, one of the massive suspension bridges that link Queens and the Bronx. There would be miles of creeping traffic at the tollbooths, and my mother -- who was smart and funny, but had the patience of a 6-year-old -- would grow angry. And because my older brother and I were always the type to try putting out fires with gasoline, we would sing a Christmas carol from the backseat, though we would sing only one line of the song, repeating it over and over ... and over. One time, our mother became so furious with us that she stormed from the car, walked ahead of us to the tollbooth, and waited for us there.

When we would finally arrive at my aunt and uncle's, we would be greeted by our cousins -- those who lived there and those who, somehow, had always beaten us there despite having traversed greater distances. To this day, my cousins are cooler than I am. And when we were children? Even worse: If they were female, they were beautiful and had dyed their hair strange colors. If they were male, they were handsome and athletic. All of them were artistic: They painted, made recordings, and played games like charades and sardines with creativity and drive.

And then there was the food. My aunt was -- and is -- a spectacular cook. There were all the foods we expect at Thanksgiving, but then there were the ones that would be there because my aunt is Armenian, such as berags (phyllo dough slathered in butter and filled with parsley and feta cheese) and baklava (phyllo dough filled with walnuts and sugar and honey). Meanwhile, my family would have appeared with my mother's broccoli mold: Imagine vomit in Bundt cake-shaped Jell-O. It was horrifically bad, and to this day, I believe people encouraged my mother to bring it as part of a "devil-you-know" sort of strategy: They thought my mother might come up with something far worse if given the chance.

But invariably something magic then occurred. No, people didn't actually eat the broccoli mold -- except for my aunt who is the sweetest human being on the planet, and my grandmother who had lived through a lot as a little Armenian girl in Turkey and believed that no food should ever be wasted, even if it was inedible by the standards of 20th-century America.

What happened was this: I would start to have fun. I would have fun with my female cousins who were far more hip than I ever was going to be, and with my male cousins who were far more athletic. We would play football because football is how people who see each other three times a year bond in November, and because it gives men something to talk about in the awkward silences that mark most male conversations. (Sports were, in fact, invented so that men could have something to talk about.)

And then there would be my grandmother's prayer at the table: "Eench bess es, Park Asdvadz, tanks God, king meal. I hope I am with you next year."

The translation? "Eench bess es" means "How are you?" It's the all-purpose Armenian greeting. "Park Asdvadz" translates to "Glory to God." "Tanks God" is simply "thank you, God." It is not a reference to some Transformer-like mixture of military vehicle and divinity. And "king meal," if you are Armenian, is anything with lamb. Grape Nuts and lamb would be a king meal. So would lamb and paste.

When she was done, we would smile, convinced that our grandmother was going to outlive us all, and we would laugh. My fears, I would realize, had been completely unfounded.

We talk often about food on Thanksgiving (Exhibit A, this column). But the reality is that what we should all be most thankful for is family.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on November 18, 2007.)

Thanksgiving is now behind us, which means we are officially in the season when we move from thanks to giving. Yes, the December holidays are fast approaching, those weeks when our hearts are filled with love and people search the classified pages of this newspaper for a parking space within seven miles of the local shopping malls -- or a bootleg handicapped parking permit for the windshield of their car.

And if we had any doubt that there is absolutely no holiday tradition that someone somewhere won't find a way to exploit, I am pleased to share with you the creativity of the folks at Serendipity 3, a restaurant and ice cream emporium on E. 60th Street in Manhattan. Imagine for a moment a steaming mug of hot cocoa, and how spectacularly delicious it is this time of the year. Now imagine it costing a tummy-warming (and wallet-draining) $25,000.

That's right, $25,000. Not a typo. Earlier this month Serendipity 3's Frrrozen Haute Chocolate was crowned by Guinness as the world's most expensive dessert. The restaurant, renowned for its considerably less pricey Frrrozen Hot Chocolate (a mere $8.50 a cup), is offering a cup of hot cocoa the cost of a car.

The concoction boasts 28 kinds of cocoa (compared with only 14 in the $8.50 model), and has five grams of edible gold flakes mixed in. It is served in a cup with a gold crown and comes with a gold spoon. The truffle on top is flown in from Knipschildt Chocolatiers in Europe -- according to Forbes, the most expensive chocolates in the world.

My sense is you can get a pretty solid cup of hot cocoa for a small (translation: microscopic) fraction of that cost right here in Burlington. Just in case, I asked around.

The most expensive hot chocolate available at Muddy Waters on Main Street is $3.50. That's a large with raspberry syrup. Graham McDowell, "one of the folks who works there" (his title, not mine), added, "There is nothing I could do to make a hot chocolate worth $25,000. But maybe we could do some sort of dance for you -- put on a show to accompany the hot chocolate." At Uncommon Grounds on Church Street, you can find a large hot chocolate (again with syrup) for about $3. "And the whipped cream comes free," said employee Jamie Lucia. Is it even possible to run up a $25,000 tab at Uncommon Grounds? Not likely. "A piece of German chocolate cake only adds $2.95. I think you'd have to buy pounds and pounds of coffee. You'd probably have to buy all that we have in the store," Lucia said.

A hot chocolate at the Starbucks at the entrance to Burlington Town Center will run $3.40 with syrup and chocolate drizzle, if you purchase a vente (Starbucks-speak for large). When informed that there is a $25,000 hot chocolate out there, Starbucks server Erica Chenette observed dryly, "The most expensive hot chocolate is not necessarily the best."

Indeed. Consequently, as much as I like Serendipity 3 (and I like their regular frozen hot chocolate a lot), I think there are at least 25,000 better ways to fritter away $25,000. Just for grins, I called Amy Porter at Church World Service, a relief, development and refugee assistance organization, and asked what $25,000 means to them. I became aware of their work this autumn when I was the honorary chairman -- well, figurehead -- for their annual Crop Hunger Walk in Middlebury last month.

Porter offered a long list, but here are a few items: 5,000 blankets for disaster victims; 347 food packages containing emergency food supplies for a family of five for a month; as many as eight wells in drought-stricken villages in Africa; and 25 renovated classrooms in Kenya.

And then, of course, there are the needs right here in Vermont: We certainly have our hungry. Our homeless. Our cold.

Far be it from me to deny a rock star a $25,000 hot chocolate in New York. But I know I will always prefer a $3 one right here at home.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 25, 2007.)