Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

No matter a certain malaise in the economy and the endless bucket brigade that bails out one atrociously run financial institution/mortgage company after another, the price of oil soars, the price of gold soars and Easter flower shipments soar right along with them…so all are not losers at the hands of the sub prime miscreants in Calabasas and their ilk. Having lurched through January, pulled back in February this is a more positive time to be in flowers. The last week or two have been active in a quite positive fashion. (more…)

I have just stepped off the Lufthansa flight from Venice to Portland via Frankfurt after fifeteen days of peddling a bike in, over, down, around and damn near under the Dolomites…as fast as was possible. I certainely spent many a day there feeling washed up, wrung out and in having been hung out to dry.

In my mind I am mostly still in Italy, wending my way from one tiny alpine village to another, listening to a myriad church bells marking the passage of time, drinking in the sights and smells of meadows now choked with the autumn crocus and noting the cracks in limestone walls sprouting tiny cyclamen. People appear industrious and gainfully employed in these pastoral settings. Much too busy to be petty.

Awaiting me at home is a mountainous pile of mostly junk mail and unread newspapers. Better it all should be tossed into the recycling bin. In the doing so I catch an article on the front page of the WSJ dated 9/18 and begin to read further. Perhaps it is because I have just spent fifeteen days washing my cycling kit every night and hanging it out to dry from various hotel windows and balconies from Castelfranco to Cles to Cortina d’Ampezzo and many another lovely village, that my attention is captured.

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The following exerpt by Lance Armstrong from”Saving Your Life” broke the all-time page view record on CNN’s site just this weekend. As some will know Flowerbud.com has been a very active supporter of Mr. Armstrong and his foundation over the years and has contributed many thousands of yellow roses to cancer survivors around the US as they peddle, run and walk across finish lines at the Challenge Series. It has been our privilage to have participated. Last summer at a dinner held In the Tiger Woods building on the Nike Campus in Beaverton, Oregon, Lance Armstrong informed the assembled that with biking now a hobby, lobbying on cancer related  issues would be his proffession. Well, as good as his word it looks as if he is now hard at work at the coal-face! We wish him the very best.

Lance Armstrong, one of cycling’s all-time greats and possibly the world’s best known cancer survivor, founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation with the goal of inspiring and empowering people with cancer. He now campaigns for more government funds for cancer research and treatment.

AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) — I’m not known for my patience. Patience is a polite quality and often appropriate, but it rarely gets things done. Impatience, however, is the hunger for results and intolerance for excuses and delays. Impatience got me over countless mountain passes, across the finish line in New York City and through four rounds of ruthless chemotherapy 10 years ago.

Yet this election season I patiently waited to hear a candidate for office explain to constituents what he or she planned to do about one of the leading threats to the health and well-being of all Americans — cancer. My patience was greeted with silence. (more…)

This was a weekend dominated by yellow. Yellow wrist bands, yellow tablecloths, a yellow light show wash on the walls within the Tiger Woods Pavillion on the Nike campus, yellow rain ponchos on the volunteers and of course Flowerbud’s own contribution: the beautiful yellow roses, fresh in from Costa Rica.

A lot of yellow to be sure but not a jaundiced moment as I stand at the finish line after my own ride, beneath the galloping neon horses at Delta Park in Portland watching the most determined and remarkable people cross the finish line, yellow Rose in hand. All are survivors or are surviving cancer and have just completed walks, runs or cycle rides of distances up to one hundred miles. The momentum to the day of course being given by Lance Armstrong himself, hopping on a bike and leading this most determined of pelotons eastwards into the breezy mouth of the Columbia River Gorge.

This is the year’s second in a series of events known as Livestrong Challenges. In 2006 they traverse the country as follows: Orange County in June, Portland in July, Denver in August, and Philadelphia in September, all culminating in Austin with The Ride For The Roses in October. The proceeds going to The Lance Armstrong Foundation which works to benefit those living with and through cancer.

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Just back from sixteen days astride a bicycle through a good many of the steeper regions of France. Often in the shadow of the Alps and the pro peloton of the Tour De France. Talking of shadows, yesterday’s charges leveled at Floyd Landis, the Pennsylvanian who eventually won and who I saw in stirring technicolor action are long and dark indeed. Needless and baseless, I trust.

In the process of broadening the mind and revelling in the pure escapism that travel allows, in the reinvention of oneself and the enjoyment of there being no preconceived ideas of who you are or may be, there are those moments when you make the inevitable comparisons between cultures. The ones sure to annoy someone, somewhere and without fail. The simple greeting of bonjour or bonsoir is the one that readily lent itself to such and prompts from me a passing opinion. (more…)