Andy Gapin

Every year on the first day of Spring, Rita’s gives away free Italian ice. And every year, I say that I’m going to go on a tour of all the locations in the area. This has never happened…until this year! Rita’s Tour 2009 started as a great idea, sadly, it did not end as a great idea.

Since it was a workday, we just did it after work instead of making an entire day out of it, though I did cheat and go during lunch. We hit four locations in a well orchestrated, but slightly mob-like, assault of gluttony. It was actually quite impressive. I didn’t think we had it in us to follow our dreams like that, but there was some serious inspiration behind all our eyes.

The biggest issue we faced was that since they were literally giving it away, there were lines and not a lot of flavors to choose from at a couple locations. One location only had pina colada and it sucked. The gods were on my side at two locations though and I was able to score vanilla and sweet tea. Vanilla is my favorite, but sweet tea was a nice departure from the ordinary flavors. It even had a slightly different texture.

Prior to the outing, I thought I would feel amazing after all the glory of getting Rita’s five times in one day. I was mistaken. Very mistaken. I actually felt ill afterwards. I’m not talking about the Beastie Boys kind of ill, I’m talking about contemplating forcing myself to throw up just to get it out of me kind of ill. I didn’t think that too much Rita’s was possible, but it is very possible. Not only did my stomach feel weird, but my whole body felt like it was crying out for insulin. There were moments of intense amounts of energy throughout the tour, but the crash after the last stop was awful. The four of us were sitting in a diner booth looking like we were hungover and hadn’t slept in days. I felt just as bad as I looked.

While it will be forgotten over the next 365 days, there is a lesson to be learned here. If you are going to try to eat Rita’s out of business, you need to start early in the day and spread it out. Don’t try to do it all at once. Realize your sugar-intake limits!

For a more in-depth account of the outing, check out this.

And on a very related (read: completely unrelated) note, I got two new zombie shirts this week. I’ll have to double check the count, but I think these may be zombie shirts four and five. Both are from 6dollarshirts.com. But they’re printed on Hanes shirts which always fit a little weird so that kind of sucks.