Not Exactly Like Riding a Bike

They say that once you've mastered riding a bike, you'll always be able to ride a bike. That may be true, but is the same principle true of other things?

Not entirely!

Sixteen years ago, I made my first real wedding cake. It was for my cousin and it served as both a wedding gift from my family and as a chance to launch my career as a wedding cake baker. It turned out beautiful and it was the beginning of a twelve-year run as the owner of Karey's Custom Cakes. During that time, I made hundreds of wedding cakes. I was good at it. I loved the challenge of duplicating the cakes in Martha Stewart Weddings and did cakes worthy of the bridal magazines.

Six years ago, we moved to Idaho. I kept my business going for awhile, but over the next couple of years, it died a natural death. People weren't ordering the cakes I loved to make and I found delivery in the rural area challenging.

It has been almost four years since I did a wedding cake, but as a favor to a friend who had just done me a huge favor, I offered to make his daughter's wedding cake.

Boy, is it different when you're older and out of practice. Everything took a little longer than it should have. I had a couple of near-catastrophes that I won't go into detail about, (maybe they'll appear in my next book) and the delivery to Salt Lake was much more stressful than I remembered. How did I deliver all those other cakes without hyperventilating?

**Let me pause here for a little shout-out to the smoking man in the white Ford pick-up with a tattoo of a lion on his muscular bicep. Thanks for swerving back into your own lane in the nick of time, thereby avoiding my wedding-cake-carrying car. And may I offer this bit of fashion advice--wife-beaters in December aren't a good idea, no matter how proud of your muscle and tattoo you are.**

But I delivered the cake safe and sound and it looked beautiful. The bonus was that I got to see an old friend and meet a couple of new ones. It was a successful day.

I'm not sure if the excitement and thrill of creating something beautiful outweighs the horror of a scary wedding cake delivery, but as Laura Ingalls Wilder always said, "All's well that ends well."