I Bought A Bath Bomb
[The Bath Bomb. Photo is mine.]
Do you think we’re going to leave this bath now? said Beaver Hateman, going menacingly to Uncle.
Yes, I do!
Well, you’re jolly well wrong! I’m going to stay here all night, if I want to!
~~ J. P. Martin “Uncle”
I glanced at the rear view mirror. The uneven ragged skyline of Manhattan was receding away from us at the rate of sixty-four mph. Into New Jersey, deeper and deeper, until the tiny notch appeared in the distance. That was one notch I knew well. It’s in all the Geology textbooks. The geographically notable and quintessential example of a water gap.
The Delaware Water Gap was soon upon us. Then the tangled streets of Stroudsburg with the impossibly short traffic lights. Then the winding route of #447 N. Through the nearly bare trees, past the small streams and up, up into the heart of the Poconos.
No, we weren’t booked for a blushing weekend at “Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge–The Host With the Most in the Poconos” No. We were here on business. Actually, Mariam was here for that. I was just tagging along, lending a hand where I could. It was the annual Steven L. Margolies, MD Family Educational Conference. It was sponsored by Hemophilia Association of New York (Mariam is the President of the Board).
In years past, the conference was held at the Mohonk Mountain House, near New Paltz, NY, on the fringes of the Catskills. This site was quite beautiful. The ginormous main building, made of stone, is reputed to be the hotel where Stephen King had the germ of an idea for The Shining. I can’t verify this, but it sounds reasonable.
But this place in the Poconos, Skytop Lodge has an ambience that draws me in. A century old family-style resort, it has everything: swimming, boating, golf, hiking, skiing, riding, sledding, skating, tennis, a zip-line, archery, axe throwing and most likely a dozen other activities I never noticed.
It was off season. A few families were there. Small groups of high schoolers wandered about, engaged in group trust activities and learning about knots and nature. Mariam’s conference had been given an entire wing for the sessions on blood factor infusions and updates on the newest research into a cure for hemophilia. She was kept busy getting attendees to the correct room and generally helping where it was needed.
Me? I had time to wander the grounds, sip tea and read by the giant fireplace in the main lobby (large enough to hold a hockey game).
[Mariam strolls the grounds of Skytop during a break. Video is mine.]
But I digress.
I am here for another reason. R & R. A mere week has passed since we arrived home from a totally delightful journey to Paris, the Sahara Desert and England. I was weary, bone-sore and unable to find a position to sit or stand without discomfort.
I wandered into the Gift Shop. I immediately pumped a gob of lotion on my dry hands from the tester. I hope it was the tester. The tee shirts were brightly colored and well-designed–and at $60+, they should be. Bathing suits for a six-year-old and a shawl for a matron. I clutched my 20% discount coupon in my pocket and headed for the door when I noticed them. Multi-colored spheres. The size of a billiard ball and encased in a plastic wrapper.
“What are these?” I asked the clerk.
“Bath bombs,” she replied.
“Oh,” I said, wondering what such a thing was intended for. Then, using my vast experience with mineral baths and Epsom Salts, heavily laced with Magnesium, I knew. They were bubble bath balls. Sadly, the micro-print on the little label sticker was unreadable so I couldn’t say if these bad boys contained the Mg ions to help alleviate my leg cramps, but I decided that these were not going to help my muscles.
I bought one anyway. The bomb part of it drew me in.
When I was much younger, I owned a SuperBall. It was roughly the same size of a golf ball and was made of a condensed rubber, so tightly packed that if you bounced it on a hard floor, it would bounce to the ceiling. I loved that little gray globe. I thought about bouncing the Bath Ball but, having taught science for three decades, I knew it would explode into a cloud of highly perfumed soapy powder.
I didn’t need that. And housekeeping would put me on a “do not rent a room” list to all the Travel Lodges and Super-8 motels in America. No, I didn’t need that.
What I did need is to find out exactly what this Bath Bomb, purchased at the Skytop Gift Shop could do for me and my aching infrastructure. I was about to drop said Bomb into the bathtub of Room 417, go and put my iPhone on it’s charger, untie the very lux terry bathrobe from the closet when I thought of something.
Once, a fair number of years ago, Mariam and I had a room at a lakeside hotel in Burlington, Vermont. I had purchased a packet of mineral salts to soothe early aches (v.1.2) from hiking in the Adirondacks. I emptied the packet in the tub and walked away, leaving the water to fill at a rapid rate. I only took a moment. When I went into the bathroom again, a mountain of suds, high as the Fresh Kills Landfill was about to overflow the rim and fill the room with foam. It looked like a scene from The Blob or something out of a Busby Berkeley movie.
[Bubbles. Not my bubbles and not my tub. Image credit: Google search.]
So, where does all this leave me? For one, I never got to soak in the tub at Skytop. Nor did I find the time to don my teal bathing suit and hit the Jacuzzi.
“Missed opportunity,” you might very well say. And you would be totally correct.
I actually spent far too much time taking videos of the things to see around the vast property. And trying to come up with a good hook for a blog about the Bath Bomb.
Then I made a mistake. Googling can be dangerous if it’s not supervised by an uninterested party. The results of my search were a bit overwhelming. The bombs available to people like me were thus: There was a 60 Pack of 6 scents and colors, a Bath Bomb with money inside, Donut Bombs, Christmas Figure Bombs, Hello Kitty Bombs, Ultra Moisturizing Bombs, Halloween Bombs, Orange colored Bombs (from Florida?), Bombs with toys inside, Egg Carton Bombs and Waffle Bombs. At this point, I stopped reading the lists of bath products. I was expecting to see a Bomb, shaped and colored to resemble an Atomic Bomb, or perhaps a Bomb that fell on London in 1941.
The lead photo above is the Bath Bomb I purchased, but never basked beneath those promised suds.
It’s sitting on the edge of my tub in our apartment in Manhattan. I’m waiting for the right moment and the right pain before I take the plunge, so to speak.
