Spring is here, and with it, the arrival of the strawberry donuts at Donut Man. This small donut shop on Route 66 acted as a time marker throughout my college life, heralding the end of the semester and the beginning of my seasonal allergies. But there's one memory I possess, after college, in which Donut Man prominently figures, a memory that began and ended with sugar on my lips.

We were lying in bed at her place in Oxnard, my heartrate pleasantly slowing down, and I turned to her with a look of wild abandon: "I'm in the mood for donuts!" And with that, we took off in the middle of the night. The distance from Oxnard to Glendora spans the great width of Los Angeles county, from Westlake Village through Burbank and Arcadia and almost to the border of the 909. Hardly a soul on the freeway, and it still took us an hour.

Fresh from the fryer, the strawberry donuts at Donut Man possess an other-worldly sweet glaze by syrupy fruit. My strategy is always to pick out the larger ones by hand, and the consume the remainder like the most sinful of sandwiches. Sugar was not only my lips, but also my hands and fingertips.

Seasonal things, I have come to learn, appear and disappear on a menu with little regard to your own wishes. She would end up moving to North Carolina and while we gave that relationship our best shot, in the end, it was too far away. I hear she married a nice guy with whom she worked.

And so I think of her, and I think of that night and I think of lots of other nights. Glendora is still quite a ways away, but I make that trek when I can. It's a short distance to travel for such a seasonal delight.