New bike

This cartoon (from http://xkcd.com/1070/) made me think about my childhood and I got a good laugh out of it. I remember when it was time for cookies, I would ask "how many can we have?" and the parental response would typically be “a couple.” To which I would reply, “how many is a couple?” Being part Cookie Monster, I was obviously hoping to hear an answer of "three" or "four" or more.  Anything but the usual "just two."  Evidently, I’m not the only one who thinks a couple could equate to more than two.


Karen is back from her Las Vegas trip with friends and she is now working to prepare to teach her summer class. Sunday evening, she was lamenting that her summer vacation was almost over, evidently expecting to get some pity out of me… of course, that did not happen. You’d think she’d learn by now that someone who only gets 10 vacation days per year is not going to provide moral support to someone who just had a month off and took two trips during that time period. Suck it up and get back to work and make us some money!

Even though I am still a bit disgruntled about being left at home during those past two trips that she took, I did surprise her with a new bicycle. I really shouldn’t reward bad behavior, but some would argue me buying her a bike was actually a gift to me. You see, I’ve been trying to get her on a bike for years now, but we’ve never found one that met her aesthetic requirements (of course it must be pretty) and my technical/equipment requirements. While she was out of town, I found a bike that I thought would meet both sets of requirements, so I made the executive, man of the house, decision to purchase it. I then parked it in the garage for when she returned home from the airport.

Unfortunately, she didn’t notice the bike sitting in the garage, even after multiple trips in/out of the garage. I didn’t put it right in front of where she pulled the car in, but I thought the girly, bright green bike would be an easily noticeable addition to the garage. Late Saturday afternoon, I moved the bike to a much more obvious location right next to the recycling bins and waited for her to go out into the garage again. She never ventured out there again, so when it was time to go for our evening exercise (typically a walk around the neighborhood), I handed her a pile of newspapers and asked her to put them in the recycling bins before we left. She walked into the garage, put the papers in the bin and walked back into the house. She didn’t even notice the shiny new bike that was sitting less than one foot away from her.

So much for the element of surprise… I made some smartass “you’re unobservant” comment and told her to go back out and look again and she finally saw it… I guess it is nice to know that I can probably hide stuff in “plain sight” and not have to worry about her finding it. We adjusted the seat and rode around the neighborhood so she could reacquaint herself to riding a bike. Once she is more comfortable on it, hopefully I’ll get her out on the local paved multi-use trails soon. Ideally, I’d like to be able to pedal to downtown to the Saturday morning farmers market (with a stop at the donut shop along the way!).