Brown paper packages tied up with string

This year, Santa brought me a great surprise that I didn't know I needed so much.

When I awoke at 5 am on Christmas morning, there was a bike. Not the one we'd expected Santa to bring for Ana (that one was there too). But a big bike. For me.

When our shed was broken into last year, my mountain bike was stolen. I hadn't ridden in much post-K (post-Kids), although I occasionally put them in the wagon and took them for a ride or to work/school.

This bike was not a replacement of that one. This one exceeds any expectation one should have for such a mechanism.

It's a vintage-style cruising bicycle, the kind you ride with your head high in the wind as you smile at the passers-by with a how-do-you-do. It's a powder-blue metallic sheen white-wall tire-d love machine,

and when we ride I feel a delicious cheesy poem working inside.

OKAY. Enough groaning. I'll stop there.

This bike in the last days when I haven't been blogging has been so wonderful for my spirit. Yesterday I rode it to work, and then down Oak St, to the commercial lane of the bank (to the great amusement of the tellers there, and the security guard emptying the ATM), and down Maple St to get the latest in my juvie-lit series addiction, and the whole time, I felt like the little happy girl inside of me, free from worry and full of love.

The bike is a reminder of my days as an exchange student in Holland where I rode my bike with my new friends everywhere (and in every condition). Through dark streets we'd ride, smoking cigarettes (yes) and telling stories, or in the case of one unrequited love, we'd sing more songs than a jukebox, pausing together at the instrumental bits (them playing in our heads), cycling closer at the grand finales, nearly crashing into heaps of metal, laughing all the while. We'd cycle out to bars to play games of backgammon, served with coffee and a shot (at the Blaue Haand), or sometimes to school (ha!), or to each other's flats...almost as good as where we were going was the getting there. The excitement of being where we were, of making new friends from around the world, of having no worries...How could that feeling reverberate through the air when I'm on this bike? I guess it's been in me all this time, I just haven't felt it in quite a while.

Thank you, Santa.

YES. It's THAT bike. Santa really nailed it. And if a fool-hardy villian should hear it calling, he'd better turn and walk away. Because this time, I WILL find her and take her back.

Oh yes, ideas for names are being accepted.