Heck, you’re one of them!
It is heartwarming, though—and flabbergastifying, as well—to see how deeply the years pile up.
Once upon a time, half a decade was a long time; these days, three times that is just a blink of an eye, and you realize, around the subsequent fire, in that most secret and lovable of destinations, that you’ve been at this for even longer, but somehow it still seems—if not brand-new—at least novel in its own way, every time.
What’s that old saw? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?
If so, then what do you call doing the same thing over and over while hoping for pretty much the same thing once more, that being flames and fellowship, saturnalia and bacchanalia, bikes and beer and bud, and eventually, a pain-free wobble home that sees all uphills flatter than usual and all downhills longer than you remember?
Thursday, maybe?
The “bicycle community” is a pretty big tent and one thing that’s kinda cool about that is the way in which a tiny little company started by a couple of those aforementioned awkward two-legged two-wheelers can make such a huge positive difference to that tent—as well as providing lots of ways to carry said tent to the great out-of-doors as desired.
You don’t have to be an avid consumer to be an avid consumer of the consumables you avidly consume and you can wish that the stuff you like would never go away, but it does, and there’s not much you can do about that other than celebrate all the joys that stuff has made possible, even as seams fray and zippers break.
Time, they say, heals all wounds, (and perhaps wounds all heels, as well), but with a bike, it just seems to happen so much quicker.