"Where'd you get that bike?"

I love "coincidences." I put quotation marks around the word "coincidences" because I have had too many of them in my life-time to still believe that they are mere coincidences. On this birthday, after my mother's french toast and opening my presents, I took a bike ride with Devoe, my husband. As we rode on a nearby trail, I heard a man coming up close behind me on his phone saying, "hold on a second" as he proceeded to ride along side me and ask "Where'd you get that bike?" I told him a yard sale and he said, "yah, that was my bike, I had two of 'em and painted 'em with my kids." It's a very unique, brightly colored bike and couldn't be confused with any other. I asked where he lived, and we live in the same neighborhood, but I bought the bike from some other family man, so I'm guessing the family I got it from must have found it in the neighbor's trash and re-sold it to me. I asked if he sold it to another guy, he said "I don't know, I wasn't home." I wondered if he meant he wasn't ever home, or if he wasn't home enough to know what his wife or kids did with the bike. Smiling, he said he was glad it was getting some use. I said "I love it" and I do. I also love the fact that it is such a recycled, re-used bike and has had so many years of use but is just as valuable to me, perhaps its' 3rd owner, as it may have been to all prior owners. Besides the obvious environmental, economical, and physical benefits of riding a bike, I also enjoy the memories involved with it. I thought maybe it brought some good reminiscence to this man, recalling painting it with his kids years ago. I also thought of special bike rides with my dad as a kid as well as the feelings of joy I had in my 3 years of using bikes as my sole method of transportation while living in the city of Boston. And I also loved that on this particular birthday, this particular man saw his old bike on this particular trail. I love "coincidences" like that. There are so many other coincidental experiences in my past that I wish I had written down all of them so I could have an extensive list displaying just how interconnected we all are on so many levels, on so many planes of existence, in so many locations. This world is so much smaller than we realize... MUCH more on that later.