Restored Understanding

I spent a large part of my childhood on two wheels. My worst scraps and bruises came from daring/stupid stunts on a bike. As I have grown bikes have had a different purpose, going from neighborhood ride to mountain biking and oddly enough I'm back to riding around my neighborhood. Bikes have been a source of transportation to the nearest friends house, entertainment, something to fix, but spiritual was not always in the mix. Over the past month my understanding of 'spiritual' has been somewhat expanded, again.

When we were living in Tyler I worked to redo an old Schwinn. I re-greased all of the bearings, polished the chrome, new wheels, new paint job from top to bottom refinished the bike. I did all of the labor because I enjoyed the process and there is something intriguing about bringing life back to an old rusty frame with wheels that aren't true (straight). During the process hours were spent doing fairly mundane dirty tasks. I had to order parts and wait for the delivery like a kid waits for Christmas morning. With the last package arriving on our doorstep containing the wire basket for the handlebars, the bike was finally complete.

Most of you have heard us talk about the bike culture that exist in Fort Collins and after being here a few weeks we found out about the Downtown Bike Show. We rode down and parked our bikes on a post next to the show. Laura went inside to work on her school stuff and I stayed outside checking out the bikes. I walked around for a while and came over to find a guy leaning down looking at my bike. We stood around the next thirty minutes or so talking. We walked around looking at some of the other bikes and I look over and someone else is looking at my bike. We walk over and I meet another guy who thought my bike should have been entered in the show. The three of us talked for a while and then the show ended. Laura and I went home, I admit I was proud my bike was noticed and I felt like I was a part of the bike culture here.

The next week I went to begin work at the Bike Coop, one of the organizations we have planned for months on getting involved in. The Coop does an Earn-a-bike program that people can work 20 hours for a non-profit in the area and receive a bike. Most of the people in the program have no other means of transportation and this earned bike widens their possibilities. They also do bike recycling, breaking down old worn out bikes and recycling the parts. Me and another girl are getting a tour of the shop and around comes the guy that I talked to at the Downtown Bike Show. We get to talking again and he mentions that the guy he introduced me to runs the Bike Coop, small world.

It turns out that the labor of fixing up an old bike and our prayers for the people in the bike culture were spiritually connected.

After living and commuting by bike for a few weeks I've experienced some spiritual understanding by doing something I've done since I was a kid.