streaming

I traipsed through my childhood today. Hearing someone at work talk about buying his kid a tricycle, WITH streamers and a bell, opened the painful memory of my streamerless bike. The bell...I could do without. Never really wanted one. But the streamers on the handlebars? Oh the dreams! I think we got a second-hand bike from someone that had one streamer still fully intact. Oh how I treasured that single strand of fun streaming in the wind! The other handlebar's streamers had been shorn, so all that remained were stiff little stubs. Not that I didn't enjoy the bike, I made a valient effort to make up for the streaming lack. It was a cool bike (despite the above), one of the old-school ones with the brakes in the pedals. I always loved that kind because it would skid to a stop instead of the immediate hand-brake stops. Get 'er stopped on a patch of sand, and you could skid for awhile. And I did the whole baseball card thing in the spokes, which I always thought was cooler than a bell. But streamers? Those you just couldn't substitute.

So since this is the season of gift-giving and brand new red bikes under the tree, I think I would like a bike with streamers, preferably more than one (streamer, not bike).