Nov

16

SprocketI recently had a conversation with a bike builder. I was watching him actually and we spoke in cadence, discussing colors, brakes, seats and the like as he spun a wrench over each exacting screw and bolt. I get excited when I see bicycles, more so than when I ride them. I think it might be the colors. Maybe it's the shape, or an image long held in my subconscious. The first bike I asked for was an orange bike. I didn't get it. I got a green one instead. It was accompanied by a neatly-typed note from Santa via "North Pole - North Texas Station" explaining that the cadre of elves charged with painting the bikes had lost their orange paint. The note was apologetic but firm. I was happy nonetheless. But orange bikes still make my heart beat a happy rhythm.

The bike builder told me that gadgets and foot pegs are the themes of the day. "Weird green is the most popular color." he said, his nose turned slightly upward. "The manufacturers know it…so they make more."

I guess Hunter green was the popular color of my day, I thought. Not orange. "They take what they get." said the builder, grinning, twisting a newly-devised disc brake on the back hub of a twenty-inch wheel. "Most have their favorites."

In trading I have my favorites, too. Trading provides a certain level of excitement…of newness. Is it comparable to the image of an orange bicycle? Maybe. There are some currencies that seem more energetic, more positive, more lively. I like those the best.

For the next month and a half children will enter stores with their parents. They'll grow mysteriously in love with one bicycle or another. Wheels, freedom, and color! Dreams will last forever, dashed by the reality of morning on the slow-moving days before Christmas. But, oh is that day coming! And the color of that bike will be the color of their dreams.

In that time I'll watch the Yen and the Dollar and the Aussie, Pound, and Euro.
I'll pick my favorites. I might even dream a little, if the mood strikes me.
I'll test every theory the way a child tests his dreams. And I'll invest my
resources the way a child invests emotion. I think there might be a good day coming, I tell myself. Do the banks know about letters from Santa…even those mailed from the post office in Texarkana? Do they know what I'm thinking? What I'm wanting? Am I big enough for them to care.

Please, please, don't let there be a letter in the mail! Just for this one day, this week… until Christmas. Just give me a little magic.

"Hey there!" says the bike builder, clapping his wrench across my wandering mind. "Can you hand me that orange frame?"


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