The Purple Dilemma

Back in the days of our newlywed bliss, Sam and I bought bicycles. Nothing fancy, just practical mountain bikes that we rode all over the town of North Pole that first summer we had them. And then we had Becky and didn't bother to get a baby seat for a 3 month old and the bikes sat. For the next 17 years. The funny thing is that if you put away a brand new bike, it kind of stays brand new. For the most part.

Three years ago, we broke out those bikes and rode the heck out of them. (At least in our understanding of the word. To others, we would have barely done any riding. It's all a perspective thing.) It's still a fantastic bike, that little gem of mine from 1993, and I love it dearly even though it has purple on it. Purple is just not my color. It's mostly gray, with purple accents, so it's not as bad as all that, but color is just color. The bike itself is the gem.

And then Sam bought me another bike last fall. I'd been eyeballing the cruisers lately and coveted Becky's antique one, because despite it's ancient years, it rides kind of like a dream. The cruiser Sam bought me is a modern one, with gears. We took it for a ride this evening, to test out the trail. And the bikes. The trail was still a bit soft, and provided quite the workout for Sam, whose bike sunk into the turf, but my bike rode like a dream. A geared, cruising dream. I love that new bike a whole lot. Except it's purple. Not gray with purple accents, this thing is legitly purple. As in ALL purple, and it has flowers on it.

People, this bike screams NOT ME, and yet I love it so much that it's going to be replacing my old kind-of purple bike. And I realized, as we were biking and talking, that if I'd have Sam paint it for me, I have no idea what color one would paint a bike. Honestly. What color WOULD one paint a bike?

I'll have to give this some thought. Perhaps, if we go to the effort of painting it, we could put paw prints on it. Or decoupage dried flowers into the clear coat. Is that going too far?