It was an eyecatcher. Think like you rode with Lance Armstrong and he put together a 10 speed for you. Maybe Lance is an exaggeration, but my Fuji was handpicked, painted and refurbished by the most accomplished bike guy I've ever known. I rode with him and his other bike buddies and I rode it alone - often. The ride to and from work was cathartic even though sometimes simply exhausting, like on those days when a pitcher or two of beer was swilled at lunch. Then there was the Tour de Bars that took all day to cover over forty miles because of stops along the way to fuel up with beer. But it was the ride with Team Rogue that this story is centered on. The event, Tour de Shore, was mostly thirty-somethings and I wasn't. But my friendship with a semi-goggue locked me a spot on the team and for backstory only purposes, we won. We celebrated at the "P" during which I exhibited fantasy skills on a pool table among a crowd of a hundred or so celebrants with a buzzed Sheryl-like interrogator who got the kiss she was looking for. When we drank the last of the toasts, I walked outside and my red Fuji was gone - stolen, lock & all. I felt the tug in my heart and carried sadness through the next several weeks checking with the police storage guy to see if it was recovered. It wasn't. So yesterday, many,many years later from this episode I'm reading about a terminally ill woman who is freaked-out because her diamond ring is missing and her spiritual adviser tried every trick to talk her down. He did. She suddenly became aware of the meaninglessness of inventory when you're in your final days and she started giving away as many of her things as she could before she died. Before the funeral, her daughter found the diamond ring in the medicine cabinet but what was most satisfying to her was the resolution of conflict her mother experienced in her final days. Then it hit me - my red Fuji was stolen just months before I walked away from 35 years of accumulation and began a new life with the person I was searching for from my birth and it was a sign that my Fuji disappeared, a sign that the pairing with my dreamgirl was fated and imminent. The collective conscience knew and the universe complied - there was no room in my found world for my red Fuji. Even so, I just might look for another one if the opportunity presents itself, not for any sort of re-do but because this world includes many things that might just catch the eye of the universe. Amen