Karma rides a bicycle

These shoes will take me where I want to go.

Ah, karma.
I got up early yesterday and went for a bike ride with Carrie. I had replaced my old bicycle seat with a new wide seat to accommodate my own wide seat. It felt quite comfortable - at first, anyway. The night before, I prepared: got my water bottle ready, pumped the tires, dusted helmet.
Though we planned to leave at 9:00, we managed to actually get on the road by 10:00 (and were proud of the relative nearness of that to our planned departure time!)
The ride was pretty, the weather perfect - sunny and cool. The sky was so blue it looked like a cartoon. Mostly uneventful, the ride went down to the tip of Manhattan where we rested and I looked at the Statue of Liberty.
On the way home, all was going well until pop and click followed by a hiss. I am a novice rider but can recognize a flat tire without a lot of help. I had one. I also had no repair kit, no cell phone, no money, and no clue. Carrie did only slightly better: she had a phone. We laughed and laughed then had the bright idea to go to a taxi tire repair shop to inflate the tire, figuring it we could do just enough to make it home. Wrong.
We ended up at a gas station in hell's kitchen. The air machine cost $.50, which of course, we didn't have. Still laughing like animals, we had to ask the attendant to spot us two quarters. He seemed less than delighted to do so, telling us, "we don't fix. We don't fix." Oh, what a coincidence, Mr. Singh, neither do we.
Struggling (far less than adeptly) to get the air pump and the valve to communicate, we continued to laugh, beginning only then to recognize the futility of our plight. I tried to get Carrie to go without me, likening our measly bike ride to a climb of Mt. Everest; "you have to go on without me. Complete the mission."
Suddenly, a small dark D.J. appeared from the autoshop next door. He asked if we wanted help. No surprise, we did. He tried to get some air in the tire but "tire is bad." Not to worry, he told us, there was a bike shop a few blocks away. Still giggling, we told him thanks, we had no money so would walk.
So he offered us money. Five dollars at first, then ten, then twenty. When we agreed to take it and mail him a check, he took out a fifty. Panic hit us. I was thinking "dude, we are not doing whatever it is you want us to do to get that money." So we negotiated for the smaller sum, got the fifteen bucks and headed to the bike store. Then Carrie's chain came off. Which was just as funny as everything else.
At the bike store, we decided to get the tire fixed then ask how much thinking, if we don't have enough, we will be able to better bargain once the work is done. Grand total: $16.25. After hearing the story of the good samaritan D.J. and his fifteen dollar donation to my fitness cause, the nice clerk realized he actually meant to charge us $14.99. Whew.
Carrie and I will be signing up for a class on how to fix our own tires on the road.
Rodolfo, the generous gas station D.J., on the other hand, will be experiencing some high return on his excellent karma this week.

Idea to practice today: pay it forward.