Elves in the garage and keeping up with Santa

Been bike building again.  I swapped the fork on the bikepacking Lenz and my wife's 29er.  I have the new SS test bike 95% built up with some things old, some things new, some things borrowed from other bikes, and a fork that has blue stickers on it.  Perfect.

The garage has become a loosely organized bin of bikes, bike parts, tires, wheels, forks...oh my.  The box of hydration packs alone is big enough to be a small row boat.  My cup runneth over.

So what do you do?  Get a bigger cup?  That is the typical response for today.  Accumulate.  The only good thing is the next thing.  More is better. 

Hmmm...too much or not enough?

 Fah!   If it were not for the situation I am in for the time being, I would have two bikes.  A 29erSS and one bike with gears and FS.  No spare wheels.  I would be looking for deals on tire sales, not packing them into milk crates in the corner. 

My natural man tends toward complication and I need to remind myself to keep it simpler.  It helps that I can pass a lot of this stuff on to those who need stuff, stuff that I have too much stuff of.  Keeps me from being too stuffed with stuff.  And really, that is the way it is supposed to work anyway.  We should be conduits of our gifts and blessings to those around us who are in need.  None of this goes with us in the end and none of it really belongs to us, in that we did not get any of this stuff completely on our own.

One of the neat things about Christmas is the gift giving.  I know it gets beat on as crass commercialism and it does burden the lesser fortunate with the guilt of not being able to give as they would like, but it allows us a scheduled reason to give, even if that is only a little.

Giving is far underrated.  I think we need more of it.  Pure, unadulterated giving;  ourselves, our talents, our possessions, our surplus.  Christmas, where the ultimate gift of all time is recognized as hittin' town, gives us a reminder or excuse or prodding or whatever, and lets us participate in, and receive in turn, gifts and well wishes from those we know and love.

I was shopping for the wife and buying some cuddly, snuggly things to keep her warm in winter (no, no jammies with feet in them, although she would wear them if I could find them) and I realized I was truly enjoying picking them out and thinking how she would receive them, enjoy wearing them.  When I got back to the car, I called her and said, "I sure like shopping for you".  I realized I hardly ever do that.  Budgets, busyness, boredome...who knows.  Life tends to lay down the trump card and bends us down under the weight of the daily grind. 

Christmas changes that for a short time and I am grateful.  So I need to decline the bigger cup option and pour out a bit of that overflow to others.  And I really have too many tires anyway. 

I sure want to see the look on my wife's face when she opens that gift bag of 29er tires.  Man, will she be surprised. Merry Christmas, sweetie.

Check out these elves...nice bit of charity work, it seems.