Arrival

Sasha announces the kind postman with her usual loud barks as Hank, the old dog, sort of perks up his head, says "Pfft... I dun scared him for fifteen years, he ain't coming in here," and sure enough he doesn't, in fact, fit through the 3x8 mail slot and pose any danger to me, but Sasha makes a ruckus nonetheless.

He brings the mail as he always does, with headphones on and scruff that makes him look like a metalhead in anachronistically blue postperson shorts, but then he drifts back to the truck, to the only vehicle in America whose driver side is on the left, and he begins hefting something...

Despite the efficiently-packed box, the bike is remarkably put together. She kind of lights up the room, not only since she is the one clean thing in the room downstairs where Sasha sheds all day, but she is the first new touring bike I've ever had. While my other, twenty-or-thirty-year old ones have had personality and life experience, this one is new, needing someone else to put the pedals on for her, seeing the world for the first time. Maybe the baby bit is too romantic: if she's like anything, she's like a Mr. Potato Head, everything sort of obviously going here and there, but this bike connects to my heart like no Mr. Potato Head ever did. Even the one in Toy Story. Of course, she's not as special as Sasha, but Sasha--giant white German shepherd that she is--only scoffs when we suggest saddling her and riding dogback to the grocery store. They did it in Lord of the Rings, though, which is such an incredible film about stretching our capabilities, yet Sasha is still incredulous on this point, as I imagine our old German shepherds were that Halloween that mom suggested, and followed through, with dressing them up like clowns (including the face paint). They had been scuba divers the year before, complete with tanks. I deduce that it is exactly this disparity between canine species that led to Middle Earth never developing bicycles.