Hey, You Guys! Wanna Go Ride Bikes!?

Remember my husband? The Knight In Shining Armor (er...exoskeleton)? My handy garden-builder? The one I am so in love with it's all sappy and annoying to those around us?

Well, here's another piece of recently developed information about Justin: He's a biker.

Not a motorcyclist, but a cyclist. A road biker. And Good God A'mighty, he's in LOVE with this sport.

He faithfully rides almost every day, and what began as a way to get in shape, has morphed into his Favorite Thing Ever. The exhilaration! The speed! The bugs in his teeth! He sets off in the evening after the girls are in bed, clad in some TOIGHT spandex and armed with spare inner-tubes. (I don't mind it because I'm left with a bit of time for important tasks like cleaning, bill-paying and blogging. Emphasis on the last. Also, he's really getting in shape. This, I like.) When he returns some time later, chugging for breath, sweating puddles on the entryway floor, and calculating his average speeds and distances, he is the picture of joy. He is a kid in a candy store.

A candy store filled with bikes.

On the days he doesn't get to ride, he's roaming the internet, gazing longingly at bikes more worthy of admiration than his own. He'll turn from the computer to get my attention: "Sarah! Look at this so-and-so with a doo-hickey! It's [some fancy Italian brand], but it can be special ordered - with only a 2 year wait...It's 3 THOUSAND dollars! Do you like this blue and white version, or the red and gunmetal grey?!"

I'll look over with squinted eyes, hoping he's completely joking. His own bike is only 3 months old. His own bike has taken him over 1,000 miles so far - with many more miles possible. His own bike seemed quite extravagant at the time, though far less than those he screen-shops for online.

I'll say to him, slowly and carefully: "Sweetie....Look at my eyes....gooooood. Now, are you being serious? You....want....that bike? As in....sometime within the next 8 years? Because....I was told when you purchased your current bike....that....it was a good investment....for years and YEARS of exercise. Am I to understand.....correct me.....that you wish to spend 6 mortgage payments on aNOTHER bike?"

His eyes will slowly come into focus on my reality. And he'll assure me that it's just his way of daydreaming. Obviously he'd never get that bike....but perhaps in 3 or 4 more years....

We go on and on like this. Me acknowledging the beauty of an unattainable bicycle, and Justin planning for the day when he can call this or that unattainable beauty his.

Last night, the discussion went several miles out into left field.

I asked him what he'd do with his perfectly good, if somewhat cheaper, bike once he'd gotten hold of a newer, lighter, faster bike. His response was confusing at first.

"Well," he began, "when I used to travel for work, there was a plant manager down in Arizona who sawed the front end off an old bike, and hung it on his office wall so that it looked like it was driving out of the wall." At this point, Justin's eyes were starting to dart over our walls, his eyebrows became startlingly animated, and I swear I could feel the reverberations of his increased heart rate. The excitement was rolling off of him in ADD-like waves. "We could do that! You know the wall that separates our kitchen from the living room?! Yeah! And we could put the back half of the bike on the other side of the wall! And...you remember I have my grandfather's old bike from [some ancient year]? We could saw it in half too, and make like a timeline of bikes! We could get a collection of older bikes, all the way up to my bike, and have them all sticking out of the wall! Like a HISTORY OF THE BICYCLE!" He stopped to catch his breath, and awaited my enthusiastic response.

I was dumbfounded. How on earth could he think we should do that to our living room?

"That would be pretty awesome," I said dryly, "IF you were in a frat house. Or a bike store. Or maybe a bachelor pad."

He smiled at me, seeing that I'd bought into his sarcastic teasing, and pulled me into his arms. "So I guess I can assume that if I mounted several chopped up bikes on our living room walls, this would become a bachelor pad pretty quickly? As in, you'd be out the door?"

Realizing that he'd pulled the old 'gullible' card on his trusting wife, I said, "THAT'S RIGHT!"

Knowing deep down inside that I'd put up with an entire house full of bike studded walls if it meant that I'd get to live with this funny, energetic, loving man.

Not to mention, he's extra hot since all the exercise began. I couldn't leave that; not for all the bad decorations in the world.