Cheap thrills.

Meet my new wheels. She's a real Bianchi. 

Light as a feather and the color of a robin's egg, my Bianchi came from Goodwill. She's got pizza-cutter tires and handlebars shaped like my pug's tail.

When I wedged her into the front seat of my Honda Civic, she contorted into a kind of fetal position, which made me think perhaps Bianchi was scared or sad, having just been pulled abruptly from the bike pile at a tidy Goodwill store on 4th Street in St. Petersburg.

She's a 23-year-old Italian with a stubborn saddle, caged pedals, soft tires and a nervous tick. I think her rear break might be chaffing against the rim, but with the proper tools and gentle touch she'll be prime for riding long distances. 

I hadn't intended to get a 1986 Italian racing bike. My sister Heelya and best friend Ro are visiting next week and I wanted a third bicycle so we could pedal the Pinellas Trail together. I've been eyeing a tricked-out mountain bike for a month now and was fixing to shell out $500 for a better (and I mean way better) bike than the one I pedal now, but today's little lesson in negotiation and good will has prompted me to forgo a new model in favor of a more seasoned cougar.

I pulled into Goodwill today with two $20 bills in my wallet, feeling good about myself, my friends and the world. I'm on a new cash-only budget thanks to $3,000 in fraudulent charges at a Panama stereo store. My debit card number was stolen last week (perhaps in cyberspace) and when the bank told me I'd have have to wait a week for my new card, I decided now was as good a time as any to pay homage to my parents by paying for everything in cash. 

Peering into the back stockroom at G.W., I asked one of the employees if there were any decent bikes for sale. One guy perked up and said, "Sure. We got a Tour de France bike out front."

I figured he was pulling my chain, (bike pun!) but as I followed him out front to the parking lot where the robin egg blue Bianchi was parked, the vintage bike stuck out like Christie Brinkley ...                                                                                      

... in a sea of Tonya Hardings.

"It suits you," the guy said.

"I'll take it," I replied, not knowing how much it would cost, but assuming not much.

So I wheeled it into the store and up to the counter, where an employee with a name tag that said JAYME asked, "You buying that bike?"

"Yup," I said.

"Do you know how much it costs?" He asked incredulously. 

"Um. No. How much does it cost?"

"Fifty bucks," he said.

Before I could even get a word out, the man in line behind me said, "No way is that bike worth fifty bucks. Man, you're rippin' the girl off. Give it to her for 25."

A woman standing in line behind the man chimed in:

"Fifty dollars! She's gonna have to put new tires on that bike!"

"It's an expensive racing bike," the Goodwill clerk snapped. 

"It was an expensive bike," scoffed the man behind me. "Man, that thing is old! Being that she's a girl, she's gonna have to pay someone to fix those tires."

Slightly embarrassed by the attention I had drawn, but thrilled by its sitcom appeal, I quietly said to the clerk, "It's OK. I came here thinking I'd get a deal. No biggie."

Upon further inspection of the name tag, I noticed that JAYME was the store manager and as I turned to push the Bianchi back to the bike pile, Jayme sighed and said, "Alright. $35 and that's as low as I'll go."

Forking over my money, I nodded at the male chauvinist behind me, grateful for his cojones. Although I don't usually take kindly to being treated like a damsel, in this case I curtsied, grabbed my bicycle and headed home. 

--

This isn't my first love affair with a 1980s bicycle. I was once infatuated with a clunker 10-speed named Ross. For more on that torrid romance click here.

The kindness of people I barely know.

I lost my debit card last week on St. Pete Beach at about 2 a.m. Saturday. Assuming the card was gone forever and if found would result in $500 in Big Gulp and Marlboro purchases at 7-Eleven, I canceled it the next morning. However, when on Monday morning I got to work in Sarasota and the receptionist said to me, "Some guy sent me an e-mail. Said he found your debit card on St. Pete Beach," I was like, Wah? The guy's name is Mark Prue and he runs one of those metal detectors up and down the beach on weekends. When he found my card Saturday morning he Googled my name and figured out who I worked for. He contacted me via e-mail and I got the card in the mail the next day.

An artist in Sarasota named Tim Jaeger gave me this sketch in 2005. A couple years later Tim opened his own studio/restaurant in Sarasota called Canvas Cafe. The fact that he offers drag queen bingo on the front porch of this place draws almost as much attention these days as his artwork.


This loaf of bread came from a place in Tampa called Pane Rustica, where Joe and I sat for a good hour and half playing Uno last weekend with friends. The owner of the place came up to us just before we left, set a giant loaf of bread (priced at $18) on the table and proclaimed that it had been "his dream" since he opened his bakery, that people would come in to hang out and play cards. "The bread," he beamed, "is on the house."

Cathy Guisewite drew this for me in March to go with a Q&A I did with her for the paper. We were on a tight deadline so she FedEx'ed it next-day delivery from Studio City, California to Sarasota, Florida. It's now framed in my bedroom. I love it.

The dish towel on the right (the blue striped one) came from Philadelphia. I helped move my old roommate Zac up there in September and I'm not so much impressed with the towel, given to me by a girl named Marcie in Philly whom we stayed with when we arrived and who without my knowing used the towel to wrap around a jar of spaghetti sauce I purchased at Di Bruno Bros. so it wouldn't break in my suitcase, but that Marcie let us stay with her unannounced for three days, and that she let Zac whom she had only met once unpack a Uhaul's worth of stuff into her living room and then one week later moved said stuff up three flights of stairs into Zac's new apartment three blocks away. I think about that every time I use this towel. Her goodness.