I've been slaving over a hot computer much of the day, with some quite good results for the fair trade campaign. But in the early afternoon I strode halfway to town to visit a bike shop and buy a new inner tube for my sadly neglected cycle.
The shop has rather idiosynchratic opening hours. I was twenty minutes early so sat on the curb outside, though I was aware of bicycle repair activity going on within. On the dot of three they let me in to make my purchase.
It's a real cycle shop, run by cyclists. So much American shopping takes place in the faceless "big box" Walmart-type stores that a speciality shop like this is, well, special. A row of bicycles in the window and every shelf stacked neatly with all the odds and ends a cyclist (and only a cyclist) might ever need. I felt the same delight as when I enter an old-fashioned hardware store (a rare thing nowadays, but there's an excellent one near my parents' house) - all those slightly mysterious items to wonder about, and that particular, faintly oily, smell. Lovely.
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