I purchased a new bike a few weeks ago–a black one, but I returned it and got a different one.
After purchasing the initial black bike, the store owner was helping me 1) get my bike rack secured on my car and 2) get my bike secured on my bike rack when a strange—and I mean strange!—older woman came up to my car and stood there waiting for me to acknowledge her. I looked at the bike shop owner to see if he knew what was going on and saw an odd look on his face; he was standing in a somewhat protective-of-me stance, but I told him I was okay and moved forward to speak with her. Having secured the bike already, he went back into the store.
The woman had frizzy gray hair dyed clown-red red. Not regular red, or auburn red, but clown red. She was wearing all black, head to toe, and had a cinched waist. She was probably in her 70s. Foreign, maybe Romanian or something. Kind of gypsy-like. She had a severe underbite and terribly damaged, rotten and uneven teeth.
I was closer to her now and looking directly at her. She told me my bike was connected to the macabre; that its energy was dark and that I was going to be injured if I rode that bike.
I told her, rather empathically, No, it’s not, and I’m not!
She said she was a practitioner of the astrologica, of the occult, and that she was warning me of danger she could feel.
I thanked her then got in my car, the black bike attached to my rack, and tried to shake the encounter. I don’t consider myself superstitious, but that just wasn’t a fun experience. The more I looked at the situation though, I had to recognize I didn’t love the bike I had just purchased. When I’d first gone to look for a new bike to buy, I test-rode another model–a light silver-colored bike, kind of feminine and pretty; but when I returned to the store to purchase the bike, a different bike was on sale. That bike was all-black, and it was a savings of about $150. A better deal, right?
Yet even when I was purchasing the on-sale bike I wondered if car drivers would see me riding about on an all-black bike, and I wondered if I’d be able to find my bike among many parked bikes at a festival or large event I might attend on my bike. In other words, this woman—this very strange woman—gave words (maybe not the exact words I would have used) to address the energy I had felt around the bike: “You’re a compromise, dear black bike. I’m not happy with you. I’ll never love you the way I could love another.” That’s pretty much the tenor of my thoughts and feelings about this bike.
When I decided I wanted to return the bike (barely ridden), I told the bike-store owner about the lady with the clown-red hair and her dark predictions for me and the black bike. He agreed it was a rather odd experience, and he was fine with me returning the cursed (to me) bike, especially as I was upgrading to the pretty silver bike I liked more. He also said he had never seen that woman in the parking lot area–not before, nor since.
While I’d hoped to purchase my new bike with a $600 new-driver bonus from Lyft, I didn’t earn the bonus because, well, simple enough: I didn’t accumulate the number of rides needed to qualify for the bonus. But I did purchase the bike I wanted, and it rides like a dream. It’s also, thankfully, easy for me to lift and move. I’m very happy with it. Light, silvery, smooth. I fly on it like angels’ wings.
The black bike with its cursed connection to me is back in the store, hopefully ready to make some other rider very happy that they found the perfect bike for them…and on sale, no less!
