The PENNY FARTHING coincidence

The PENNY FARTHING coincidence.

There is an old fashioned bike called a penny farthing. You may have seen it in cartoons. It has a HUGE GIANT wheel in the front and a TINY LITTLE wheel in the back. It was a bike that was only popular in the 1870’s. The only reason I even know what it is called is because back in 1989, when I was in college I learned what it was from a friend. I have not thought about that bike or the strange name of the bike since then…until a few months ago. I was in my apartment, suddenly the words PENNY FARTHING pop into my head, a word I only used one time back in 1989. I have not thought of that word for 16 years. I was surprised that I could still remember it. And why did it suddenly pop into my head after all these years? It became an obsession of mine. I wanted to OWN a penny farthing! I had to have one! I would be the only person in Montreal with a bike like that. I would be known as “THAT GUY WITH THE PENNY FARTHING.” So I tell my girlfriend about it, while we were instant messaging over the computer. Of course I had to explain to her what a penny farthing is. So we looked at penny farthings on the internet. Right away she said “NO WAY.” She did not approve of me owning a penny farthing. I begged and pleaded with her, but she was completely opposed to the idea. She did humor by looking at them on the internet though. We also found a video clip of how to mount and dismount on one of these bikes, not an easy thing to do. And we found a video clip of someone wiping out on a penny farthing. It is worse than wiping out on a regular bike because the bike is 5 or 6 feet tall, with no brakes!

Here comes the coincidence part!

THE VERY NEXT DAY, my girlfriend went to get a bite to eat. She decided to go to this Chinese place she always go to. It is in a strip mall. There is another restaurant in the strip mall too, a steak BBQ place. She drove in to the strip mall in her car. Something caught her eye. She almost smashed into a wall because she was so shocked at what she saw. There, leaned against the wall of the steak place…A PENNY FARTHING!!

The very same bike we had we talked about the night before, the very same bike she had never seen or heard of in her life until I obsessed about it and wanted to get one. So she called me immediately after she almost smashed her car. I was as shocked as her. I’m the one that wanted a penny farthing, but she is the one gets to see one for real! What are the odds of seeing a bike this rare the day after we spend an hour on the internet looking at this type of bike?

There’s more to this story!

I was still obsessing about the penny farthing the next night. I took it as a sign from the Gods that I needed to own a penny farthing. How else can you explain what just happened? She still said NO. So we looked at other bikes on the internet. She found something called a TANDEM BIKE. I asked what that was. She sent me a link to a website. I saw the bike. I know these bikes! I did not know they were called tandem bikes. I always called them DOUBLE BIKES, or 2 PERSON BIKES. I absolutely was not interested in getting a tandem bike, I wanted a penny farthing. But I humored her as we looked at tandem bikes on the internet. Neither of us have ever actually seen a tandem bike for real, only in movies and cartoons.

THE VERY NEXT DAY, my girlfriend was driving to school in the morning. It is normally a 15 minute drive. But this time there was traffic and she wasn’t even half way there yet and it was already a half hour drive. There is never traffic on that road! So there she is stuck in traffic and a huge trailer pulls up into the lane next to her. She was stuck in traffic for 20 minutes right next to this trailer. It was like those trailers that carry cars. Only this one was not carrying cars. It was carrying about 20 TANDEM BIKES!!!!!

My girlfriend, Nefta, is more convinced than ever that her life is being staged like in the movie THE TRUEMAN SHOW.