Found on the rail trail behind my apartment, this bike light doesn’t necessarily seem like an object the typical person would stop to pick up.

Almost in perfect condition, the bike light is pretty unscathed for something that was nestled in the dirt and probably had quite the fall from a moving person’s belt while they were cycling. This object is bright candy apple red and black, and about 2 inches in width, 1 inch in height. It must have fallen off of someone pretty recently before I snatched it up and maybe they even had bought it recently, because the light works quite well.

Okay, so whenever I find things and decide on keeping them I feel a twinge of guilt. Yet it also reminds me of geocaching (a fun pastime: defined as an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a GPS or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world)  and adventure, like finding buried treasure (even if this item was not exactly hidden) and hey, if I saw the person who actually dropped it, I would definitely have gave it back to them!

Moving on, the reason why I kept this object: it is memento for another set of objects that always hold dearly to my heart: bicycles!

My father owns three different types of bikes, I have two, and my mother has one. So that makes six bikes for my small family that fit snugly into our garage, somehow, among other objects. (And I still would like to own more!)

It took me a while to learn how to ride. My dad taught me in the parking lot of the school across the street from my childhood house and it took me until the ripe age of 10 to finally get the hang of it without the training wheels. Before learning, my parents forced me into their bike escapades by putting me onto this contraption which turned my dad’s bike practically into a tricycle. Prior to that, I would sit in a little trailer, which I adored because it was like a mini moving tent. They even found ways to bring our dogs on the bike rides.

Now my father is almost 60 and handicapped and somehow, miraculously, the man can still ride a bicycle even though he can barely walk. This mode of transportation is extremely important to me because at the age of 20, I still don’t have a driver’s license, but for the past 10 years I’ve enjoyed pedaling myself to places I would like to go and feeling the wind in my hair. It’s exhilarating and feels rewarding when you reach your destination. To me, a bicycle is a magical object.

My parents have taken their bikes up to New Paltz to ride on the very trail I found this light on.

I’m thinking of giving my dad the light for his birthday so he can put it to good use.