On the importance of carrying a large bag

Last Thursday night, I once again found myself in the position of needing to bike to Middletown to collect a car, although this time instead of a raw mid-spring night with drenching rain, it was the very definition of May biking perfection - 65 degrees and clear. So I threw on a bag with some tools and a pump and a spare tube and had myself a marvelous jaunt.

A nice bike ride on a nice night would, by itself, have been more than enough to make me happy. And in fact, when I got home I had received the news by e-mail that I would be getting a free Swift folding bike, so it was an especially good night. But on top of all that, the ride provided me with two extra goodies - (1) an object lesson in why it is always good to carry a large bag and (2) a cool found item:

If my dear wife hadn't known me for almost ten years already, she might have seen me heading out with a huge back and no stuff and asked, "Why are you carrying that huge bag with no stuff?" But she does know me, and she knows that if she had asked that, I would have said, "You never know. I might find something cool." And that night, I did find something cool, which made me very glad to have a huge bag with me: A perfectly good pair of galoshes that actually fit my size 13 feet!