Without a hitch

Lately we have been chanelling our life savings into our local bike shop. In addition to each buying a new bike in the last few months, we have also picked up an infant bike seat, a helmet for Liam (well… that was a gift from Gramma & Grampa Cook), and most recently, a new bike rack. We used to have a rack that strapped onto the trunk of our car, but now that the truck is our family vehicle it was time for something different. Even without knowing about Chad’s plan to kit us out with new bikes, I had anticipated the need for a hitch-mounted rack, and started looking into it as a Christmas gift for Chad last year. I stopped looking into it when the dealership quoted me almost $500 for the hitch alone, nevermind the rack. But when Chad’s biking enthusiasm picked up in the spring I thought it would make an appropriate Father’s Day gift and bit the bullet and started calling around for hitches.

Chad has the uncanny ability to go out and buy exactly what I am thinking of getting him for the next major holiday at exactly that time, and it wasn’t long before he came home and announced that he was looking into buying a hitch-mounted rack. So much for my great idea. To make a long story short, within a few weeks we had a hitch installed and a new bike rack mounted. Luckily, the bike shop came through with a much better deal than the car dealership could muster.

Somehow, over the past few weeks, Chad started to refer to this new hitch as my birthday present. Which offended me on two levels. Number one, what kind of man gets his wife a car accessory as a birthday present? And number two, how did this go from being my gift for him, to his gift for me? Somehow, I never wind up getting credit when I come up with a good gift idea.

There is really no point to this story, except to say thanks to Chad and his family for having a few other birthday surprises up their sleeves so that I was not left trying to act excited about having just received a new hitch for my birthday. Chad, I hope you are able to muster up some excitement over it on Father’s Day, because it’s still your gift. :)

(In case you’re wondering why I am thanking Chad’s family and not my own, it’s because birthdays seem to be done entirely different in the Robinson family… sometimes not even acknowledged. You know who you are!!)

I just ran into Mark (Cindy’s husband) at the printer, and he reported to me (after speaking with Cindy at lunch) that Liam is having another rough day today. This may interfere with my plans to catch the season 2 premiere of Lost again tonight (9 p.m. Jenn!!) if I am sitting up with him all night. Well, it could be worse… it could have been an epi I’d never seen before…