THIS is what Christmas is about!

Maybe it's the spirit of the season actually getting to me or something, but I'm in a real good mood. I'm talking dreams of sugar plum faries in compromising positions level of good. This has been a great Christmas, and not just for me, but for some of the more needy citizens of our fair city. For instance, last Friday I got to go witness a heaping helping of holiday cheer down at Mellow Johnny's, when JB and Sandy of Mix 94.7FM (IQ... dropping...), with the help of all the amazing wrenches and people at MJs, gave away almost 750 bicycles to needy families and children. My wife actually went down there to pick up 5 bikes for a family her company was sponsoring, so I accompanied her to see what all was going on. When I got there my mind was blown. Lines wrapping around half the building, radio people spilling copious amounts of personality all over the place, fake snow machine blowing soap suds into the air in a poor facsimile of a "white Christmas", but most of all, nearly everyone there was smiling. It didn't matter if they were picking up a bike for themselves or a family they were sponsoring, building bikes, running around doing all the administrative stuff, passing out free breakfast tacos (Whataburger, what), or even blabbering into a microphone, EVERYBODY was happy! I'm not talking regular "thank god traffic didn't suck" happy, I mean ear-to-ear grin, people laughing, children playing, heart growing three sizes too big kinda happiness. Seriously, if Boris Karloff were still with us I'd have wanted him to narrate the scene for me, it was that incredibly badass.

I only hung around for a little while since I still had to bike another 10 miles to work from there, but the few minutes I spent in the presence of all this happy holiday madness warmed my stony heart and reminded me that not everyone has the simple luxury of being able to buy a bike. Between my wife and I we're encroaching on double-digits with regards to our bike stable, but for many of the people receiving this unexpected gift, these are their VERY FIRST bikes. Think back to your first bike experience. Yeah, that. If you don't have a smile on your face right now you're a frikkin' grinch. Mad props to everyone involved, either through donations, working on the bikes, picking them up, or even just blahblahblahing on a top-40 mix station and raising the cheddar to put this whole thing on. As much as I hate on shitty lowest-common-denominator radio stations, I just can't hate JB and Sandy. In the 12 years they've been doing this they've given away over 11,000 bikes. Yes, eleven thousand. Damn. To top it all off, Lance Armstrong even made an appearance at the event, which kinda makes sense since it's his shop and all. When I showed up he was shilling on the radio with JB and Sandy so I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but that's probably a good thing since I automatically despise anyone with a bigger ego than mine. If you want to see a couple more pics of the event, check 'em out over on The Statesman website, or just cruise over to their "Fit City" blog and read a much better written account of what went down last week.

If this wasn't enough, another organization called Bikes for Goodness Sake managed to distribute over 421 bikes statewide to the children and families of military personel, both stateside and deployed abroad. 52 of these bikes were given away locally through the selfless assistance of the people at Buck's Bikes. I guess I can't really say "selfless" since they're getting some good press out of it, but it's a heck of a lot more than I did for anyone else this Christmas, hell of a job y'all! Despite my views of most things military, I do appreciate the sacrifices made by service members of all brances, and love to see this small token of appreciation being shown by a couple good-hearted locals. Forget all the big sales and that asshole who dressed in red and broke into lots of peoples' houses last night, THIS is what Christmas is about; the smile on those kids' faces when they saw their brand new bike under the tree yesterday. DOPE.

Update: Wow, I can't write. IGNORE ME!