Giving Thanks

It's Thanksgiving and I give thanks to the wheel that only broke half its spokes on the drive side (6) and cracked the inside race of the bearing (if the wheel had collapsed it would not be pretty); vxb.com a wonderful clear, easy-to-navigate bearing website that is providing me with a replacement bearing (aka steel wheels separated by steel balls-ceramic if you want to spring for it); the 20" wheel that transformed a tippy too-tall recumbent into a speed machine with a great aero profile of a long thin wedge; the trash wheel whose axle bearings were so notchy it felt like there were a couple of boulders in the races transformed by replacement bearings; the wheels on all my bikes that spin pretty well and get me to work on time; the wheel that creates dichroic emanations that improve my brain functions (patent pending); the pawn idler wheels whose existence is largely unseen and anonymous but also vital demonstratable when a bent arm derails the chain; what of the repetition of the wheel's cycle itself as I go to work or go home or go shopping on my heavy hauler?; and thanks to the eight fold path (represented by a wheel) to follow; the wheel of the seasons as one day fuses into another with changes but discrete; the wheel of the stars at night so slowly turning it might seem still but for the passage of dark (and the dark within each of us) itself; and thanks to the endless cycle of birth and death, relief for endings and joyful opportunities but how it is seen is in the personal and specific.