Please pause with me for a moment of silence...

*     *     *     *     *

I'm sorry to report that a dear friend has died.

My steady steed, my immutible mount, my trusty transport over the last three years -- yes, good old "Cleveland Brown" has gone to that great Rust Belt in the sky, as of about two o'clock this afternoon.  Naturally, at this point I just want to remember the good times... nevermind the times when the old two-wheeler's persona shifted toward the Dark Side (earning him the occasional moniker Darth Brown)... For the most part, through multiple cycles of getting beat up and then getting built back up again, Cleveland Brown had been a tried and true traveling companion -- traversing thousands of kilometers over concrete, asphalt, cobblestones, grass, dirt, mud, ice, and snow in every corner of Amsterdam throughout the majority of my time living here.  But now, I'm sorry to say, he is no more.

The short story is that he cracked -- right through the frame... It wasn't any kind of dramatic accident that brought about the end (at least not as far as I'm aware).  It was just a creaking sound up around the handlebars that kept getting louder and louder until it could not be ignored any longer.  Taking the bicycle into the neighborhood bicycle shop this afternoon, it took the guy about sixteen seconds to spot the fissure in the front-end of the frame... And unfortunately, such a crack is the kind of damage from which it's basically impossible to be restored.  If I were to have kept riding Cleveland Brown until the crack became complete, I would have found myself in a nasty head-first accident somehow, someday, somewhere out in the city.  As you can imagine, such a scenario would not have been a pretty one.  Thus, this is basically why Cleveland Brown met his demise today.

Now I'm faced with the prospect of starting all over again.

Since an Amsterdammer can scarcely go a day without a bicycle -- and since I've really come to know and trust our neighborhood bicycle shop --  I went ahead and ponied up for a "new" second-hand bicycle right then and there:  a medium-gray framed specimen with new wheels, new chain, and new lighting kit... I'm not sure of the make, but the word "Ricardo" is emblazoned on the rear vertical shaft.  And even though it's hard to say at this point, I feel like there is much hope and promise for the future...

I just have to come up with a name for the new ride.

For the longest time, I have had a peculiar habit of naming my vehicles. I've actually done so ever since I first learned to drive... In those early days, it was a Subaru station wagon presumably manufactured sometime in the early 1980s -- and being the Star Wars era that it was, our family mimicked the name of one of the film series' main characters in christening the family car "Obi-Two Subaru."  When Obi-Two died a couple of months after I acquired my driver's license, I found myself the proud owner of my "own" car: a bright red 1985 Chevrolet Chevette that was shortly dubbed "the Cherry Bomb." From the summer following my sixteenth birthday all the way up until the last summer that I lived in America -- encompassing the majority of my high school years, the entirety of my university experience, and my first years of marriage and ministry -- the Cherry Bomb was a faithful and true (if not always the most chic or elegant) traveling companion.  And of course, there were other vehicles throughout the years in America -- even concurrent to the good ol' Cherry Bomb: Marci's Chrysler LeBaron that became known by the French title "Noir Desir" ("Black Wish")... Our 1992 Toyota Camry, "the Sopwith Camel"... Even my red bicycle unimaginitively referred to by its obscure manufacturing moniker "Dynasty" -- or "the Nasty" for short... I named them all.  Still, when I made the move to Europe in 2003 -- to live in the city of Amsterdam, where I knew I would be depending almost entirely on public transportation, walking, and bicycling -- I wasn't so sure that my vehicular naming habit would be able continue...

I shouldn't have doubted.  When I first moved to Amsterdam, I found myself the proud owner of a sleek Batavus three-speed that I dubbed "Maher-shalal-hash-baz" -- based on an obscure section of the Bible (Isaiah 8:1) in which the prophet Isaiah is instructed to name his son, "quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil."  After Maher-shalal-hash-baz was stolen, however, I downgraded to a junky green bicycle that I named "Niet Makkelijk" (Dutch for "Not Easy" -- refering to the song by Kermit the Frog and to the way that the bicycle itself rode).  Less than a year later, I settled on a more middle-of-the-road bicycle that became Cleveland (a.k.a. Darth) Brown.  He was named in homage to my home state's principal metropolis -- a reinvigorated Rust-Belt city (like the bike itself) and home to a football team whose name conveniently coincided with the paint job on the bicycle...

It's fun to think back on these treasured memories from the past.  Now that Cleveland Brown has joined the ranks of history, though, I must reinvent a new persona for a new bicycle.  As you've probably picked up from the other christenings of my transportation, I usually stay away from humanistic names (like "Johnny" or "Suzy")... And I often incorporate some element of the vehicle's color and/or make... But since acquiring my new old bicycle this afternoon, I have yet to be struck by any particular inspiration for a new name.

Does anyone have any suggestions?