Of Mats and bicycles

Mats has his 48th birthday today. The first time I saw him he brought hope to my desillusioned heart. I was by then starting to believe that on-fire guys were only to be found amongst radical left wing groups. He was then a 23 years old unpretentious young man, with wooden clogs and drum-sticks in the backpocket of his worn out jeans. He was speaking to a visiting audience and I was sitting in that audience. It was 1985. He spoke english with an accent I did not recognise. In those days I had full knowledge of the names of every land in Africa and in Southeast Asia, but had not a clue of what was beyond Denmark. Anyhow, he had been asked to tell of how he and his friends manufactured (on a hand-driven printing-press) pamphlets with bible scriptures in the albanian language, placed them in empty marmelade jars from the galley and dropped them in the Adriatic sea while sailing M/V Doulos on the east coast of Italy. Years later we got reports of albanians finding those jars on the beach and avidly reading the booklets. I also remember him telling of how they provided Scriptures to spiritually hungry russian and chinese sailors. As I said, it was 1985. Sometimes they just made an agreement with them of walking by the side of their ships after dark, these sailors would stretch out a hand from their portholes and they quickly handed over the small books in the right language. No face, no eyes, just a callous tanned hand. This guy made my 19 years old heart dance a walz. Little did I know then that I would end up marrying him and build a family with him! Mats lived his life out of inner convictions and he still totally does. In all these years I have never seen him do or claim anything just because "everybody does it". The Bible is his compass. That is one of the reasons why we still sleep in a draw-out-couch, we only buy second-hand and we recycle anything. Life with a radical is not always glamorous but it is indeed interesting! To the bicycles then. Mats has never allowed himself a new bicycle. He has taken himself though maritime academy rolling on his grandmother's rusty bike with a very bent front-wheel (he would not allow himself a new wheel either!), this while his fellow captain-students rode shining 28 gears mountain-bikes. Lately we have been watching him trying to put together pieces of different old bikes to build one single bicycle that would take him to and from the docks everyday (30 km a day). That is when the kids and I decided that dad needs a new bike. It was not without fear and trembling this morning that we rolled in the new bicycle from our neighbour who had hidden it for us. We knew exactly how it would be:

"What? What have you done!"

"Happy Birthday"

"It must have cost a fortune, it is not right..."

(we were prepared)

"Not really, it was on sale, and it is not a good brand, and look at the weldings they are not that well done, and we bought one with only three gears because the seven gears one was MUUUUCH more expensive..."

When we had managed to totally demolish the quality of our birthday present our Mats relaxed a bit and he is now the happy owner of a new bicycle.

Happy Birthday dearest Mats, enjoy your present, you deserve it!