As I said on Friday I'd seen the Blog it Forward initiative that Wayfair are running this Christmas and hoped to get involved. Wayfair are challenging bloggers to "spread festive cheer by doing a good deed. Deeds can include any act of kindness, no matter how big or small". I was mulling things over and wondering how I could get involved as for every blogger that takes part Wayfair will donate £50 to Habitat for Humanity.
Thinking nothing more of it we set out for a bike ride last Sunday morning. The forecast had said Sunday would be the better day, except it wasn't. It was windy and cycling was pretty hard work, especially as I'd not been out on my bike for a while. We decided to head up to Tower Bridge on the north side of the river and home along the south section of the Thames Path, reversing the route we'd done many times.
We went through the Greenwich foot tunnel and then as we cycled towards Tower Bridge it started to rain. It was so windy in some places that even in first gear it was hard to propel the bike forward, I seriously wondered what I was doing and if I was really just a fair weather cyclist. But we pressed ahead with wind tears rolling down my cheeks. And rain too, driving into my face. Nice.
Ahead of us we could see a cyclist crouched down by his bike. As we got closer we slowed to check he was ok, because let's face it no one would be stopping for a rest in the open in that weather.
We quickly learnt that his chain had come off. With one look at his bike - a step through fixed gear bike - we immediately knew that the hub cover would need to come off to get the chain back on. He seemed less sure, but with experience of this on my own bike we knew we were right.
He didn't have a tool to do this, but luckily for him we did. In fact we had two, as since this happened to me I've bought my own. So we set to work, and it wasn't long before MOH and the stranded cyclist were bonding over a bike chain, and I was given the important job of holding the screws!
And then it struck me. This was my small act of kindness. Yes it's small, but as I reflected later not every act of kindness needs to be a grand gesture and without the multi-tool to undo the screws he wouldn't have been cycling anywhere.
Thanks Wayfair, this is a great initiative and I hope that by bloggers spreading kindness you reach your target of donating £5,000 this December. The final part of the challenge is for me to nominate two blogging friends, so I'm nominating Lins from Boo & Maddie and Angie from Changing Pages.
