I pick up all the pennies I find along the road.
It’s a simple superstition: Don’t distain the penny, and you’ll never be down to your last one.
When I started biking to work four years ago, I would often run into penny massacres, dozens of pennies flung recklessly from automobile ashtrays. Talk about bad karma.
These penny troves were troublesome because–as everybody knows–you can only take the heads-up pennies. The tails-up pennies must be flipped over and left for the next person. Concentration is required as one works across a field of pennies so that a newly flipped penny is not taken in error.
At first I kept my pennies in a large jar. It seemed I would soon have enough for a new bicycle.
But a penny jar is really only suitable for pocket pennies. Not road pennies. They start as clones but the world changes them. They become beautiful.
