I loved this one, and I can relate. I’m an adult and only 5′0″ (if you ever visit PEI or New-Brunswick, you’ll feel at home amongst the short Acadian women). I still can use the same bike I had when I was about 14.

not having a ready source of those white plastic tassels, I can only offer the thought that bikes can be (ahem) painted. That’s how I got to have a red bike, handed down from the black it’d been for my elder bro’.

The white plastic handlebar basket with the flowers, though? They really do still make those.

But if you’re honoring Gertie Gertie Stein Stein, shouldn’t she be Gertrude Gertrude Chibi Chibi?
Or would that only lead down the garden path to horrible, errible Chibi-Chibi-Bang-Bang jokes?

Good on you for getting the bike that FIT you. Pink? Pink can be cured.

Denise - PEI! My obvious ancestral home! Hee.

Ru - Gertrude Chibi is not, actually, an homage to Gertrude Stein. It’s a very long story. It involves demons. And yes! Pink can be cured! Sadly, my local bike painting person threatened to paint it a HOTTER pink with SPARKLES!

Demon-chibi sounds like a story worth anticipating…for a while.

Sparkles, now there you go!

Some pals of ours swear by the efficacy of varnishing (just one) toenail as a cure-all against grumpiness (okay, they dance, so much may be Understood about this brand of silliness right away)
– once on travels about we found a bottle of clear-with-sparkles nail polish that changes color in sunlight and brought it back to them.

Does Gertrude Chibi *need* something like this?

The crayola roll-on glue-with-sparkles-in could do the job as well, I’m quite sure. Aren’t you glad I don’t live right aqround the corner with my wicked paintbrush? (hums insouciantly…)