I was surprised the other day to get an envelope in the mail with a return address of Oregon Randonneurs. First of all, I didn’t even know there was a rando mailing address; secondly, what could they possibly be sending me, anyway?
It turns out it was the brevet cards for all the rides I’d done this year:
(it may not seem like much, but those cards sure represent a lot of miles:)
In retrospect, someone probably did tell me at one point that these would get mailed back to me (I guess that’s why you put your address on the back of them), though of course at the time I didn’t think to retain that information. So it was a total surprise when they showed up in my mail, safely returned to me like little bikey homing pigeons.
I looked at them, then unceremoniously dumped them into my recycling. Was that somehow disrespectful to the effort they represent? Does anyone actually do anything with these cards? Save them for posterity? Wallpaper a choice room? Should I be treating these relics with more respect? Let me know, oh wise randonneurs:)
I usually just put ’em up on my bulletin board. (Looking at one now!)
Or make a collage out of it.
Also, I hope to get to a point where I get more than one in that envelope. That way, when I get to the level you’ve achieved, I can toss ’em into the recycling bin, because it just doesn’t matter anymore. ;-)
ha! That kind of makes me feel like a pompous jackass: “oh, look at me and allllllll my brevet cards.” heh. Which is funny, since I honestly didn’t even do that many rides.
My first impulse is to save this kind of stuff (“it might be fun to look back on some day!”), but then I try to fight that impulse in the spirit of not accumulating too much stuff. I never know.
I hear you. I have the compulsion to save these kinds of things, but where do I store it? I have scads of envelopes of “ephemera” that I’ve collected over the years.
I pile them up, take a picture, then either lose or recycle them (I think that my 2011 pile-o-cards is somewhere in my office under a few layers of fabric pieces; eventually I’ll find ’em and send them on to a new life.)
hm. So it sounds like most people don’t really keep these. Is that the message? :)