My Two Cents Worth

I ride my bicycle to work. I don't want a medal for this. I don't need one. I'm picking up spare change on the way.
I picked up this habit (get it?) from my older brother - who is still the master in the art of spotting and retrieving dropped coinage. He has his own database to track how much money he's taken in on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. He's not ready to quit his day job just yet, but he does have to regularly lay in a supply of coin rolls of various denominations.
This obsession with picking up other people's money seems frugal to some, compulsive to others. What others think stopped being a primary concern of mine a long time ago, so the whole "picking up people's change thing" is hardly a ripple in my pond. Some people have expressed a reasonable concern for my health, considering that I sometimes stop my bike (on side streets, never busy thoroughfares) to bend over and pick up a few cents. "Somebody's going to run you over someday," they say. Quite possible, since I present an easier target when I'm standing still. I have a larger concern that someday I will be bending over to pick up somebody's nickel and damage my spine to the tune of several thousand dollars. Oh well - lift with your knees, I guess.
The other thing I find interesting about this little hobby of mine is the abundance of pennies I find on the streets of Oakland. I have puzzled for some time about how and why I might periodically find ten, twenty, even thirty pennies scattered in the middle of a street. I have wondered if they were the remnants of some robbery gone bad - dropped in the street out of frustration. Or could it be some youth/gang related tribute to fallen comrades - or a mark of some heinous act of retribution to come? I think it's more likely that they're just tossed out on the asphalt for cars to run over like we used to put a penny on the railroad tracks for trains to smash. With all the kids doing donuts in intersections here in Oakland, it might just be a fun little sideshow for the sideshow - to see if the car can spit the pennies out behind the car as it peels out.
Maybe - as you can see, I've spent some time pondering it. I generally don't pick up the pennies, nickels or dimes that have been mangled beyond use. Even the guys stopping to pick up loose change have some standards.