Theme Thursday: Bicycle

I ride my bike a lot. I love my bike. He is my friend. My bike is a yellow and black mountain bike. Well, I keep telling him he is a mountain bike, but actually I think he might be a city bike wearing a disguise… He looks cool anyhow, and we have been trough a lot together. We have been through hell…, eh, well, maybe not hell, but hail nonetheless. We have been through heavy snow storms. We have been through ice. We have crashed on more than one occasion, due to ice. We have cussed over ice on several occasions. (Now I am talking really bad language here, people.) We have been going downhill, fast. We have been going uphill, not so fast, returning from town having had us a couple of cold ones together with laughter and good friends. We have jumped over bumps together. Jump over bumps, don’t you just love the sound of that? We have jumped into hedges too, and once even a tree. Riding your bike might be environmentally friendly, but still the environment I keep crashing into is not thanking me. Or keep crashing into…, we have had a couple of crashes, my bike and I, no big deal.

I live in Mariestad, which is a small town in the southern part of Sweden. Here it is still common to take your bike to go to work. I think it used to be even more common however... Recently I have noticed people who take their car to go only a couple of blocks. I don’t understand why you would want to do that. Maybe they fear that their hair-dos will get messed up or something. Maybe they are in love with their cars, as symbols of their statuses. Maybe they have their entire trunk full of Very Important And Heavy Objects that would be impossible to transport on a bike. Or maybe they just don’t know how to ride a bike…

The way I see it, when you take your bike to work you get some free exercise. Your mind can focus. Well, your mind can attempt to focus at least (how well you actually manage to focus is up to the mind, I guess). Going by bike you notice things you wouldn’t have seen if you hade been in your car, speeding. You notice the weather, the wind, the seasons changing, what kind of dog your neighbor just got, what time that very same guy seem to buy his morning coffee Every Single Morning, and what kind of flowers actually grow in the park… Riding your bike going to work in the morning you get to hear the music of the small town traffic embrace you as the people around you wake up and start going places. Sleepy small towns are so adorable in the mornings. I ride my bike with my eyes and my ears wide open and with a smile on my face.