Bicycling

I bought a bicycle a couple of months ago -- a very nice recumbent. I haven't been a bike rider since college. Now I'm all over town on this thing. I like to get up in the high gears and crank it like crazy!

And this is certainly the town for it. Corvallis has been cited for its bicycle-friendliness. There are lots of bike lanes and trails, paved and unpaved. Automobile drivers seem generally courteous. And downtown every block seems to have a bike shop. In with the crowd of normal bikes, I see many odd rigs -- extreme recumbents, tricycles, tandems, sidecars, trains of trailers. One of our neighbors made a bike trailer for his canoe.

Leela will get a bike soon. She bought a helmet today and promptly took off on my bike -- gone for over an hour. "I was starting to worry," said I on her safe return. "Like I do when you're out," she replied.

In Austin the idea of bicycling frightened me. It can be dicey here too, of course, but it's not overly intimidating. Many activities are less formidable in the doing than in the imagining.

Will the winter rains cool my enthusiasm? I don't know. Right now we have only one car -- our little Honda Fit. We don't plan to get another. The rain and cold don't keep many of the bike riders off the road. They just put on their gear and go.