Yellow Bicycles

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” Ernest Hemingway.

The weather at zero degrees ( C ) today has me wishing it were not winter and that a ride on a summer afternoon was planned. Best I could do was put on a yellow jersey and cycle to Denny’s.

Yellow is a cheerful color, associated with daffodils in the spring, with the sun in any season…And the maillot jaune. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillot_jaune

Bicycles offend few people and even inspire many.

Mark Twain said, “Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.”

H.G. Wells was unequivocal. “When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.”

And after bicycle and its rider have navigated many years unscathed, where do they go? Disposing of a worn out human body has its prescribed protocols, but where do old bicycles go when they are not up to it anymore? For retiring old bicycles see www.geocities.com/verdrahciretop/bikes.html

“The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community.” Ann Strong

That all said, here’s a last word from Paul Scott Mowrer: “There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast.”