From four wheels to two

It's now official.  The International Geneva Motor Show opened this morning.  For the next ten days, the latest models and trends in the automobile world will be featured before a mostly adoring public.  I still haven't decided whether I'll attend or not.  The decision window is drawing to a close though, so I'll have to make up my mind soon.

Yesterday's print edition of the Tribune de Genève mentioned that there is a sort of counter event being held in Geneva, running concurrently with its larger and much better known competitor.  This event will feature two-wheeled vehicles, i.e., bicycles.  Pedal power is, after all, the ultimate in environmentally-friendly transportation.  The alternate exposition will also feature motorized bicycles.  Of course, gas-powered motorbikes have been around for quite a while.  I well remember first seeing mobylettes, aka mopeds or scooters in Morocco in the 1960s.  More recently however, electric bicycles have become the rage, in large part because there are no noxious emissions.

I well remember my own first bike.  My father bought it for me when I was five years old because I would be attending school on the other side of my small home town.  Although it doesn't seem like a long way now, for those days, and for a five-year-old who was traveling unaccompanied, it was indeed quite a trek.  The bicycle, purchased at the local Coast to Coast store (that is definitely a name from the past -- a long-gone chain store), was a mint green Monarch bicycle with the big balloon tires that were in fashion at the time.  The "time" was the late 1940s.  The bicycle was beautiful to my eyes, especially because it was brand-new.  It was always a treat to get something new.  Usually, I received hand-me-downs from my older cousins.  Even though that bike probably weighed more than I did, I was so proud of it.  I rode it then and for many years, until I went away to high school in the Big City.  I even used it for a time when I was a grad student at the state university several years later.  I don't believe that my mother ever forgave me for selling it in a garage sale in 1978. 

From then until about 1990, I didn't have a bicycle again.  Then HWMBO decided that it was time for me to get myself in physical shape and so he gifted me with a bicycle from Toys 'R Us.  While it certainly wasn't a toy, it was nothing like the sleek lightweight bicycles that other adults were using.  In fact, it greatly resembled my old balloon-tired Monarch and weighed just about as much.  It differed from the Monarch because it was a ten-speed.  The brave old Monarch had been a good, old-fashioned one-speed.  And believe me, that ten-speed feature was a great improvement.  So I tried to relearn my lost biking skills.  Lo and behold, they came right back.

In fact, I was so encouraged that HWMBO and I went on a bike tour of the châteaux on the Loire in France.  We enjoyed the experience so much that we went on several other bike tours: to Nova Scotia, to Provence, to the Gulf Islands off Vancouver Island, and finally, to the Czech Republic and Austria.  In the meantime, we both realized that we needed more serious bikes.  We weren't quite speed racers, nor were we trail riders, so we opted for Trek hybrids.  We still have them now.

Switzerland is a wonderful place for biking.  There are so many picturesque opportunities, many literally minutes from my door.  I've fully resolved to do much more biking in 2010 than I have done in recent years.  It is a real rush.  It's great for one's health and well-being.  Most of all, it is something that should not be missed.