On bicycles

Well, you should know we are originally from Monterrey, an industrial city in the northeast of Mexico, a city with a strong Texan influence. It is a place with almost 5 million inhabitants and a rather poor public transportation system. We used to spend most of our lives in the car, sometimes we would have breakfast there, talk about our day while driving back home, sometimes I would even have lunch there, while driving from one class to another. Distances are long and commuting time doubles due to bad roads and poor connections, I must confess I miss none of this while living in York. I cannot and do not intend to compare cities, I'd hate to sound like those who leave their hometown and suddenly find it "paradise on earth" or the worst place ever, let's say both places are different, and that is that. The place where we are living at the moment is a relatively small place, according to Wikipedia it's less than 200,000 inhabitants, and commuting distances do not represent a problem when going to school or a convenience store, but for a city sliker like me, asking her overnight to ride her bike for 16 kms to go to the supermarket and back carrying a week's groceries, is asking too much! I must say that I only speak on my behalf. My husband is a whole different story. Before leaving Mexico, Ru ha trying going to work on his bike, but it ended up being an almost suicidal task, with so many crazy driver and rather non-existing cycling infrastructure. His passion was fed by spending hours browsing websites on cycling, specially one called Copenhagenize, and every single day he would tell me with enthusiasm about the culture of getting everywhere by bike, not depending on cars, and enjoying the freedom of going everywhere, feeling the wind, moved by your own impulse, and I would think to myself: oh I love my Honda Civic! Well, with this scenario you won't be surprised to learn that the process to get used to riding a bike was a slow one for me, I was mentally not prepared for it, I kept telling myself I could not make it, while Ru would tell me the opposite. As his strategy was not working for me, he started saying that people who use the UB1 (Uni shuttle bus) was only for the lazy, because distances did not justify the need to take the bus. I obviously took it personal and thought "are you calling me lazy?"... I was not willing to take that. So there, here's my confession, I did not want to ride a bike when we first arrived in York, my parents told me to find a car and they would help us pay for it, and I honestly thought that was the way things would turn up, but one day, I stopped resisting the idea, I decided I would ride my bike and would give myself a chance. At first, my knees and my legs hurt, I was tired, I had to stop half way through our ride, sometimes I would loose myy balance, mostly when one of the kids was riding with me. I used to think that one day I would end up on the floor with my child... but it was just a matter of doing it that I learned to like it, I felt more and more confident about riding my bike. Ru was really happy and he would even compliment me, saying I looked more beautiful than usual when riding my bike. He pedals much faster than I do and when I try to catch up I feel like my heartbeat is a thousand a minute. We haven't been to every place in town yet, mostly because there are places we don't need to go to and the weather has not be ideal as to simply ride and explore. I know there are really nice places nearby, soon we'll get there, perhaps over the summer, because early this year we had a not very nice experience challenging the weather... you see, one nice Sunday morning we decided to go for a ride, along the racecourse and all the way to a cycle route with the Solar System, all very nice. We went all the way up to Jupiter but then decided to get back because it was getting late and the end of the route was still far. On the way back we had a bit of everything, strong winds, rain, and hail... without waterproof jackets and with the hail hitting the kids in the face I was furious with the one who had the great idea of going for a ride that day... but now I think it was a rather funny and unusual experience. Ru keeps nagging me and educating me on how to be a good cyclist, how to mark my turnings, using the right signalling, using the lights properly, wearing my helmet the right way,I give him a harder time than our own kids and at times I'm fed up with this cycling theme, but I reckon if it wasn't for him and his enthusiasm I would be missing all the fun. Now we're experiencing cycling in a whole different way, since he got what I believe is the best Xmas present Ru has ever received.