Sunday, August 23, 2009

Bikes in Newspapers and Books and Everywhere!

Today's Sunday Styles of the NYTimes shows the fun of commuting to work by bike and just how stylish one can be on wheels. Check out Happy Trails now!

And as I started to read my current, light, end-of-summer library book, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's latest, The Husband Habit, I was delighted to learn that the protagonist is a bike commuter. Vanessa, a chef in Albuquerque, gave up her car some years before and gets around on her bike. While her sister, Larissa, heads off to do research overseas, Vanessa is charged with looking after her ill (and quite cantankerous) mother. Larissa has left her car with car-free Vanessa so that Vanessa can do her daughterly duty. Looking at the red Subaru in her yard elicits this feeling:

The sight of the car makes her feel weighted down, flightless, encumbered as a fruitcake. She wishes it away because it obstructs her view of the wildflowers, and because of where it demands she take herself. It's not that she cannot drive. It's that driving fast, and life, savored well, ought to be slow, even its fast moments taken not too seriously if at all possible (p 66).

1 comment:

MamaVee said...

I love bill and I love On the Street and that one is my favorite by far!