Going Dutch

We’ve been having fantastic fall weather – not raining a lot and most days are sunny and cool. After a summer and early fall of rain and rain and rain and rain and not much sun, people are recreating outside in droves. As I’ve been riding around, I’ve been noticing the variety of transportation people use here.

I was waiting to get on the punt the other day, and a bright yellow bullet-bike came up the hill at me. Behind yellow bullet-bike guy were 9 motorcycles, including one with a sidecar and a passenger wearing the old-style motorcycling goggles. It made me giggle. The punt was delayed a bit because there were two sailboats and a barge on the river, and they have the right of way, I guess.






Recently, I was walking and pushing Rebecca in her stroller. As I rounded the corner by our home, there were three hot air balloons above our house. This is ballooning country, but I’ve never seen them so close to our house. It was a lovely sight.





Then there was the lady on her powered wheelchair rolling toward the store one Saturday morning. And the guy behind her on the moped that really isn’t a moped it is so small. I was on my bike, and was trying to draft off the lady, but when I noticed there were at least 5 cars behind us going the speed of powered wheelchair lady, the first chance I got I passed her so the automobile drivers would have one less object (me) to avoid.





Rebecca and I watch for the horse and cart that goes past the house a few times a week. Sometimes I’m able to get outside fast enough to greet it, and the children on the cart like to wave at Rebecca. We also often see horses and their riders on the trails and roads around here.



I love that people go out in whatever vehicle they have. Today while running errands, I encountered a family who was walking around town do their own errands. The eldest daughter had a broken leg and she was out in her wheelchair, tooling around on the sidewalks with her younger sister pushing her.

It goes without saying bicycles are common here. Our breakfast time coincides with the start of the school day, so we watch the many, many children riding their bikes to school each morning. The days must be getting shorter because on Friday, most of the kids had their bicycle’s headlights working. We have a tandem bike here at The Barn, at least 12 other regular bikes in the garage (for various people, not all are ours), and my friend, the recumbent-bike riding man, I often see wheeling down the road toward the river on his recumbent bike. And every once in awhile I see a very practical bike tooling around the neighboring town.





Walking, Strollering, Wheelchairing, Horse and Carting, Bicycling, Mopeding, Motorcycling, Punting, Barging, Sailing, Ballooning, and Driving

And that’s not even including tractors and busses and trains and planes and subways and trams and lorries and other forms that I’m not thinking about right now. Whew!