my bike and me

This was definitely the most memorable birthday gift of the first quarter century of my life:

That smile on my face, and the almost psychotic look in my eye, says it all. I loved that bike. It didn’t take long before the training wheels were off and I could ride around the neighborhood with all the other kids. Yes, this past summer of 2006 was a milestone for me and I had a blast.

Actually, I’m really looking forward to biking with my family this year. If only this snow would go away. Here we are in the middle of March and it’s snowing today. Winter is not giving up without a fight. There is so much snow still, and no sign of the cold breaking. This picture of three of our children and the family dog was just taken today:

 

I suppose in no time we will be dusting off the bikes and enjoying summer. This reminds me of something quite humorous that I learned this week from one of my English students. A young man from India told me about how people in his country use the English word “bicycle,” instead of the Hindi word for bike. I asked him why they didn’t just use the word in their own language. He then spoke the word to me. Everyone around, who heard our conversation, started giggling. The word was literally the length of an entire sentence. How could “bike” in English be so long to say in Hindi? Then he told us that there was originally no word for “bicycle” in his native tongue, and that this is why the Hindi word for “bike” is so long. I asked him how it translates into English. He said, “a two wheeled, man powered, transportation machine.”