Falk Travel Tracks: I bike in my jeans...

...I must confess. I also bike wearing flip flops, sandals, boots, heels, cowboy boots and flats. I bike wearing shorts, skirts, dresses, yoga pants, dress pants (though my British students would snicker at my use of the words pants - for them, that means underwear - they would say trousers. I don't just bike in my underwear, let's make that clear) and un-dressy pants. I bike in the sun, the rain, the sleet and snow, gale force winds, pleasurable breezes, humid days, biting cold days, lovely temperature days. Before moving here, I was unused to biking in anything other than proper biking wear - biking was a pleasure activity (OK, I'm not fooling anyone who knows me, I didn't even bike for pleasure, I wasn't much of a biker. Though I liked to fancy myself as an avid road biker, if I had had a road bike.)

Now my biking days are numbered. Soon, I will return to relying on a car to get me to where I need to go. There is no good or bad to that - living in a mountain community makes it difficult to rely solely on biking or public transportation. And there are things I have missed about my car - warmth in the winter, protection from the cold and wind, singing loudly in the car when I am alone. It will be the end of looking at the weather report and wondering if I need to bring my rain gear with me, hemming and hawing and then deciding to bring them because it would probably rain anyway at some point in the day. Yeah, I look forward to that.

But I do dislike the word end. There is such finality to the word. Even when you say it, the pronounced "d" is so forceful. I can fool myself and say, my time here is not the end, just a pause, I'll be back. But for this experience, it is the end. If I do come back, I will be older and I won't be able to relive what I had these past two years. Soon, these years will settle themselves into the crevices of my memory and when I recall them, the difficulties and struggles will erode with the victories and successes forming a landscape in my mind that can't be replicated. So, this is the end. For now.

And though the mountains draw us back home, I know our lives in the Netherlands will travel with us. I am not sure how yet...what I do know is, the next time you drive down Highway 6 and see a biker wearing heals, it very well be me.

Cheers,

Noel

The pictures that follow are of our last jaunt in Europe: Saint-Cast-Le-Guildo, Brittany, France and World War II memorial sites in Normandy, France.

Our family has come a long way from the early days of our move and traveling and site-seeing. Our children no longer make farting noises and play guns in churches. They now play hopscotch on grave stones in the floors of churches, save their farting noises for outside and play guns on battlefield sites. This, I see as an improvement.