Bicycles and REI Store
My children actually bought me a bicycle. On Friday, they went to the store for jeans (maybe that was an excuse), and they came back without jeans but with a bicycle and a helmet. Here, all cyclists are required to wear helmets. Now, in the evenings when Mark doesn’t have practice, they’re torturing him with a healthy lifestyle 🙂 We ride on bike and pedestrian paths through the desert.
Bicycles these days are quite strange. They come with a bunch of gadgets, with gear shifters, and you have to brake using levers on the handlebars. I’m used to the old way from my childhood: to stop, you just pedal backward, and the bicycle stops. Here, even though bike paths are laid out and are periodically cleaned by a mini tractor, there are still cactus thorns on them. So, people here prefer to buy bikes with wide, thick tires and deep treads if they ride on those paths. Many people ride regular road sports bikes in the designated bike lanes, but I think it’s unsafe, and why breathe exhaust fumes when you can ride on dedicated paths away from the roads?
The purchase of bicycles led to a lot of additional expenses. Besides helmets, we needed to buy water bottle holders, special bottles for those holders, lights so that passing cars and pedestrians can see you in the evening. We also got a holder for Valya’s cellphone on the bicycle. Valya bought herself special shorts and a shirt (thankfully, the rest of us didn’t need that). In short, we started visiting the bike shop like it was our second home. The bike salesman greets them like old friends.
Stop sign before the road
The trail goes into the mountains across the road
Pedestrian and bicycle path
The store REI is truly wonderful; they sell everything for tourism and recreation, and you want to buy everything. Recently, they bought a gift for an acquaintance, and they were given a membership card. This card grants discounts. Now, as members of this community (it’s a coöperative 🙂 seriously, after the name it says COOP), they only buy all their sports gear at this store, but those discounts are already built into their high prices 🙂
