Pedal for life

I’ve been watching the PBS series Call the Midwife http://www.pbs.org/programs/call-the-midwife  based on a memoir by British nurse Jennifer Worth, and narrated by Vanessa Redgrave, whose voice I have been captured by since the film Atonement.  I consider the film a classic; with superb performances, beautiful direction, a moving soundtrack, a script with magnificent depth, a storyline with an intricate plot and a cinematic treasure that didn’t leave me for months on end.

Tonight will be the last episode of Call the Midwife until 2013, and I shall miss it. It’s immensely satisfying—a period piece that takes place in London’s East End with people coming together in tough times and bonding within a community regardless of class or color.

As a mode of transportation, the characters cycle from one place to another.  It takes me back to the last days of April 1992, when the day started wet and gray and threatened to get uglier as Berliners tried to get to work, to school, or to the doctors, when the public transit system shut down— the closest thing to a nationwide general strike since World War II. Cycling through the heart of some European cities can be a terrifying experience as you jostle for space with cars, trucks and scooters that whiz by with only inches to spare. Not so in Berlin, the urban infrastructure was cycling friendly and I perched on my red cruiser along with other cyclists and used both the bike path and designated bus lane to get around.  

The exercise kept me warm and bolstered my sense of well-being—cycling injected fun and whimsy back into my life, after a long winter.  By the time spring hit two weeks later, I rode everywhere and felt like a girl again, as I had on my turquoise Schwinn bicycle— carefree as the wind.  Being able to take in the sights and feeling my legs getting stronger, my heart beating faster, best of all I was part of a community; waving to the neighbors, florist, and the baker in a spirit of friendliness.

Visiting Barcelona in 2010, Steven and I rented bikes but only for one day, when the weather was good. It was easier to get through the crowds and the city embraced cycling as a safe, clean, healthy, inexpensive and even trendy way to get around town. They even had parking lots for bicycles.

But it wasn’t just for show. European transport officials were trying to cut down on carbon emissions. Ironic, on how things make a revival.  The few photos that we have of my late father-in-law before he endured the atrocities of Auschwitz are of him young and happy riding his bike on the streets of Poland. Makes you wonder about our modern erratic perception of lifestyle— how easily we shift from satisfactory to mindless only to bring back the former again.   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVuRWdu_Ifg&feature=related