the GOT bike

In January of 2005 I visited the south of France with a bike and began by riding up, gently with lots of switchbacks, into the small villages of the maritime Alps. I was struck by many realizations. For one, World War Two happened there and was more than something in school history text books. Built into the hills, I would find old gun emplacements with the scars of incoming fire still visible on thick metalwork. The war wasn't just an idea. It was real. But for Europe, WWII is still very recent history. I grew up and live in the part of North America than was first settled by Europeans, but even there a really, really old house might date to the 1600s, maybe. On my ride up into the hills of France, I saw houses that possibly dated to a time before Christopher Columbus. Europe's buildinngs are old, far older than the automobile. When building a village without the need to accommodate cars, the passages can be narrow, even just wide enough to fit a person. It's cozy, or as I...