Because of the surgeries on my eye, I have not been on my bike since late October.  It is going to be a slog to get back into shape for the spring, but I will!  It's such a great way to be out and to move without feeling like you're working at it.  There's so much to see from a bike!

But I learned here that bikes are not just recreation, they are transportation, and it seems the pandemic has created an epidemic of bike building - bikes for transport!

There are so many bike shops here who build bikes for their customers.  Of course, you can get them at the supermarket, too, but that's not for folks who are serious about their bikes.  It seems that during this last year, the "Lastrad" or transport bike has seen a real boom!  You can carry a small refrigerator in on the bike or three kids!  

There are lots more cars than places to park them and bikes are often quicker and less stressful to use, not to mention healthier. We're a pretty "green" city, though there are others that are greener, but they estimate there are 2-3,000 of these bikes right now in Bremen.  Wow.  

IF I had little kids and IF I were younger, I'd consider that.  But I think I'll keep with my regular old bike.  

I just want to ride again.

Operational Changes

 Wow.  Weeks and weeks without an update. There have been lots of reasons.

Number One has to be corona.  It's been going on for months of course, but in the last few, the cocooning has been more intense.  We go nowhere except to market to market.  We so very rarely meet friends in person.  We do walk, though most often it is from home:  through the cemetery, around the small garden plots, down to the Manor House at Schönebeck, back home.

And my eye.  Oh, the eye.  It broke, the retina.  Imagine a stack of plates.  

Now imagine that in the middle the lines don't stay straight, but they make a sort of step and in the middle of the step, the image just goes away.  Weird, huh?  So, I called the doc who's been following this problem for a while and he said, Well, now it's time for the surgery.  

So surgery, scheduled and then delayed because of a cold (and who knows if it is a cold these days?) and then a couple of weeks of looking at your toes all the time and then finding out the surgery didn't work and then doing the surgery again, but different.  

Between the two surgeries, we did have a chance to take some walks, get outside, stretch our legs, breathe the fresh air.

Now it is mostly on the sofa or in the bed, 18-20 hours a day lying on my side, reading the news, listening to podcasts and books, randomly reading. 

I'm willing to do whatever to be sure I can see as well as possible for the rest of my time here on this earth.  Because I want to stitch and sew and do things with my hands.  I miss that a lot.

Here's to good eye health and healing.