Two Walls

This week the world is celebrating 20 years to the fall of the Berlin wall.

You might ask what has this got to do with bicycles? After all, I an not a historian. In fact I am not even Human and logically, your affairs should be of no concern to me.

And yet, there are a couple of points that are of interest to me, as a bike. The first is that today, what is used to be a wall of separation has been largely turned into a bike path. What bike can be indifferent to such a turn of affairs? But the salient point, to me, is that  I live some 10 miles from another wall, not less infamous than the Berlin wall, a wall built on the exact premise as the Berlin wall, which says that walls solve problems, and they do not. They did not stop the Mongols in China, they did not stop the Germans in France and they did not stop the Egyptians at the Suez canal.

Hiding behind walls is a very Human trait, but of course it is a chimera. And I find it ironic that the very week were humanity at large is rejoicing over that memorable event, two decades ago, when people took their fate in their hands and tore down the Berlin wall, the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale, happened to my wall.  Protesters managed – twice – to dismantle sections of the Separation wall and thus prove my point, that walls are not the answer. In fact, they might be a part of the problem.

Us, bikes, like the mechanical horses that we are – love open land. We thrive in the sense of freedom an open land gives us and we firmly believe  Humans should not create obstacles whose sole purpose is cut off sections of humanity from each other.

If bikes had religion, I would be praying for tearing down all barriers  between Humans, and of course between bikes.

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