Bikes in Spain
Bikes in Madrid,
originally uploaded by 360bikers.
I haven’t blogged for quite awhile. There have been assorted reasons, mostly business related. For one thing, I was in Spain for a week providing support for a project. There was very little down time, but I did get to walk around Madrid a little bit.
It isn’t uncommon to see a lot of 2-wheel traffic in Madrid. The most common law enforcement vehicle was of this variety. What surprised me was two-fold. First, it’s scooters. Even the police were riding these quick little scooters. The added maneuverability and quickness in traffic seemed to make them a good choice.
The second was the age of the bikes. Outside of a few Harley Davidsons, I saw fewer than five bikes made in the last 3 years.
A motorcycle I saw several times that seemed to be popular was the Virago. Typically, these bikes showed excessive wear and were quite old. Abuse was the norm and you didn’t see any bikes that were “chromed out” in Madrid.
Overall, though, I would venture to say that you see more 2-wheel transportation in Madrid than in New York. Bikes and scooters have a lot of flexibility in the traffic and can “scoot up” when in grid-lock situations.
The country-side in Spain looks like it would be great to ride in the summer. This could be a possible goal sometime in the future.