Technically, we own three cars. All three are paid off. Each one has at least 130,000 miles on it. Oddly, each one looks much younger than its age and mileage might suggest -- especially considering that for the most part, they have lived their lives outside our garage. Today one lives in Cincinnati, one in Kent, and one in Bluffton.

Open the door of our unattached single car garage and you'll find the reason that the cars sit outside. Bicycles. A lot of them. Too many of them. They outnumber the members of the family. I'm really not sure how this happened, except for the fact that we've inherited most of them.

There's the tandem, a hand-me-down from my brother and SIL, who discovered that tandems don't work well in the mountains of Virginia. It made the trip from VA to Ohio on the back of a Volvo sedan, and somehow made it in one piece despite the fact that end to end, it was slightly longer than the width of a car lane. We ride it regularly, but that's another story...the husband is not the most careful rider.

Next to that is a 12-speed Concord touring bike that belonged to my dad. It had a little gear problem recently and we thought it was headed to bike heaven since the guys at the bike shop discovered the part was no longer available. Lucky for us, a salesman showed the guys how to wrangle the thing back into gear. He gave it a kick and it clicked back into place. Or something like that.

One of my favorites -- partly because it was my dad's and partly because I love the turquoise color -- is another Concord, this one a fat-tired mountain bike that he bought after wrecking the 12 speed (above). It spent a few years in Kent, but recently returned to join the bicycle brigade.

Continue reading this column at: http://steinermp.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/bicycles-outnumber-cars/