The wheel: arguably one of the best inventions of all time. It�s been in existence for 55,000 years, and what does humanity have to show for it?

We have Houston.

We have grocery carts and golf carts. Street skates, in-line skates and skateboards. Normal strollers and fancy dolphin-shaped strollers. Wheelchairs. Ambulances and fire trucks. Cars, pickup trucks, vans, SUVs, recreational vehicles and Humvees. Motorcycles and scooters. Tractors and riding lawn mowers. Taxicabs, trolleys, buses, trains and airplanes. Trams and semi tractor-trailer trucks.

Our Life on Wheels revolves around the city�s 16,000 lane-miles of paved roads, streets, avenues, boulevards, thoroughfares, freeways, expressways and tollways. More than a quarter of a million people ride Metro�s buses each day. Houston automobile dealers report record-breaking new car sales this year. We have hundreds of miles of bicycle lanes and paths � many of them brand-new. Life on Wheels gets us around this sprawling city, helping us connect with one another.

In these pages, we are attempting not to reinvent the wheel, but merely to pay homage to it and the Best of Houston 2000. -- Sally Huffer, Best of Houston editor