Ok, so I got a new bike while I was in China. (Actually, I got two new bikes and left one in China, but that's another story.) I'm thinking of the one I ordered in the hotel room in Shang Hai, and that got delivered right after I got home - a beautiful purple (I thought it was gonna be pink, Emma!) 21-speed "girls' bike" from LL Bean that I've kitted out with a rear rack and folding grocery basket and the removable front basket that I've had since forever (since before the kids were born, I know that much).

I wasn't sure why I wanted this bike, but I had a very strong yen for a riding position that my other bikes don't supply . . . and I have this image of riding the bike to work in a long skirt, and looking like I'm in Amsterdam, or something. (Except in Amsterdam they don't wear screaming yellow zephyrr bicycle jackets.) It seemed silly and self-indulgent to get a bike on that basis.

But I did it anyway, and now that I've been riding it for a week and have made a few errand and grocery runs using it, I can see why I wanted it. I've been returned to the approximate age of ten, when the bike was all I had and it didn't matter because I could do everything I wanted with it. It's a nice way to ride about town, I have to say. I'm enjoying the upright riding position, because I get a chance to look around me and take in the atmosphere. The bike isn't all that amenable to hurrying, so I've just had to plan in a bit longer time for getting to and fro. And I've decided that as long as I'm slowing down, I may as well choose my routes for their aesthetic appeal. If it takes longer to get somewhere, so be it.

So riding this bike is a different experience than riding the road bike, with its emphasis on getting somewhere. It's also different than the mountain bike because its riding position is more upright. It's a lot more like the utility bikes I see in China all the time - bikes carrying passengers (often young kids), or freight of almost any kind you can name - mattresses, cardboard to be recycled, long pieces of lumber, a couch, books, a moveable fast-food stand (serving boiled eggs or boiled corn or sweet potatoes or something), a bike repair shop, bikes being hauled back to the place from which they were rented - I could go on. The bikes in China fascinate me). Anyhow, I feel a kinship with all the people I see who use their bikes as transportation and think nothing of it.

And this bike is extremely convenient. The baskets are on the bike; I don't have a choice about whether I take them. (The side basket folds against the frame, so it's inobtrusive when not in use.) This means I only have to leave the house with a wallet and a water bottle and a lock (I keep one in the basket), and I can do pretty much any errand I care to do.

We're having wonderful fall weather here (today!) and I've been enjoying tooling around the neighborhood, as it were. We live in a perfect location for biking as general transportation: practically everything I could possibly want is available to me in some form within a 2-mile radius of my house. (And there are some things that come in superb form - the four swimming pools from which to choose, the free squash courts, the major research library, for instance.) I think it's entirely reasonable to set myself a goal of (almost) never driving the car if what I have to do can be done within biking distance.

I could have set that goal WITHOUT the new bike, of course. But in some weird way, I think the new bike will make it a lot easier for me to meet that goal. Maybe it wasn't entirely silly to get this bike after all . . .