[Kathryn: Just taking a VERY BRIEF BREAK from the tasks you have assigned me. Hope that’s OK.]

Peter:

I am of exactly the same mind.

During the year I spent teaching college out in the sticks of mainland China, 1982-3, the college authorities, after a subtle and persistent campaign on my part, gave me a bicycle to get around on. It was one of the old-style state-produced Chinese bicycles, a “Swallow” brand, modeled I believe on an English Raleigh, with three Sturmey-Archer-style gears in the rear hub — none of this nonsense about external cogs and levers. The riding posture was “sit up and beg,” far healthier and more comfortable than the gut-cramping teeth-on-the-handlebars business you have to do with a 10-speed.

I loved that bike. Sturdy? You could have dropped the darn thing out of a plane, picked it up, and ridden off on it. The Vietcong rode to war on those bikes, in fact. (Sorry, vets.) It had a platform on the back you could carry a passenger on, quite comfortably. It was not uncommon, in fact, to see _two_ passengers being carried — one on that rear platform, one on the crossbar. Put an infant in the front basket, you had a family vehicle.

Now that was a bike. I wish I’d brought it out with me, but the paperwork was too complicated. In the sleek, supercharged, bustling new China, I bet

they’ve stopped making them. Economic liberalization, bah!