I miss my bike.

Growing up in Oxford, bicycles were the default mode of transportation for just about everyone. I cycled to school and back every day; I'd cycle into town to go shopping; later on, I'd cycle to the pub to meet my friends. I remember cycling through the University Parks cycle path in the dead of night after seeing a midnight movie. Sometimes - by which I mean, a couple of times a week - I would cycle around the perimeter of the city, or up to Shotover Park, just for the hell of it.

It was just a thing that you did. Most people didn't have very expensive bicycles, because they were a target for thieves; certainly, nobody dressed up to go cycling. You carried your helmet and your bike lights with you. Maybe, if you were fancy, you attached bike clips to your jeans.

Every year, a student would die or be seriously injured because they were new to the city and didn't understand that bikes needed to adhere to the rules of the world. They'd run a red light and be hit by a car, or they'd hit a curb at the wrong angle and hit their unhelmeted head on the sidewalk. But mostly, it was a safe thing to do, partially because there was safety in numbers: the cyclists almost travel in herds.

In Edinburgh, the wind, the hills, and the freezing, horizontal rain combined to form too oppressive a force. People did cycle, but I quickly realized that I wouldn't be one of them. And then when I moved to California, it became obvious that cars were the kings of the road, and my sense of self-preservation kept me away. There's also a terrifying trend, in Berkeley at least, of cyclists militantly rejecting road rules, as if red lights and stop signs don't apply to them. Again: this is how you die.

I think this year, I might finally go back to cycling. Using Oxford rules, though: I don't need or want to pay a four figure sum for a bicycle, and while mountain biking in Marin looks like a lot of fun, I don't think anyone needs to see me clad head to toe in spandex to do so. No offense intended for anyone who goes for the expensive bikes or full cycling gear - it does look like fun - but for me, simplicity appeals.

Oxford isn't my only influence here. I was born in the Netherlands, and my first memory is of Amsterdam, now the bicycle capital of the world. The country has 22,000 miles of cycle paths, and its size means that you could feasibly take a week or two and travel around the whole country this way. If that's too ambitious, every train station has a bike rental place attached to it, and for a few Euros - far less than the extortionate amounts charged to tourists in San Francisco, for example - you can have freedom to roam for a day. I've spent lovely days cycling around places like Gouda, between the irrigation canals, stopping in at cheesemakers along the way. While this kind of thing used to be a cheap hop that I wouldn't have to think much about, it now requires travel that I have to budget for. Nevertheless, I think there are more trips like those in my future.

I'm learning that my presence here isn't ephemeral: I'm probably in the States for good - or at least, for a long time to come. I didn't arrive here as an entirely new person, but with the turbulence of my life here, I've let go of a lot of the things I used to do, or used to enjoy. But my life is a continuous line, and what feels like breaks are nothing of the sort. It's possible to reach back for big things and small. A bicycle is a small thing, but a reminder that I'm the same person I was there; just, removed.