Our apartment overlooks a street that runs along the edge of a creek (dry in summer) that is the boundary between two towns. Our street is a bike boulevard with two bike bridges across the creek about a half a mile apart. Therefore it is also a commuter route from various places, including the university and lots of Silicon Valley startups, to housing in the next town. The creek is lined with leftover woods, which is also nice, and there are crickets at night. And train whistles from the train to the city--I mean San Francisco--or St Jose to the south.

There is very little automobile traffic along our street, but a lot of other kinds of traffic from the obvious, bikes (road bikes, dirt bikes, city bikes, bikes towing babies in side-cars that are behind-cars, bikes where people pedal with their feet up...) to scooters, motorized or non-motorized; skateboards, ditto, those things with two wheels that people stand on, motorized, etc. It occurs to me that I could assess the state of private, personal transportation just by sitting looking off our deck for an hour each morning or evening. Not forgetting motorized wheelchairs, of course, pedestrians and

Beverley Bie Brahic