To hike or bike? Getting around the capital with ease

Most healthy Beijingers have a predetermined tolerance for just how far they're willing to walk to go grocery shopping, give gadgetry and gizmo gurus a gander at fix-em shops, or maybe take Gonzo the goldendoodle for her monthly grooming. What I typically hear is that a 2-kilometer upper threshold for round-trip walking distances is tolerable. Asking around, that means a 20-30 minute back and forth sojourn for most, tops. This stretch of pavement and temporal investment seems to be a "rule of thumb".

Whoops! That expression's etymology conjures up Sleeping With the Enemy-like domestic turmoil. I'll try again. Given the capital's scorching summer swelter, hiking such distances surely results in the dreaded "ring around the collar" for even the most endothermic of pedestrians.

By the way, this unfortunate summertime sweat stain shame was behind perhaps one of the all-time most cringeworthy ads of the 80s in which a group of Children of the Corn crossbreed with Children of the Damned preteen urchin types to chant the cruel incantation "Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!" with arms linked circling a poor housewife's clothesline to attract attention to her allegedly slovenly housework and laundry acumen in general. I digress (by now most readers would have completed their 30-minute round-trip trek to the laundromat), but that childish insult in a Whisk spray-away stain commercial is based on the adorable nursery rhyme: "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down!" Ahhh … yes … what Larks! Singing that with my elementary school peers, and then the collective joy of falling down as a group after the refrain on the soft grass without fear of breaking a hip. Who can deny the sweet innocence and joy of youth?