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WE GOT BIKES. Okay, okay, not so loud. We got
bikes. We are now actual homeys. Or is it homies. A Dutchman without
his bike isn’t a Dutchman, and he knows it. The Netherlands has more
bicycles per capita than anywhere else on earth except China. That’s
what it says in the books and anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s
true. Everyone rides a bike. On the Saturday night after
Thanksgiving, we went to someone’s home for dinner and an expatriate
American woman, late 40s and been here for more than 30 years, was a
guest. In 30 years, she had become Dutchified. She was all dressed
up in high heels, a long skirt and a just so hat. She left on her
bike close to midnight for the three mile trip home. We see young
mothers with not one, not two, but three kids mounted on a bike
along with a load of groceries. There was a guy riding his bike
while reading a book. There was a woman balancing a box that
appeared to be a small television between the handle bars and her
lap. Another guy was carrying a piece of plate glass under his arm
and someone else had a hold on a fifteen foot pole. All on bikes!
Octogenarians are pedaling around. My favorite, though, was an old
guy who had a holster mounted on his front wheel to hold his cane.
This dude couldn’t walk but he could ride his bike. You gotta love a
guy like that!
The bikes come in a variety of styles that you
wouldn’t see in the U.S. There are hardly any racing bikes, the ones
with the dropped handle bars, but what they do with the upright
handle bars is surprising. Some have very small front wheels so that
a crate is permanently affixed. These crates are loaded with
groceries, kids, and dogs. Most of the bikes are clunkers. The
clunkier the better. People ride bikes in all kinds of weather, and
it rains a lot here, so a new bike will turn into a clunker pretty
soon anyway. The bike I rode at home had no fenders so it would
throw water in wet weather making an "I" on the back of the rider
and it had no chain guard which added weight. Here, every bike has
fenders and a chain guard. The chain guard keeps your pant legs from
getting grease on them. At home it was just my bare legs getting
greasy and I had to take a shower after riding anyway so who cared?
Bicycles are a basic mode of transportation even
in Den Haag and Amsterdam, two large cities. Every street has bike
lanes clearly marked. If a car has to cross a bike lane to make a
right turn, the driver has to be very careful that he doesn’t
interfere with the movement of the biker. If anything happens
between a car and a bike, it’s the driver of the car that’s at fault
and this is common knowledge. Unlike at home where bikes are, at
best, a tolerated nuisance and at worst, something to take aim at,
here they are fully integrated into traffic and into society.
A lot of the reason for the extensive bicycle
usage is probably because the terrain here is so flat and it’s easy
to pedal. One need not have legs of steel or even a Clydesdale
horse. But the sheer number of bikes can be the scariest thing for a
biker. A bike rider’s paradise might be something like Fairmount
Park on a weekday morning. It’s quiet, not too much traffic, and you
can enjoy all the surroundings. This isn’t that. Delft is a small
town, maybe about two miles square and it’s dense. There’s old Delft
and new Delft. New Delft has been around, I’m guessing, since maybe
the 18th century and has broad streets and trams. Old
Delft has been around since about the 11th century. It
gives an American a different perspective on "old." We saw in a book
that Delft means moat in Dutch and the old town is pretty much
surrounded by a moat. There is some automobile traffic in the old
town (and even some city busses – that is a sight to see) but mostly
it’s pedestrians and bikes. The good thing with cars is that they
move generally in single file. Bikes come from all directions and at
varying speeds. If one is a little unsteady on a bike, it can be
unnerving. Also, because the town is so old, there are alleys
everywhere. People come out of the alleys without paying any
attention to whether or not there are any pedestrians, bikes, or
even cars approaching. With cars, though, it doesn’t matter, because
if you get racked up on the bike, at least it’s the driver’s fault.
Maybe you could sue.
This may not be a biker’s paradise but it’s damn
close. So I have to get out of here. I’m going grocery shopping with
my bike and my backpack! |
