Friday, March 05, 2004
Bike Freak
More than a quarter of all workers in this country ride their bikes to their jobs. Everyday is "Bike to Work Day" when 1.2 million people are on the streets on their bikes during the typical commute. Orange, the telecom, has even offered the Dutch free bikes, complete with handsfree gear, for anybody who signs a two-year, 30-euro-a-month contract. It's illegal to drive while talking on the phone here; if that law applies to fietsers, it's the most widely ignored law in The Netherlands. In fact, being a fietser in The Netherlands gives you license to ignore pretty much any laws, as near as I can tell. Red lights? Optional. Sidewalks? Also known as unofficial fietspads (bike paths). I've never seen a fietser stopped by an officer. We have our own paths. We have our own traffic-control signals (which we regularly ignore).
A friend of mine, Anees, lent me his mountain bike when I got here. It had been locked up in the bicycle jungle near the back entrance to the Tribunal when I rescued it, still in the same place it had been left by the last intern he lent it to. It took some doing to find it, but there it was, still chained to the rack with the extra-extra-extra heavy duty motorcycle lock.
Getting this bike spared me one of two rather unsavory prospects: haggling with a junkie for an obviously stolen bike or bending over and taking it in the private parts to buy a "legit" used bike from one of the shops around town. Apparently, used bikes in the 50-euro range can be gotten (my friend Susana managed), but most shops want a mint for these big, heavy, Dutch-made bikes everybody here is so fond of. Mostly, they are one gear, footbrake, sit-up-straight, "gaywad" bikes (in the colorful language of my lovely wife) and they want more than 200 euros for them used. Used. The other option is to go down to Hollands-Spoor or Rotterdam or Amsterdam and buy a bike off a junkie. The prices are more negotiable and reasonable, and for a good reason: These bikes are stolen. The interns were warned that police in Amsterdam would throw you in jail for the night if they caught you buying a bike that is obviously stolen, as most junkie-bikes clearly are. Bicycle theft is like a national sport here. I know one Dutch guy who always has two bikes, so that he has a backup for when one get stolen. To hear the Dutch tell it, junkies are the prime movers behind this underground economy.
Thus, I was more than happy to accept Anees' offer of his bike for the remainder of my stay in exchange for fixing it up and maintaining it.
I took it to the bike shop off the Fred behind Primafoon, a shop full of typical Dutch bikes. He frowned when he saw my bike, not the least because of the state it was in after extended periods in the Den Haag rain. This bike is all wrong for the city, he said. You'll get a backache. You'll get hit by a car because you can't see anything. Nevertheless, I told him to press on and 35 euros later, I had a bike in workable condition.
Since then, I ride this thing everywhere. It's my international bike: named after a city in Canada (Calgary) and made by a company named after a city in Wisconsin (Kenosha) ridden around by an American in The Netherlands on loan from an Indian lawyer trained in London. My 25-minute walk to work is now an eight-minute ride. My 40-minute walk to the pub near the Centrum (because I'm too damn cheap to pay for the tram) is now a 12-minute flight past the American ambassador's house and the Peace Palace. Yesterday, I rode south on the North Sea Route, a 6,000-kilometer trail that goes through Norway, Scotland, England, (after a ferry ride, of course) Denmark, Holland, Germany and Sweden. I settled for a 40 km. trip to the Hoek van Holland and back.
A friend of mine, Anees, lent me his mountain bike when I got here. It had been locked up in the bicycle jungle near the back entrance to the Tribunal when I rescued it, still in the same place it had been left by the last intern he lent it to. It took some doing to find it, but there it was, still chained to the rack with the extra-extra-extra heavy duty motorcycle lock.
Getting this bike spared me one of two rather unsavory prospects: haggling with a junkie for an obviously stolen bike or bending over and taking it in the private parts to buy a "legit" used bike from one of the shops around town. Apparently, used bikes in the 50-euro range can be gotten (my friend Susana managed), but most shops want a mint for these big, heavy, Dutch-made bikes everybody here is so fond of. Mostly, they are one gear, footbrake, sit-up-straight, "gaywad" bikes (in the colorful language of my lovely wife) and they want more than 200 euros for them used. Used. The other option is to go down to Hollands-Spoor or Rotterdam or Amsterdam and buy a bike off a junkie. The prices are more negotiable and reasonable, and for a good reason: These bikes are stolen. The interns were warned that police in Amsterdam would throw you in jail for the night if they caught you buying a bike that is obviously stolen, as most junkie-bikes clearly are. Bicycle theft is like a national sport here. I know one Dutch guy who always has two bikes, so that he has a backup for when one get stolen. To hear the Dutch tell it, junkies are the prime movers behind this underground economy.
Thus, I was more than happy to accept Anees' offer of his bike for the remainder of my stay in exchange for fixing it up and maintaining it.
I took it to the bike shop off the Fred behind Primafoon, a shop full of typical Dutch bikes. He frowned when he saw my bike, not the least because of the state it was in after extended periods in the Den Haag rain. This bike is all wrong for the city, he said. You'll get a backache. You'll get hit by a car because you can't see anything. Nevertheless, I told him to press on and 35 euros later, I had a bike in workable condition.
Since then, I ride this thing everywhere. It's my international bike: named after a city in Canada (Calgary) and made by a company named after a city in Wisconsin (Kenosha) ridden around by an American in The Netherlands on loan from an Indian lawyer trained in London. My 25-minute walk to work is now an eight-minute ride. My 40-minute walk to the pub near the Centrum (because I'm too damn cheap to pay for the tram) is now a 12-minute flight past the American ambassador's house and the Peace Palace. Yesterday, I rode south on the North Sea Route, a 6,000-kilometer trail that goes through Norway, Scotland, England, (after a ferry ride, of course) Denmark, Holland, Germany and Sweden. I settled for a 40 km. trip to the Hoek van Holland and back.
