Holland

I'd never been to Holland before, but I'm sure I'll go again after a week there for a conference and other work business. The people are very friendly and generally laid-back, the towns are pretty and there seem to be quite a lot of nice open spaces, parks and woodlands. But the best two things about Holland are the trains and the cycling environment.

We travelled on the train a few times, and apart from one journey where the carriages were over-full and we had to stand, the service was wonderful. You can easily buy tickets from the machines, the information at the stations is very clear, and — most importantly — the trains are punctual. We had the novel experience when making a connection of finding that our train was not only timed to meet the connecting service, but that the trains were on adjacent platforms. The pricing structure is also admirably simple, with only a couple of types of tickets, rather than the incomprehensible mess of Super-Advance-Third-Wednesday-in-Lent-Only tickets we have here.

And the bikes! Of course, I knew that the Netherlands was a cycling Utopia, but actually experiencing it is something else. Unfortunately, the schedule (and our finances) didn't allow for hiring bikes, but I was gazing adoringly at the lovely, upright, laid back machines gliding by. What I love about Dutch cycling is that it is taken as something absolutely normal and unremarkable. Cyclists there would think that you were a bit weird if you wore special clothes or — heavens! — a helmet, unless you were an actual, in-training racing cyclist.

Everyone, from little kids to elderly people, cycles. There are dedicated cycle paths on either side of almost every road, and everyone else has to give way to the bikes. The bikes themselves are very comfortable with full mudguards, lights and racks as standard equipment, and encourage a stately, gentle progress so that you don't work up a sweat. When it rained, cyclists unfurled umbrellas rather than donning waterproofs, and I saw couples holding hands as they cycled side-by-side. Parents also held the hands of their younger children as they crossed junctions together on their bikes, which struck me as very sensible and rather sweet. People sit upright, looking around them and beaming at passers-by. Wonderful.

Of course, the flat terrain helps a lot: it's much more difficult to look nonchalant and carefree while puffing up a 1:4 gradient, but the culture is completely different. The next time I visit, I'm definitely going to hire a bike next time I visit, and try to hold on to that carefree spirit when I'm dodging cars, dogs and broken glass on my daily commute.

The wheels nearly came off

Something weird and slightly creepy happened this week.

It all started in an innocuous, if slightly annoying, way. Riding my bike home from work, I found that the back wheel was incredibly stiff. There was a lot of friction, even when freewheeling, and various clunks and creaks were coming from the hub. I checked (so I thought) for any obvious problems, but I couldn't see what might be causing it. I was forced to conclude that my Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub gear was having problems, and needed servicing and perhaps some new parts.

It was difficult to find a cycle shop which had the necessary know-how and tools to service Nexus hub gears, and the nearest I could find would mean transporting my bike by car (particularly as it was difficult to ride with the gear problems). I didn't have time to take it in the week, but on Saturday, Mr. Bsag and I struggled to get the bike in the car. With a very small car and a rather chunky bike, this was never going to be an easy fit, and even after we'd taken the front wheel off, we still couldn't get the hatchback closed. So Mr. Bsag went to take the back wheel off as well, and found something odd: the nuts holding the rear axle to the frame were barely even hand-tight — in fact, they were positively loose. Curious. Even more curious was the fact that the headset nut was also extremely loose, resulting in a lot of play in the front forks. Obviously, I should have checked that everything was properly tightened when I had problems, but it didn't occur to me, as I check my bike fairly regularly for those kinds of things. We tightened everything up properly, and — lo and behold — the bike was back to normal, smooth operation again. That solved the problem of fitting the bike in the car, and the expense of getting it fixed, but left unresolved how it got in that state in the first place.

Now, it's possible that they worked themselves loose, but we'd fixed a puncture only a few weeks ago, and we know that the wheel nuts were fully tightened up then. The problem also came on very suddenly, in the interval between riding my bike to work, leaving it in the bike shed and riding it home. I'm wondering if some mischievous or malevolent person with a spanner has been loosening nuts. They couldn't have got my rear wheel off anyway, because the bike has one of those Continental frame locks which locks the rear wheel to the frame. Whatever the cause, I'll be checking my nuts more regularly from now on. So to speak...

Shadow sister

[Something I wrote in my head at the end of last week, cycling home.]

The bright full moon is floating down the river, trembling and fractured by the breeze. A rider's lamp behind me spawns my shadow sister, moving in front of me, solid and hunched against the chill. She weaves left and right, now skimming across the grass, now sliding over the gravel path. I'm fascinated by my projected self, encountering the future ahead of me, but keeping me company on this cold, dark night.

Eventually, the rider passes me. My shadow sister slows then disappears, and I feel a sudden ridiculous pang of loss for something which was just a trick of the light. Despite knowing how she was born, I find myself looking for her for the rest of the journey, wondering if she's around the next corner, or waiting for me in the trees.

Chopper

As I cycled through the park yesterday, I saw a young lad on a bike which had the unmistakable outline of a Raleigh Chopper. He was sitting back on the banana seat, hands loosely on the ape-hanger bars, sweeping graceful, joyful curves across the path in the late evening sun. He had a huge grin on his face, and it made me smile just to see how much he was enjoying his ride. I always wanted a Chopper when I was a kid, but my parents said it was an impractical bike¹ so I got a more sensible ride. This chap's Chopper was the 'revival' model, of course -- they stopped making the original models, with their potentially castrating top-tube mounted gear lever, long before he was born.

When he saw me riding towards him with a smile on my face, he honked his horn -- a lovely, rubber bulb horn with a clownish "honk honk" sound, which made my day.

¹ Of course it was impractical and not particularly well-made, but that was half the fun of it. And it was cool. ↑

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