czwartek, 27 października 2011

Single track wheelers

As big as Holland is (which means not a very great space) everyone is cycling. Everyone has a bicycle... so do I! :)

Actually I just took Maurice's popular model Omafiet (meaning: grandma's bike).Simple, big, black, with saddle, but without hand breaks, amortization nor gears. If I remember well my own grandma is crossing Hajnówka (a city in North-East Poland) on the same type. After few weeks I decided to fight my fear and start transporting myself around the city like a real Dutch. 

Clearly I wasn't my first experience with a bicycle. Back in Poland I used to cycle with my mountain bike a lot in summer. I think I don't even know a single person, who wouldn't know how to ride a bicycle. But here is a bit different... ok, there are special lanes for bikes almost all over the city. I can safely pedal on my own piece of road not worrying that some car is gonna hit me out of nowhere. I'm rather afraid of... other cyclists. There's so many of them! At any time of a day or night. Sure that cycling traffic is not as big as in Vietnam, but it's deffinitaly way bigger than any polish conditions I was used to. And riding this kind of bike, without any hand breaks I ust feel so tiny, scared, lost and too... loose. Just like in a front seat of the car without fastened seat belts. 

However as everyone know, fears are generally irrational. Sooner or later i would have to try and because I promised my "mother-in-law", that I'm gonna come and help her packing things before renovating their house, this had to happen today. In the morning, through the quite streets away from the traffic and crossroads I cycled with my omafiets. To be honest I was moving slow like a turtle. Everything great! Except one tiny problem... after unlocking my bike I couldn't take out the key from the lock. After few tries struggling with the key I gave up and left it inside the lock. I felt like an idiot riding with this stupid key stucked in my bike. 

Of course I called later Maurice to tell him about the insubordinate bicycle. He started laughing and repeating how silly I was. It is supposed to stay like this. The key has to stay in a bike when you're cycling. Amen.
Again... how was I supposed to know?!

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