biking

Have you seen these people?

Brooke, Leave a comment

Here are three people I saw this week that I can’t stop thinking about.

Kale man

This was a bald man wearing business clothes, smoking a cigarette, and standing by a bridge. He was talking to himself in a very serious voice while staring off into the water.

“Mmm. Good. Good.”

You’ve probably already guessed that he was on a bluetooth headset, and you’re right, he was. They make those bluetooth headsets so small! They fool me every time.

But it’s possible that the headset was turned off, and he was just quietly approving the canal.

Kale is Dutch for bald.

Hot and cold construction worker

One intersection I bike through usually has workers standing there, fielding traffic.

The other day a man riding in front of me reached out to high five the construction worker. It looked so fun that I immediately reached out to do the same thing, but as I passed the guy pulled his hand down and wouldn’t high five me.

What do you make of this?

I’ve been thinking about it non-stop for three days.

Rob’s girlfriend

I saw Rob and his girlfriend walking through the neighborhood where we work. I’m not sure where Rob is from but his girlfriend is American and she loves Amsterdam. There is so much to look at in Amsterdam.

But does Rob see it all? Is he looking?

“Rob, look!” said Rob’s girlfriend, pointing at, I don’t know, just one of the buildings on the street. It didn’t seem like much to look at.

“Look, Rob, look, look at that.” she said, pointing at another thing I guess.

“Look Rob, Rob look Rob. Rob, look look look Rob Rob look Rob.”

I know it’s pretty unlikely that any of these people have been thinking about me this week. But I hope one of them is, and I hope it’s that construction worker. I’m a safe and confident biker. I obey the rules of the road that I understand. My hands were clean, pretty clean anyway. I’m a great person to high five.

Beth took this photo of us.

 

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Before you open a bike shop

Brooke, , 1 Comment

My Dutch textbook doesn’t cover most of the things I’m interested in, but it does spend a lot of time teaching me how to ask people how they’re doing: Hoe gaat het. “Hoe gaat het?” asks every character in every single dialogue we listen to.

In the Dutch textbook there are pretty much only two ways things can be going: awfully good, or quite bad.

I’m not sure why we haven’t learned the word for “fine,” maybe it’s because the word for “fine” is so difficult to pronounce it requires at least a year of Dutch lessons. May be it’s a word that’s entirely consonants, or worse, entirely vowels. For now in our textbook life is lived in the extremes. In chapter two a man goes on a romantic vacation to Italy. In chapter eight his bike is stolen and in chapter nine he goes to the hospital, but by chapter ten it’s his birthday and he goes shopping for new pants. I understand. When every day involves either a trip to Venice or a trip to the emergency room, there is no fine. There is awfully good and there is quite bad and that is that.

The only person in real life I could think of who seemed to be living in a world of such disparate emotional states was a man who owns a bike shop in our neighborhood.

The bike shop I’m talking about is staffed by a very tall man with long curly hair. The door of the shop is always open and a few rental bikes are always outside, and the owner runs out frantically every few minutes, as though he’s always just now remembering he has a bike shop. Every time he runs out he looks either thrilled by the realization or horrified. He makes owning a bike shop seem like a real roller coaster, and if you’ve been daydreaming about retiring and owning a cute little bike shop somewhere, I would suggest you talk to him before you get too serious about it. We’d never spoken before, until yesterday.

Yesterday as I was walking past with groceries he lit up when he saw me, and he asked me “Hoe gaat het?”

Awfully good! I told him in Dutch. I could hardly believe my luck that a stranger had asked me the very question I’ve listened to over a thousand times while working my way through my remedial Dutch textbook.

Right away it became clear that the bike shop owner had thought I was someone else, someone he knew. He got flustered and said something I didn’t understand, and began gesturing as though he was tapping the side of an invisible stovepipe hat he was wearing. Maybe he mistook me for a friend who usually wears them.

But people don’t speak Dutch with me very often and there was no way I was letting this conversation end that quickly.

And with you, I asked. “Hoe gaat het?”

He was also doing awfully good.

My vocabulary doesn’t end at hoe gaat het, there are three more questions I know how to answer in Dutch and luckily he asked one of them next: where are you from. I also know how to respond to the questions “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” and “What color are your eyes and hair?” but he didn’t ask. I guess he wasn’t feeling that chatty.

I don’t know how to say it’s nice to meet you, but I know how to say that it’s truly an honor to make your acquaintance, so I told him so with a small curtsey, in hopes that he would think I was a visiting dignitary, princess, or lunatic.

But I meant it, it was truly an honor to make his acquaintance. I hope we meet again on another awfully good day. I hope we’re both wearing stovepipe hats. And I hope mine is large enough that it conceals my face and he has to ask what color my eyes and hair are, because no one has asked me that yet and it sort of feels like I learned it for nothing.

A kid in our neighborhood (I’m assuming it’s a kid) draws on the sidewalk almost every day. Here’s a plane.

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The first of probably many posts about bikes

Brooke, Leave a comment

Growing up in Minnesota there were two family sizes: regular car or minivan.

I was only eight when we became a minivan family so I don’t remember it clearly, but for other families, switching from regular car to minivan was a rite of passage. Whether you like minivans or not: four kids is too many to have in a regular car backseat. Unless one of them is only two inches tall and can sit comfortably and safely in a teacup or an Altoids tin. (Having a kid who’s only two inches tall seems really stressful. I’d much rather have two-inch-tall dad.)

I haven’t seen too many minivans in Amsterdam, but parents are definitely bringing their kids places, it’s hard to miss. And it seems like there is absolutely no limit to how many kids you can have on a bike. No matter how big your family is, it is a bike family.

The popular thing in our neighborhood is dads biking around with a small child in a little seat on the handlebars, and a larger child standing on the bar behind the dad’s back. It’s strange to see three faces stacked like that, all facing in one direction, all sort of grimacing because of the wind.

People also set two larger kids over the back wheel, sitting with their legs dangling on one side, like little ladies.

And then there are the bakfiets, where kids sit in little chairs squinting if it’s nice out, or covered in plastic like enormous leftovers if it’s rainy.

I haven’t taken any photos of people, so enjoy this family of models in a bakfiets:

bakfiets

Do you like that photo pretty much exactly as it is, but wish the kids were wearing helmets? No problem:

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Other popular ways to cycle include holding an umbrella with one hand, reading something on your phone, or listening to music. This morning I saw a woman biking without using the handlebars, because in each hand she was clutching a tote-bag sized bundle of lettuce.

Then there are the people who look just like everyone else, but I bet if you look closely you can see a little bit of hair peeking out of the pocket of their backpack, and tiny little fingers, it’s their two-inch-tall dad, on his way to work.