All My Bikes
Key in hand, wanting to unlock my bike, I stopped short. An empty place stared at me. Who borrowed (read: nicked) my bike?
Mine was one of the three thousand bikes that are stolen in the Netherlands every day. If all sixteen and a half million Dutch people had bikes, it would mean that each of us has a bicycle stolen every six years. My first bicycle was a present on my tenth birthday. Since then I haved owned another five. Only one of my six bikes was stolen. That happened yesterday.
The theft felt like a personal loss, but not for long. My bike is not very dear to me. It is a means of transport. I use it to go to the city centre and to do my shopping. Yesterday I pedalled to the centre and parked it against a bridge railing. I locked it and when I came back it had gone Awol. For a second I thought that I put it in another place, but I had all my faculties and realised that someone needed transport there and then. I went to the police station to report it missing. The policewoman asked for the brand, colour, accessories and if I needed counselling. I said, “no”, but could I leave my heavy bags behind her desk. I would collect them with my other bicycle. I have two bicycles; one city-cum-shopping bike and one lightweight, twenty-one gears for long distances. Walking home, I reminisced about all my other bicycles and where were they? Not stolen. I know that for sure. I don’t know and cannot remember what happened to them.
Dutch Bike Facts
is the Bike Capital of the world. In 2009, 1.3 million Dutch people bought a new or second-hand bike. On average, a reliable new bike costs €700.
Brian took 82 pictures of bicycles in 73 minutes, showing how interesting and different the , Netherlands bicycle culture is from ’s bicycle culture.
Marc van Woudenberg met William Hsu, employee of the San Franciscan bicycle shop in . They talked bicycle and Hsu remarked that bicycles in aren’t really thought of as a culture or a means of transportation, but rather just a way of life. Bicycles are incorporated in everything.
Listen to what the Times says about Dutch Bicycles.
Photo: courtesy of Bicycles
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