just like riding a bike...

Since spring washed over Amsterdam, I have been having a harder time finding a place to park my bike outside my house. Weird, right? It's like more bikes have suddenly been called into existence and they're hogging all the good spaces in the bike rack! Since last autumn, and all winter I had been locking my bike up in more or less the exact same place, and now I'm lucky if I can find anywhere at all among the 26 or so bike spots in front of my house. Even my flatmate's usual spot (on a railing literally outside our door) has been usurped!

Anyway, the point is (besides a little venting) that Amsterdammers are crazy for bikes. Most people seem to own more than one of them - especially if they commute between cities, leaving one bike in each place rather than paying 7 Euros to bring it on the train with them. It's not that public transportation is bad here. Not at all. It's just that cycling is by far the best way to get around the city (any city), and the cheapest, and the healthiest. In Amsterdam, like everywhere else in the Netherlands, the bicycle is celebrated. I think this is done quietly: in having (usually) enough places for people to lock up their bikes, in making roads friendly for cyclists (not automobilists), in allowing you to take your bike for free on the ferry across to Amsterdam Noord or on the train if it's a small folding bike, etc. But it seems in spring, this spring especially, Amsterdam is making noise about how great their bicycle culture is.

Today, in Amsterdam and all over the Netherlands, the Dutch are trying to break the world record for the most people cycling at once. Although I didn't get on my bike between noon and 1pm for the record myself, I don't doubt that there were a lot of people who did. Afterall, "Nederland is gegrepen door het fietsvirus" (The Netherlands is in the grips of the bike-bug).

Of course, all the people who cycle daily to and from work, school, through the neighbourhood and everywhere else, will be making way in May this year for the 'professionals'. From the 8th to 10th of May, the city just recovering from spring fever is expected to succumb briefly to Giromania! That's right, the Giro d'Italia is kicking off the cycling tour this year with time trials in Amsterdam and two races to other cities (Utrecht and Middelburg) the following days. Keeners can try the course for themselves on the 9th.

With all this attention on how great cycling is, it makes me thankful that the old saying is true; once you learn how to ride a bike, you'll never forget. It does make me think though (and recall a certain early post by one Ms. Long) about just how important knowing how to bike is to really living and maybe even belonging in Amsterdam, or anywhere else in the Netherlands!