Our primary mode of transport is bicycle. I mean… it’s the Netherlands, so that’s sort of a given. For trips around Amstelveen and Amsterdam Zuid, we’ll usually just go by bike entirely. For other trips, it just depends on how close the destination is to a train or bus stop; you can take your bike on trains and metros/subways, so sometimes we’ll bike to a metro stop, navigate metros and trains and bring our bikes along, and then use them for the “last” mile on the other end.
A few reflections on this.
Kristin’s Bike Woes
As you all well know, Kristin is absurdly short… and as you may not know, the Dutch are some of the tallest people in the world (#3!). So, bikes are built for tall people here. It’s hard enough to find an “adult” bike anywhere in the world that’s built for someone who’s 4’10”. Now, try to find that bike in the land of the tall people? Forget about it.
Kristin’s “sport” bike is made by Giant and is a size “XS” - and even then, she’s technically still an inch too short for it to be the “right” size for her. They don’t make an “XXS”, I’m sure because they’d sell exactly 4 a year. When you’re under the 5th percentile in heigh distribution, it really complicates things.
The first bike we bought Kristin was a cargo bike - a “bakfiets”. She rides it to this day. Just getting it home was a 3 mile ride and nearly killed Kristin - even at the lowest setting, she could barely reach the peddles. Now, try riding a giant, steel cargo bike, loaded with 2 children, when you can barely reach the peddles?
There were tears shed that night.
We learned eventually that you can reverse the mounting bracket on most saddles and earn yourself about one more inch. This helped, but to be fair it just took the bike from being “impossible” to peddle to just “somewhat uncomfortable”.
We’ve visited bike shops (“fietsen”) from one end of the country to the other looking for bikes that Kristin can safely ride with a child seat on it - no mean feat. Most women of her stature simply ride a girl’s bike, but those often aren’t suitable for one child’s seat, let alone two. Ultimately, we found a German bike at a fietsen in The Hague that, like her Giant, is “technically” too big for her, but she can safely and comfortably ride with a child on it.
We ordered it 2 months ago and right now it’s still about a month out from delivery. So, Kristin continues to use the bakfiets around Amstelveen but when we go on longer trips I take both children on my bike and Kristin rides her sports bike.
Flat Tire #1
The first flat tire was suffered on Benjamin’s first day of school. She cycled the children to school - a 2.5 mile trip - in the bakfiets, only to have a front tire go flat about 200 feet from the school. We’d been in the country for about a month and a half at this point, had never tried to repair a bakfiets, had no idea where a fietsen was in that neighbourhood, and hadn’t really figured out what the public transit options were in that neighbourhood. Consequently, tears were shed.
In an emergency, in the US there are tire fillers you can get that fill your tire with foam that will at least allow you to complete your current trip. I set about trying to find some of this, only to discover it’s just not a thing here. At all. I even went to a fietsen and asked in person, and they looked at me like I had grown an extra head. He handed me an inner tube patch kit.
Patching an inner tube is a lot of work. You have to remove the wheel, then use a pry tool to remove the tire, then inspect the inner tube to find the hole (often using soapy water, then looking for bubbles as you put air in the tube), patch, wait, reassemble. But here’s the thing I didn’t really understand at the time: very few dutch bikes use derailleurs and instead have internal hub planetary gears. These are almost exactly zero maintenance and last decades … but you DO NOT EVER take your back wheel off in the field. Ever ever ever. Removing these wheels is the stuff of seasoned technicians. As a result, the Dutch are pros at patching tubes without even removing the wheel. You pop the tire off, then just listen for a whistle while you pump air into it. The Dutch will patch a tube endlessly, never replacing it until it’s more patch than tube or dry rotted beyond its useful lifespan.
For this episode, I knew none of this, so Kristin locked it up near the school and I retrieved it after work and walked it about half a mile to a fietsen who fixed the tire for about €25.
Kristin’s rear tire went flat at one point and I tried removing the planetary gear set. To say this was a disaster is an understatement. I didn’t even vaguely have the right tools for the job, and we wound up having to have the manufacturer send a technician to our house to fix my error. I forget the exact bill, but I think this cost us about €200 parts and labor.
How I learned to patch tires in the field
For a while, I rode a gold 60s or 70s “Dutch special”. This bike powered me through the spring and carried me and both kids through our summer adventures. It was a workhorse, but has since been retired in favour of my much more comfortable tourer from German manufacturer VSF.
It also had internal gears, and I acquired it with tires already warn to the radials. Gun-shy from my previous experience with Kristin’s bike, I very lazily refused to deal with this situation as long as humanly possible. This went on long enough that Kristin was actively hassling me to get my tires replaced.
Well, the expected outcome came to pass. Through the spring and early summer, I would cycle all the way to work - about 8 miles! And one day, I hit a rock right on the baldest spot on the front tire, puncturing the inner tube. I was passing Station Zuid, about half-way home. We owned a patch kit - but I did not have it with me, and I didn’t have time to walk 10-15 minutes each way to the nearest fietsen.
I locked up my bike, hopped on the metro line (thankfully about 20 feet away) and headed home. After getting the family through dinner, I headed back out. I popped the front tire off, removed the tire and patched the tube. In under 10 minutes, I was back on my way. Now, if I’d been smart, I’d have taken my bike on the metro for the bulk of the trip home. But I’ve never been one to learn lessons the easy way.
About 15 minutes later, just short of the Amstelveen Stadshart - about half way from Zuid to home - I hit another obstacle on the fietspad and punctured the tube … again! I flip my bike over, and in 10 minutes I have it re-patched, and I’m on my way once again.
I don’t get maybe another 200 meters, just on the other side of the Stadshart, when it punctures yet again. I still have another 10-15 minutes to go to get home under the best conditions, and decide to throw in the towel. I lock my bike back up at the Stadshart, then take the Metro home yet again. On the ride, I order a new set of tires for overnight delivery. The next evening, I run back up to the Stadshart and replace the tire and inner tube, and get home safely.
I still haven’t replaced the rear tire on that bike, which is sitting in front of the house to this day.
The Time My Bike Got Stolen While Buying Some Hockey Gear
Immediately after we rented our house out in Amstelveen and moved out here, we realised that we needed at least one bike: walking to/from the local shopping centres was just far enough away that walking in the winter is a pain in the ass. On a blustery Saturday morning, I walked about 2 miles to the nearest fietsen I could find that I knew would be open and way overspent on a brand new city bike. It was a good bike that lasted me about 2 months? Maybe 3. I forget exactly.
As we were finally getting into a routine, I decided to re-gear myself for hockey and found a guy from the local 4th division team who was hanging up his skates for good. He happened to live very close to us - about a 10 minute bike ride. He sold me all of his gear for about €100.
I thought I was going to knock on his door, hand over €100, and get handed a bag of gear, so I was lackadaisical in bike security. Between the moment I rang his doorbell and when he opened the door, a torrential rain started. It went from “it might rain soon” to “THE END TIMES ARE UPON US” level rain in the blink of an eye.
So, when he opened the door, he quickly invited me into his entry to perform our transaction. In my panic, I left my keys in the chassis lock.
And in the 5 minutes I was inside, that hockey gear wound up costing me €100 in cash and a €600 bicycle.