Biking in Amsterdam

Last Sunday was the biking day. Sis. Anne Marie van Steven (prefect for meditaton here, henceforth mentioned as Sis. AM) asked me after the morning group meditation if I would like to join her to Ouderkerk (old church) where a 17km race is being organized and her husband Dirk is participating. Despite the fact that I had a lot of housekeeping work to do, I joined the wonderful opportunity. Ouderkerk was 20km far and we had to make it in 1 hr to manage to see Dirk's finish.

Netherlands, as some of you may know, can be really called as the 'Land of Bicycles'. Bicycle is more commonly known as bike. A lot of models similar to scooty and other lady bikes are more common and then the next level is the Dhoom-Hrithik-fame BMW's. The intermediate Hero-honda or Pulsar type motorbikes can hardly be found here.

Coming back to the 'Land of Bikes', Netherlands, as a country, promotes biking. There is no class-bias when it comes to biking and big managers of big companies may literally be seen zooming the roads with their bikes. I may also boldly claim that except for the people with physical/mental disabilities, everyone bikes in Netherlands. There are special bike pavements on most of the roads and bikers are also given preference when it comes to the road traffic and lights.

The book The Undutchables say that there are more than 17 million bikes (more than population!) with 750000 in Amsterdam alone and it is growing at 15% a year. More than 10000km of roads are devoted to the bikes and 91% of the families own at least 1.

The most amazing fact is that Netherlands is also notorious for bike theft, especially my Amsterdam. More than 80000 bikes are stolen every year and many of these are found in the canals of Amsterdam. The story goes like these - many people who are drunk and have spent all their money on alcohol or gambling, just break a lock, steal the bike and throw it in a canal once they are near home. Not sure how much this is correct though. The bike theft is so serious that sometimes thieves manage to break three locks and steal the bicycle. Many people pay huge sums on the bike insurance. Needless to say, I keep it inside my house every night.

On top of it all (or may be this is the primary reason), Netherlands is a very flat country and biking is really effortless. So 20 km in an hour was by no means an overestimation.

Jeroen also joined it since it was a good opportunity. The beginning was slow, since we were still in the city, but once when we were out, it was fast and fun. We biked more than 10kms along the Amstel river and it was very good because the weather was very pleasant.

With Jeroen near the finish line

With Sis. AM

We made it to Ouderkerk in an hour, to realize that the race started late and we had to wait for some time before Dirk appeared. He came out first in the 60+ category. In the meantime, we just enjoyed the nature. It was so good and fresh air that can not be expected in Amsterdam (I still love Amsterdam). We saw two cute chicks in a small channel of water. Sis. AM told me about Heron (a bird) which likes to eat these chicks very much.

Dirk: on the right (515)

On the way back, the weather turned overcast but it was still good. I and Sis. AM halted at a few places. We saw a Heron patiently waiting for the chicks along the bank. It is really wonderful to see how the bird can wait patiently, motionless for such a long time for its prey. We stopped by the a park with a statue of Rembrandt with a windmill nearby (did I also mention that Nethterlands is a 'Country of windmills'?).

With the Great Rembrandt

Windmill

I had some pain in my left thigh on my way back but I managed. It was gone the next day. But I was very satisfied. The weather is very uncertain these days but once summer arrives, I am going to do more of these biking trips.