Introduction To Dutch Bicycle Culture
 There are a lot of bicycles in Holland, in we have one for every man woman and child in the country, that is some 16 million bicycles!.
Bicycle have rights too, that is to say that the bicycle has the right of way every time, unless you are a tram, then the tram is master, but that is the only time that the bicycle has to yield. Think about that for a moment - can you imagine this happening in America, a country that is so pro-car that car owners have been known to successfully sue the pedestrians they have struck for their flesh and blood bodies causing damage to a car. In Holland bikes (fiets) have the right-of-way.
From birth we are brought in close contact with our bikes. They are often part of a cramped city centre apartments furniture, so that baby grows up playing around them. As you will see from the day a Dutch child is born it travels by bike. I can still recall being a tiny tot in the handle bar seat facing my mother and laughing as the wind blew her long hair about her as we sped through the woods of Arnhem. Being older an on the back seat, then graduating to my own bike beside her on the cycle lanes. The bike is simply bred into us.
 For the visitor to our country this bicycle culture can catch them unawares. Often I have seen a foreigner step carelessly from sidewalk to cycle lane without realising the bikes bearing down on them, thinking the first line of danger will be the road itself. They usually only make the mistake once as an angry yell and wild ringing of a bike bell remain ringing in their rather red and embarrassed ears. The typical Amsterdam street, bar those canal-side lanes that are only four or five meters wide has a bicycle lane on each side (usually red or yellow.) Traffic on these flows quite smoothly. The interplay of bicycles in and out of the lanes is a bit of poetry, really. We Dutch are good at it.
Most Dutch bikes are pretty typical, not for us the carbon fibre, eight hundred Euro techno bikes, oh no. In a country where bicycle theft is practically an Olympic sport it is just not wise. We prefer a standard tubular frame, straight handlebars, full mud guards, because we value our clothes; three gears in the rear hub, switched by a cable attached to a lever on the right handlebar, and then there are the brakes………
 Brakes, these can come as a bit of a surprise to the unwary visitor. You happen upon a bike with two hand level operated brakes, but you may also come across the hand / pedal combination, and these can be tricky unless you have grown up with them. They are a skill in themselves. Remember that childhood game where by you rubbed your tummy in a circular motion while patting the top of your head? Well hand/pedal brakes are a bit like that. The brake level on the handle bar operates just the front brake, to operated the back wheel brake you have to pedal backwards – are you getting the idea? I have seen some hilarious results from visitors, Americans and Canadians mostly, trying to ride these bikes!
 Judith and Nina have several bikes in their family, and amongst them is Judith’s “Mamafiets”. Equipped to carry two little ones as well as her self this bike had logged many hundreds and kilometers in the last three or four years. For the longer trips they have a little trailer that can connects to the rear of the bike and allows her to transport cargo, additions children or even their two guide dogs !
In order to accommodate their growing family they recently purchased a Bakfiets like the one shown in the photos below ( the one with a large cargo bucket in the front). This monster of a bike can carry a baby on the rear frame in her baby carrier seat, two children and two guide dogs or cargo in the from. It is truly a limousine of bikes!
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Bicycle weight conscious we Dutch are not, in fact it is a matter some considerable amusement to use to see how The English speaking world goes to great lengths to strip bikes of weight by leaving of chain and mud guards. If you really want to make a different to all up weight of a bicycle then don’t eat another hamburger or crispy cream donut !