Speeding...

It took awhile before I noticed the speed markers on the road around the Ringvaart... but once I did, it became a challenge to see if I could make an angry face appear by going over the speed limit.

The fastest I can ride and take a photo.

Alas, no. I was up to 29 kph at one point, but no faster.

It was all smiles for me. :)

Amphibious bicycle

Folding bicycle and inflatable kayak, a perfect combination.

Inspired by a friend, and, because of constant envy from the crazy flotilla that goes past our apartment on the canal everyday, we've acquired an inflatable kayak. It's big enough to fit two people uncomfortably and small enough to pack and strap on to my bicycle... which is what I did for a planned kayak trip on the kagerplassen on Sunday with my friends.

Here we are alight on our journey:

Ideally, this should end with a photo of my folded bicycle inside the inflated kayak, but, unfortunately, there was a puncture! I was clumsy in my dragging/heaving attempts to dry the thing after the last paddle and must have snagged it on a splinter. I'm happy to have discovered this before getting in the water.

How many patch kits do I need to carry these days??  :)

I went home and patched it and everything seems shipshape now, so expect a photo from the next perfect day!

On a large screen

The Euro cup begins in June! Not sure where you can watch the games?

Check your new bicycle seat cover.

Klompenfiets!

A local bicycle store has a promotional bakfiets shaped like a klompen (wooden shoe). They also rent out regular bakfiets for daytrips... but I'm sure they'll rent the klompen if anyone wants to take it for a spin!

Fotografie & fietsen

Last week on polderdag, we went for a short ride out to re-photograph some knotwilgen/tree stumps that I had badly exposed the last time... (I've been obsessed with getting the perfect knotwilgen photograph for a few months now, but my fascination with the tradition of extreme tree pruning started a few years ago.) 

Bad exposure: 

I hoped the presence of my scientifically inclined boyfriend would help me be more disciplined about exposure readings.

This time, I managed to get one good shot, and then double expose the second piece of film when my boyfriend turned away.

Good exposure and double exposure:

Yeah, I really don't know how I did that.

Anyways, traveling with a  4x5 field camera and tripod is very easy on a Brompton. The front basket is huge and I don't have to unpack/repack the same way as I would with a regular pannier. It's very convenient and easy to manage. The only problems are with my photography technique, not the transport.

(Near a path lined with knotwilgen just outside of Koudekerk)

Also, I'd like to point out how the landscape had changed in just a month and a half! Flowers blooming everywhere, bugs abound, the stumps are growing new shoots.

A few fuzzy swan babies had appeared!

But yet another swan was still waiting for her nestlings and I was able to stop and take a picture without messing up the film.

Grebe babies hitching a ride

Not bicycle related. :)

Spring blooming

Wine store (wijnkoperij) bicycle!

Henri Bloem in Leiden has a very nice bicycle out front:

And backwards:

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Bike share - Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv's bike share program is now just over one year old. It's called "Tel O Fun" (which is kind of hilarious, and, according to Wikipedia, "The service name is the blend of the words "Tel Aviv" and the English word for pleasure "fun" in Hebrew the word "Ofan (אופן) is Wheel.")

The program's website has a full english section with everything you need to know. It seem simple and convenient with lots of well located stations.

Here's a picture of one station.

The website also includes a link to a map of bicycle lanes in the city. One dedicated lane extends almost along the entire coast, from the old north Tel Aviv port to the Old Jaffa port. This would be a nice place to ride for recreation and beach going. I'm not sure how commuting works in the city, but recreational riding seems very well considered!

From what I observed, most cyclists were taking it easy and enjoying their fair and wonderful weather. Sidewalk cycling is allowed and some bike paths are multi-use with pedestrians. This leads to slow riding and lot of relaxed socialising on bicycles. Also, it was the weekend. :)

 

While in Tel Aviv for a day, I was very eager to try cycling in the city so I looked into several options before arriving. First, I found some tour packages or organized rides, which look great, but expensive per person for small groups.

Instead, we decided to use the bike share program and use my brother as a tour guide. :) He's a good story teller, so no matter what, it would be entertaining. We met with him near the north port and proceeded to buy tickets from a Tel-O-Fun machine. The station was full of bicycles, with a truck and more bicycles out front. And so begins our sad story.

Unfortunately, the station machine indicated that all the bicycles attached were out of order and could not be rented... so we walked south to the next station.

At that station, the barcode scanner was out of order so we couldn't engage the system with our tickets... at this point my brother called the helpline. They suggested we walk to the next station. We did so - under a bit of time pressure.

At the third station, the barcode scanner was also out of order and could not read our tickets! A few other users stopped by and no one with a barcoded ticket was able to use the system.

My brother has an annual subscription, so he was able to use his pass (not barcoded) to get a bicycle. With his Tel O Fun bicycle, he cycled to the next (fourth) station, patience at an end, to see if it was operational. Apparently, the barcode scanner was operational, but it had the same problem as the first station, all the bicycles were marked as out of order and unavailable!

Over an hour had passed from when we had expected to get bicycles, take a nice ride and return them. We didn't have much time left, and frankly, were so annoyed by the system errors that we gave up on the idea. I wish I had prepared a "plan b," such as renting bicycles from one of the many bicycle stores in Tel Aviv, but alas, no plan, no bicycle.

After we giving up on Tel O Fun, we called the service line again and were assured that we'd be given a refund for the tickets we purchased.

At the time of this misadventure, it felt like a terrible disappointing ordeal, but as I write the story down, I realize that we could have just kept trying to find a working station...

I'm curious, were we too impatient? Would you check more than four stations?

More photos of cyclists and cycling in Tel Aviv here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliannack/sets/72157629674807800/

Cycling appropriate attire - shoes

I'm a bit stubborn about some things... for cycling, I resist buying "cycling" specific attire... My attitude is probably very silly, but I just think that regular exercise gear, or regular clothing should be good enough. My typical cycling outfit, 10 or 100k, is: leggings, a short skirt, shoes, a nice icebreaker wool shirt, layered hoodies and/or windbreaker.  In the winter, I wear wool socks with thermal leggings. Oh, and I have some cycling gloves when I remember to bring them. That's about it for bicycle costuming.

The only problem I've ever really had is foot fatigue- (no need for bicycle shorts! Brooks saddles for the win.) so I would try to wear the shoes or boots that caused the least noticeable aches. Not a perfect solution, with the result that some of my regular shoes have funny markings from the clips and pedals. Taking a break and walking always alleviates the ache, or spying a very cute pony. Luckily, these things are easy enough to do.

When I finally started taking spin classes this year, the intensity of the cycling in class with no breaks or ponies, exacerbated by standing(!) while pedalling- something that I never do on the road -  made the foot problem impossible to ignore. My foot would cramp or creak very painfully in my regular running shoes.

So, I did a little research (google) and decided to find some real cycling shoes.

Yay, Bever outlet store!

I found some cycling sandals for half-off the price. Eager to test them, I wore them with socks, in public, on my ride to the lowest point in the Netherlands. The look of them, and the effect of them enabled me to ride for a few hours without wanting to take any breaks. God forbid anyone saw me like this. Oh, and my feet didn't ache at all.

Extreme dork.

Now that I know they work, I might find some that aren't extremely embarrassing to wear; especially because I can't rely on the weather ever getting warm enough to go sockless. :)

FYI, I'm not getting a clipless pedal system. I don't care about efficiency/yadda yadda, only making my feet feel better and this seems to work and will ease up the wear on my regular shoes. I did buy some cleats to try on the pedals in spin class (evoking a great joke at the bicycle store about spinners falling over like dominoes when I fail to unclip properly). The clipless system in class is fun, but it's not anything I need for my bicycle trips.

Holiday in the sun

I just returned from a nice holiday to Israel... 20+ degrees, sun, palm trees, historical sites galore, delicious hummus, etc.

The only problem was no bicycles (bike rental scheme in Tel Aviv = fail)  :(

I'll write more about it this week.

For now, I'd like to just highlight how much this guy rocks! He's cycling, midday, in the dead sea desert area between Masada and Arad, getting buzzed by cars and obnoxious/envious photographers.
!!!

't kopje van bloemendaal

This highest point in the Leiden vicinity is a hilltop just north of Haarlem- 43 meters above sea level!

The area is part of Bloemendaal and from what I saw, it has many near-palatial residential buildings, winding brick roads and lovely tall trees.

The specific hill has it's own name, "'t kopje van bloemendaal", and a pannenkoeken restaurant on the top (as every decent hill should).

Adjoined to the pannekoekhuis building is a bunker/viewing station with a sign and history for the "Kopje." 

The route to the top of the hill is not clearly marked, but if you simply follow the large crowd of hill-starved racing cyclists, you'll get to the top...

And incidentally, while looking for the directions to the hilltop on the internet, I found a number of great cycling routes and sites, but my favorite is this one: http://heuvelsfietsen.nl/  A specialized site for hill lovers who ride in the Netherlands!

They rate the route I took up the hill as a 21 kip difficulty. Being unfamiliar with this system of measurement, I'm going just imagine that kip translates to chicken, like on a menu- and it's not an acronym for anything else.

So my effort was 21 chickens, and if I'd approached from the other way, it could have been 29 chickens! For comparison, some of the hills that I attempted in Limburg on my brompton vouwfiets were over 50 chickens! And maybe that's why I couldn't do them.  I'm a 30 chickens or less gal.

Good to know.

It's a fun ride! Do it. Pannenkoeken. (Call first- Apparently they think posting their hours on a printout taped to their roadside sign, without updating their website is acceptable.)

Better Bagels Bicycle!

Better Bagels has opened in Leiden and the owner has parked his bicycle outside with the biggest basket ever. Seriously, it's the biggest basket. There can't be a bigger basket. No way.

Open on Sunday mornings!!

Early morning bicycle rescue

Weekend mornings are nice and quiet in Leiden.
The evidence of student partying in the night before is usually amusing.
Sometimes, there are bicycle trees, nice efforts made to not litter: 

Scarfs on cars:

Then, there are knocked over bicycles:

And less amusingly, bicycles in the canals.

I've had to rescue two recently...
This one was resting by the handlebars. I pulled it out and leaned it against a pole nearby. Probably, I should have moved it further away to avoid a repeat.

Yesterday morning, evidence of a wild party night included a broken teacup:

And wheels bobbing up and down in the water. (Another reason to get fat tires?)

It's one of the OV-Fiets rental bicycles. I hope the person who borrowed it comes back to look for it. I left it far from the water, leaning against the building, in full view of the street.

Daily news - Famous!

As I was checking the Leidsch Dagblad in a fit of self-obsession last week...  (There was an interview by Journalist Frank Beijen of, well, me and this blog. It was published in the print edition, not online.
So I made a scan and re-edited the headline to read:

Or you can see the full article scanned here with a lovely little lamb springing in the corner:

)

But anyways, as I was saying, I kept checking the Leidsch Dagblad and I ended up reading this little blurb about an accident on the Rapenburg.

Not five hours later, I walked down the Rapenburg and saw the bicycle myself!

The fork came apart and appears quite rusty.

Scary!

And nowhere in the article did a helmet get mentioned.

Even the commenters only mentioned the outrage of shoddy repair jobs.