OMG Jay Bought a Ladies' Bike!

Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues once wrote, “Thinking is the best way to travel.” Around here it’s probably a close second. Where I now live and without a bike, my options included my (overactive) imagination and my size 12’s.

Jim's bike (hee hee Jim rides a ladies' bike!)

Thanks to Jim, my means of transportation and my horizons expanded. For the first week in Holland, I walked. At the start of my second, Jim lent me his bike. Life, as I knew it, changed. Last Saturday, I did my best Magellan and went on a ride of discovery. Once away from my beaten path, I found Chinese and Italian restaurants, I found a small grocery store, and I found the bicycle shop where I would buy my very own fiets.

At first I asked about “second-hand” bikes, and not liking what I was shown, I moved on to new bikes. I said something like, "Please show me the least expensive bike you sell." The guy turned to the closest one, the one with the price tag with 1499 euros written on it, and said, “This is the cheapest price.” (Ahh, Dutch humor. I knew it was here somewhere.) After staring at each other in an infinitely brief moment, we both smiled and he said, “OK so I tried.”

The issue for me, according to my salesguy, was the size of the bike. (Not many size 60’s in the secondhand lot.) The next bike he showed me was the one I eventually bought, sort of. I liked it. My size. Three speeds. Hand brakes. Perfect; except for one thing: the bar. (Every ‘merican boy reading this knows exactly what I mean. The bar: the almost daily reminder of the fragility of male anatomy.)

Dutch people speak English. Some speak English very well; others are less comfortable with nuances like metaphor and inference; so when I asked him if “the ones with the bar” were for men and the other ones were “just for ladies,” I wasn’t as clear as he would have liked. I think I said, “This (other) one has no bar. Is it the same?”

“Ya,” he said, slowly getting my train of thought. “The same. This one for men. This (other) one for anyone.”

“For women and old men?” I asked.

“Nay, not for old men; all men.” Then he gave me some statistics to sooth my aching ego. “This one,” (pointing to the bike with a bar), “thiry percent. The one with no bar, seventy percent.” (Ahh, tacit permission; thank goodness. For all of you thinking OMG Jay bought a ladies’ bike! here’s the thing: A bike rider is often required to get on and off the bike many, many times on a single journey. At every intersection (it seems), every tram crossing (for sure), and many crosswalks, you must de-bike. There aine no way I’m swingin’ my right leg over the backend of my bike every time I get on and off.) “Not just old men,” he repeated.

Thinking might be better; but three gears, hand brakes, and a comfortable seat is a lot more practical.