Archive for the ‘bakfiets’ Category

I brought it home with my bike.


Upright

05Jan11

Photo by Amsterdamize Fully upright is the best position for cycling. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. They’re only trying to sell you a bike that’s less comfortable in exchange for maybe a tiny percentage of gain in leg-effort or some other power dynamic that you won’t ever consider while you’re actually riding a bike. […]


Oh, corporate America. You do have your ways. One of those ways involves moving me through four spaces in two years, all within a thirty-foot radius. In a 1400-person building. Like a hamster scratching out a path in cedar chips. At least the facilities guys will always have jobs. So I took some things out, […]


Photo by Amsterdamize The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday in which much puzzlement and a fair amount of scorn was directed toward the Dutch for not wearing helmets. From the lede on through, the implication is the Dutch are fools not to wear them and it is only a matter of cultural stubbornness […]


What does a day look like if the bakfiets is your car? It looks pretty much like any other day, only maybe you need a little extra time to get it all done because you’re going to be a little slower about it. What did I have to accomplish on Halloween? Take the kids to […]


On Friday, one of my posts was featured on a portal site. A messload of people were sent down my series of tubes who would not have otherwise found this sleepy blog. To those of you who have returned: welcome! It’s been a long hot summer during which we did a lot less riding than […]


I have the good fortune in the work that I do to have met a few Dutch people this year. When the conversation inevitably turned toward cycling, they all said the same thing: “The Dutch are born on bicycles.” The reason all that fantastic infrastructure works so well is because people start learning to use […]


One toddler out for dinner is a task. Two toddlers out for dinner can border on torture—for everybody in the restaurant. This summer we had to decide whether we would be prisoners of our own creation or if we would take the children out to eat. We took them out to eat. It sometimes bordered […]


Shout outs

02Oct10

Two surprising shout outs from the street today. This morning on the way to the farmer’s market, we got a “look at that silly thing!” from a little girl in her lawn. Which was of course hilarious. Tonight on the way to ice cream, we passed a handful of people on a second-floor balcony. A […]


I’ve been riding the bakfiets full time since Mr. Blazer mashed up my Raleigh. I love my LBS, but they’re a tiny shop. With Memorial Day weekend coming up, they said they’d need at least a week and a half to order the rim and build the wheel. I could have gone to the other […]