An Amusement & Diversion for The Genteel Cyclist. Daily.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Bike down! Learn how to ride in "the Dutch Style"


A cool article in today's Wall Street Journal, about Amsterdam's efforts to continue innovating on behalf of bike commuters, about the awesome cargo bikes in use over in Europe and now available here in limited supplies, about bike path development in the US, and about what can only be described as "the Dutch Riding Style," which is something we here at Pinch Flat certainly aspire to:


No one wears bike helmets here. They're afraid they'll mess up their hair. "I have a big head and I would look silly," Mayor Klaus Bondam says.

People bike while pregnant, carrying two cups of coffee, smoking, eating bananas. At the airport, there are parking spaces for bikes. In the emergency room at Frederiksberg Hospital on weekends, half the biking accidents are from people riding drunk. Doctors say the drunk riders tend to run into poles.



Note to self: Next time I'm pregnant, I'm going to try riding my bike with two cups of coffee, a banana, and a lit cigarette.

Note to self #2: If God gave us bikes that are big enough to carry around a keg of beer, then He certainly intended for us to use them that way.


The Journal is available only to subscribers, but one of our correspondents pinched this article for us, and we posted it here.

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