Bikes on Dykes

I slept really poorly last night because it was hot and I was not tired since I took a long nap yesterday afternoon. But, I knew I had to do something today to deal with the heat. I decided to do a country bike tour.

I went to Mike's Bikes and arrived a little after 11. I thought I was early, so I took a little time exploring the neighborhood, went to a supermarket, etc., but it turned out I was a few blocks away. I was afraid I would never find it. When I got there a few minutes after 11, the group had already gathered and was getting an orientation.

I never would have thought I'd be able to navigate the streets of Amsterdam on a bike, much less that I would be able to do it in a group of 20 tourists! But it turned out to be relatively easy if you just paid attention and followed the rules of the road.

Our guide was a Dutch-Canadian guy. His father moved to Canada after World War II. He was a funny guy (our guide, not his dad, who I never met), and knew a lot about Amsterdam and the Netherlands. He was also a total bike fanatic and after riding a bike with him for 4 hours, I became one too.

I learned a lot of things on the tour, including answers to my burning questions about why the Netherlands is also called Holland and why the language and people are called Dutch. I'm not going to share my answers here, but if you want to know, you'll just have to ask me.

We rode through the city and within minutes we were on a bike path that took us out of town, through more suburban looking neighborhoods and finally into the countryside. We were riding along the Amstel river from which Amsterdam gets its name. We stopped at a real windmill and took a group photo and then went on to a farm where we learned how they make cheese and wooden shoes (they did not call them clogs).

Finally, we headed back a different route that took us again through the countryside and then through an amazing network of trails that make it possible to tour all of the Netherlands on bike if you wanted to.

Our guide (I never got his name) told us that bikes have been used in the Netherlands since they were first invented. Cars were too expensive, dirty and too big for the small streets of medeival Dutch cities, but bikes were cheap, clean and could maneuver through even the smalles spaces. I thought it was a relatively new thing and don't remember seeing many bikes when I was here 20 years ago, but I believed our guide, especially when he explained that the bike networks were built after the Great Depression as a huge public works project (hear that President Obama? There's an idea for you to put people to work and help reduce our dependence on "foreign oil")

I had a great time and felt like I got to know a little more about Amsterdam and the Netherlands.