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Riding home with happy boys on the Xtracycle after a long playtime in the next town (The playaground is bigger than in our village). If you haven’t guessed this week was a break from work to be with the boys and fix all the things in the house we’ve not got around to since we moved in summer. I’ll be back next week with details of this and other stuff. Happy cycling and thanks for reading along…
Yesterday Beautiful Wife and myself celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. Eleven years after we met in the UK, and many people reacted to our engagement with disbelief that two young people from the UK and Japan could ever see each other again, let alone organise a life together, we’ve three fantastic boys and a lot of dreams for the future. And she’s more beautiful than ever…
I love you M, thanks for a great nine years…
[If you're wondering what the picture is, it's a Celtic two-chord design, each chord forming one half of the heart, intertwined at the top and the point.]
I don’t know what is wrong at the moment, the work keeps coming. Unfortunately it’s usually annoying stuff like the health insurance asking how much we earn -for the third time this year. So todays post is a photo essay/copout, showing a fairly typical afternoon with the bikes…
Trusty steeds awaiting family. The Bafiets didn’t poop: that’s sand dumped on the drive for some reason. We were going to pick up Eldest Son from Circus School in the next town, so I’m hauling his bike and carrying Youngest Son on the Xtracycle, while Beautiful Wife has a go carrying Middle Son in the Bakfiets.
And away they go. The Bakfiets is heavy so it obviously goes faster than the Xtracycle downhill. That’s my excuse anyway.
Heading home, Middle Son now with me and smallest with Beautiful Wife as the way back is partly uphill. As far as I know there isn’t a single metre of dedicated bike lane in Ostfildern, and this is shared with pedestrians. It also becomes a gravel road in a few metres, but at least we’re away from the traffic to the right. Considering Eldest son has been learning circus skills for the last two hours, including tightrope walking and unicycling, he’s riding well.
The ‘big swing’: one of the best places in the boys current universe, and only accessible by bike or on foot. As an added advantage there are friendly goats to watch in the field alongside. What more could a small boy want? Perhaps a pack of chocolate dips, such as Middle Son is quietly finishing off in the on the swing.
Last part of the ride home on traffic free streets. Riding conditions like these are the reason we could get the bakfiets, as Beautiful Wife is very nervous about using it in traffic. Eldest son is a speck in the distance. Several parents in his school have remarked that he’s pretty fit compared to their kids. I don’t point out the obvious reason why this is: I find it’s not worth the effort.
We had to cross two slightly busy roads, but the journey was direct, straight, and 99% traffic calmed or traffic free . And this is Ostfildern, (“Four wheels good, two wheels baaaad”) so you can bet very little money went into making this happen. Most of the time we were on field roads, although to be fair they were signposted for bikes. A few improvements would be nice, like smooth surfaces on a couple of sections (Gravel is fine as a surface, but why the potholes?) and parhaps a set of lights on the crossings so we can stop traffic instead of having to wait in the centre refuge… sorry, a bit radical for Ostfildern there.
Ah, well. Beautiful wife is getting the hang of the Bakfiets and the boys think it’s the best thing since Christmas, so on balance I’m happy.
Time to fill in the form for the health insurance…
My goodness but its been a week since I wrote anything here.: as you’ve probably gathered it’s been a busy one. This week, Beautiful Wife decided it was time to master the Bakfiets, and that the best way to do this was to go out for the evening with me alongside on the Xtracycle. Even Ostfildern manages to have sufficient cycle lanes to avoid running along a road much, and we followed these to a restaurant in the next town.
Beautiful wife getting used to the Bakfiets.
Her verdict: great bike, but a bit of a pull on hills, and probably not good to ride wearing a short skirt. She also found it awkward to make corners in a hurry. This we discovered when we missed a turning and she had to do a 240 degree turn to fit into the cycle lane. This was in no was due to my bad navigation. Not at all. And the driver of the car following was very nice about waiting for us to manouvre. We made the restaurant comfortably and parked the bikes be the hedge.
Bikes onna date.
They are locked, although it’s not obvious. local bike thieves wouldn’t know that this is, let alone have a market for it, so we felt pretty safe, especially as we were sitting on the other side of the hedge. The meal was punctuated by overheard conversations like this:
“What is that?”
“Is it a bicycle?”
“Can’t be…”
Life is moving so fast at the moment I’m pushed to keep up with it, let alone blog about it. Apart from the bike tour, which I still need to write loads on, I’ve other people powered stories to tell. And I’m supposed to be writing a guest post for another blog, and…
In the meantime I’m trying to live in the real world, where both the Xtracycle and the Bakfiets are seeing a lot of use. Someone asked me to fetch and deliver an empty box which will soon find a use in a community theatre production or on some other project. Ironically the piano this box transported was made in Hamamatsu, Japan. The person who asked me to move this was convinced it wouldn’t fit on the Bakfiets, on the basis it wouldn’t fit into a car… Mwahahahaaa…
That's better...
All this schepping stuff about can wear a chap down, so here’s a new use for the Bakfiets. Shortly afterwards it was comandeered by Beautiful Wife to ride home. I was hoping she’d let me ride in the box, but she made some excuse about carrying the boys instead. I ask you…
Yesterdays post seems pretty maudlin reading by the light of today, so let’s look at something more positive, and furthermore actually on topic for this blog. I’ll Introduce you to the Omafiets.
The first thing you notice about Oma is that she’s Heavy. None of that namby-pamby lightweight carbon or chromoloy: this one is steel: great lumps of the stuff. If it didn’t have wheels you could mistake her for scaffolding. In view of this, the manufacturer fitted a stand rather like those associated with Indian bikes, a big triangle that is horizontal much of the time and lifts the back wheel clean off the ground when pushed vertical, It also locks in position. These stands are found on most single-speed bikes in Japan, which seem to be most bikes. The ubiquity of these inbuilt stands may be why I’ve yet to find a bike rack as I’d recognise one in Europe: most are just a parking space with a bike symbol. The bike is locked with a wheel lock of the sort that the Dutch use all the time, but out of interest, do the Dutch ones clamp the key into the lock when it’s unlocked?
If we get a bike for Beautiful Wife to take home, it will probably be a three-speed one at least, partly so she has at least some options when climbing up the hills of Ostfildern, but also because than I can be sure that the frame is wide enough to take a Nexus hub gear for if and when we want to upgrade. I know they are usually a standard size, but Japanese bikes seem to have few ’standard’ parts (Ironically, I don’t see a lot with Shimano components) and It’d be a real bummer to find the chain stays are the wrong width after I get a new wheel.
The back rack is next to useless as I don’t have any bungee chords and it doesn’t have a sprung clamp, but the front basket is very handy for shopping, although it’s not exactly Xtracycle capacity as I found yesterday when I had th squeeze the groceries in, and when full it does funky things to the steering and I’ve nearly landed in a ditch once when the handlebars seemed to move of their own accord because of the weight. I also find the contents of the basket tend to go airborne when we hit a bump: you hit a lot of bumps on Japanese side roads.
However, the frame is what sold me on the idea of getting a bike here: It’s curved like a Dutch Omafiets, instead of being straight like a mountain bike. For some reason it looks slightly more feminine (when my wife’s riding it anyway, my beard tends to take the edge off any femininity). It certainly looks more at home doing the shopping than an MTB conversion would, while being a bit better suited to Beautiful Wife than the larger-wheeled European town bikes.
We’ll be scouting the local bike shop, which is so eccentric it warrants a blog post of its own but which has a big range of used bikes of the sort we want. Then we have to work out how to get it home.
Anyone have any other suggestions for thngs to watch out for?
There’s good news and bad news at the moment: The good news is that I’ve got (read: borrowed) a bicycle: a maroon, single-speed Omafiets with full mudguards, full chain guard, a saddle like a sofa and a dented basket. The basket is handy for recognition when I’ve parked next to several dozen near-identical bikes (This happens a lot in Japan). I’ve christened her Oma which is unoriginal and innacurate: she’s really more like a great Aunt, the one that gets you into trouble and still goes backpacking to exotic places but she’s an old lady and doesn’t like rough ground: the other day I nearly ejected the shopping out of the basket when I ran over a drain. She’s answered my first question about Japanese cycling, which was how my lovely wife used a town bike in Japan but can’t get a small enough version in Germany. The answer, of course is that in Japan town bikes use 26” wheels, not 700cc. Obvious when you think about it. We’re considering buying an old bike and taking the frame home for Beautiful Wife. The not so good news is that we’re having trouble with our internet connection is Slow: slower than a very slow thing, in fact, so it’s difficult to upload the pictures I’ve taken of Oma and our adventures, (or even respond to comments: sorry about that, but, I’ll get to them) Next week I’ll not be posting at all because we’ll be travelling to visit family and I doubt I’ll be able to get on line at all, but I’ll keep making notes of the journey and taking photos ready for the time we get back and I make the mother of all uploads.. Just wondering, but would people be interested in general stuff about where we go, or should I stick to bicycle-related material?
It’s been a bit of a fight with the internet provider but it seems they have now agreed with me that as I’m paying them a monthly fee, they probably should get on with making a connection and providing me internet access, so they sent someone to find the plug or to whatever it is that they need to do when customers move house. Goodness knows why big corporations find it so hard to handle this sort of thing. It also seems my cunning plan to keep entries appearing on a regular basis didn’t work as it was suposed to: unfortunately after getting the pictures up and ready, I didn’t have time to make the rest publishable before the connection went down, hence the silence, Sorry about that: I’ll rewrite those over the next few days. On the other hand I’ve come back to several kind comments and emails wishing us well with the move: many thanks for those.
The Xtracycle was used a lot in the move and at some point during the shuttling back and forth we managed to clock up 1000km since I accidentally reset the computer in February. This and the weight it’s been carrying help explain why the brake blocks were worn down to almost nothing, and were even showing bare metal at the back: the poor thing wasn’t made for this sort of punishment.
Anyway, we’re here: we have a garage that we can use, and which I’m making into a bike workshop, (more of that anon) in a network of relatively quiet streets we can cycle on without too much trouble from Mercedes Man: We can see green trees, the boys can get to the meadow to play within three minutes, and every couple of days a buzzard or two flies past, so on balance I’m happy…
After a couple of years racing about on a wooden push-along bike, Middle Son is graduating to his first pedal powered vehicle. He’s doing it in fits and starts at the moment, and when I put out traffic cones for him to ride around he spends more time playing games with the cones, but we’re getting there. He’s learning quickly because Eldest Son, who is just off frame, is acting as a pace car, so he has a target and an example. On the flip side he’s used to me driving him about on the Xtracycle so I think he’s reluctant to give that up.
- Adventure Awaits
Meanwhile Eldest Son is spreading his wings, getting faster and more confident, and wants to ride, ride, ride, (so as a ‘Good Dad’ I naturally have to ride with him) He’s really embraced the ‘bike as transportation’ idea, and I think he gets a kick out of turning up to his activities by bike. He isn’t alone any more though: now the weather is warmer many children are travelling by bike, often alone, to visit friends or relatives, play, have fun, or go to children’s activities: we we have severe bike congestion sometimes with bikes in the stands, up the sides and all over the lawns People saw the weather and came by bike. This isn’t in Ostfildern I would add: it’s in the next town where there is infrastructure for bikes.
There are lots of other changes on the horizon: as well as the house move there’s other stuff that is looking exciting, and I’m itching to blog about, but unfortunately all the preparation and organising is taking time that I’d otherwise use to write, which is slowing my posting rate down a bit: watch this cliche.
Infrastructure = Bikes. Simple
The reason why
July 31, 2009 in Cycling, Environment, Family, Trenchant comments about cars, Uninformed opinions | 4 comments
In our youngest sons’ medical record there’s a medical report from the children’s hospital in Esslingen to our children’s doctor, dated the 30th of January 2007. The introduction begins:
“Report of the above named patient who was brought to our emergency department at 07:54 this morning. Found this morning …breathing loudly and drowsy. Emergency doctor called, on arrival patient unresponsive…“
I can’t read those rather undramatic words without remembering the fear I felt holding my tiny six-month-old baby and trying to get him to wake up, move, respond, anything. I remember the rasping wheezing sound of his breath as I tried to call the advice line to see what I could do, and being met with a barrage of questions about my insurance details, address, and other things that I really didn’t what to deal with right then, before explaining the symptoms and hearing the words “Call an ambulance”. Well, gee thanks. I could have done that three precious minutes ago.
The dispatcher told me the emergency doctor was on his way, and to wait outside the house for them to come so they could find us quickly, so I stood outside for a private eternity, trying to stay calm so my family wouldn’t get even more scared, while a truck decided to deliver in the shop next door and caused a traffic jam in both directions. The doctor’s red and white mercedes came, blue lights reflecting off the houses, and they piled out carrying oxygen bottles, monitoring devices and other unfamiliar but strangely comforting tools of the trade, asking questions even before they were through the door.
Our little boy still wouldn’t respond to light, noise or gentle shaking so an ambulance was called. We carried him there, lit by flashing blue lights, with neighbours watching through the windows, although I admit I felt a slight stab of justice when I saw the Ambulance was parked in the loading bay, blocking the truck in.
After continual talking and massaging in the ambulance, I was rewarded by a squeeze of his fingers as we rattled through the morning rush-hour traffic, and the ambulance drivers were fairly confident that he’d be okay, but he didn’t really seem to wake up until he was being examined in the hospital. The form shows a great long list of things they checked before coming to the eventual conclusion it was Croup, probably aggravated by the Feinstaub (Particle pollution) from diesel engines: at the time we were living in an apartment next to a street with 1500 trucks and 13000 cars passing daily.
That morning ‘caring for the environment’ became personal. For me it’s not just about ‘looking after the earth’ but a memory of waiting for the doctor and not knowing if my little boy would die. I don’t want other parents to have to stand on the street, praying the ambulance will come quickly, that their child will wake up or just keep breathing.
We’d followed the cultural belief that ‘one day’ we would have to get a car but on January 30th 2007, that changed. Our family learned first hand the cost of society’s addiction to driving everywhere, and decided we won’t live that way. The process that resulted in us getting the Xtracycle, going to Amsterdam and bringing a bakfiets to Stuttgart and much else, was kicked into high gear that morning.
We’re a car free family in a car obsessed culture: this is our story.
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