Not that I normally would, only the back tyre sprung a leak during a thunderstorm, and that was the closest place I could lock it up under shelter.

And not that it got stolen, either. Instead, some klootzak slashed the seat and both tyres open with a knife. The seat I can tape up, the tyres are gonna cost to replace.

I’ve been saying for about a week now I should pick it up and fix that back tyre. There’s a lesson about procrastination somewhere in there.

Some observations about the bakfiets: (What is that in English, anyway? Cargo tricycle? Big-bike-with-a-box?)

• People ask you for directions a lot. Especially, for some reason, in German.
• A sprung and padded saddle is a luxury beyond belief. And my ordinary bikeseat is really really hard. Funny how I never noticed…
• Because they’re three-wheeled, you can’t lean into turns. Which is (a) horribly disconcerting, and (b) actually dangerous — when you get back onto your bicycle and realise you’ve forgotten how to stay upright.
• When planning your moving, keep in mind the following guidelines: (a) Getting up before noon may allow you to keep the hire to a single day (here I can’t speak from experience); (b) However having to cross the Gay Pride parade route will definitely make this unlikely.
• Drunken people will want you to take them home. (No, not that way, not even during the parade.) Bring along some witty rebuffs, and perhaps a cudgel.

I didn’t get photos. But I ended up with the less-photogenic Gustav model anyway, since they messed up my reservation and gave someone else the big one. So three trips to Bos en Lommer, plus packing time, plus carrying boxes down three flights, all told roughly eight hours. Not the easiest way to move house, but definitely an experience.

That’s not a typo.

There’s construction work going on near my house, for about two blocks on both sides of a major street. One of the two cycle lanes is blocked off with portable barriers at each end. It’s a bit odd they chose that side to blockade, because off the side of that lane is a three metre fence, and on the other side of the that fence is where the construction is going on. It’s even odder, given that the only construction I’ve seen actually in progress is on the other side of the road entirely.

So that’s the cycle lane I was using, on my way home at seven in the evening. Whether they’ve blockaded the correct side of the street or not is kind of a moot point by then, since the construction crew have knocked off and there’s not a soul in sight, except for the cyclists doing like I’m doing, taking the short way home.

And except for the five police officers and one motorcycle traffic warden, waiting at the dead end.

I honestly thought there was something going on, an accident or at least a traffic diversion. But no, all they wanted from me was ID. So they could fine me 20 euro. (While the dude was painstakingly filling out the form —not the sharpest knife in the drawer— I saw one of his compatriots letting two tourists go their merry way, after they protested that they didn’t understand what the signs meant. I fumed silently and refrained from asking them how they thought they should enterpret a crossed-out bicycle, a detour arrow, and a barrier across the lane.)

After I accepted my fine I asked the guy what the deal was. “Well,” he said, “you’re not allowed to cycle here,” and pointed at the signs. I said I understood that, but I wondered why not. “They’re working on the road here,” he replied.

I looked at the road, conspicuously devoid of workers — indeed, entirely empty now that some kind soul had gone back to the open end of the block and closed the two metre gap in the middle of the barriers. I looked back at the officer, with that dreamlike feeling that the person you’re talking too is seeing an entirely different reality to the one you’re inhabiting. “They’re working on the road?” I asked, and checked again to be sure: still lots of road, still nobody working. “Well,” he said, “you’re not allowed to cycle here,” and he pointed again at the signs.

I took my fine and went home.

(If this sounds a little bitter, well, it is. Due to some unexpected costs —which I’ll blog about when they’re ancient enough history that I can laugh at them, instead of weeping— I’ve spent the last week eating potatoes even more than I usually do. Today is payday, but to usher that in by paying the same amount in pointless petty fines that I spent all week on food, well, it’s left me in a bit of a bad mood.)

The city is currently undergoing general refurbishment, and lots of the bridges have signs requesting that you don’t leave your bikes chained to the railing because of repainting. This morning on my way to school I saw this work in progress, and a couple of bicycle owners had decided to disregard the warnings.

Without giving any sign of the satisfaction it was giving him, indeed with a calm almost bovine in its placidity, the painter was colouring bridge, chain and bicycle all together in the same muddy gray-green shade.

I’m definitely the anti-hero of this little tale, but it starts with a real villain: Bikeshop Guy #1. This was the guy working at the shop closest by, when the back wheel of my beloved bicycle started making distressing crunching noises instead of its usual gentle purr. The bearings were beyond saving, and since several of the spokes were also broken (after a highspeed encounter with the curb late one night), I decided to make a full replacement. Enter Bikeshop Guy #1, who quoted me 50 euros for the whole shebang, pick it up tomorrow. So far, he’s not particularly villainous, but the bike only cost me 75 so I was a bit reluctant. How much would the wheel on its own cost? Just 30. And was it difficult to replace? He shrugged. “I don’t know how handy you are… but you shouldn’t have any trouble.” He tossed me a new wheel, and I left with a lighter wallet and a hopelessly naive feeling of optimism.

The depth of depravity of Bikeshop Guy #1 will only gradually become apparent in this narrative. What will also slowly become clear is that I don’t know the first thing about bicycles, and shouldn’t be allowed within poking distance of one if I’m carrying an adjustable spanner. Bearing in mind that the original plan was cost-cutting, I’m going to keep a running total of how much this exercise in futility has cost me. (For purposes of comparison, a stolen bike bought from a junky on a bridge costs on average less than ten euro, and my slightly fancier —and not stolen— model was bought third-hand for 75.) Total cost so far: 30 euro, and counting. (I was patting myself on the back: it costs me two euro per day to take the train to work, I would have to fail to repair my bicycle for two whole weeks for this effort investment not to pay off.)

Enter the first of many helpful figures who have made plain to me the error of my ways: my bike-mad flatmate Marlies. Marlies was the reason I was pretty confident I could handle whatever difficulties this piece of engineering might throw at me. There’s not much about bikes she doesn’t know; she’ll happily cycle a hundred kilometers “to wind down” in the weekends, and she was recently given a repair kit weighing five kilos for a Valentine’s Day gift.

My first disappointment: said repair kit was lacking the one and only tool that we needed to do the job. The problem was, I needed to move the gear cluster from the old defunct wheel to the shiny new one. And it seems that my bicycle uses a system that no self-respecting cyclist would be seen dead with these days, requiring a tool nobody has.

I’m not kidding about “nobody” here. By this time, the bike was back in Zaandam and I had spent a week in Scotland and lost the original receipt, so I didn’t take it back to Bikeshop Guy #1 (thankfully; I was still unaware of the depth of his perfidy, who knows what further havoc he would have wreaked). Instead, I went to the local repair shop next to Zaandam station.

“Nope, can’t do it here. It’s a funny old-fashioned system, see?”

“But you’re a bicycle repair shop. You’re supposed to have tools and… and stuff.”

“Well yeah, but nobody uses this sort of cluster anymore. Tell you what, try behind the Albert Hein, there’s a good place there that might be able to help you.”

Enter Bikeshop Guy #3 (#2 had a speaking part but no introduction), and the first hints of just how nasty #1 had been. Bikeshop Guy #3 didn’t have the dingus we needed either. He offered to take off the cluster with a hammer, but acknowledged that it might be difficult to affix them thereafter to the new wheel. This guy was a pro, that was clear from his shop. If he didn’t have the tool I was looking for, I wouldn’t find it anywhere. So I asked him how much a new cluster would cost. A mere 25 euro, it seems. “You didn’t buy this wheel here, did you?” he asked, frowning a little. Then he whipped on the new gears (with the up-to-date system that’s so simple I see why the old one excited such derision), and while he was about it he added a couple of washers and two large nuts to the axle.

Those nuts, they’re kinda important. They’re what hold the wheel onto the bicycle, generally acknowledged as a significant component in the whole cycling experience. Bikeshop Guy #1 hadn’t seen fit to include them in the package.

(Timeout for a score check: 30 euro for the wheel, 25 for the new sprocket cluster, and by now I’ve spent nearly two weeks using the train, what with erratic opening hours, work pressure and occasional world travel getting in the way. Total cost: approx. 70 euro, approaching the original cost of the bike.)

But it’s finally over, right? I’ll take my new wheel home, slap the old tyre and tube onto it, whip it onto the frame (with the helpfully-provided big nuts of Bikeshop Guy #3) and pedal off into the sunset. Oh me, the eternal optimist.

The next letdown was realising that the old tyres don’t fit on the new wheel. What? That shouldn’t happen, Bikeshop Guy #1 checked out the size of my old wheel when he sold me the new one. “Caveat Emptor” is the sad lesson of this story: double-checking myself, I find the old wheel is noticeably larger than the new. Since the old wheel is a 27-inch rim, the twit must have sold me a 26-inch without me noticing. (The alert reader will notice my lack of healthy paranoia: at this point, I didn’t think to check my conclusion. You know what they say about assumptions…)

Ok, back I go. This process is interrupted by a trip to Italy, and then trying to play tour-guide for my family, overall there’s probably another five days of train travel, perhaps more. The upshot of all this was, I happened to remember what I needed when passing the Amsterdam Centraal Station bike repair shop, and thoroughly confused Bikeshop Guy #4 by attempting to explain the problem in broken Dutch. He politely informed me that as well as the rim diameter, he needs the breadth. By this time I’ve confidently promised my family I will join them on a cycling trip tomorrow, and I’m fairly sure I know what I’m after. I looked at some samples, and with more confidence than sense made a firm decision. Thankfully, #4 made sure I took the receipt, and told me I could make an exchange if necessary.

I say thankfully, because it turns out I could hardly have made a worse choice. The new wheel is not a 26-inch, it is a 28-inch. (It falls to Bikeshop Guy #5, the final hero of this story, to explain that every 27-inch rim is in fact larger than every 28-inch rim, for unfathomable reasons to do with differing national standards.) It later appears that my confident choice of breadth was equally wrong-headed (thanks again to #5 for sorting this out).

By this point, I was somewhat in a fix. I’d promised to go cycling in Amsterdam, but the bicycle was in pieces in Zaandam. I could exchange the tyre freely, but only in Amsterdam, leaving a fair bit of unnecessary back-and-forward travel before the various pieces of bike could come together in their usual configuration. I decided to take a risk, and ride the old wheel in to Amsterdam, carrying the new with me. I’m quite sure that, had I gone ahead with this plan, the wheel would have ground to a final halt at a point precisely equidistant between the two cities, leaving me to spend a pleasant day walking a disfunctional bike through the Dutch countryside. One simple fact saved me from this fate: in some unfathomable manner the old inner tube, while sitting completely unused in our bicycle shed, had sprung a fast leak and was no longer usable.

I must confess, this was shout-and-kick-things material. When I’d calmed down, I figured out a new solution: I would walk the bike to the station, pay the excessive fee that the Dutch railways use to discourage people travelling with their bicycles, and take the train to Amsterdam. Bike and wheel in hand. And so I did.

This should be the end of the story: bike and wheel to Bikeshop Guy #5, who finds me the right tyre and tube and even helpfully inflates it for me, five minutes with the spanner outside their repair shop and I’m cruising happily through the A’dam streets once more. Total cost: 30 + 25 + call it 30 in train tickets + 6 for that last trip with the bike = 91 euro by my count, not bad for a cost-cutting exercise. In fact, there’s one tiny coda, which could have tipped it over 100 if not for the lucky chance that I paid cash for the new tyre the night before.

Because I managed to mess up the ticket purchase, and also managed to hit a ticket-checker with a God complex and a defective sympathy gland. I paid my 6 euro, for the bike ticket, and didn’t buy myself a 1,30 ticket like I usually do. (Ok, objectively this is dumb. I was having a bad day, all right? And I’ve never travelled with a bicycle before, and believe me I don’t plan to ever again.) And Mevrouw Dat-Mag-Niet wanted to charge me 10 euro to buy my ticket on the train.

I tried to explain, in my usual broken mixture of Dutch and English. I had made a mistake, I didn’t understand the system. I would be happy to buy a ticket at the Amsterdam end, I wasn’t trying to rip anyone off here.

No dice.

I’m not sure who to thank, since I’m an atheist, but after buying the tyre the night before, I had no money in my wallet. Not even enough change to buy the ordinary ticket, actually — I usually use a cashcard dispenser gizmo. I’m quite sure she would have taken the money, over my protests, if I’d had it on me. Instead, she grudgingly agreed to accompany me to the dispenser at A’dam Centraal and make sure I bought the right ticket. To make sure I didn’t pull a fast one, she took my identity card away with her, then returned five minutes before we arrived to stand menacingly over me as we pulled in to the station.

I don’t know, maybe I look like a junky. With my Bonn University t-shirt, and my two hours worth of stubble. Maybe it was the newly washed hair in a neat plait that gave me away. Or perhaps, my entirely valid (and extremely expensive) bicycle ticket clued her in to the fact that I was a desperate criminal, willing to stop at nothing in order to ride the NS rail system without paying my dues. Whatever the case, she called ahead with her walky-talky so that we were met at the station by another two tickety personages, and all three escorted me to the dispenser. Where I bought my ticket, which they stamped and returned to me (first carefully checking that my reduction card was valid). As they left, my guardian angel fired a parting shot. “You do know that this identity card is no longer valid, don’t you?”

I was having a bad day, as I said, so my response was a simple “Yes”. I’d like to pause here a moment and expand on this a little. Bear with me for this single paragraph, I guarantee you that it will leave me, at least, feeling better.

Yes, Madam, I’m aware that the residence permit that I treasure so highly in fact ran out last September. The reason I continue to carry it is that your bureaucracy has so far failed to supply me with a replacement. I could (and indeed probably should, legally speaking) carry instead the colourful sticker announcing that my application has been received, and is even as we speak being processed. However that sticker is in my passport, which is rather more difficult to replace (should it go astray) than the plastic square I left in your tender care (which, may I tangentially note, nonetheless cost me 450 euro to procure). What you fail to realise, Madam, is that the validity of my identification is utterly unimportant for our little transaction this morning. Because I wasn’t trying to dodge my fair, I didn’t leap desperately (bicycle in hand) from the train window before our arrival in Amsterdam, leaving you with the bitter realisation that the card in your hand (which nonetheless gives you access to my name and current address) was lapsed. No, I gave the darned thing to you for your own peace of mind, so that you didn’t feel compelled to physically frogmarch me to the ticket dispenser. In conclusion, Madam, I have a question for you: In your official capacity as an NS ticket-checker, what possible concern of yours is it that my residence permit is lapsed?

Ah, that feels a little better. If only I could have delivered that in Dutch at the appropriate time…

As I said before, but for the convenient emptiness of my wallet, the running total would at this point be topping 100 euro. Thankfully, the rest of the story really is as simple and easygoing as I had hoped. Bikeshop Guy #5 replaced the tyre and tube without complaint, and even cleared up the mystery of how a 28-inch rim wheel can pass through a 27-inch tyre without touching the sides. (I remind you: it seems that not every country agrees on the standard inch. Whether that makes sense is another story.) It took me literally less than a minute to swap the old wheel for the new, and I happily cycled from the station to work, a poorer but hopefully wiser man. Later this afternoon I’m going cycling, as promised, with my family.

Unless my bicycle gets stolen in the meantime.

Granny sits in her wheelchair in front, with a manic grin and white hair streaming in the breeze. On the back there’s the back half of a bicycle, with a dutiful son-in-law (I’m guessing here, naturally) panting and straining to send them hurtling through the traffic. I wish I could have caught them on film, but even if I had a camera Granny was cracking the whip so enthusiastically that there’s no way I could have been fast enough. So let the eye of your imagination wander, and be amazed.

The novel is also notable for the copious commentary on (and occasional quotation from) the savant De Selby. He is responsible for such fascinating ideas as the explanation of ‘night’ as an accretion of black air (extremely flammable, as seen for instance when a match is struck); that bereavement, old age, love, sin, death and other “saliencies of existence” are “unnecessary”; that the Earth is not spherical but ‘sausage-shaped’; and so on. As perhaps the only reliable extant source on De Selby’s writings, O’Brien is a great source for those perceptive and penetrating coffee-table discussions.