Urban Bikes

Over at Urban Sketchers there is a recent posting on bicycling in Denmark. The author writes, "Danes bike everywhere - school, job, shopping, picking up kids. Bike lanes figure prominently in major towns, not just in the centre….” Check out his sketch at the link. It reminds me of the multitudes of bikes in Western Europe. I got a chance to ride in the Netherlands in 2009 and then in the UK in 2011. Both trips made my hands very cold, as we traveled to Europe in the winter when it’s cheaper and not crowded. In the Netherlands we rode on dikes and in a national park (where bikes are left unlocked at public stands for free usage) and in the UK, I pedaled around the famed walled city of York.

Nijmegen, Netherlands, December 2008

I’m not sure if I’ve ranted about technology before on this blog, but one barely developed theory I have about technology is that the more we use it the more we are separated from natural experience. Thus we’ve read on so many blogs that “cagers” just miss so much as they press the gas and move through town without noticing the air, the surroundings, the sounds of pedestrians talking, or a better view that comes from a slower pace. Bikes, being relatively low tech, are so much less a foreign appendage of human beings; certainly in comparison to cars. As such, my daughter and our friends (above photo) talked to each other and shared the experience of a ride along a riverside at a human pace and scale.