“You see Dutch sobriety on a bicycle”, a Hungarian holiday friend once said when I showed him around Utrecht by bicycle. He pointed to the carelessness with which we crossed an overcrowded intersection. He pointed to all the passing rattling fenders, loose brake cables, underinflated tires. Cycling in the Netherlands means shrugging your shoulders all the time: ignoring the wind and rain, the same with antisocial fellow cyclists and red lights, and simply ignoring the ominous sounds that your bicycle is not supposed to produce.
Until companies like VanMoof came along. Electric bikes suddenly became yup-worthy. Sleek frame, nice model and, admittedly, that speed is also enviable if you try to catch your already departed train on your old barrel, and know that you will arrive at your destination with stained armpits – and that there will be just one whistling VanMoofiaan carelessly passes by, very pleased with himself.
I just find it always embarrassing when I know that someone who is fit, young or healthy or all three has such a thing. It is like the children who used to be taken to school by car. Or like people in their thirties who get a ton from their parents ‘because the housing market is so overheated and we want stained glass’. Nice to take on when possible, but: a bit spoiled. Anyone who owns a VanMoof is their own curling parent.
Moreover, I have never understood what you can do with a bicycle that arouses a pertinent stealing fear in you. I was once in a pub with a friend and she was constantly looking out the window at what I thought was a nice person, until she confessed that she checked to see if her ‘Mooffie’ was still there.
And then have to open a lock with an app. I can’t imagine that there isn’t a single VanMoof owner who, drunk or not, stood in front of his bike with an empty phone after an unplanned night. And I can’t imagine that something like that wouldn’t go through someone’s head: handy, such a self-stepping copy. And I can’t imagine that the same thought doesn’t cross those same heads now that VanMoof is bankrupt and half the Randstad is in a panic.
I thought about my Hungarian boyfriend this week. How he made me realize: we are normal, we are so incredibly normal. We are not small, but we have not risen either. Because we keep cycling. Or, in the case of the VanMoof owners: we have to start cycling again.
I call it: the great sobering up.
2023-07-19 04:18:38
#owns #VanMoof #curling #parent #column
