On any given week in Amsterdam, I spend at least seven or eight hours on a bike. About four to five of these hours are for leisure, out on my prized race bike, a brand new beetle green Cannondale. Road cycling is a hobby I have long been interested in. I finally picked up the hobby last summer with the help of my local triathlon club. The other two or three are spent commuting on my city bike. These quick rides, whether it’s an eight-minute journey to my gym/co-working space in the morning, twelve to Dutch class on Monday evenings, or nine to my friend’s house for dinner, often bring me as much joy as my long weekend ones. From my saddle, I am the prima in the daily ballet of city life.
Growing up on various rural American military bases and suburban subdivisions, my relationship with cycling wasn’t always so ingrained. When I was sixteen, my parents helped me buy my first car solely to help run errands. At first, I was excited by the freedom. I had a tenuous sense of liberation. After a year or so, I realized that their gift to me was more beneficial to them. With my driving in the mix, there was no more ferrying us to school at the crack of dawn through 25 minutes of traffic and red light and no more three-hour round-trip drives to basketball games in the middle of nowhere on Thursday nights.
When I entered college at seventeen, tired of the responsibility of the driver’s seat, I acquired a student transit pass. Within my first week in Colorado, I figured out how to take regional transit into Denver. There, I wandered down an empty city street to spend my hard-earned summer job and graduation money on the nicest used bike I could find. The bike I bought home with me on the light rail was by far the most expensive thing I had ever bought. The entire way home I imagined all the adventures it could take me on.
As freshman year rolled by, my bike saw daylight only once. The petite, hilly campus didn’t warrant a bike, and the surrounding areas were better explored by car. When I moved into a sorority house from the dorms, I brought my bike out of storage and locked it at the back entrance. A few months later, I noticed the bike rack empty again. The most expensive thing I owned, gone! I had barely even ridden it!
I put my cycling dreams on hold, vowing that I would pursue them again after I’d graduated, gotten a job, and moved to a real city with painted green bike lanes. My opportunity to get on two wheels again came when I moved to Minneapolis in the summer of my twenty-first year. I found myself leaving another used bike store, this time with a modest, dull gold city bike with slimmer tires than my first.
The Midtown Greenway, once a railroad corridor, now a multi-use path, became my route to work. As summer gave way to fall, I frequented the on-road bike lanes and leafy scenic trails, reducing my car usage by almost 60%. Fall slowly turned to winter. Each morning I burst with pride as I figured out how to layer my clothes and fit my belongings into my bike bags to shower at the office after a sweaty 30-minute ride. I reveled in the quiet, dark mornings, never tiring of the murals along the walls of the below-grade trails and the smell of fresh sourdough from a nearby industrial bakery.
My daily rides were sanctuaries I clung to, the rare moments I could breathe fresh air and immerse myself in my community. These treasured respites were all the more precious when set against the backdrop of grueling 10-plus-hour shifts in a stuffy office. All was going well in my cycling world; until the snow came.
The first day the streets iced over that December I thought, “How bad could it be?” On that pitch-black Northern winter morning, it took me less than a block to find out. My bike slipped right out from under me, ripping my pants down the middle, and immediately adding splashes of black and blue on the entirety of my upper right thigh. I walked my bike back into my apartment with my tail between my legs. I would have to drive to work.
After braving the weather in Minneapolis for less than a year, I quit my job and ran back to the Mile High City, aimless and wandering. I ended up in my parent’s basement in the sprawled Denver suburbs, a community not conducive to getting anywhere by bike, foot, or anything other than a car. So, while I revamped my career and bank account, my bike collected dust in their garage for over a year.
After moving out and into the heart of Denver, I was finally able to get around for most of my daily chores by bike or foot– except for work. There was an unfortunate imbalance. Although the drive was a quick 14 minutes, it took about an hour to cover the 10 miles by bike.
Cycling to work wouldn’t be an everyday possibility, but I was determined to try it out at least twice a week until winter came. Once again, I stuffed my bike bags with all the things I would need to give myself a bird bath (no shower at this office!) and change. At five-thirty in the morning, I began my journey along the waters flowing from the mountains, and out into the sleepy suburbs past skyscrapers, an enormous (American) football stadium, and roller coasters from the city’s theme park.
This continued for a few months when the paths’ conditions allowed until I got a new job based out of Washington D.C. I was excited to get back to a city with better bike infrastructure. I was leaving my car in Colorado!
In February 2020, my mom and I loaded my beloved bike into a rented box truck and drove it through the cornfields of Iowa and the mountains of West Virginia to the US Capitol. One month later, I found the move I had long been awaiting was not particularly well-timed. I barely had time to figure out which grocery store in my neighborhood I preferred, let alone make any friends before the pandemic shut the city down. So for the next year, I took advantage of the one place I was allowed to go– outside. And boy, was I glad I had my bike.