Op de Fiets in de Winter

We are well into winter. Or perhaps you’re reading this sometime in the summer, in which case, screw you.

The Dutch winter has an annoying trait wherein it gets cold, but not cold enough to experience any of the cool things that come with cold weather. It’s as if there was a fight  among the elements, and a compromise was reached to split the baby where everyone would be equally unhappy with the gloomy scene outside of the window. Getting out of bed is a challenge as is, but the real betrayal is having the nightly warmth sucked out of you; shivering as winter wraps around you like an unsolicited advance.

The real fun, however, is getting around. For the longest time, I didn’t have a fiets. I was one of those stubborn people that would just walk everywhere, even if it took an hour. I couldn’t be bothered to find one, pay the price for it, do the maintenance, etc etc. Nowadays, having moved to Utrecht, my hand has been forced. Whenever I have an early lecture, I am already off to a great start with it still being dark whenever I fetch it from the shed. I do at least have the luxury of being able to store it indoors; I dread the thought of having my rear go for a cold plunge as I lower myself onto the bike seat. Now luckily, we have rules and laws against any aspiring knight riders, in that fietslampen are required. When everyone has their lights beaming, things tend to be fine. Things are not always fine. I’ve come to find that the Dutch are okay with theft if you’re stealing a fietslamp.

So the journey begins. While I have considered gloves a rather useful invention, I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated them as much as whenever I’d forget to bring them. If one could ever grab the North Pole, that’s what it’d feel like. Having not grown up in the Netherlands, I do not have the ability to simply tuck my hands away into my pockets and steer with hip strength alone.

The early winter has a fun added challenge of autumnal leaves lingering around the edges of the fietspad, in case the wet ground and ice was too grippy for you. From experience, a winter coat provides good protection to injury whenever your fiets slips from under you. Your ego however, not as much.

Last, but not least, the wind. In a country where one is solely at the mercy of human engineering to avoid the wind, it’s a chore to constantly cycle against it, no matter which direction you’re headed. It’s as if the weather here exists as one angsty fit, with its sole mission of being as much of a pain as possible.

Some things in life don’t have a point. This is one of those things.