A bicycle or a lawn tractor?

ning · Jun 21, 2023

idk this looks like a lot of fun!

(presented for the lolz - obviously there are no wheels so I'm not sure how you can call it a bicycle)

Captain Dirty · Jun 21, 2023

Danny MacAskill may differ. 2:51 for the water. (Also see outtakes after 4:30 to feel a little better.)

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tradosaurus · Jun 21, 2023

dodge man said:
I ride on the rural roads near my house. Low volume of traffic, I use lights on the back and wear high visibility clothing but still a risk.

I would be roadkill if I tried to ride on the Farm to Market Roads near me. And loose dogs chasing me wouldn't be fun either.
I had to buy a bike carrier for my car and then find safe places to ride.

dmccarty · Jun 22, 2023

Captain Dirty said:
Alas, the United States is not the Netherlands. The Netherlands have decided, bicycle-enhancing advantages.

1. It is a small country 200 mi N-S, 160 Mi E-W. Distances are nowhere near as great as in the US.
...

Comparing the NL to the US is really not fair because the US is Galactic in size compared to the NL. Heck, even comparing NC to NL, which we were doing constantly during our trip is problematic. NC has 60% of the NL population but is around three times bigger so the population density is much, much more in the NL.

The area of land we have for our house, contained dozens of homes, on almost a dozen blocks, at the development we stayed in the NL. To say they are densely packed is an understatement. Course, this allows public transportation, biking and walking to work. Oddly I only rode the bike once, to test it out, during our stay. The bus system was just so easy and quick to use. Having said that, if I lived there full time, riding the bike would be the way to travel for many trips AND it would be safe.

The first thing we noticed about the NL during our trip was how danged polite and nice everyone was to us. There was only a bit of no politeness but that was a nit and cultural. We found out the hard way that one of the major grocery stores does not take credit cards. Only debit and cash. As my wife was figuring this out with the cashier, the cashier offered to BUY our groceries.

This level of politeness and friendliness we ran into over and over and over. This seemed to apply to walking, riding, and driving, though I have heard that one had better know the bike rules of the roads because the Dutch will run you over if you are walking in the wrong place.

Especially in the older areas, as in centuries old, the "street" is small and really not easy to use in a car, though with their small cars, they manage. Having said that we saw three pick up trucks in the NL. One Ford 150 and two Rams. One Ram was lifted and had huge off terrain tires. Making it even more out of place, the guy drove up and parked in front of the Pieterskerk in Leiden. Here is this church that is almost 1,000 years old and guy parks this huge 4x4 out front.

It was so funny, that my kid took a video of the guy driving into the small square. The guy hoped out and looked to be carrying a choir uniform.

Imagine parking a lifted Ram by the front door. The photo is old and does not show that this is a small, quite, pretty area with small "streets."