Cycling, Serendipity & Zemblanity

I had a potentially dangerous, but eventually funny accident last Tuesday while riding to the Leiden Students' Movie Night. At a fairly high speed, I was flung over the handlebars of my bicycle when the dynamo came loose and got stuck in the front wheel. Funnily, I landed on the grass, without a scratch. The front mudguard came loose and a couple of spokes in the front wheel were slightly bent. The bike had dutifully served me for over 2500 kilometers over the past six and a half months, but the time had come to move on - at least as far as recreational riding was concerned.

   

The local bike shop was sure to burn a hole in my pocket, and I wondered how and where one might be able to find a decent bike, which could fit my shoestring budget. Just then I met a guy with a nice race bike at a traffic light, who informed me that he'd bought it for a throwaway price from a dutch website. On this website, I found a couple of used bikes worth taking a closer look at, but one seemed exceptionally good. The only obstacle was that the owner of the bike lived in the province of Drenthe in north-east Holland - approximately 250 kilometers from Leiden - and one would have to spend a whole day in getting to and fro. But I did make the journey on Sunday.    

The alarm on my cell phone goes off at 05:30 every morning. However, there had not been a single instance, since I had arrived in Leiden, that I was able to rise much before 08:00. Usually, it is a struggle to make it to the 08:30 class and I just about make it in time or I am a couple of minutes late. Sunday morning was different though. I woke up at 03:30 and, in anticipation, couldn't sleep thereafter. For the first time in weeks I had the time to run errands, and have a decent breakfast - baked beans on toast. I was off to the train station as soon as the sun rose at about 07:00. The 05:30 alarm was just as useless as any other day.

I get a feeling that there is usually more to a journey than merely the commuting. On the train to Utrecht Centraal, where I had to change over, I met another cycling enthusiast with a very nice race bike. A very interesting conversation about the joys of cycling ensued, and I learnt that the guy had had a kidney transplant a couple of years ago. However, his passion for biking did not abandon him. He'd just done 110 kilometers the previous day and was going to do a 50-odd kilometer ride with a group of people who'd had transplants too. While this guy's passion and the will to live was inspiring, another incident was an unfortunate antithesis.  A few minutes before we would have arrived at Assen, a man jumped to his death before our speeding train. In the two hours that the train stood stationary thereafter, one learnt that these incidents have become "rather frequent" in the Netherlands due to the economic downturn. By "frequent", my dutch co-passengers implied a number not more than a couple of handfuls in a year - a rather zemblanitous connotation for someone from the "the world's fastest growing free market democracy".    

The real adventure began once I arrived at Assen. The owner of the bike lived about 20 kilometers away, in a very small village called Hultslaan, and the only set of directions I had were my notes from Google maps. Surely, I was so taken in my the beauty of the fields and forests that I was riding through that I missed a turn and took quite a detour. But I had little to complain - I kept riding and serendipitously arrived at the correct door after riding a few additional kilometers. I asked the now previous owner of the bike about the different routes that I could take to get back to Assen. I couldn't resist taking the one that wound through the Drentsche Aa - the national park in Zuidlaren. 

All these months since I first arrived in Leiden, I was a tad disappointed that there weren't many dense forests around, unlike Germany or Luxembourg. But I have no reason to complain anymore. The new road bike rides like a dream and come weekend, and I will be off on a cross-country ride to the national park. Maybe I will also click a few pictures.