Hoeve de Schoor in Baexem, Netherlands

This past weekend we took our first little holiday as a family of four. We loaded the kids into their safety certified car seats in a rental Renault and headed south. Despite the documented danger of driving automobiles we chose not to wear helmets. First stop was our friends’ wedding party at a tranquil old (“old” as in dating to at least the mid 1300’s) farm complex in Leudal township in Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands. The farm, called Hoeve de Schoor, was very similar in format to some old farms I know in France; a continuous ring of buildings forming a sort of walled complex with an inner courtyard. One or more of the buildings are residences for the family, workers and guests and the others are for the farm: barns, storage areas, workshop and so forth. As is typical with these places the encroaching nature combined with the “patina” of curvy thatched roofs, wood- and stonework rounded and polished by hundreds of years of feet and hands is utterly charming and relaxing.

After a night’s stay in the farmhouse and a lazy brunch with the family and friends the kids were in good spirits and we didn’t need to head directly back to Amsterdam. Both Kyoko and I had passed through Limburg many times on my way south to Belgium, Luxembourg, France and destinations further but we’d never actually spent any time in the area. We decided to get some more use out of the car (which we only have a couple times each year) and continued 45 minutes further to Maastricht, the main city and nearly southern point of Limburg. Actually Maastricht is more like a Dutch peninsula jutting into Belgium and Germany.

Along the way we checked out some notable villages along the way. In one we happened upon some local fellows riding a sort of bicycle train contraption. One fellow demonstrated to Kyoko (-taking the pictures – I was focusing on the road, driving being a life-threatening activity) his remarkable intelligence: He could actually recognize that she’s an Asian!

Little did Fuckface realize that 2000 visitors per day would now be viewing this image here. But hey, I assume he stands behind his opinions, probably being one of the 27% of Limburgers who just last week voted for extreme right, anti immigration, muslim-hater Gert Wilders and his PVV (Party for Freedom). But I digress… we were enjoying a relaxing family trip.

Once installed in a Maastricht hotel we set out to explore the city. Maastricht is much older and richer in very old stuff than Amsterdam: city walls, cathedrals, tiny buildings with tinier doorways, water flowing under and through buildings and streets of rounded cobblestones. The architecture is also far more ornate than in sober Holland. Amsterdam has lots of buildings from the 1600’s and 1700’s but not much older. In Maastricht you come across things from the 1000’s and 1100’s. That’s old.

Of course whenever I visit a city I look at the bikes, bicyclists and infrastructure. In this regard Maastricht was hardly recognizable as being part of the Netherlands. There were certainly some cyclists here and there but only in quantities comparable to a typical German or Swiss city. In other words nothing at all like most of the rest of the Netherlands. I spotted one Gazelle bakfiets and in two days only once did I see a parent carrying a child on a bike. There were bike racks and perfectly good bike roads and lanes… just largely unused. I actually saw an empty bike rack getting overgrown with nature – a redundant impossibility in Amsterdam. We did, however, see an amazing number of groups of racing cyclists on Sunday morning.

Trams were also notably absent in Maastricht. I assume there are buses though I cannot recall actually seeing any. Instead of bicyclists and public transport there seemed to be a large, underground parking garage every few blocks in the city center. That’s apparently what it takes to hide all those cars. Ah, but at least there were Segways in abundance! Has Segway maybe hired Geert Wilders as their spokesperson?

What is it about Segways anyway that universally makes their riders look like total dorks? See above for evidence.

I’ll round this one off with a valuable message from Maastricht. A number of shops had these stickers on their windows. Should we maybe get some for WorkCycles too?

Some industry insiders, myself included, were at least suspecting things weren’t going smoothly at Amsterdam’s populair transport bike producer De Fietsfabriek. Yesterday their filing for bankruptcy got leaked and now the press is all over it like flies on poop. That’s not really surprising considering the uncanny knack those guys had for keeping the media’s attention. It is (or was) indeed a very charismatic story about a temperamental and driven Kurdish immigrant’s success with that most Dutch of products; the bicycle. I have to admit that it sounds far more exciting than “Highly educated industrial designer and ex bike industry guy from New York makes conservative, high quality bikes in Holland”. But I suppose the downside of celebrity status is that you’re even more newsworthy when things go wrong.

A lot of people apparently think it’s really important news for WorkCycles since friends, colleagues and acquaintances have been sending me links and commentary all day long. Just for the record: We’re not exactly cheering here. Regardless of the situations that led to their financial difficulties I sympathize with their situation as a fellow business owner. According to the news reports the two partners are looking at personal responsibility (Fietsfabriek was an unincorporated partnership) of about 1.2 million euro. How on earth does one dig themselves out of such a hole?

Most who’ve forwarded the news do so both because WorkCycles and De Fietsfabriek are often compared as Amsterdam colleagues/competitors. Magazine and newspaper articles have often featured both of our bikes and interviewed both myself and either Dave or Yalcin from Fietsfabriek. However the suggestion is really that WorkCycles would benefit hugely from the disappearance of Fietsfabriek. I’m no so convinced of this. It is true that both firms produce their own unique lines of heavy-duty city bikes, transport bikes and trikes (bakfietsen) and both are based in and have multiple shops in Amsterdam. We’ve even sold our bikes through a handful of the same dealers, though for what it’s worth the WorkCycles line has generally (or always?) replaced the Fietsfabriek line.

But as Dave Deutsch, one of the Fietsfabriek partners, and I have discussed several times we’re very different companies that make very different bikes that appeal to different audiences. WorkCycles are mostly black or grey or other boring colors. We’re willing to paint them anything you wish but that’s just what our customers want. Our bike designs, and perhaps our entire company “look and feel” is straightforward, the focus being an admittedly nerdy, no-BS, technical perfection. Fietsfabriek, on the other hand, has been much bolder: bikes with frame designs that are fun bordering on silly, in colors spanning the rainbow. I’ve seen them quoted as saying they’ll build whatever the customer wishes. Sorry to disappoint you but WorkCycles won’t make such claims; We’re flexible but we build bikes with a collection of parts and principles we’ve thoroughly tested and trust. Of course I have to think that WorkCycles bikes are better, but I suppose they think the same of their own product.

Photo by Marc of Amsterdamize

The differences between our products and approaches have fortunately led to each company appealing to different audiences. Fietsfabriek is much bigger and better known in Amsterdam while WorkCycles is stronger elsewhere, particularly in other countries. Regardless Fietsfabriek’s extroverted charm and constant media attention has brought them a much younger, hipper customer base than ours. When customers go “shopping around” for a bakfiets or sturdy city bike in Amsterdam they’ll likely visit both but the experiences are so different that customers seem to choose where they belong.

But still, isn’t the Fietsfabriek one of WorkCycles main competitors? Only from a tunnel vision perspective. Our competitors are everything else people might spend their money on instead of transport bikes: kitchen remodeling, cars, travel, a flat screen TV. In particular the rampant bike theft is worse for our turnover than another bike company that brings considerable media attention to small bicycle manufacturers. If Amsterdammers could perceive it as safe to park their bikes we would sell far more, better equipped, more expensive bikes.

Will WorkCycles benefit anyway? Of course, probably to some extent. All things considered Amsterdammers will continue buying bikes at about the same rate so some of the would-be Fietsfabriek customers will inevitably come to us in their absence… and just order their bikes with different specs and in brighter colors than have been typical Workcycles. But while these types of bikes were totally novel in 2003, now in 2010 they’re fairly mainstream and can be found in many hundreds of shops all over the country. Thus whatever vacuum that opens will be filled not just by WorkCycles but also by many dealers offering bikes from a variety of large and small manufacturers. And therein lies one of the fundamental challenges for both of our companies: There’s far more competition now than just a few years ago. Compete or die.

Photo by Marc of Amsterdamize

The newspapers first all published approximately the same piece which simply reported that Fietsfabriek has filed for bankruptcy as a result of huge debts and that the curator is working on a continuation. According to those in the know there’s a debt of 1.2 million on a yearly turnover of about 3 million. There are 60 employees for which permission for layoffs has been requested. (To me these are strange numbers: a debt of almost half the yearly turnover and 60 employees for just 3 million turnover.)

If you can read Dutch or wish to read an online translation you can check the article out in Het Parool.
Fascinating are the reader’s comments that follow: Some blame the bankers. Some blame the saturated market. A few bakfiets haters take the opportunity to demonstrate their moral superiority and insult some parents. And a surprising number imply fraud, one claiming rather specific knowledge of an enormous tax fine for avoiding customs charges. That’s some pretty hefty stuff to be accusing in the comments section. Truth or just an axe to grind? Who knows.

Later in the day Het Parool published an UPDATE. Herman Stil apparently researched further, calling around to Fietsfabriek dealers, their bike designer and partner Yalcin Cihangir. Ouch, this piece paints a much uglier picture. One former dealer announces that they opened a bottle of bubbly upon hearing the news and goes on to run off a list of problems. (In the comments below the same dealer denies the bubbly part but supports the rest of the statement.) Other dealers offer similar descriptions including poor quality, many broken frames, chaotic delivery and administration and add that their critique only led to intimidation. Several dealers listed on their site replied that they haven’t done business with the Fietsfabriek in years. Michael Kemper, the German designer of the Fietsfabriek bikes claims he hasn’t been paid the agreed royalties in two years. Yalcin denies all of the accusations and fires back that his critics aren’t bike makers, just people who want to share in his success. Concerning Kemper’s accusations he turns them around claiming that Kemper began producing the bikes himself and selling them to the dealers behind his back. Cihangir is quoted as saying “I’ll come with new models, a new Fietsfabriek. Just wait.”

What to believe? It’s really hard to say. I assume some of the worst accusations are hyperbole or half-truths on both sides. But my impression has always been of a company with a genius for seat of the pants marketing and promotion but not for organization, infrastructure and long-term relationship building.

The irony of all this is that perhaps the biggest publicity they ever got was from a hugely successful two-part documentary in 2004 by Frans Bromet called “Failliet of niet? – de fietsfabriek” (“Bankrupt or not? – the Fietsfabriek”) in which Yalcin struggles getting his new Fietsfabriek business on its feet out of an imploding bike builder called ‘t Mannetje, a criminal Jan Willem Deijmann and seemingly everybody doing their best to cheat everyone else.

Business-wise I’m not particularly fussed about where it goes but I certainly wish the best for Dave, Yalcin and their employees.

In News & Events on the Dutch Volvo website:

Bij Volvo staat veiligheid voorop. Niet alleen van de mensen in een Volvo, maar ook van iedereen eromheen. Daarom introduceren we nu de POCito: de Volvo onder de kinderfietshelmen.

Translation: At Volvo safety comes first. Not only for the people in a Volvo, but also of everyone around it. Therefore we now introduce the POCito: the Volvo amongst the children’s bike helmets.

Am I being simplistic in seeing this as essentially the same as Smith & Wesson introducing and promoting children’s bulletproof vests to protect them from the guns they make?

Volvo continues in their press release to explain that each year in the Netherlands 35 children under 12 die “in traffic”. They don’t qualify whether this gruesome statistic has anything to do with bicycles, but actually that’s fairly irrelevant: Deaths and serious injuries amongst children while cycling are almost entirely inflicted by automobiles. As Mikael Colville Andersen frequently comments: They’re conveniently “ignoring the bull in the china shop.”

Later in the same press release Volvo explains their promotion of mandatory helmet laws in the Netherlands. From a business perspective it’s the obvious choice. The Dutch city planners widely recognize the danger that automobiles present to other street users and have been working hard for decades to minimize it. The primary safety tactics include excluding and slowing automobiles, and separating autos from bicyclists and other road users. This has very successfully led to both the safest roads in the world and the highest cycling rates. Promoting or enforcing helmet use, on the other hand, has shown to reduce cycling rates while safety gains are debatable at best.

Though we should always strive for improvement cycling is already mighty safe here in the Netherlands. Let’s just briefly look at Amsterdam, the capitol city in rough numbers:

Thus…

As noted in an earlier post…

Heck, we can even go further and note that universal helmet use would indeed probably prevent death in a couple of those six yearly incidents, but certainly not all of them. And then there’s that other pesky problem: It’s been demonstrated that helmet laws and promotion decrease cycling rates and reduced numbers of cyclists increase the danger of cycling. So aside from deflecting some blame what does Volvo expect to accomplish through widespread helmet use?

Cartoon by Wulff Morgenthaler via Copenhagenize.

My excuses for the lack of precise numbers and supporting statistics; There’s an impatient toddler tugging on me and it’s time to head to the office. But I can assure you I didn’t pull the above facts out of a hat or sleeve. If you want to investigate further there are plenty of numbers to be found elsewhere in this blog and far more on David Hembrow’s excellent blog.

We’ve been working with ROC an Amsterdam technical college and a few other bicycle firms to create a new bicycle mechanic education program. There is already such an education track there but it’s primarily classroom based. This new program will be practice based, with interns working at each participating business for several months. In time the students will also work in and operate their own bike shop, similar to the student-run restaurants at cooking schools.

The problem we’re looking to fix may seem ironic; while cycling is über-hip amongst adults, it’s anything but amongst Dutch teens, especially the teens likely to follow a bike mechanic education track. The interns who periodically work at WorkCycles generally have no interest in bikes whatsoever. As soon as they’re old enough they dump their bikes in favor of scooters, and the bike education is often seen as a stepping stone toward a career as a car or truck mechanic. They’re generally also not the sharpest knives in the drawer and that’s part of the challenge.

Thus in order to fill this new education program with motivated (or at least willing) and capable kids the image of cycling and bikes has to be spiffed up in the eyes of our teenaged target group. In discussing these plans and tactics the organizer pointed us to the video above as a model. Though I doubt many of these kids have a long enough attention span to sit through this particular video it certainly is a great example of how to promote cycling amongst adults.

The video is from the BOVAG, the branch organization for businesses involved with selling and maintaining vehicles (including, bikes, mopeds, scooters, cars, trucks etc). It simply offers ten reasons to cycle more, with the emphasis on cycling instead of driving a car. It’s nicely shot, offers just enough facts to make the point, doesn’t take itself too seriously and is guilt free. The reasons…

1. Cycling improves your fitness.

2.Cycling keeps you slim.

3. Cycling gives you a great feeling.

4. Cycling reduces your chance of illness.

5. Cycling is convenient.

6. More cycling means cleaner air in your own surroundings.

7. Cycling is quiet.

8. Cycling improves access for short distances.

9. Cycling is inexpensive.

10. More cycling means less greenhouse gasses.

The title? “Natuurlijk pak ik de Fiets!” (Of course I take the Bike!)

…was luckily also “papa day”. Thursday’s are dad’s weekday to hang out with Pascal. Since a 19 month old demands pretty much full-time attention it means a (nearly) no work day. We do all kind of things on papa day: ride to the zoo, walk around Amsterdam doing errands and checking out every park and playground along the way, visit friends… If it’s decent weather we often go for a bike ride.

Today was beautiful, at least by Dutch late winter standards. After breakfast we got on the bike and then we rode until early evening. We stopped at several playgrounds to test their slides (P’s favorite). The big, curvy one near the wind turbines was the winner. We sat on the terrace of a cafe and shared a chicken saté and frites. We checked out a running windmill where they still grind grains and the nice bakkers bakfiets out front. We even climbed “Het Kopje van Bloemendaal” the biggest hill in the area (43 meters!).

Of course our daily ride bikes are equipped with child seats but I also have a bike especially for longer, recreational rides with the family. It’s essentially a heavy-duty touring bike somewhat modified to make it comfortable and safe with a toddler in a front child seat and it works really well. It has full fenders and dynamo lights so rain and darkness aren’t real problems. With a triple crank and derailleur gearing I can climb hills. I usually bring one pannier with kid essentials: diaper/wipes, snacks, jacket, spare clothes etc. Speaking of panniers I absolutely hate the Vaude roll-tops I’ve got. Sure they’re waterproof and lightweight but having only one compartment is a total pain in the butt; all of the little stuff you need falls to the bottom, my camera bangs against the lock or keys and so on. Next panniers will have little compartments, will stand up when off the bike, and will be quick to open and close. I’m thinking Carradice canvas or something along those lines.

In any case we’ve racked up a lot of family kilometers both around Holland and on holiday in France. Pascal sits in front of me in a Bobike Mini seat. When he naps I drape an arm over his little handlebar cushion so that his head rests in my arm. I’ve climbed entire mountains like this since you can’t always predict when a little kid will fall asleep. Our heads are only a few centimeters apart so we can “talk” easily. Pascal points out the animals (wanwan, baaahh, moooo…) and vehicles (monono, kruk, batchi, pee pee…), and particularly gets a kick out of hearing his voice flutter when we ride over rough surfaces: “Waa-aa-a-aaa-aa-a-aaaaa!” Being a typical dad I thought this was unique but it turns out lots of kids do exactly the same thing. As long as the scenery/action is good, and we stop to play or eat each hour or so Pascal will happily ride and babble all day… and that makes me very happy.

I wrote in an earlier post about the two ex-Marines riding WorkCycles Secret Service bikes around the world. They previously sent a photo anonymously from their Blackberry (that much I could read in the email) of one of them somewhere in the UK. Well now they’re apparently somewhere else, judging from the different, hilly scenery in this photo. And they’ve traded camera duty thus we see our other protagonist in this story… though I honestly can’t remember which one of the two is Sage. I think it’s the guy in this picture. Detailed descriptions are clearly not their forte.

[UPDATE: In this photo we see Cooper while in the previous photo it's Sage. Glad that's cleared up.]

Speaking of riding the Secret Service in terrain hillier than pannekoeken flat Holland and also of non-detailed descriptions, we were tinkering with Shimano roller brakes today. Shimano makes several versions of their nearly maintenance-free roller brake but their literature and website offer almost no information about the differences between them. Countless conversations with the Shimano tech support guys were fruitless. There are three basic versions of roller brakes commonly found on quality bikes:

For about a year or so we’ve been fitting the IM70 to all Bakfiets Cargobikes and the Secret Service, partially because they look cool but mostly because it clearly has a more consistent, snappy feel and is more powerful. This baffled us since the braking unit in the center of each rollerbrake seemed to be exactly the same unit. In theory then there shouldn’t be much difference.

But today our chief mechanic Eric showed me something new: They’d opened up one of each type of rollerbrake to check out the guts and it turns out that the IM70 is actually special. While the IM40 and IM50 share the same flat braking surface (like a drum brake except in steel), the IM70 has a “V” shaped, or rather double conical braking surface. This gives it more braking surface area and probably makes it self-adjusting as well.

The problem though is that the front IM70 doesn’t have it’s own cable stop, thus meaning that it only fits on front forks equipped with a little cable stop tab. Many bikes don’t have these.

Enter the Shimano IM80 roller brake due for introduction shortly. Again the Shimano literature is just worthless marketing garble but at least it’s visible from the photos that the cable stop is built into this one. Let’s just hope that they’re using the better V-shaped brake surface.

Oh, just to back up a little here… “What’s a roller brake” you might ask, or perhaps a little more advanced question: “how is a roller brake different from a drum brake or a disk brake?” I’ll try to explain briefly, without photos. If that doesn’t work I’ll try again later WITH photos.

Drum brake: Two semi-cylindrical “shoes” get pressed against the inside of a cylindrical drum. The drum rotates with the wheel while the shoes are stationary in the frame or fork. The shoes are pressed outward at one end by means of a cam. More sophisticated drum brakes have been fitted to motorcycles and cars but, to my knowledge, never to bicycles.

Disk brake: A disk rotates with the wheel and the sides of the disk get squeezed by flat pads. The pads can be either cable actuated through a helix or hydraulically actuated.

Roller brake: The IM40 and IM50 are basically just drum brakes with a six lobed actuation cam that presses the shoes outward radially over their whole length instead of just at one point. The roller brake shoes are also steel, running in a bath of special graphite grease. Does your rollerbrake make noise? Squirt fresh grease in.

The IM70 roller brake has the same actuation as the IM40 and IM50 but uses a special type of drum described above.

I’m sure that’s all just totally clear for you know.

OK, so perhaps somebody disagrees with the sticker: “Tijd voor een goeie fiets” (time for a good bike)… but at least they had the decency to leave the workcycles logo intact.

My buddy Chomi and I have been taking photos of the WorkCycles stickers that keep appearing on abandoned bikes around Amsterdam. We’ve spotted them on bikes all over the city, but particularly in several neighborhoods such as the Jordaan and the Oostelijke Eilanden. It’s fun to browse through the slideshow to see the sights or identify the broken bicycles left to rot. Or if you know Amsterdam well you can try to figure out where the bikes are located. Perhaps we should have a contest. Suggestions?

The stickers are available at WorkCycles: €0.50 each. They’re mostly sold out so we’re going to invent some new ones and print more soon.

No bicycles have been harmed in this project.

I’m surprised this little Smart car doesn’t tip over backwards when driving with this huge (70cm frame) WorkCycles Transport Double-Tube. But apparently a man of 200cm (6′ 6″) fits in a Smart.

Photo by Doede van der Linden.

Bas of www.transportfiets.net, (that’s trans-port-feets-poont-net for english speakers) turned me onto this super little video. It’s genuine film footage from a 1933 race in Bussum (near Amsterdam) on baker’s and butcher’s bikes. Back in those days most transport bikes had fixed wheels (“fixies” you young folk) and like all those modern-day urban hipsters on track bikes, these bikes had no brakes either. There’s a difference though: A transportfiets weighs an easy 50kg, and that’s before it was loaded down with 50kg of meat. The wheels alone weigh a good 10kg each. Can you say mo-men-tum?

I have a handful of old “transportfietsen” in various states of disrepair and disassembly. They’re glorious machines; Very simple but so solidly made that they put all other bicycles to shame. Riding them is a great sensation. It takes a while to get up to speed but once all that mass is rolling there’s no stopping it.

These bikes were employed by practically every baker, butcher, milkman and other business in the Netherlands from perhaps the 1920’s until perhaps the 1960’s, when cars and delivery vans became affordable for small businesses. Keep in mind that the Netherlands was quite a poor country through modern history until the 1960’s. The bikes were ridden by delivery kids, much like pizzas are now delivered by annoying kids on mopeds with boxes on the back.

Note also that the Dutch Transportfiets predates the similar format but rather esoteric and much lighter duty French “porteur” or “veloporteur” by decades. Transportfietsen were also made in quite large quantities which partially accounts for the remarkably large number still on the streets, considering that the last of them went out of production in the 1970’s. Of course the fact that they were quality built like tanks also helps.

Transportfietsen were made by hundreds of firms, small and large and most of them look essentially the same: double top tube, huge front carrier fixed to the handlebar and (large) front axle, generally no rear carrier or parking stand. Pre-WW2 examples all had 28 x 1 3/4 wheels and usually fixed wheels. Later both 28″ and 26″ wheels were used and most were made with a single-speed Fichtel & Sachs Torpedo coaster brake hub. Parts such as chains and sprockets, forks handlebars, cranks, pedals etc were all bigger and stronger than on normal bicycles. I have never seen an old transportfiets originally equipped with gears or a front brake.

Have a look around transportfiets.net for tons of examples, including a number of bikes in restoration and also lots of old archive photos and catalogues. Bikes like this will never come back so it’s great that some enthusiasts are keeping them alive as examples of the values of another era.