Every fan and promoter of urban cycling simply needsмаси a copy of Shirley Agudo’s “Bicycle Mania”. You can regard it as a photo book, with probably the best collection of Dutch cycling photos ever assembled. Even as an Amsterdam resident and amateur(ish) photographer I marvel at the shots in these pages. Have a peek at a few examples here at the Eduard Planting gallery.

But “Bicycle Mania” goes much deeper. The photos are accompanied by well-informed and thoughtfully written text covering in sections covering the how and why the Dutch have achieved (and continue to build upon) the world’s best of nearly everything in transportation cycling: broad popularity, amazing infrastructure, safety, fun and pure variety on wheels. The text is in both English and Dutch, handy learning for those anglophiles who want to delve deeper into Dutch cycling culture than English can take you. Numerous authorities are interviewed, hyperbole and abuse of statistics is thankfully avoided and and it’s just a good read. In a nutshell: Recommended.

Read more about it at the Bicycle Mania website.

In related news a bike photo contest is being held in conjunction with the launch of “Bicycle Mania” by The XPat Journal magazine. First prize is (yep, you guessed it)… a custom built WorkCycles Secret Service bike.

Think you can take this one home? Well, you’d better act quickly since the deadline is 20 January. Photos must be emailed as jpeg’s of maximum 3Mb to: editor@xpat.nl. One photo entry per person and include your full name and phone number.

Wanna check out the bike first to see if it’s worth the trouble? It’s at the Eduard Planting Fine Art Photographs gallery where a number of Agudo’s photographs are on display. I also “borrowed” the above image from their site.

The last few winters have been pretty wimpy; hardly any snow and not even particularly cold. Actually that’s not entirely true since there’s nothing more bone chilling than a rainy, windy day just above the freezing point. The Dutch call it “waterkoud” meaning “water cold”, though it doesn’t prevent them from cycling like their water soluble cycling neighbors.

This winter began in November. It rained for weeks and weeks and weeks, right through much of December. It was apparently the rainiest November since the Golden Age… or something like that. Fortunately we were in Japan enjoying perfect weather. Then in late December it got colder and the rain turned to snow. Of course we’re talking about Amsterdam here so it’s never very much snow, but at least it’s been snowing regularly and the snow’s been sticking around for long enough to have some winter wonderland. Cycling in the snow is fun, especially in a city where the distances are short and you can largely avoid cars. I’ve always loved the quietness and lightness of a snowy city, I assume the result of the snow absorbing sound and reflecting light far better than most of what’s under the snow.

This afternoon poked my camera out the door to snap the above picture. Good thing those bikes aren’t spring flowers but no takers for a bakfiets rental this evening?

It’s ironic that some humble, dirty parts such as a parking stand actually have far more influence on your cycling experience than a beautiful frame or fancy, name-brand components. A stable, smooth working parking stand enables you (for example) to safely load up the kids and groceries, plop the bike onto the ground and cycle away uneventfully… just how you want it to be. But few people pay attention to such mundane things in the showroom so this is exactly where most manufacturers save a few bucks or euros. WorkCycles isn’t “most manufacturers” because we actually ride our bikes every day, carry our kids on/in them, move our stock between two shops on them… and listen to our customers who do the same.

Finding decent parking stands has been one of our most vexing challenges. During our quest for the perfect parking stand we’ve tried dozens. Most are so crappy that they don’t even deserve mention: All those Hebie copies from Taiwan and China fit poorly and then either bend under the weight of a loaded bike, quickly get scarily sloppy and break, or seize up from corrosion. The more sophisticated folding stands from Humpert and Spanninga (Sparta) have also failed our durability tests miserably. The cast aluminium Pletschers are light and pretty but not strong enough for bikes with child seats and heavy bags.

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We arrived at work yesterday figuring that the sub-zero cold, wind and snow would keep most of the customers away, leaving us with time to work on some projects. The highest priority is reconfiguring our workshop after building a massive, floor-anchored, steel frame to hang our electric bike lifts from. It’s a great improvement but not entirely our own initiative. The lifts, you see, were bolted into the 150 or 200 year old wooden beams of our ceiling… and thus the floor of the neighbors upstairs. Though the lifts are nearly new and operate very quietly they do make some vibration. Standing on the concrete (over sand) floor we never noticed this vibration but it drove the lady upstairs crazy. Actually she’s complained very vocally and angrily about a lot of things, apparently calling and writing every possible authority on a regular basis. Most of her complaints have nothing to do with our activities (there’s another bike workshop next door and several apartments have been renovated), but the vibration was a legitimate issue according to the various city inspectors who visited to investigate.

So the city ordered the building owner (a social housing corporation that manages tens of thousands of properties) to fix the vibration problem. It was decided that the only solution was to totally isolate the lifts from the floor beams, and the only practical way to do that was to build a steel frame all the way to the floor. We’re very fortunate and thankful that they took care of the job and paid for it. But it still requires an investment of several days of our labor to refit the lifts and lights. We took the opportunity to make them fully adjustable on both X and Y axis as well as angle, and now we’re adding more lights. I don’t think a workshop can ever have enough light.

Anyhow, this is all we were thinking about yesterday morning so I got busy with the scaffold, drills, plugs, screws and wiring to hang the fluorescent boxes on our ancient ceiling. And then the first snowy Cargobike and customer came in:

Customer: “My bike is almost impossible to ride. It’s really slow, and I think the brake lever might be broken.”

Mechanic: “I’m pretty sure your cables are frozen.”

Customer: “But I think there’s also something wrong with the brake.”

Mechanic: “The brakes are probably fine but they’re being locked by the frozen cables.”

Customer: “Oh wait, now it seems to be fine.”

Mechanic: “Sure, your bike is indoors so the cable just thawed, releasing the brake. It’ll freeze again a few moments after going outside. If you can wait 15 minutes I’ll fix it.

While working on this bike another snowy bike came in with the same problem, and so it went the whole day. Alexis and I pulled and flushed at least 15 cables yesterday. The problem is that Amsterdam bikes live outdoors, rain or shine. Tiny amounts of water drip and condense into the cable housings. On good quality bikes the cables are stainless steel and the housings are lined with polyethelene or another low friction plastic so the water doesn’t make much difference… until the thermometer goes below the freezing point. Then the cable freezes inside the housing. Usually it creates enough friction that pulling hard on the brake lever will overcome the friction, actuating the brake but the brake’s return spring cannot pull it back… thus locked brakes.

So here’s what you do to fix (or prevent) a frozen cable:

1. Let it thaw.

2. Remove the crimped end cap and make sure the end of the cable isn’t unwound or damaged. If it is either rewind, shorten or replace the cable as necessary.

3. Remove any kinks in the cable so that it can easily be pulled and reinserted through the housing.

4. Pull the cable out.

5. Seal the nozzle of a compressed air pistol against the upper end of the housing and blow everything possible out of the housing.

6. Seal the dispenser straw of a suitable light oil against the brake lever end of the housing. It might be necessary to pull the housing cap to do this. We use a generic multipurpose oil with teflon but just about any light oil should work fine. Don’t use “dry” type lubricant because it won’t displace the water for long.

7. Spray the oil into the housing until it begins coming out the other end.

5.5 Oops. Put a rag at the brake end of the housing to catch the oil coming out at great velocity.

8-9-10. Thread the cable back into the housing, readjust the brake and crimp a new end on.

This fix is valid for any brake (or gear) cable but I’m basically assuming the bike has roller brakes here. Drum brakes can pull their own freezing tricks and rim brakes simply aren’t suitable for storing outdoors and riding in snow country. Now the techies can ask me why I didn’t write anything about disk brakes.

This experience also demonstrates something about Amsterdam cyclists: Not only do they store their bikes on the street, they also ride in ALL conditions including snow. Of course they do; How else would they get to work, take the kids to school, do the groceries and visit their friends?

Speaking of snow, here’s a sneak peek at our surprising new development: The WorkCycles Child Transport Sled. We’re strong proponents of the K.I.S.S. philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) and our Sled meets the KISS criteria beautifully: It needs no wheels, tires, bearings, towing linkage or even harnesses. Just shove the kid in and go! It’s versatile too: You can pull it while walking, tie the patented “S.T.R.A.P.” (Singular Tied/Releasable Attaching Pieceofplasticwebbing) to your bike or even have your dog(s) or oxen pull it from a yoke. When there’s no snow it can be attached to the front carrier of your bike as a convenient transport bin.

In testing the WorkCycles sled we also learned that Amsterdammers not only ride their bikes all year round in all conditions, they can also make really big snowballs.

Several years ago while I was doing a project with design students at Technical University Eindhoven I met Jelle Zijlstra of Zijlstra Industrial Design. He’d designed the “Fietshangar“, a protective bicycle parking unit that replaces half a car parking spot. The concept is brilliant and philosophically I just love the idea that a single car parking space will be replaced by ten bike parking places. There are already a few hundred Fietshangars in use in various Dutch and Belgian cities and several hundred more are scheduled to be installed.

It is estimated that some 900,000 bikes are stolen each year in the Netherlands, about half of which were parked outside at home (statistics from CBS). Our experience selling city bikes at WorkCycles suggests that the perceived risk that a bike will be stolen (or vandalized or damaged) has a considerable influence on both cycling behavior and the sales of bicycles; There are a few people who’ve given up cycling after having their umpteenth bike stolen but more often people simply choose to ride crappy bikes to avoid theft and minimize the loss if their bike gets stolen anyway. The theft problem does vary widely by location; As expected it’s not a big problem in more upscale urban neighborhoods and certainly not in the villages and smaller cities. In the urban neighborhoods with mostly social housing and sketchier areas of the city center bike theft and destruction is really a plague. Just to note: The question of why fewer immigrants ride bikes comes up frequently but I’ve never seen anybody take into consideration that the areas with the highest concentrations of immigrant populations are lousy places to leave a bike outdoors. Few people have an indoor place to store a bike thus that tram gets more attractive each time you walk outside and find either your bike with a wheel flattened to the ground, your bike with the saddle slashed open, or no bike at all.

Thus the Fietshangar offers a solution for those (potential) cyclists who live where their bike otherwise wouldn’t be safe. There are two versions: A standard model that offers a basic level of protection, and the heavier duty, more secure Fietshangar+. The latter version is normally installed by a city.

I’m not sure whether Fietshangars have been installed outside the Benelux but if you’re interested you can contact the manufacturer: Heimerink Wagemakers. Their site’s in Dutch but the contact info is at the bottom of each page.

Rob Bushill of Really Useful Bikes in Bristol, England was clearly a little jealous of all the attention pulled in by the tech-weenie discussion about crates on bikes inspired by Swiss colleagues DoubleDutch. Exactly why my readers get more excited by a five minute post about a wooden crate than several hours of observations and philosophy about Japan with dozens of photos is something that escapes me but hey, I’ll just go with the flow.

Rob sent the following note with these great pictures:

Roy Belchamber took these of his Fr8, he says his daughter loves to travel on the back and he enjoys the way he can now ride to the shops instead of driving…

I think it great how a Dutch/American product with Dutch accessories can look so quintesentially English….

hope you enjoy..

Rob

I certainly DO enjoy Rob – Thanks very much for passing them along. That’s a really interesting observation that a Dutch/American product with Dutch accessories can look so quintessentially English, even if the word “quintessentially” has far too many letters and syllables for most Americans to wrap their heads around. I think our previous President “W” was even pushing a bill to ban words like “quintessentially” from Amurrican dikshunerees and buks… or maybe they were just trying to ban/burn books. I can’t quite remember what was going on in those darkest of days.

In any case I think there’s a fairly simple explanation; The qualities that people associate with “quintessentially English” are basically elements of timeless style such as natural materials, conservative colors, and pure form high on function and low on flourish. They result in objects or products that (if manufactured well) stand the test of time, achieving a certain patina. These are certainly qualities that WorkCycles strives for.

This is, incidentally, in stark contrast with what we would call “typically English” such as drunken and stoned weekend tourists browsing the windows of Amsterdam’s red light district in a rowdy group.

The Swiss are known for making and liking “good stuff” thus it makes me proud when Sjoerd at Swiss WorkCycles dealer DoubleDutch sends along these great photos showing how happy he is with our Fr8 bikes. Sjoerd also does a fun blog called Bakfiets Totaal. There you’ll find nice workbike photos and great ideas.

The photo above illustrates how stable your bike will stand with our special, extra wide version of the Hebie 2-leg centerstand. The Hebie is currently the only really solid and reliable centerstand on the market, and we’ve tested them all. Our stand simply has legs with a different bend to make it a few centimeters wider… and thus (even) more stable. Sjoerd was apparently so convinced of the stability that he put his lovely Rega amplifier in the crate, as evidenced below. Now that does seem a strange thing to do but I don’t presume to understand other cultures, and it makes for a nice photo anyway.

Looking at this picture reminds me of our quest for nice, suitable crates to mount on bikes. At WorkCycles we fit hundreds of tough plastic crates to the front carriers of bikes. They work just fine and are relatively cheap. The Dutch milk crate below is a good example; It’s utterly indestructible and a handy size… but pretty it ain’t.

Customers sometimes find charming, old, wooden crates formerly used by beer, wine or produce companies. These look great on the bikes and are just about as handy as the modern plastic crates, if somewhat heavier. We’d love to have a collection of these at the WorkCycles shops for customers to choose from… but where to find a stock of them? Ideas?

Yeah, I feel like I’m becoming Paul’s repost bitch here but this one is too good not to add. Check out the director of New York’s Transportation Alternatives riding his WorkCycles Opafiets around my beautiful hometown explaining how the conversion of New York from car-centric to human-centric will simply benefit everyone… or at least the vast majority of people. Against all odds they’re making great progress there. Beautifully filmed, eloquently spoken and plain old positive. Paul even manages to wear a helmet without looking like a dork. Thanks for the hard work TA!

ps: What happened to your bike’s chaincase Paul?

Thanks to Paul Steely White of the almighty Transportation Alternatives in New York, and Freeman Transport makers of custom bikes and some tasty and tasteful accessories such as this great T-shirt:

Speaking of T-shirts… WorkCycles has them too, along with a fresh supply of hoodies and also handy shop/kitchen aprons. The silkscreen detail of the WorkCycles kruisframe bike is quite amazing on these. As always, supplies are limited to act fast to get one!

- Hoodie: €35
- T-shirt: €15
- Apron: €20

Here’s artist Kyoko modeling the hoodie sweatshirt with the family Brompton. The design is essentially the same on the T-shirts and aprons. Both hoodies and T-shirts are heavyweights of great quality. The aprons are quite long and have pockets.

Contact WorkCycles for more info.

No, the original NYT article was NOT cited.

We’re just back from Japan here and there’s still so much to show and tell. First I’ll get past the jetlag and clear the pile on my desk. In the meanwhile you can check out the 550 or so photos of Japan I posted on Flickr. I’m patting myself on the back here for making them pretty entertaining and informative.

Meanwhile I came across a nice bit of bike and fashion parody out of Shanghai, China. Most of you probably saw the slightly silly but timely articles on Dutch bikes such as “Riding the It Factor” in The New York Times. Yours truly was interviewed for said article, WorkCycles bikes were mentioned and used as props and the super photos of my friend Marc (a.k.a. Amsterdamize) were used for an accompanying slideshow about Dutch cycling.

Well shortly afterward some “economic refugee” Shanghai expats showed up with “It’s the S**t!” Factor parodying the NYT article above.

A couple days later “5000 Years of Civilized Riding” appeared… their take on the NYT fashion shoot with some worthy quotes such as:

…in China, bicycles have been part of the culture for 5,000 years. Fashionable Qin riders first unified China’s sense of style in 221 BC…

Oh, and I learned an excellent new (for me at least) acronym: BINO (Brand in Name Only).

Thanks to Fred Shasta, writer of these pieces.