And they are the cutest bikes you've ever seen. And every single one is outfitted with a bell and a basket. The bell, I suspect, is used to save tourists like me from being run over. If you think crossing north Prospect Avenue is difficult because of the cars, well, Dutch bikers are quite a dangerous lot. Seriously, I have never seen so many bikes in my life.
And they are almost all the same. Very few mountain bikes, hybrids or road bikes. In other words, the population has managed to avoid buying into the marketing hype of specialized bikes. Good old general purpose bikes are fine, thank you. They are all very large and long with nice curvy tall handlebars and big fat tires. (Part of the reason for their bigness, I think, is because Dutch people are big.) There are hundreds of cyclists of all ages swooshing around with baskets full of groceries and flowers and babies and dogs at any given moment. I'm not kidding. They have ingenious attachments for their bikes, too, for hauling stuff around. The automobile, although it is just as ubiquitious here as in the States, does not enjoy the supremacy of the roads that it does in America. They must share their roads with thousands of bikers and do so without any difficulty. In fact, the roads are subdivided into various bike lanes everywhere you go. And these bike lanes ... well, they are rather evolved. The bikers actually have their /own/ traffic lights and hand signals are essential if you do not want to get into an accident. It's quite amazing.