Like RAGBRAI every day

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Someone reminded me recently of the words spoken by the character Gramma Mary in the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: “You should look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.”

I’ve noticed that certain things increase the sharpness of my view – like an overnight flight and that exhilarating feeling of being at the beginning of a long-planned vacation.

Last night my husband and I boarded a plane that is larger than our condo and flew 4,500 miles to Amsterdam, a place I visited long ago as a college student but am seeing as if for the first time. We’re on our way to participate in a week-long Bike and Barge trip that begins and ends in Amsterdam; in between, we’ll peddle a loop through the famous Dutch flower markets and several historic towns in the southern half of the Netherlands. After biking each day, we’ll spend our nights on a barge, which will travel along with us via canals and rivers.

Arriving at 10 a.m. Wednesday Amsterdam time (3 a.m. Cedar Rapids time), we found our way by train and tram to our hotel, enjoying the benefits of cheap, convenient mass transit in a large metro area. But there is no question that Amsterdam belongs, above all, to the bicyclists – thousands of them barreling or meandering along in their own bike lanes on every city street; flashing past pedestrians, cars and trams; and parking their bikes by the hundreds on every sidewalk and bridge and alleyway.

In Amsterdam, there is a parking garage that holds 2,500 bikes, no cars. These bikes are not for racing or touring, but for commuting and carrying, with wide tires, comfy seats, and baskets or racks for hauling everything from briefcases to kids.

About 85 percent of people living in the Netherlands own at least one bike, and there are said to be 16 million bikes in Holland – slightly more than one per inhabitant. Around here, it’s like RAGBRAI every day. And the cars know it. In the Netherlands, a driver who strikes a bicyclist is considered guilty until proven innocent. It puts some teeth into the idea of “sharing the road.”