I Got a Bike!

Ever since I got to Denmark, I’ve been checking out all the cool people on their bikes.

There are guys in business suits biking around, women in high heels, children on those bicycles with no pedals, old ladies in skirts, old men in hats. There are more bicycles out on the streets than there are cars.

I started looking for a bike soon after I arrived. I wanted to have one of those typical city bikes. One that has a basket in the front and the frame is low, so you can wear a skirt and there in a back rack for more stuff to carry and a comfy seat.

I quickly realized there was one major flaw with all of these bikes: no proper brakes! For some odd reason, the vast majority of these city bikes rely on back pedaling for braking (they do have the left hand/front wheel brake, which for me at least, makes the set up seem even more dangerous! Since I’ve never learned how to use back pedaling for braking, I imagined myself relying on the front wheel brake. Bad idea. That’s how you lose your front teeth. And since I already lost them once, I’m not about to do it again).

I asked about this at a few of the bike shops. The answers ranged from a shrug (“so?”) to “people prefer back pedaling”. When I said I don’t prefer it, I was told “that’s very unusual. If we carried ones with brakes, people wouldn’t buy them.”

I wasn’t going to give in though. I am a very insecure cyclist. I just learned how to ride a bike a couple of years ago. I’m still new at this!

So, I talked to a bike store down the street from us. It’s local and I decided that it would be the best place for me to buy a bicycle. I wouldn’t have far to bike home, after the purchase.

At that store they looked at catalogues with me. After searching the pages for a while, they finally found a city bike with two hand brakes!

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank god…  What colors do these come in?”

This particular model came in one color only: green curry. Not my favorite color, but I decided I could live with it. When it arrived it proved to be a lot cuter than its picture. It even has brown tires!