Newbie On Two Wheels

I thought I’d be toot-toot scootering this morning to see some windmills. But that went to hell in a handbasket.

When I arrived in Landsmeer for my adventure, the owner gave me essentially a 20 second run down on how to operate a scooter.

Thisiswhereyouturnonthescooter. Yourlefthandisyourbrake. Yourrighthandisyourgas. Thisiswhereyourblinkersare. Rightforrightleftforleft. Clickthisbuttonwhenyoufinishedturning. Thisishowyoulockthescooter. I’llleaveyouamobilesoyoucancallmeifyourunintoanytrouble. Heresthemapfortheroute. You’llhavetorideonthefreewayuntilyoucandetourtotheroute. Nowfollowmesoicanshowyoutothefreewayentrance.

I’m sorry. I know you said on your website no experience is necessary for renting your scooters but c’mon a 20 second what’s what? I know I’m not a 10 years old, but I need a little more hand-holding than that.

The guy gave me the equivalent of telling someone who’s never swam before, to just jump right into the deep end, swing your arms around, kick your legs and you’ll be swimming.

And the fact that my first time on a scooter, I’ll be on the freeway for a stretch with cars and lorries? This screamed accident waiting to happen. Too many things wrong with this picture: I could cause an accident, crash his scooter, endanger myself, endanger other people or worse, strain international relations between Holland and Canada over this.

Course, I’d still love to learn how to ride a scooter. Just not with this guy. I made my way back to Amsterdam.

Smoked salmon on a bun with fresh squeezed OJ. Nom!

At first I was a little bummed that the scootering didn’t work out, but if it hadn’t played out like that, I wouldn’t have decided that I was going to learn to ride a bike instead.

After lunch, I made my way to Leidesplein area and found the Macbike bicycle rentals. I was going to rent a bike and learn to ride it in nearby Vondel park.

There’s 2 things that I think it’s important for everyone to learn. (everyone meaning me) One is how to swim. The other is how to ride a bike.

Holland is a nation of bikers. Amsterdam is the bicycling capital of Europe. There are about 700K bicycles in Amsterdam alone. (there are some 735K people in Amsterdam) The Dutch start getting their children comfortable with being on 2 wheels. By the time they’re adults, they are bonafide cyclists.

So I walked my bike over to the park. I was miss weeble wobble when I first got on. I’ve only ever been on a bike maybe once or twice when I was a kid and got turned off because I was also wobbling all over the place back then. And it’s no fun to ride like that.

And since I never had a bike at home, I never practiced. But I was determined to ride straight this time. After a bit of feeling how a bike steers and where it’ll curve and what I have to do to correct it, I started to be able to ride straight and for long stretches.

I kept rationalizing to myself: I been on rollerskates, skateboards and snowboards. I have to be able to learn how to balance on a bike. Hell, I balance myself on 3.5 inch stilettos!

The great thing about being in another country, you don’t care if everyone is judging you, because you’re never gonna see or run into them again. I didn’t give a hoot who was looking at me. I was just doing my own thing and trying not to take down the bike and me with it. But of course in a nation of expert cyclists, I’m gonna attract attention.

I was coming up to a group of young guys playing footie on the grass and a few of them were taking a break. As I wobbly cycled passed, one guy ran up to me and for a second I thought he was going to harass me by telling me to get off the road. Instead, he held onto the back of the bike to steady me and push me in a straight line. That was really good of him. Course, I was still just starting out so if I had looked back or waved, I know I would’ve toppled over.

It got easier, but still challenging. Sure, Amsterdam is flat and the riding is easy. But there are no dedicated bike paths in Vondel park. Everyone shares the pathway: pedestrians, cyclists, scooterists.

So I had to learn to ride, weave between pedestrians and not crash into them, watch for oncoming bikers, and make sure to check if there’s bikers coming from behind me before getting back on my bike. I had just hoped that any speedsters from behind would just go around me, which they did. They flew by me and that was a bit disconcerting at first.

I ended up biking in the park for 2 hours. (I’m sure at least 40 of those minutes were just on sorting myself out) When I got going and cruising steadily along, I really started enjoying it.

Mind you I was more Morgan Freeman driving Miss Daisy, than Lance Armstrong competing at the Tour de France. I’m happy to be riding like that for now. I’m not planning on cycling in traffic. Even with a bike lane.

The girl at the Macbike told me I was brave to learn to ride a bike in crazy Amsterdam. Hardly. I would be brave if I had learned in traffic instead.

Still psyched from biking, I walked over to the Het Muziektheater for the off-chance that I could score a cheap seat to the opera, A Dog’s Heart. There was one seat left in the 1st balcony for € 25. My i Amsterdam card gave me a further discount and I ended up only paying € 18,75. Cool.

The theatre is very modern and nice. Glass windows from floor to ceiling, with a view of the canal. The inside of the house was clean and gloriously red. It was odd for me not to see a sunken orchestra pit. Not only was there no barricade separating the orchestra from the audience, but the first row was almost on the same level as the orchestra. In fact, sitting in the first row, if you crane your neck a little, you could read along to the music sheets. You can practically touch the maestro, he’s so close to the front row.

My seat was not bad at all. I ended up having almost the whole row to myself! There were people at the other end of the row, but no one was on my side. I had 5 seats on my left empty and like 15 seats on my right empty. And there was no row behind me. I owned that row. The theatre was far from being sold out. There were lots of big pockets in the first and second balcony, Although the orchestra seats were filled.

The view from my seat.

From where I sat, I could see the stage perfectly. The only obstruction was that I couldn’t see the surtitles, but it doesn’t matter anyways, as the surtitles were in Dutch. Unlike Vancouver Opera, they charge € 8 for their programs.

The world premiere of Sasha Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart is based on the Russian novel, Heart of a Dog.

In a score laden with fantasy and emotion, he tells the absurd tale of a professor who implants a human pituitary gland into a stray dog, which proceeds to become more and more human. The utopia goes awry as the transformed beast turns into a cruel figure from whom everyone learns the sensation of fear. – De Nederlandse Opera

Sjarik the dog had 4-5 handlers on stage the whole time. Watching Sjarik, I was reminded of the puppetry in War Horse. I was also reminded of Eric Stoltz’s mutated dog in The Fly II.

The opera was short, finishing at 920pm. For a second I wondered if it was intermission but then I saw people heading out the door.

Did I like it? It was different. It was hard to watch though cuz the dog was skeletal and rough-housed, so that it could be put under for experimental surgery. The surgery was done behind a sheet, so all you could see were sinister shadows of the doctors, but was still graphic, with all it’s medical instruments and blood spurting. It did not appeal to my animal loving side.

But hey! Tonight’s the latest that I stayed out the whole time I’ve been here. I got back to the AirBnB by 1030pm. I’m living it up.

View more photos of my trip on my Flickr album.