Points of complication are usually both surprising and completely predictable. Take, for instance, international travel. We don’t really have trouble cramming a few hundred people who don’t know each other in a small, confined space and chucking in the air at 9,000 meteres to a destination several thousand kilometers away. That bit, apparently, is simple and is generally goes off without a hitch.
The complicated bit, evidently, is the bit where you arrive with all the same objects that you left with. My bicycle comes to mind as one such item that I would have liked to have arrive with me in Amsterdam, as it is an item that bears some relevance to this trip. And which, of course, didn’t make it onto the plane with me.
Thankfully, I’ve done enough travel to have some degree of familiarity with this particular routine. I’ve also learned that in America, we become very occupied with the idea that we might predict with some certainty when the missing items could arrive, or where they should be at any given moment. This gives us a degree of comfort that we might at some point regain possession of our beloved items.
Europeans don’t share this occupation with us. I recall my first trip to France with(out) bicycle. We arrived, naturally, in Toulouse san le velo. Throughout our workings with the airline as to determine where our bicycles might be, they treated us the the customary French ridicule that we should be so concerned with the whereabouts of the bicycles; they weren’t lost, after all. They just didn’t know where they were. But on that occasion, we were phoned within an hour or so that they would arrive on the next plane and that we should pick them up in a few hours.
My arrival in Amsterdam, without my bicycle, distinguished itself from our arrival in France in the respect that they had absolutely no idea where the bicycle was, and since I’d had a layover in San Francisco wherein the bicycle changed hands between airlines, there was also some question as to precisely at which airport it might have been left, whose fault it was (probably mine), and whether it hadn’t accidentally boarded a plane to New Delhi or some such exotic location. Thankfully, it also distinguished itself in the respect that I can speak the language well enough and can easily switch between English and Dutch as it suits my needs (the Dutch are often more tolerant of your ignorance if they don’t know you’re Dutch and should thusly know better, so if I’m clueless about something I tend to revert back into English to demonstrate my idiocy and invoke their sense of sympathy for my predicament.)
If you find routine comforting, as many of us do, then you would find it comforting to know that the baggage handlers in Amsterdam held the same degree of interest as the French did as to whether or not I found the situation I was in either inconvenient or distressing. That is to say, they had none; they were much more interested in getting me to stop talking than finding any kind of resolution.
Having experienced all this before, I left the airport not terribly distressed. But then the questions started to creep in, often raised by other. What should I if my bike didn’t arrive? I’m perhaps the most finicky person when it comes to my bicycle and position as anyone could be, so borrowing a bike is a very unappealing idea. Not to mention that I began curating my wheels in November, and had only twice ridden on the tires I had specially handmade for my ride over the cobblestones. To return to Seattle without having had these wheels so much as grace the pavé seems very incomplete, somehow.
I went to sleep last night with no updates, despite several calls to Schiphol in pursuit of some information that might put me at my ease. I awoke an hour later needing to use the loo, so I got up and made my way upstairs where I ran into my mother who had just gotten off the phone with my dad. She informed me of his heartfelt condolences, and that he was concerned that some handler with sticky fingers had perhaps stolen the bike as it came off the plane. This seemed almost completely impossible, but just possible enough to worry me to my core. I fell asleep with visions of never again laying eyes upon my irreplaceable Bike #1.
I start the day today in the waning hope of receiving my bicycle before we jump on the train for Lille tomorrow. I also find Lou Reed’s lyrics running through my mind.
I’m waiting for my bike,
With $26 in my hand.
So sick and dirty, more dead than alive,
I’m waiting for my bike.
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I have seen my bike being carted from one plane to the next. Fingers crossed. Please baby Merckxus let it arrive with me in Amsterdam and I promise not to let it out of my sight again.
@sthilzy
HA, nice! I wonder how hard it is to pedal underwater...
BTW, how are those V end caps coming along??
Lastly, I found a photo of the Velominati emergency team that will rush to your aid should you crack your head on the pave (or burst into flames, thus the fire extinguisher):
@mcsqueak
Coming along nicely! Had porosity issues with the 3D printer and spray putty/primer adhesion. Also time. Pics soon!
(Now I want to put V-Loins on them!)
I love the smell of fresh cobblestones in the morning!
this should be playing from the Directeur Sportif's car http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AlEvy0fJto&feature=related
@sthilzy
V-loins. Ha! I don't know if that was intentional, but it was frakking funny.
@Belgian Cobblestones
Coolest badge ever! Gotta get me one of those.
Well I was all ready for a story to cheer the Dutch Monkey up, but it appears it's no longer needed. Meh it's a good story so you'll get it anyways...
The climbing on this morning's ride finished at the summit of the hill that overlooks Adelaide (despite it's name, I'm not going to call it a mountain, it's really not that big) and so with it's restaurant & gift shop at the summit it's also a bit of a tourist attraction.
As I'm making my way through the gates at the summit a massive coach pulls up with your typical 20 or 30 geriatrics hobbling out speaking some 4 or 5 different Euro languages. As I'm sitting next to the bike having a bite to eat & some water this old lady wanders over & congratulates me on climbing up, starts admiring the bike & then tells me a story...apparently her old man was a bit of a racer back in the day, I'm feigning interest in my best Casually Deliberate style until she mentions that not only did he race for Holland at the Olympics both in Amsterdam in '28 & Berlin in '36, but won Gold in '28 & Silver in '36.
Intrigued I gave it a bit of a Google when I got to work & dug up that her old man is most likely Bernhard Leene & I was speaking to Antoinette as she mentioned she also rode but because there were no women's races at the time she took up swimming & turned her guns in to torpedos. She still rides though, mentioning that she still tries to go out once a week with one of her daughters.
Here's a pic of Bernhard with his tandem partner Daan van Dijk after their win in '28, although it appears that someone forgot to tell Daan they'd won. I mean seriously, crack a smile dude, you just won an Olympic gold medal!
@The Oracle
D'oh! Lion, I must write out 100 times....
@Mikael Liddy
Cool story. Glad you posted it notwithstanding Frank's recent good fortune.
@mcsqueak
"Maybe you can work on a new feature where a screen name could have multiple badges next to it? ...So someone could have the possibility of "earning" multiple badges (say they happen to be a V-article contributor AND current VSP leader, as just one example). Maybe put a cap on it, like the ability to earn up to a maximum of three badges at any one time."
Is that consistent with our sporting traditions? Or would PROtocol (see what I did there?) suggest that there be a hierarchy of jerseys: if you win a higher-ranked one, the lower-ranked one goes to the person who finished immediately behind you (in the same way as happens with the yellow jersey, green jersey and spotty jumper)? Or would that involve a giant flame war, over where each jersey ranks in the hierarchy, which would make the Great Helmet War pale by comparison? (And, if so, would that be A Bad Thing, if it necessitated more gratuitous posting of Assos models?)
@G'phant
All I know is it's consistent with my sporting tradition of trying to make more work for Frank...