As you know, when I travel, I like to investigate the local bike shops that I can find. The volume of bicycles in a city like Amsterdam is simply amazing, and hard to fathom. So many of the bikes are left at train stations, one wonders how many are possibly abandoned there. Most of these bikes are not special to me, but the common styles tell you a lot. Almost every bike in Amsterdam had mustache handle bars for example. While some of the bikes you see ridden are like those parked at the station, many of the bikes I see ridden in Europe this year are electrified bikes, and in the bike shops the range of electric bikes is quite large, not just one or two models. Several shops here now carry dominantly electric bikes, and some only carry electrics. I recently found a folding electric bike with a shaft drive here in a store in Sant Cugat. I see electric mountain bikes as well as city bikes. I have not seen nearly as many road bikes here as I would have expected in stores. I do see people out riding road bikes, but that is not what most vendors are stocking in the stores I find randomly as I travel.
Anyway here is some items that caught my eye, and that I wanted to share with you. The first photo is from a store that sold only electric vehicles. The website is http://www.electric-scooters.be/en/index.html The store was closed when I went by, but the item that caught my eye appealed to me more than any electric bicycle. I guess I feel like if I am on a bicycle, I want it to be a bicycle, not an electric thing. This is an electric scooter, which looked like a classic Vespa, and while the color is a bit Bianchi for me, I think if I were to ride an electric two-wheel vehicle this would be the one I would choose (ignoring the 3800€ sticker price, although this is far cheaper than the items that follow).
After that I found another bike shop (also closed on a Monday), which was clearly more likely to get my business,
In fact on Wednesday I had a chance to go back to this shop when the proprietor was there and it was open. My brother-in-law has my Pedersen from my sabbatical in Denmark and he told me that I should be looking for this bike for this year’s sabbatical acquisition. I found three in the store, one belonged to the owner, one was new (in blue) on the wall for only 5700€ with an Alfine 11 hub, shown here:
But when I started to talk about the Moultons with the shop owner, he was really excited and said he had to show me a different one. This one was recently on loan from the Moulton factory to a museum in the area and when the exhibit closed Moulton asked him to pick up the bike and store it for them until they know where they want to send it next. It was a very special bike, with a very special price, ~20,000€ (I had to ask which means I could not afford it). But he brought it out for me to enjoy sharing it with me in the store. Here is the photo, I am sorry that is the closest I will get to owning this bike.
Note the difference between the full space frame on this bike and the lower end Moulton I showed before, which still had a recognizable head tube and seat tube. This bike was light and very rigid (excepting the full suspension) on all three axes. In many ways the Moulton space frames do remind me of the trusses on the Pedersen, which also was made with large numbers of smaller diameter tubes in contrast to most bicycles.
The shop also carried a full range of Bromptons, Brooks, and more typical high-end Amsterdam-style commuting bicycles with really nice bells and whistles, etc. I attach one photo of something that I thought you might not have seen which I thought was cute, but had no need to own.
While I don’t have any pictures, one thing that I really enjoyed in one of the other bike shops I found on this trip was the wide variety of panniers that are available here. In the US I am lucky to see maybe 3 or 4 styles of panniers in any shop. Here almost every bicycle has a pair of panniers on the back and they come in many different styles, from denim, to leather and solid colors, to wild patterns. Prices vary, too, from under 50€ to 300€ per pannier.
I am riding a 26” wheel GT mountain bike I purchased secondhand here as well as my folding bike and occasionally the red tandem with either A. or J. The mountain biking is excellent here and every weekend I see many many riders out in the trails. Many have very high end full suspension 29er bikes, but the type of riding terrain is lots of rocky staircases and chutes, and I admit that it is challenging for me. I go out alone, find a group, and try to follow and often get left behind. I don’t think it is out of my range, but it is out of my comfort zone in some cases.
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