It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. How do I keep a blog running that has a main focus on Dutch cycling when I don’t have the privilege of living in the Netherlands? How do I keep topics interesting without wasting people’s time who dare click on a link to read it? This is something I struggle with as I continue on in this Netherlands advocacy, but I think I have a good idea for this write-up.

What keeps me riding in a country that does nothing to support cycling?

This is where the title of the post ties in, finding your motivation. How do I keep up the motivation to choose the bicycle over the car in a country that is dominated by the automobile industry, has hostile infrastructure, and sprawl that is detrimental to the very idea of riding a bike as transportation? For me, that answer is simple. I look across the Atlantic over to the Netherlands. (Predictable answer, right?)

Each and every day, I look to a little bit of visual inspiration easily found online of people living life on two wheels in the NL. I see them in their everyday clothing, on simple upright bicycles, safely and happily cycling to the same obligations we all have, but largely without the car. They’re cycling to work, day care, a restaurant, school, the grocery store, and on and on. To me, there’s something very inspiring, very romantic, very………tranquil about it all.

Since I don’t have the ability to replicate the beautiful infrastructure like the bike paths, roads with brick pavers, charming buildings, etc, I have to focus on what I can control and that would be myself and my bicycle.

When this all started for me back in 2017, I came back home from NL and decided I wanted a Dutch bicycle. I entered into this search blindly and rather ignorantly. Nevertheless, I found what I thought I needed and made the purchase. That first bike was a Gazelle Tour Populair as seen below.

I had this bike for a few months and I just wasn’t feeling the inspiration with it. I didn’t really have any commute by bike to speak of given my job at the time, so there was no feeling of being a Dutch commuter. The cargo hauling capacity of this bike was extremely minimal so putting a couple bags of groceries in my panniers from time to time just wasn’t doing it either. Outside of that, all I could seem to find to do with this bike was the typical American recreation ride. I lost almost all motivation really quickly with this particular bike in the particular setting I was living in.

Next, enter my growing knowledge of cargo bikes found in the Netherlands. This is where the gears in my head started turning again on how I could bring the enjoyment of Dutch cycling home to where I live. Fortunately for me, I was introduced to the Workcycles company.

This company was founded by an American named Henry Cutler who went to the Netherlands for work back in 2000. He looked around at the people and their bikes and felt that he could design a Dutch bicycle that would be better than most. One that would come with everything you needed to accomplish life on two wheels without needing to go out and purchase all the “extra accessories”. This led to the startup and founding of Workcycles and they have been taking over the world one bike at a time since 2003.

I started looking at options from the company, but also balancing their prices and what I thought was justifiable. Again, I still had so much to learn and little knowledge of what was best or right for my situation. Regardless, I chose the Workcycles Kruisframe and my entrance into the Dutch cargo bike world had begun.

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Before I talk about the new Kruisframe, let’s see what happened to the Gazelle. 🙂 It was put online and sold to a student at a university down in Florida. He was going to use it for his commute since he was a foreign student here and didn’t want to buy a car. I took a loss selling this bike, but I’ve rarely found life to be a profitable business.

Now that I had purchased the Kruisframe, my ability to do more Dutch style cargo biking was greatly enhanced. The front crate and carrier made a huge difference. I no longer went for leisure rides and was starting to make grocery-getting by bike my main thing.

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We were living in a town of 25,000 people and almost zero bike infrastructure. The roads were wide and not really safe for cycling in my opinion. The to/from the grocery store started to get pretty boring, so I began to eye the possibility of moving closer to Minneapolis so I could take better advantage of their trail system and hopefully get more use out of my bicycle to live a more Dutch cycling life.

Oh wait, I almost forgot to mention that I added pet shop runs into my routine. I mean, why not haul 18kg of kitty litter by bike…

Oh wait again, just thought of another one! That time I rode to city hall to renew my commercial driver’s license…by bike. You see the trend here. The more I studied how the Dutch used their bikes, the more I tried to find ways to incorporate riding into my everyday life. This is something I never would have done before or really even have thought of.

We decided to make the move closer to Minneapolis to have a more bike friendly environment, but I knew it would take more than that to keep me riding and working to incorporate the Dutch cycling lifestyle into my routine. The sprawl was starting to get to me and a Dutch style cargo bike wasn’t mixing well with some hills, wind, and long distances to services. This is where converting my Workcycles Kruisframe to an e-bike came into the picture.

Without going into all the details, a mid-drive assist was purchased, installed, and ready to go just shortly after we moved to a 1st ring suburb of Minneapolis. We still had pretty decent access to dedicated trails that led to goods/services so it fit us well at the time.

The addition of the e-assist opened up a whole new world to me combined with the newly available bike path “network” where we lived. Covering distances was not as hard, the wind didn’t bother me, and the occasional hill was not a problem. The now e-cargo bike eliminated all of those excuses. It was a pricey investment, but it paid off. I was riding everywhere with this bike now as you’ll see in the gallery below.

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During all of this time, I was consuming Dutch media, diving into bike Twitter, watching countless hours of BicycleDutch videos, and learning all I could about cargo bikes and e-cargo bikes being used by people all around the world, but primarily in a Netherlands setting since that’s what I enjoyed the most.

My Workcycles Kruisframe was serving me well and I used it pretty hard for close to a year, but now that I was riding so much and my load sizes were increasing, I found myself needing a more sturdy cargo bike. One that could handle the heaviest of loads without the frame flex, which I was now experiencing on the Kruisframe. This is where we enter the purchase of the Workcycles Fr8.

The timing was perfect because about 8 weeks prior, I had placed my order for the new Workcycles Fr8 and what did I see when I walked into the shop for the first time upon my arrival? The box containing my bike ready to be put on an airplane for shipping! 🙂

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I had not only come to Workcycles to see their shop, but also to pick up a bike to use for my stay in NL. I wasn’t staying in Amsterdam, too many tourists. 🙂 I was just picking up the bike to take it back to ‘s-Hertogenbosch where it would stay with us at our apartment for the duration. It so easy and fun to do all this by bike/train.

Shortly after visiting with some of the crew at Workcycles, I took my bike and started my ride back to the train station. This was my first ride out on my own in the Netherlands and I recorded a small bit of it as you’ll see next. I felt almost euphoric as I pedaled through the streets on that bike. Life was exploding around me, I felt safe, bikes and people everywhere, it was just amazing!

Here is a small gallery of photos taken while in NL and using my borrowed Fr8. It’s certainly a time I’ll never forget and I’ll continue to go back and do it over and over for a lifetime.

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If you’ve now made it this far, thanks! I’m gonna try to wrap this up, but I still haven’t made my complete point about finding your motivation…

So here I am, a few years into this newly adopted lifestyle of incorporating Dutch cycling into my everyday existence. My new Workcycles Fr8 arrives at my home just a few days after returning from the Netherlands.

Arrival and setup of my new Fr8. This included me taking the e-assist off the Kruisframe and putting it on the new bike. I’m certainly no bike mechanic, but I was learning as I went along. It seemed proper that I learn some of the ins and outs of my bike.

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Now, let’s fast forward over a year and about 4,000 km of riding to what came next. The swapping out of the front rack for the more utilitarian Workcycle’s Massive Rack.

Why did I just drag you through that long process of acquiring three different bikes?

That’s simple to answer. I was fine tuning my motivation. The more I tried and the more I learned about different styles of Dutch bicycles, the more I was inspired and motivated to ride. As I said before, this motivation kept me on the saddle and out of the driver’s seat. Had I stopped at the Gazelle, there’s a chance that my bike would have been parked and collecting dust. The same could have happened with the Kruisframe. Its cargo capacity was limited and could have contributed to me losing my drive to ride.

I have no doubt that adding an e-assist was crucial to keeping my motivation going. It eliminated excuses and helped smooth out infrastructure issues where my country, city, neighborhood failed me. I would encourage anyone even remotely curious about incorporating the bicycle back into their life to find a shop or a friend with an e-cargo bike and making arrangements to try it out. Don’t just ride it, see if you can take it to go pick up some groceries, or grab some take out at your favorite local restaurant. Use it for something you’d normally use the car for and see how that goes! 🙂

So, to conclude the bike segment of this, here’s my message. Bike style matters!!!!!! I don’t ride because I love bikes or because I love riding. I ride partially because my bike motivates me to. I feel good on it. I like to stand out from the lycra crowd, the recreation crowd, the mountain bike crowd, etc. I like knowing that here I’m an outlier, but on the other side of the Atlantic in a small country of roughly 17 million people, I’d blend in and be nothing special. The thought is interesting and inspiring to me…

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So, it’s easy to see that the bike plays a major part in my toolkit of motivation.

Next, and I think this is an easy one to illustrate, is choice of clothing. I couldn’t be more turned off to the idea of helmets, hi-vis clothing, tight shorts, or just the usual US bike apparel/image. I’m not saying anyone is wrong for dressing that way, but thanks to the Dutch and the Netherlands, I’m a proponent of the “Dress for the destination, not the ride” model. #CycleChic is one of my favorite things. If you’re not familiar with that, just head over to Twitter and type in that hashtag. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

So, what type of imagery motivates me to cycle in relation to clothing?

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I keep up on this stuff. If you’re a participant in the Twitter world, you’ll find me active over at the @Brandon_Lust profile. I use Twitter as a tool. It’s not just there for me to do advocacy, talk about infrastructure, and spread awareness of the Dutch cycling lifestyle, but also for me to learn more and keep my motivation and inspiration up. Through a combination of videos, pictures, discussions, my bike, trying to emulate #CycleChic, etc., I am doing all I can to stay motivated to keep living the Dutch cycling life in a country that does little to support it. I can’t just sit back and hope to wake up each day feeling like riding my bike for an errand rather than taking the car. I have to actively fuel my heart and mind to make me want to do that.

Find your inspiration! No matter what it is! Do the things that motivate you to ride, make them part of your daily life somehow, and just try to think about what you enjoy about cycling and why you do it in the first place. Make that a topic of consumption for you. Throw that inspirational gas on your fire. 🙂

I hope this wasn’t too long or too far out to have made my point with you as a reader. Like I’ve said before, I only participate on Twitter and write this blog in hopes of inspiring someone else to take their bike and leave the car at home. I hope you can find the joy that I have found in cycling even if it’s not driven by the same motivations that I have.

In conclusion…

My experiences and motivations have inspired someone else, my wife. If you follow me on Twitter, you’re already very familiar with that story. She is now an e-cargo bike rider after only learning to ride a bike just a couple of years ago. We now ride together and it has been a great thing for us. I hope you can find that special riding partner for you as well. It certainly makes the kilometers pass by a little bit quicker and with greater enjoyment.