It started with a car boot sale. I bought a bicycle in the parking lot of a car dealer in Hilversum. A black carbon racing bike with disc brakes (my brother had to) and an extra set of gravel wheels for when I wanted to go into the woods.
So the bike was in a trunk and was sold by a man who wore a pink glitter party hat with a matching pink glitter tie in his WhatsApp profile photo. In real life he looked like any Dutch man on a Monday afternoon: jeans, sneakers, comfortable shirt.
He sold cars, but they could also have been washing machines or telephones. The bicycle was a private deal, we found each other through the online marketplace. I had bid, he made a reservation and that’s how a person ends up in a parking lot in Hilversum. Before he opened the trunk, he briefly explained, as a real salesman should, how much interest there was in the bicycle.
“So I say to that guy who keeps insisting: what don’t you understand about ‘reserved’?”
In that WhatsApp profile photo he stood next to a woman with a similar hat and a radiant white smile, pink balloons hanging in the background.
A bicycle without pedals
He took the bicycle out of the trunk. My brother and I had forgotten that he sold it without pedals. A test ride was not an option, but the bike looked too good not to. We inspected gears, squeezed the brakes and shifted gears a bit. Okay, we said.
“If you don’t like it, just sell it again,” said the man from the trunk deals.
Then suddenly he started talking about it. “Groningen,” he mused out loud. “My grandmother cycled to Groningen. In the war. And not on one of those fast racing things, on a normal bike. She had children at her back, and she brought them to the North to gain strength. In the Hunger Winter.”
There we were in the parking lot of the car dealer, spending a lot of money to ride a bike for fun. Just a nice round, in nice weather on a feather-light bike. Never drive 200 kilometers in winter with a child on the back.
“I think she did it about eight times,” the salesman said proudly.
An unseen button
Then when I wanted to flatten the seats of my car to load the luxury bicycle into my own trunk, my brother stopped me. Wait a minute, he said, pressing a button I’d never seen before. The seats lowered automatically.
“Handy,” I said.
“Yes,” said my brother.
Convenience was with us.
