Solo bike ride

Today I went on a bike ride around the general area in which we live. It’s a combination of suburbia and city fringe inter-mixed with beautiful countryside and farms. Always something unique to see in this area of Brussels.

Today was a high of 60 with no rain, lots of clouds with the sun poking through on occasion. One of the nice things about Brussels is the access to bike paths and trails as well as being able to ride bikes on the street or sidewalks. While it still feels scary with cars zooming by, bike riding is a big part of the traffic pattern here. Many people bike to work or school. It is ubiquitous. As a driver, not accustomed to bikes and bike lanes everywhere, you really have to be very cautious. In some parts of the city bike lanes have their own stoplight system. It is complicated! At NATO there is a very large bike parking area. My guesstimate is there are over 300 bikes on any given day.

The other thing about bikes here is the majority of them are E-bikes, and a large percentage of them have what we call “the cart” on the front or sometimes on the rear of the bike. It looks like a bathtub and some have high tech weather guards to keep passengers, warm and dry! Routinely, we see a mom or a dad riding multiple children (as many as three) in a cart attached to the bike. And in some cases I’ve seen children as old as 10 years. It’s really fascinating how these parents are able to zip in and out of streets and traffic getting their children to and from school.

One of the more challenging things about our move to Europe was figuring out our bike situation. We knew we wanted to bring our e-bikes, but the batteries are considered hazardous material and didn’t ship with our bikes in the cargo shipment. We had many different trips to FEDEX to figure out how to ship them. We had to purchase special boxes and labels as well as document every part about the battery. In addition to using the battery down to less than 25% before it got shipped. We honestly had no idea if they were going to show up in Europe. We were prepared to have E-bikes with no battery and just use them as regular bikes, although they are much heavier. Fortunately, one day they arrived and it’s made our life here seem more like home!

Connor wants to get a cart bike so we can put Bucky in it. I’m not quite sure how that would work out…