The Even Greater Tokyo Region

Farewell Giselle

Giselle

Feb 2009 - 15 October 2009

It's never easy when you lose something important to you. But at the same time, you try your best to deal with it, knowing that good things are supposed to end. I always knew this time would come, but it is still difficult when it is taken from you. It doesn't seem fair, when it really nothing could be more fair. It happens to everybody.

My bike, beloved Giselle, was stolen from me after I locked it up at the station last Thursday morning. Bikes in Holland are very frequently stolen; they are more contagious than an STI. I kind of expected it to get stolen this year, which is why I got a cheap bike, but I was still careful to always lock her up. It is sad to lose my bike. Of course, I am not really talking about my bike.

But let's talk about my bike. This was our last adventure together.

Okay, it was Saturday night after 3am, and I was... No, let's phrase this more carefully: I had been drinking. It was a party in town. I was coming home by bike, and I was needing to cross through to the other side of the station. For the purposes of a visual aid to the story, I will include a map.


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Starting from the bottom of the map, I was biking up towards the station (the large white building at the top-left.) However, as I entered the map, a sporty white car came out of the side street from the right. Giselle no longer has a working light, but then, in Holland almost everyone's light is broken, and this was a well-lit and relatively busy street, even at this early morning hour. However, the car didn't stop for me, and I had right-of-way. However, as I say, "right-of-way means very little when you are in hospital." I swerved to the left, and avoided driving straight into the driver's door. But my pedal hit and scraped against the front bumper of the car. Yes, I had officially been in a car-to-bike crash. I didn't fall off, and Giselle had suffered no damage, but I was pretty pissed-off.

Maybe in retrospect, I was acting. Maybe I was just relieved to have avoided a potentially bad crash. And I probably shouldn't have tried to be so tough. But in the moment, I was pretty pissed-off and I gave that driver of the car an earful. It probably contained many words of an offensive nature. It was also in free-flowing angry English, which I'd like to think sounds much more threatening to a Dutch person who would understand most of it, but be unable to reply.

Feeling better, I continued to bike on up the road toward the station. That's when I observed the same car coming up behind me with the lights on full. Shit. About where the "Paviljoenshof" is on the map, I ducked through a small gap onto the footpath to get out of the car's way and let it pass. I biked slowly to let the car go by, but it drove up further onto the pedestrian crossing and onto the wide pedestrian area in front of the station. The car was facing me. It was staring me down.

Shit.

I had pissed the guy off. And let's, for a moment, consider what kind of person drives around the city centre in a flashy car after 3am in the morning. I won't draw any conclusions, but surely you know of similar people in your home town.

This is where all my years of movie-watching paid off. I tore off a chapter from the Bourne Identity, and started biking towards the car, swerved to its left, over the pedestrian crossing and back onto the road. The car was turning around like a slow dinosaur, unable to keep up with my agility. I then quickly turned back towards the station entrance, through the sliding doors and inside. I knew there are cameras there, and also security guards late at night, especially on weekends. I was safe... Also, the station has a back entrance where it is difficult for cars to get to. I simply biked through to the other side and biked home.

I doubt the guy (and I vaguely remember there maybe being a girl in the passenger seat) was actually going to try run me over (because cyclists make dents), but he may have wanted to get out of the car and fight me with more than just words. I say this because I heard a similar story where a car driver got out and ran to try and fight a cyclist he almost hit.

It was a close call, because let's be honest, I couldn't fight my way out of a roomful of newborn puppies. But I am grateful that Giselle was there for me in my time of need, and did everything asked of her. And I will always have stories like this to remember her by. And that is something that noone can take from me.