It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for four days now, every moment has been so packed! I've spent my time exploring the city and biking. This is such an incredible city and there is so much to see and do.
Biking Around the City
We got our bikes yesterday and went for our first ride, the goal was to explore and follow random people for 2 hours, then meet back up at Nørrebroparken for a picnic. Sean and I rode together for this and we had a great time. The following people had it’s ups and downs, but we learned a lot. We weren't sly enough with our following distance at first and we got off to a great start by creeping out a woman on a cargo with two kids to the point that she got off the cycletrack until we passed, and then we accidentally followed the next people to their front door. Today, we went on a bike tour around the city and it was very cool, though, the tour guide was a bit uncomfortable. He kept joking about sexism and Trump. There were times that it was nerve racking to bike in such a big group (25-30 people) but everything always worked out! From these experiences I’ve been thinking about a few things in particular:
Every road is a bike road. The level of infrastructure for bikes on a road reflects how traveled upon the road is. Busy streets all have protected bike lanes. That’s something I think about in Portland a lot. Commercial streets like Hawthorne and Division have no bike infrastructure because riders ‘should just use neighborhood bikeways’ like Clinton or Harrison, but here it makes much more sense. Bikes can and should be able to use every street.
Drivers don’t hate cyclists. Wild idea, right? Because everyone who drives in Copenhagen also bikes, there isn’t such a toxic frustration with cyclists. Back home, cyclists are seen as a obstacle that just slows cars down. Here, if a car and a bike are traveling down a narrow road, the car doesn‘t honk, yell, or flip the bird, they just act like a decent human being and be patient. Like I said, wild.
Merge with bikes. It’s not hard to do, but it sticks out as something I don’t have to do back home because the infrastructure has never encouraged enough people to ride that you would have to merge with MASSES of cyclists
Go on yellow. The lights here turn yellow before green so you go when it turns yellow which is new to me.
Jim and I are following you from Australia. It's great fun to see what you are experiencing. So glad you are enjoying it and learning a lot. We look forward to more of your adventures. Love, Omi and Jim
Wow! What a great experience. I also love to bike and also bike to work.