People biking & pedal braking (Denmark Day 1.5)

After the nap, check-in, and moving my bags from the storage lockers to my shared room, the class met outside on the deck. (In Danish style of utility while facilitating hygge, the roof of the car parking is fitted out as a pleasant outdoor space for socializing.) Some students had arrived a day or so prior to our class. They were in a little better shape than those of us who arrived day of (judging by our various abilities to focus). We had a quick round of introductions with a (blessedly) short preview of what to expect in week 1. Then, we received the keys to our bikes!


Yes, you read that right, we received the keys to our bikes. The standard rental bike has a locking system built into the bike. So smooth. So easy. (It only took me several minutes and a consult to figure out how to relock the bike. I'm attributing that struggle to jetlag.) Our first assignment was to buddy up and take about an hour to an hour and a half to ride the bikes, follow some locals (discreetly), and meet up at a park for pizza and a debrief. Easy, yeah?

Alas, I was so busy trying to remember how to handle a bike with pedal brakes that I forgot to take any pics of people biking during that first bike run. 

Denmark has some very helpful tricks for making biking easy. For example, the a yellow light pops up with a red light just before it turns green. That allows people on bikes to start going and be on their way when the light turns green. I'll get into the infrastructure design more in later posts. For now, imagine a 41 year old who used to commute by bike struggling to get going from a stop since pedal brakes don't allow for repositioning pedals at said stop. (It wasn't pretty, but no one was injured.) Did I mention that it was rush hour? Yeah. It was rush hour. Except in Copenhagen that means that it's a mass of cyclists trying to get home.

After about an hour and a half, we met up at a park. They said to meet at the little airplane. I wondered what that meant. Like, was it a mounted fighter plane or what? It was this!

Play equipment shaped like a crashed plane! You can crawl through, on top, or under. The whole playground was quite nifty with spaces for parents to chill and let the kids run around. 

We all met up at these tables to have pizza and discuss our first experiences of biking Copenhagen. (Side note: The pizza was similar to New York style.) Some folks followed commuters through the Green Wave (signal timing matches to 20 km/hr, average biking speed). My pair followed several different folks as we weren't going as fast as the commuters. Commuters seemed as focused on getting home quickly by bike here as they are by car at home. It just involves a lot less being stuck in traffic.

Next up: Bike tour of Copenhagen 

Random pic of the day: Hazelnuts, they seem to be popular here. I have to watch out for them (or Nutella) in food.

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