Do I miss life back home? For sure. I am missing the bright green blanket of lush living that surrounds my house in Massachusetts. I am missing the friends I saw IRL on a regular basis — nothing in particular, just their presence. The way they changed the atmosphere around me. I am missing the adrenaline rush of summiting a large hill. I miss the crisp, fall air that smells like damp pine and lush leaves beautifully dying. I miss bulk bags of chocolate chips and bags of crisp, lightly salted corn chips. I miss the amazing interlibrary loan system in the state of Massachusetts where, like magic, I can request almost any book and it will be waiting for me at the counter within the week. FOR FREE PEOPLE.

But there's a lot that I like about life in the Netherlands — and I don't mean the well-advertised tourist draws of stroopwaffles and tulips and canals, though if that's your thing, cheers. At the top of my list?

BIKES! BIKES! FIETSEN! BIKES!

One of my favorite parts of the Barbie movie is how Ken thinks "beach" is his entire professional calling card and primary source of pride. Not lifeguard. Not volleyball. Simply the essence and experience of "beach." Well, that's how I feel about bike. When I'm sitting on a bike at a stoplight, one arm braced on the cross-light-request-pole to hold me upright as I wait, I feel whole. In it. Engaged. Part of something bigger than myself but very much captain of my own steel-rod-flesh assemblage.

In the city I live in in the south of the Netherlands, the bike lanes are full but are not chaos. People thirty years older than me regularly smoke bye in a flash of competence. Knee-height kids bike along the road with their parent hovering calmly like a duck herding her chicks to the waterside. And I get to be among it, moving at whatever pace I can muster from this place to that.

I take my dog running alongside my bike least once a day. I hold her leash with one hand and she glides along, ears back feet galloping. She's not the only dog running side-car to the bike — I realized it was possible by watching any number of older men out and about with their dogs, some of them leash-free, trotting happily alongside their person.

Can-Do Bike Energy

One of the best days of my first month here was the day I biked home two square 2.5ft paintings on my bicycle. They were 7 euros. They were perfect for our all-white apartment. And so I found a way. I looped a bungee cord through the loop at the top of my backpack, wrapped the bungee through the frame of the paintings so if they fell they would be caught, and used the tension from the cord to steady the paintings as I dangled them from my left hand, steering and braking with my right. The ride home was 20 minutes through the city. One or two people observed, but no one was astonished and no one laughed. I was doing what needed done! Bikes are how you get things home. If it could be done, it should be done. I felt like… myself.

When I was 20 and broke and unstably housed, I would have felt triumphant about prioritizing beauty in deep scarcity. Now, at middle aged, with a highly functional bike, plenty of options for getting art on my walls, and no urgency to do so, I still felt triumphant. I was drawing on that can-do energy because my context called for it. And I loved the paintings. And I could. And I love it.

Dutch Bike Affection

One of my favorite parts of bike culture is watching what I think of as Dutch Bike Affection. At least once a week I see two people doing affection between the bikes as they ride. This affection-in-motion happens in the same way I might put my arm around my kid on the couch or hold my wife's hand in the car. Moms put their arms out to rest on their son's shoulder, paramours hold hands dangling between the bikes, and young men ride with one strong arm clapped on the shoulder of their friend while they talk. Maybe one of them has an e-bike and is gliding in the other along. But it’s physical comradery. Hanging out.

There’s also sweetness in seeing the various ways people affectionately ride TOGETHER on bicycles, and the arrangements are seemingly endless. Kids nestled between parents’ arms in seats (and not). Dogs in baskets. Teens nonchalantly sitting sideways on the front of their friend’s handlebar seat, casually texting.

The other day I saw a man and woman emerge from their front yard with a big cargo bike — the kind with a giant plastic bucket on the front that’s usually used to bike multiple children around town. But they were clearly headed on a business trip, dressed in tight fancy clothes, the woman wheeling a hard-sided carryong bag behind her. Instead of kissing goodbye and parting ways as I expected, the man held out his arm and the woman in heels and skirt deftly climbed into the front cargo, nestled the carryon wheel bag in front of her, and hopped on the bike, pedaling toward downtown and the train station. As I live!

The special sauce is infrastructure

People around here love to share the fun fact that the Netherlands has more bikes than people1. 1.3 bikes for every person. This is all made possible, of course, by a robust bicycle infrastructure that is affordable, accessible, and widely shared across social differences like income and age.

For example, I recently went on a multi-day international trip. I was able to get to the airport via train. I was able to get to the train station by bike — one carry-on bag in the front basket, one in the back. If I parked my bike outside a train station in the US, it would surely be stripped for parts by the time I came back to it a week later. But here, the train station has a bike parking garage staffed by humans and monitored by cameras 24/7.

This bike parking garage is free for the first 24 hours, then costs 1.40 a day to keep it parked in a giant system of two-tiered bike racks. My bike slides up top and sits up on its perch until I am ready to pull the bike down, unlock the tiny back lock that came with the bike, and tag my way out of the bike storage with my transit card, all for the price of a round-trip bus fare to downtown.

Not everyone can bike on two wheels or feels comfortable doing so. My wife LOVES her grownup tricycle that’s sturdy enough for a kid to sit or stand on the back. We regularly share the bike lane with people zooming along on three- and four-wheeled motor scooters that are probably used throughout their day, not just as transit. Dutch cycle culture has bloomed any number of amazing designs and hacks. Here’s a picture of the King (yes, there’s a king) riding a woman on the front of a bike designed for a wheelchair to back easily onto it.

The rainy seasons hasn’t hit yet, so my enthusiasm may dampen as I learn to don the draping water-resistant bike clothes to get around town. Once I figure it out, I’ll share what I learned here with you.

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An evergreen note on my excitement amidst the horror: The news from US is deeply concerning right now. And so each day I hold the complex work of seeing, feeling, and acting on that information alongside my big long work of building a life here in the Netherlands. This requires tending to, rather than shutting down my wonder, curiosity and appreciation for life in my new home.

If you’re considering leaving the US (even if flashes of “what if” or “I couldn’t!” cross your mind occasionally) my wife Nova and I wrote a book just for you.