Pronounced, HiYa
Pronounced, HiYa
Although I've been to the Netherlands a couple of times and I've made extensive use of the ACD - mapping and planning - for several years, I somehow overlooked the Forums. I realised the other day, they could be very useful to me at the moment, so I'll be posting a new topic about getting seeds in the near future.
I love the Netherlands!
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StonedSince67
- Posts: 1489
- Joined: Thu 10th Jul 2008 12:16 pm
- Location: Keep on Truckin'
i just want to double-check whether you have read the document by S G Collins entitled How not to get hit by a bike
if you have already read this document, then that is great
if you have not read this document then please please find some time to read it for your safety, the traffic in amsterdam is nuts and if you are smoking extra care is needed, so thanks
have a great trip ...
if you have already read this document, then that is great
if you have not read this document then please please find some time to read it for your safety, the traffic in amsterdam is nuts and if you are smoking extra care is needed, so thanks
have a great trip ...
Cycling Around the Damn Dam
Yes, thanks, I read it the other day.
It reminds me of an incident I experienced when I spent a month camping at Het Amsterdamse Bos: rather than renting a bike, I bought a twenty-odd year old, clapped-out, one with a rusty rear wheel. It was asonishingly hot that July, with the temperature reaching 40C in the shade of my tent on many days. (Really!)
One such afternoon I rather foolishly decided a ride around the city would be a good idea. The heat alone was enough to boggle the mind without the physical exertion of riding 10-15km into the centre (through Amstelveen - my favourite 'part of' Amsterdam), never mind in combination with wares from 'The Border'. At some damn junction with half a dozen lanes of traffic in each direction from half a dozen different roads and streets of various sizes and a couple of tram lines thrown in for good measure, I stopped at a light. Nothing moved. For ages. It seemed like an eternity (as time sometimes can be perceived). And nothing moved. All these lights and cars and trams and buses and vans and people and God only knows what else (cats, dogs, etc.) and they must all have just been waiting for me. So, I set off. I didn't really have much idea where or why. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I made my way towards the tram line in the centre of the junction, because it seemed like a better place to stop. As I approached it, I realised there was a police van waiting on the other side of the tram line. The driver caught my eye as I was crossing one of the bigger roads and I realised I shouldn't have moved. He was furious. "Fifty euros!" he shouted and I looked around and understood how I was in the process of running a red light. I sort of slowed down without stopping and looked at him and shook my head as if I was shaking off a daze (which is exactly what I was doing). "Fifty euro fine," he shouted again. He was a big, very dutch-looking policeman with a very pretty, blonde WPC in the passenger seat. I looked at her still shaking myself back to earth when she gave me the most knowing look I can recall having ever been given. She smiled and nodded her head. The driver shouted, "Next time - fifty euros!" And I got away with it.
It reminds me of an incident I experienced when I spent a month camping at Het Amsterdamse Bos: rather than renting a bike, I bought a twenty-odd year old, clapped-out, one with a rusty rear wheel. It was asonishingly hot that July, with the temperature reaching 40C in the shade of my tent on many days. (Really!)
One such afternoon I rather foolishly decided a ride around the city would be a good idea. The heat alone was enough to boggle the mind without the physical exertion of riding 10-15km into the centre (through Amstelveen - my favourite 'part of' Amsterdam), never mind in combination with wares from 'The Border'. At some damn junction with half a dozen lanes of traffic in each direction from half a dozen different roads and streets of various sizes and a couple of tram lines thrown in for good measure, I stopped at a light. Nothing moved. For ages. It seemed like an eternity (as time sometimes can be perceived). And nothing moved. All these lights and cars and trams and buses and vans and people and God only knows what else (cats, dogs, etc.) and they must all have just been waiting for me. So, I set off. I didn't really have much idea where or why. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I made my way towards the tram line in the centre of the junction, because it seemed like a better place to stop. As I approached it, I realised there was a police van waiting on the other side of the tram line. The driver caught my eye as I was crossing one of the bigger roads and I realised I shouldn't have moved. He was furious. "Fifty euros!" he shouted and I looked around and understood how I was in the process of running a red light. I sort of slowed down without stopping and looked at him and shook my head as if I was shaking off a daze (which is exactly what I was doing). "Fifty euro fine," he shouted again. He was a big, very dutch-looking policeman with a very pretty, blonde WPC in the passenger seat. I looked at her still shaking myself back to earth when she gave me the most knowing look I can recall having ever been given. She smiled and nodded her head. The driver shouted, "Next time - fifty euros!" And I got away with it.
I love the Netherlands!
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spidergawd
- Posts: 4420
- Joined: Sun 11th May 2008 09:21 pm
- Location: The Mars Hotel
High on a bike is good, baked on one is taking a serious risk with life and if you are lucky only your wallet. 
Absolutely - too true!
Makes you think about why so many of the local councils at the borders of the Netherlands, eg. Maastrict and Bergen op Zoom, are so worried about cannabis tourism, doesn't it? The volume of traffic to the shops in border towns is enormous. Most of it is in cars. (How many people are going to cycle for a couple of hours in the rain and who takes the train anymore?) How many of these visitors just get their 5g and go home unstoned? It's a time bomb waiting to explode: how long will it be before some idiot (like me) doesn't figure out in time why nothing is moving on the motorway and causes a multi-car pile up which kills a busload of kids, or something? You know what they're going to say, don't you? 'It's all fault of the Dutch and their evil coffee shops! If the idiot hadn't been stoned out of his head, with 4.5g in his pocket, none of these people would have died.' And then will come the inevitable manipulation and backed by the Americans: 'We must save these people from themselves, because it's not just themselves they hurt, but innocents they take with them!' Cannabis tourism... Must be a real headache for mayors of the border towns.
Something of a follow up to that previous post: I don't drive stoned. I went all the way through France, Belgium and most of the Netherlands straight as an arrow, having had nothing to smoke since the day before I got a good night's sleep in preparation to set off across Europe in the car. It was eight o'clock in the evening and I'd been driving since a couple of hours before midnight the day before, having taken the 23:59 Calais>Dunkurque crossing. I decided I'd spend the night in the Netherlands, and maybe drop into a coffee shop in Zutphen, get up early the next day to cross Germany and Poland in one fell swoop. Now, I swear to God I was not stoned and had not been stoned, or even vaugly high, for nearly two days. BAM - I ran into one of those damn rising bollard things that come up out of the middle of the road when a bus has passed through. More than 5,000EUR damage to the car, ten days waiting for it to be fixed, all the associated costs, e.g. a week in B&B, travel back to the UK (and back to Zutphen)... Fortunately, I wasn't hurt. How the hell did I hit it? It was so well signed, like all roads and hazards in the Netherlands... If I'd been stoned, it would have seemed fair enough. I suppose it's some sort of instant karma making up for jumping the half a dozen red lights (not to mention the ones I never noticed) in Amsterdam.
It is, indeed, a long, strange trip!
Makes you think about why so many of the local councils at the borders of the Netherlands, eg. Maastrict and Bergen op Zoom, are so worried about cannabis tourism, doesn't it? The volume of traffic to the shops in border towns is enormous. Most of it is in cars. (How many people are going to cycle for a couple of hours in the rain and who takes the train anymore?) How many of these visitors just get their 5g and go home unstoned? It's a time bomb waiting to explode: how long will it be before some idiot (like me) doesn't figure out in time why nothing is moving on the motorway and causes a multi-car pile up which kills a busload of kids, or something? You know what they're going to say, don't you? 'It's all fault of the Dutch and their evil coffee shops! If the idiot hadn't been stoned out of his head, with 4.5g in his pocket, none of these people would have died.' And then will come the inevitable manipulation and backed by the Americans: 'We must save these people from themselves, because it's not just themselves they hurt, but innocents they take with them!' Cannabis tourism... Must be a real headache for mayors of the border towns.
Something of a follow up to that previous post: I don't drive stoned. I went all the way through France, Belgium and most of the Netherlands straight as an arrow, having had nothing to smoke since the day before I got a good night's sleep in preparation to set off across Europe in the car. It was eight o'clock in the evening and I'd been driving since a couple of hours before midnight the day before, having taken the 23:59 Calais>Dunkurque crossing. I decided I'd spend the night in the Netherlands, and maybe drop into a coffee shop in Zutphen, get up early the next day to cross Germany and Poland in one fell swoop. Now, I swear to God I was not stoned and had not been stoned, or even vaugly high, for nearly two days. BAM - I ran into one of those damn rising bollard things that come up out of the middle of the road when a bus has passed through. More than 5,000EUR damage to the car, ten days waiting for it to be fixed, all the associated costs, e.g. a week in B&B, travel back to the UK (and back to Zutphen)... Fortunately, I wasn't hurt. How the hell did I hit it? It was so well signed, like all roads and hazards in the Netherlands... If I'd been stoned, it would have seemed fair enough. I suppose it's some sort of instant karma making up for jumping the half a dozen red lights (not to mention the ones I never noticed) in Amsterdam.
It is, indeed, a long, strange trip!
I love the Netherlands!
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the happy hacker
- Posts: 385
- Joined: Wed 17th Sep 2008 11:08 pm
- Location: On the Outside Looking in-------- Trips to Dam 20+
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spidergawd
- Posts: 4420
- Joined: Sun 11th May 2008 09:21 pm
- Location: The Mars Hotel
