First rollerblading adventure in Amsterdam
People often ask me why I'm not biking in Amsterdam, and I often answered with I didn't want to buy a new bike and that I have my blades and I'd blade instead. So here is it, my first blading advanture:
At first I thought it'd be very easy. The streets aren't busy and there are bike lanes. True to non-busy streets, but bike lanes do not make things better. I hadn't bladed for man since 2003(?) so I immediately fell when I attempted to step off the sidewalk onto the street. Ok...stepping up was fine but stepping down was too big a challenge to conquer after 10 years. A lot of streets are brick-paved so there are a lot of friction. You also need to shift your balance a lot for some of those random protrusion on the roads. The bike lanes are smoother, but there are a lot of fast bikes that don't follow traffic rules. I had to hop onto the sidewalk and hop off quite frequently to let the bikes pass. That only works assuming there are no pedestrians on the sidewalk the moment you want to hop up.
The second challenge is with the traffic lights. Bikes got their own lights but you gotta know to make emergency brakes after crossing the streets into the bike crossings. So my choice is to wait till the intersection is almost devoid of bikes. I crossed with the pedestrian lights one time but that was horrible and dangerous. On bigger streets, pedestrians make multiple crossings. They make intermittent stops on the islands. That is blading nightmare. So you blade for 3 meter, make a solid stop. Cars are still going in front of you, and before you can go forward, cars start to go behind you. With nothing to hold on to make a solid stand it was a lot of work. Today it was even more dangerous since the island was crowded with peds. So I had to make a T-stand on the edge of the road hoping cars would not run me over. Luckily the streets weren't busy.
All in all, today with blading I saved about 5-10 minute on my journey. Next time I'll have to plan my crossings ahead of time for a safer journey. It was quite a work-out though at least.
At first I thought it'd be very easy. The streets aren't busy and there are bike lanes. True to non-busy streets, but bike lanes do not make things better. I hadn't bladed for man since 2003(?) so I immediately fell when I attempted to step off the sidewalk onto the street. Ok...stepping up was fine but stepping down was too big a challenge to conquer after 10 years. A lot of streets are brick-paved so there are a lot of friction. You also need to shift your balance a lot for some of those random protrusion on the roads. The bike lanes are smoother, but there are a lot of fast bikes that don't follow traffic rules. I had to hop onto the sidewalk and hop off quite frequently to let the bikes pass. That only works assuming there are no pedestrians on the sidewalk the moment you want to hop up.
The second challenge is with the traffic lights. Bikes got their own lights but you gotta know to make emergency brakes after crossing the streets into the bike crossings. So my choice is to wait till the intersection is almost devoid of bikes. I crossed with the pedestrian lights one time but that was horrible and dangerous. On bigger streets, pedestrians make multiple crossings. They make intermittent stops on the islands. That is blading nightmare. So you blade for 3 meter, make a solid stop. Cars are still going in front of you, and before you can go forward, cars start to go behind you. With nothing to hold on to make a solid stand it was a lot of work. Today it was even more dangerous since the island was crowded with peds. So I had to make a T-stand on the edge of the road hoping cars would not run me over. Luckily the streets weren't busy.
All in all, today with blading I saved about 5-10 minute on my journey. Next time I'll have to plan my crossings ahead of time for a safer journey. It was quite a work-out though at least.
posted by test at
3:07 AM
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