The Black Beast returneth

Any day now, it will be time to unleash The Black Beast. It has been penned up since late November, and now that it’s April, it should be safe to release into the wilds of Storm Lake streets.

It sounds like I have a big old classic, gas guzzling car, but I don’t. The Black Beast is really a Gazelle Dutch bicycle, and it’s 47 hulking pounds of steel. This model is an “Omafiets” which means Granny Bicycle, and in my case, it is aptly named.

This is a bike for transportation more than recreation. This is a bike to last the test of time. This is a workhorse, a Clydesdale, if you will.

This thing weighs more than one-third my spindly frame, and I live on the second floor of a building with a non-elevating elevator. If you’ve ever seen The Big Bang Theory, you’ll understand.

Lugging it up and down from my second floor is beyond my capacity. When the Black Beast finally descends to street level, it’s staying there for the duration.

Why, oh, why, don’t I get one of those ultra-light, ultra-fast bicycles? Well, yes, it would be so much more practical.

But I’m committed, you see.

Years — decades ago — when my kids were small, I went bicycling in The Netherlands and fell in love with biking as a way of life. Everyone — literally everyone — bikes in The Netherlands, and they don’t (or didn’t then) wear helmets or Lycra or Spandex togs. They wore their everyday clothes and zoomed along with alarming speed, ching-chinging their happy little bike bells.

What a great way to live. I saw few obese Dutch people, and they seemed to ooze sunshine and vigor out of their pores. Quite a feat, really, when you consider that The Netherlands averages about 130 rainy days each year.

We rode paved paths and unpaved paths. We cycled through towns and villages and through the deepest countryside where cows and crops grew. It looked like northwest Iowa in a lot of ways.

One evening, a friend and I biked to a nearby village for ice cream. This town retained remnants of the fort that had kept it safe from marauders centuries before. We bumped along cobblestone streets and greeted many tall, robust Dutch people. It was the first time that I felt diminutive.

On the last day of the bike tour, I bought a wicker bike basket and vowed that one day I would buy a Dutch bike to complete the ensemble.

Most people would buy the bike first and add the basket later, but why be logical? You know how I feel about math, and logic is too close to math for my liking.

Years went by. Decades. In the rush of raising kids and meeting obligations, I never made work of starting a bike fund.

Then Covid came along and changed things for a lot of people. All that sheltering in place in a tiny town finally got to me. While others went camping or visited state parks, I drove into Chicago just north of the Magnificent Mile and bought a Dutch bike.

J.C. Lind, owner of J.C. Lind Bike Company, had lived in The Netherlands for a time, and he understood the beauty of living by bike. He also thought that I held romantic (that is, not practical) notions about owning a Dutch bike.

I had this bike basket, you see.

So, J.C. and I wedged that big, black Gazelle Omafiets into the back of my Pontiac Vibe, and I made my way back to northwest Iowa.

And the basket? Well, the basket didn’t fit. It must have been made for a different model, so I had to buy a different basket.

Storm Lakers: The Black Beast and I will be coming to a street near you very soon.

You’ll recognize Joan Zwagerman on her bike. She resembles Almira Gulch, aka The Wicked Witch of the West. She has a little dog, too, just not in the basket.