I've been into pushbikes and cycling as long as I can remember; I'm Dutch, so I guess it's in my DNA. Until I was about 13 we didn't have a car, and holidays usually meant cycling from campsite to campsite for three weeks. I can't remember ever objecting, it was usually good fun. My dad taught me how to fix a tyre when I was 6 or 7, something I was very proud of at the time (and he probably hasn't fixed a tyre since).
When I was about 9 or 10 I had my first bike "project". Our bikes were always hand-me-downs from cousins, and at some point we had a bike that my youngest brother had grown out of and my dad deemed too bad to pass on, so I could have it. It was purple, it was ugly and it wasn't the BMX I wanted; we only ever got "proper" bikes. I took the mudguards and chain case off, put pipe insulation around the handlebars and top tube, and with a little squinting I had a poor boy's BMX. I built a ramp in the garden from scrap wood and rode the hell out of it, until the rear tire blew in spectacular fashion when I rounded the corner onto the drive and I was launched over the handlebars into a tree. I remember there was a lot of blood and I think my parents lied that that tyre couldn't be fixed (which was true!) and the bike needed to be scrapped as a result (which in hindsight wasn't). I'm sure they have photos in an album somewhere, next time I'm there I'll see what I can find.
I got my first brand new bike when I was 11 or 12. It was an underwhelming (especially at that age) blue metallic Union Extra gents bike in the smallest frame size available, with a Sachs 3-speed hub (still love those!). I maintained it myself (I did all our family's bikes from age 13-14) and I started fixing bikes that people gave us with a mate. I painted the Union satin black when I was about 15; I wanted an MTB and I still hated the fact I was only allowed a decent 3-speed town bike, but at least I customised it and made it "mine".
I moved out of the house when I was 18, and that's when proper bike hoarding started. My girlfriend lived in a flat with a small garden with two sheds, one of which I converted into a small bike workshop. Back then you could find free bikes everywhere, you probably still can as there are so many bikes in NL. The council would collect furniture and bikes and other big stuff once a week and I knew exactly what day of the week was rubbish collection day in which neighbourhoods, so I would usually roam the streets late at night or early in the morning looking for discarded bikes that I could fix and sell. I moved in with her a bit later; by that time our garden was overflowing with bikes and we often kept the best ones in the living room.
When I was 20 or 21 I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to build a workshop (which I still have) at my in laws' place. More space meant even more bikes, at some point I had amassed well over a hundred. In the late '00s we moved abroad, and that's when I decided I needed to trim the herd a bit and clear out some of my car and bike collection (I only started messing with cars when I was 27). We reduced the combined collection to around 25-30 and two trailers in 2010, we currently have about 35-ish due to a few new acquisitions over the past ten years.
We live simultaneously in Ireland and England and my workshop is still in NL as said, so our collection is spread out over three countries. (We still have our bikes in the living room in one flat, and one in the bedroom and one in the hallway in the other). I don't have photos handy of most of my past and present bikes, many from the pre-digital era are in albums in our Dublin flat and I don't think we'll be going there any time soon... I'll try and see what I can dig out from the depths of my laptop and show a few bikes at a time around a specific theme. Let's start with some of my workhorses.
Two-wheeled transporters
I've always had a fascination with work bikes and one of the first bikes I spent actual money on (the first one was finally an MTB when I was 16), was a butcher's bike. The frame was a bit big for me, it was bloody far away (as a student I had a free train card though), but it was the only one I could find for reasonable money. This was pre-internet marketplaces, and this kind of stuff was pretty hard to find. I had a dream of restoring it to perfect condition and took it to bits. Then reality hit when I got a quote for blasting and painting that I couldn't afford, and I stashed it away. I should never have taken it apart, but it was a good lesson because it taught me perfection is a good job's worst enemy. I sold the bike in parts in the 2010 clear-out, actually making pretty good money on it.
In 2011 we moved to Denmark, another country with a great bike heritage. As soon as we arrived I started looking for a Long John, a two-wheeled long wheelbase transporter that I'd wanted for a long time:
I soon found out how bloody expensive they are, especially in hipster cities like Copenhagen or Aarhus, where we lived. I kept looking at marketplace websites like guloggratis.dk and dba.dk, but only found a reasonable looking deal just months before we were about to move to Ireland. The bike was at the isle of Als, close to the German border, and it came with a few other bikes. The ad only had one crappy pic that didn't show the other bikes, and the seller said he had no idea how many or what type of bikes they were. Great. It was more or less my last chance to get a Long John before we would leave Denmark though, and it was pretty cheap (±£600) compared to others I had seen for sale, so I rented a trailer and set off for a 270-mile round trip.
It was worth it. Unfortunately, the Long John was one made in the late '80s – early '90s, which means curse word quality steel and powder coat instead of paint, but two of the other bikes turned out to be Short Johns, the shorter brother of the Long John. Both decent '60s–70s versions too. All three were Danfoss (a Danish engineering company) internal transport bikes at their Als plant. The seller told me he got them in an auction in a lot with some machines he wanted for his business. There was a whole load of other bikes that the seller's neighbour kindly let me dump on his scrap pile.
Because we were moving, I needed to get the bikes to NL asap as I didn't want to take them to Ireland. So, I took them apart, removed the passenger seat from our Saab 900 and brought the bikes to the workshop. All three needed work, which I fixed promptly so they wouldn't end up on the project pile (remember I sold and gave away about 70 bikes a few years earlier because I had too many projects!). I sold one of the Short Johns to a friend and kept the nicest one for myself.
I don't have a pic of the Long John, will take one next time I go to NL. Long Johns have a 100kg max payload, but to be honest mine's lack of frame stiffness due to the crappy '80s steel makes for a rubbish ride with anything approaching half of that. It's great for getting beer or long stuff, but I wouldn't mind a better one if given the chance.
Three-wheeled transporters
I got a Saturday job as a postman when I was 19, and when I dropped out of uni a year and a half later this became my proper job. This meant I made quite good money compared to the student benefits I was used to. All of a sudden I could buy all the bikes I wanted, so I started looking for a bakfiets* (transporter tricycle) as I'd wanted one for years. My girlfriend, being a bit smarter than me, convinced me my money was better spent on a driving licence though. I didn't have a real interest in cars back then, but she was right. When I had my licence, I was offered a permanent contract as a driver with more hours, which meant even more money. Win. Bakfiets time. I bought two Gazelle projects because they were cheap, but quickly realised I needed something a bit more usable after the butcher's bike debacle.
Lo and behold, when I'd come to the conclusion I needed a functioning bakfiets, I came across an ad for a '50s Batavus postal bakfiets from the same chap I bought my butcher's bike from a few years earlier. I went to pick it up with my girlfriend's dad and his father in law, my girlfriend's granddad. Granddad was very proud I had secured a permanent contract at the mail (half his family were posties or post office clerks), but he thought I was completely nuts buying a bakfiets with flat tires for 1250 guilders (±£500). It was a nice three-generation in-law day out though.
It's not exactly mint, but it's a good bike which has done a fair few house moves and many other haulage jobs for me. It has a 400kg max payload, no kidding!
Originally these bakfietsen had a canopy, which was sadly missing from mine. I've always kept my eyes open for one, or even for a complete postal bakfiets in better condition. This very morning I finally found a frame for one at marktplaats.nl that will be coming to my workshop next week.
It seems the government ordered their bakfietsen from different bicycle manufacturers; I was led to believe this was official procurement policy to avoid favouring certain companies. Mine's a Batavus, but I've seen ones with Gazelle, Maxwell and other frames too, and also the beds came in a few different variants with slight design differences.
Years later PTT Post as it was then called, started experimenting with bakfietsen again, amongst others Danish Christiania tricycles were used by a few sorting offices.
Eventually they settled on a bespoke tricycle called "Roodrunner" in 2001, which was designed by the Amsterdam design consultancy Springtime. I've used these quite a bit as a postman and they were pretty good bikes to ride. They had electric assist and a 125kg max payload if I remember correctly. Would be great to add one to the collection at some point, but the ones that come up for sale are usually completely clapped out or ridiculously expensive, or both.
More bikes another time. Thanks to yoeddynz for prompting this thread!
* Many people call Long John type bikes "bakfiets". In Dutch a "bakfiets" traditionally has three wheels, two-wheelers are called "transportfiets"; "bak" means bed/ tray, "fiets" means bicycle.
When I was about 9 or 10 I had my first bike "project". Our bikes were always hand-me-downs from cousins, and at some point we had a bike that my youngest brother had grown out of and my dad deemed too bad to pass on, so I could have it. It was purple, it was ugly and it wasn't the BMX I wanted; we only ever got "proper" bikes. I took the mudguards and chain case off, put pipe insulation around the handlebars and top tube, and with a little squinting I had a poor boy's BMX. I built a ramp in the garden from scrap wood and rode the hell out of it, until the rear tire blew in spectacular fashion when I rounded the corner onto the drive and I was launched over the handlebars into a tree. I remember there was a lot of blood and I think my parents lied that that tyre couldn't be fixed (which was true!) and the bike needed to be scrapped as a result (which in hindsight wasn't). I'm sure they have photos in an album somewhere, next time I'm there I'll see what I can find.
I got my first brand new bike when I was 11 or 12. It was an underwhelming (especially at that age) blue metallic Union Extra gents bike in the smallest frame size available, with a Sachs 3-speed hub (still love those!). I maintained it myself (I did all our family's bikes from age 13-14) and I started fixing bikes that people gave us with a mate. I painted the Union satin black when I was about 15; I wanted an MTB and I still hated the fact I was only allowed a decent 3-speed town bike, but at least I customised it and made it "mine".
I moved out of the house when I was 18, and that's when proper bike hoarding started. My girlfriend lived in a flat with a small garden with two sheds, one of which I converted into a small bike workshop. Back then you could find free bikes everywhere, you probably still can as there are so many bikes in NL. The council would collect furniture and bikes and other big stuff once a week and I knew exactly what day of the week was rubbish collection day in which neighbourhoods, so I would usually roam the streets late at night or early in the morning looking for discarded bikes that I could fix and sell. I moved in with her a bit later; by that time our garden was overflowing with bikes and we often kept the best ones in the living room.
When I was 20 or 21 I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to build a workshop (which I still have) at my in laws' place. More space meant even more bikes, at some point I had amassed well over a hundred. In the late '00s we moved abroad, and that's when I decided I needed to trim the herd a bit and clear out some of my car and bike collection (I only started messing with cars when I was 27). We reduced the combined collection to around 25-30 and two trailers in 2010, we currently have about 35-ish due to a few new acquisitions over the past ten years.
We live simultaneously in Ireland and England and my workshop is still in NL as said, so our collection is spread out over three countries. (We still have our bikes in the living room in one flat, and one in the bedroom and one in the hallway in the other). I don't have photos handy of most of my past and present bikes, many from the pre-digital era are in albums in our Dublin flat and I don't think we'll be going there any time soon... I'll try and see what I can dig out from the depths of my laptop and show a few bikes at a time around a specific theme. Let's start with some of my workhorses.
Two-wheeled transporters
I've always had a fascination with work bikes and one of the first bikes I spent actual money on (the first one was finally an MTB when I was 16), was a butcher's bike. The frame was a bit big for me, it was bloody far away (as a student I had a free train card though), but it was the only one I could find for reasonable money. This was pre-internet marketplaces, and this kind of stuff was pretty hard to find. I had a dream of restoring it to perfect condition and took it to bits. Then reality hit when I got a quote for blasting and painting that I couldn't afford, and I stashed it away. I should never have taken it apart, but it was a good lesson because it taught me perfection is a good job's worst enemy. I sold the bike in parts in the 2010 clear-out, actually making pretty good money on it.
Here it is in parts, I don't have a photo of the complete bike handy.
In 2011 we moved to Denmark, another country with a great bike heritage. As soon as we arrived I started looking for a Long John, a two-wheeled long wheelbase transporter that I'd wanted for a long time:
I soon found out how bloody expensive they are, especially in hipster cities like Copenhagen or Aarhus, where we lived. I kept looking at marketplace websites like guloggratis.dk and dba.dk, but only found a reasonable looking deal just months before we were about to move to Ireland. The bike was at the isle of Als, close to the German border, and it came with a few other bikes. The ad only had one crappy pic that didn't show the other bikes, and the seller said he had no idea how many or what type of bikes they were. Great. It was more or less my last chance to get a Long John before we would leave Denmark though, and it was pretty cheap (±£600) compared to others I had seen for sale, so I rented a trailer and set off for a 270-mile round trip.
It was worth it. Unfortunately, the Long John was one made in the late '80s – early '90s, which means curse word quality steel and powder coat instead of paint, but two of the other bikes turned out to be Short Johns, the shorter brother of the Long John. Both decent '60s–70s versions too. All three were Danfoss (a Danish engineering company) internal transport bikes at their Als plant. The seller told me he got them in an auction in a lot with some machines he wanted for his business. There was a whole load of other bikes that the seller's neighbour kindly let me dump on his scrap pile.
Because we were moving, I needed to get the bikes to NL asap as I didn't want to take them to Ireland. So, I took them apart, removed the passenger seat from our Saab 900 and brought the bikes to the workshop. All three needed work, which I fixed promptly so they wouldn't end up on the project pile (remember I sold and gave away about 70 bikes a few years earlier because I had too many projects!). I sold one of the Short Johns to a friend and kept the nicest one for myself.
No, I have no idea why Danfoss would have painted a factory bike in primary colours... This one I sold, my friend had it restored and it looks like a new bike now.
This one I kept, I use it every time I'm in NL. It's a really smooth and stable ride, even with a heavy load. Here it's pictured with the exhaust from my engine test bench that a mate TIG welded for me.
I don't have a pic of the Long John, will take one next time I go to NL. Long Johns have a 100kg max payload, but to be honest mine's lack of frame stiffness due to the crappy '80s steel makes for a rubbish ride with anything approaching half of that. It's great for getting beer or long stuff, but I wouldn't mind a better one if given the chance.
Three-wheeled transporters
I got a Saturday job as a postman when I was 19, and when I dropped out of uni a year and a half later this became my proper job. This meant I made quite good money compared to the student benefits I was used to. All of a sudden I could buy all the bikes I wanted, so I started looking for a bakfiets* (transporter tricycle) as I'd wanted one for years. My girlfriend, being a bit smarter than me, convinced me my money was better spent on a driving licence though. I didn't have a real interest in cars back then, but she was right. When I had my licence, I was offered a permanent contract as a driver with more hours, which meant even more money. Win. Bakfiets time. I bought two Gazelle projects because they were cheap, but quickly realised I needed something a bit more usable after the butcher's bike debacle.
The one in the first of below photos was complete when I bought it, but it had been a garden ornament for years and the original oak bed was completely rotted out. I shouldn't have bought it really, it was in much worse condition than the seller told me over the phone (newspaper ad without photos). It was a 320-mile round trip to get it though, and we weren't going home with an empty trailer. I haven't done anything with it other than stripping it with the vague plan of getting it blasted and painted with the butcher's bike. I got the purple one in the second photo a little later locally, it came without a bed, but cost next to nothing. I sold both in the 2010 clear-out, made good money again as the hipster bakfiets craze had gotten hold of NL (to never go away it seems).
Lo and behold, when I'd come to the conclusion I needed a functioning bakfiets, I came across an ad for a '50s Batavus postal bakfiets from the same chap I bought my butcher's bike from a few years earlier. I went to pick it up with my girlfriend's dad and his father in law, my girlfriend's granddad. Granddad was very proud I had secured a permanent contract at the mail (half his family were posties or post office clerks), but he thought I was completely nuts buying a bakfiets with flat tires for 1250 guilders (±£500). It was a nice three-generation in-law day out though.
It's not exactly mint, but it's a good bike which has done a fair few house moves and many other haulage jobs for me. It has a 400kg max payload, no kidding!
(I kept the rear mudguard from the purple one, still have to fit it to this one.)
Originally these bakfietsen had a canopy, which was sadly missing from mine. I've always kept my eyes open for one, or even for a complete postal bakfiets in better condition. This very morning I finally found a frame for one at marktplaats.nl that will be coming to my workshop next week.
Should look like this when complete again:
It seems the government ordered their bakfietsen from different bicycle manufacturers; I was led to believe this was official procurement policy to avoid favouring certain companies. Mine's a Batavus, but I've seen ones with Gazelle, Maxwell and other frames too, and also the beds came in a few different variants with slight design differences.
Years later PTT Post as it was then called, started experimenting with bakfietsen again, amongst others Danish Christiania tricycles were used by a few sorting offices.
Eventually they settled on a bespoke tricycle called "Roodrunner" in 2001, which was designed by the Amsterdam design consultancy Springtime. I've used these quite a bit as a postman and they were pretty good bikes to ride. They had electric assist and a 125kg max payload if I remember correctly. Would be great to add one to the collection at some point, but the ones that come up for sale are usually completely clapped out or ridiculously expensive, or both.
More bikes another time. Thanks to yoeddynz for prompting this thread!
* Many people call Long John type bikes "bakfiets". In Dutch a "bakfiets" traditionally has three wheels, two-wheelers are called "transportfiets"; "bak" means bed/ tray, "fiets" means bicycle.
) but I've lived in various places. My workshop is still up north.
)
