Travelling abroad

Visiting Washington: a Few Quick Pics of Cycling near the White House

July 4, 2013 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 4 minutes Today is 4th of July. A good day to share with you a few pictures  I took in Washington, DC two weeks ago, when I was there for a work related training. There are tons of websites and blogs out to read up on all the good bicycle initiatives happening down there so I am not going to repeat them. We were last in Washington in 2008 and I don’t recall seeing many cyclists there, at least not enough that I would notice the numbers. It has definitely changed. There is a bike lane right next to the White House. [Read more…]

Of a Woonerf, Too Many Signs and Complete Streets

April 15, 2013 Hansonthebike 19

Reading Time: 6 minutes A world without signs? We have one woonerf in Ottawa: part of Cambridge is designated as a woonerf. An ‘erf’ is a somewhat old fashioned Dutch word for the area around the farm house, where chickens roam, the dog guards and the cow explores. ‘Woon’ comes from the verb ‘wonen’, Dutch for ‘to live in a place’. Woon-erf more or less literally translates to “living yard”. Here in Canada, we’d like to translate it with ‘complete streets’ sometimes, but typically a woonerf has few curbs; traffic calming measures are taken to the extreme with planters, coloured pavers, bike racks and [Read more…]

Cuban Bicycles

March 12, 2013 Hansonthebike 1

Reading Time: 3 minutes While most Canadians appear to have been to Cuba at least once in their life, my wife and I had never been. Somehow, the whole all you can eat all inclusive vacation among poor people didn’t really appeal to us. We both can’t sit on a beach for more than two hours anyway so we never gave Cuba much attention. But one gets older, one can handle only so much snow in one’s life and we too reached a point that we had enough of slipping and sliding and bundling up. So we read up on Cuba (hours on Tripadvisor, [Read more…]

Visiting Charleston, South Carolina

June 19, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 5 minutes April is not a great month in Ottawa, so my wife and I had planned a trip to South Carolina and Georgia’s low country along the coast. The coast line resembles very much the Dutch coast line of about a thousand years ago before the Dutch closed the gaps between the sand banks. That in it self doesn’t make it a holiday destination, unless you are a geography buff, but the lush green and warm weather definitely do. Ottawa’s ski season is over in April, the weather is usually not something to write home about, the trees are still bare [Read more…]

One Minute at The Hague Central Station

May 14, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 3 minutes The last three posts probably gave you a peek into every day cycling in The Hague. If you are in the down town area, you always see cyclists, no matter what time of day. However, there is one spot where many seem to converse: Central Station. People cycle to and fro the station. Below are a few very random pictures that I took probably half a minute apart. There is a steady stream of cyclists coming and going to the station. (There is a large square, currently being redesigned). People leave their bike and take the train or arrive by [Read more…]

A Casual Stroll Through The Hague – Part 3: Urban Chickens

May 11, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 2 minutes The locals are complaining about the failing summer already, they have had a lot of cloudy weather. The morning meetings were cancelled, so I walked down the Scheveningseweg to downtown The Hague and I passed this urban chickens. Very nice to see. It is right across the Peace Palace on the edge of a cemetery. Here is the link on Google. It is near the house in the centre with the red tiled roof. So far, the series of walks through Den Haag. A lovely city to walk, bike or entertain. Downtown is no less than about 5-6 km (4 miles) [Read more…]

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A Casual Stroll Through The Hague – Part 2: A Very Blue Bike

May 10, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 2 minutes I randomly took a really great picture of a mother on a bakfiets (cargo bike) with three kids after asking permission. Unfortunately, she doesn’t want me to put it on the Internet, which I respect, so you have to come to one of my presentations some day. I did show the pic to a friend of mine, and the woman turns out to be one of her former colleagues; that’s how small Holland is. Here is part two of The Hague: Go to the next page in the series of strolls through The Hague: Part Three: Urban Chickens

A Casual Stroll Through The Hague – Part 1: Daddy Bike

May 9, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 3 minutes I am in Holland in Den Haag (The Hague) for work this week. Locked up in meetings and presentations for most of the day for 5 days in a row, I was eager to go for a walk to visit a friend.  Tuesday afternoon I had a change to leave a wee early and walked from the Crowne Plaza (which has been renovated from kind of Modernist to a large I phone retro Modernist, with shag carpets, pink under the bar atmospheric lights and lots of white, a work counter/bar and a couple of Apple computers for Internet access). For [Read more…]

What if the Swedes Would Own Chaudière Island?

March 5, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 4

Reading Time: 6 minutes As you already read in the previous post: Of Post-It Notes and Tapestries, many of the Ottawa residents saw the Chaudière Island as one of the key elements in meeting the ideas and expectations that Canadians have for developing the Nation’s Capital into a world class capital. I have biked around the place and it is really a gorgeous spot, waiting to be developed, now the pulp paper industry is retreating. What about Chaudière Island? For those who don’t live in Ottawa: Chaudière Island has a collection of buildings, some as old as 100 years and built with natural stone, [Read more…]

Cycling in the snow….

February 6, 2012 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 3 minutes It doesn’t happen too often, but Holland was covered in snow late last week. Cyclists kept cycling, resulting in some really nice pictures of cyclists in the snow. If the “inexperienced-with-snow” Dutch can do it, teens included, we Canadians can no longer use the argument of a snowy country as a reason not to cycle. Enjoy the screen shots from the nu.nl website I took this weekend. You will notice few cars in the pictures, as many cyclists are separated from faster traffic on special bike paths or cycle through city centres with traffic calming measures. Many kids cycle to [Read more…]