No Hands

No Hands

“I am a man!”

Nearby co-workers turned their heads as I strolled into the office with great pride and triumph booming from my voice. They were are all obviously deeply curious and jealous about whatever achievement had caused me to display such manly pride.

“What is it this time?” one of them asked.

“I have just successfully figured out how to ride my bicycle with no hands.” I waved my hands as I relayed the story in case there was any doubt that I had hands.

“Congratulations,” my obviously envious Dutch co-worker replied, “You can now do the same thing that every five year old in this country can do.”

Not to be put down by this I grinned and quickly added, “And I have the language skills to match.”

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

37 Responses

  1. Invader Stu says:

    Aledys Ver – That must have looked hilarious :)

  2. Dave Hampton says:

    ‘bet you can’t do it on cobblestones, though? If so, then can you do it on icy cobblestones? I’m still rattling along with both hands firmly on the bike (or, actually, one for the bike, one for my bag)

  3. Bart says:

    The next challenge: turn right or left without using your hands (something that most Dutch people (but not all) will also be able to do) :-)

  4. Invader Stu says:

    Dave – Cobblestones is a level of mastery I will never reach and never dare to.

    Bart – Is that ‘without’ falling over? Otherwise I can do it :p

  5. ben268 says:

    That’s exciting! Try biking up a steep hill with no hands.

  6. Invader Stu says:

    Ben268 – Steep hills? In Holland sir? :p

  7. Remco says:

    …and then there’s a third challenge: riding without hand whilst sitting on the baggage carrier.

    This is a fantastic blog; I’ve been reading through the content for days now… Thank you for the smiles!

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