The Rise of Sarah Jane

Some punky 13-year-olds crashed into Lynette's front wheel, causing her to become more balky than before, and although the guy at the Fietsenfabriek did something with a monkey wrench that made steering a lot easier, I couldn't pretend that it wasn't time to get that friend I had been thinking about for Lynette.

I was able to identify the mechanic's request for a monkey wrench, incidentally, because of its appearance in one of the strange puppet songs at Uitmarkt ("hoop daar is Willem"). So that was a minor coup.

But anyway: Lynette. I had been thinking for a couple weeks that I should get a slightly better bike when a good opportunity arose, and save Lynette for use when I have visitors who want to go biking with me. (Come visit me in Amsterdam! I have a bike for you to use...) Somewhat surprisingly, I found one within a day of starting to look. Sarah Jane (as in Moore) is a bit more stable and much less rusty than Lynette, and it's still amazing to me after a day of riding her that the bell never slips down the handlebars, and the grips don't gradually slide off, and the kickstand never starts rattling agains the spokes.

I took Sarah Jane out for a long ride today (30km round-trip) to the Muidenslot, a castle (and falconry center?) south of Amsterdam. Again covered in sunscreen and protected by a hat ( ) I set off. The bike path was a lot more pleasant than the one to Haarlem, all tree-lined and smooth and much to Sarah Jane's liking:
Then there was a less-fun part where it went next to the highway (on the other side of a big wall, Mom, don't worry!) and then it opened up into countryside again:

I got to the castle in about 45 minutes, waltzed in for free with my Museumjaarkaart, and wandered the gardens and grounds before stumbling on the falconry area. No one was actually doing falconry, but a man was answering questions about the two falcons (I think? in Dutch he was calling them "hunt-birds" so they could be some non-falcon type of bird for all I know) tethered to little posts. One of them had a cute little bird hat on to make him think it was night, only he obviously knew it wasn't night, since he could totally hear all of us talking and could probably smell all the delicious, juicy children sitting on benches. (If birds can smell? I'm pretty sure they can.)

Anyway, the "awake" one kept trying to fly away, which of course failed after the tether pulled tight three feet from the post, or in this case, the falcon-guy's arm. Twice—twice!—kids asked the man why he was wearing a thick glove. "Because the hunt-bird's talons are very, very sharp," the man explained both times. Then a third kid asked him what would happen if he didn't wear the glove. I didn't really understand the response, but I'm pretty sure it would involve huge gashes in his arm and probably some sort of bird disease.

The castle itself was okay. I've been to a lot of castles, so I'm pretty clear on the concept of murder holes and toilets that open directly into the moat. It's required that Dutch castles have awesome moats, by the way; you'll find a lot of normal houses with moats as well, if you look hard enough.
It's not really as big as it looks in the picture, or possibly I'm just much bigger than I was in the heyday of my castle-visiting.