My first ride in ʼs-Hertogenbosch

This week I have a special ride to show you. It is the first post-op ride I filmed. I am sure some people will be very happy to see images of the actual weather conditions instead of the eternal winter I was showing in most of those pre-recorded videos in the last few months.

This week’s ride starts in the new bicycle / bus street of ʼs-Hertogenbosch.

I did make it very confusing for people, I know, by also publishing videos I had filmed last year. When someone commented “oh look at how lovely it is to ride in May” to a video I had filmed in June 2021, I almost felt like I was cheating on everyone. But my main objective was to keep you busy and entertained while I recover. You did see some material I filmed after my surgery. The video on the new cycle street was one I filmed during all the walks I made to recover. That location is indeed within walking distance from my home. Some people may have noticed that the video did not contain any images from the saddle, simply because I could not ride at that time. The editing took much longer than usual too, but I could spread that out over many days. My previous post did also show some new material which I filmed while riding. Those images were filmed after I had shot the ride I show today, but for reasons obvious to me (it went with the post I had published prior to that one) I had to publish that ride before this one.

This route is one that is taken by people of all backgrounds. School children and pensioners alike.

Now back to riding again. I don’t want to tire you out by talking about my medical condition all the time, but I must say that the cycling didn’t quite go as I had expected, initially. I had big plans to film my very first ride to proudly show my progress, but after just a short while of trying I understood that that was out of the question. I had to rest a lot and my speed was very slow to say the least. That I was shocked and disappointed about this was all too obvious in the tweet I did publish.

Yes, I cycled, but… it was a lot harder than I had hoped. Still recovering from the open heart surgery exactly 6 weeks ago today. pic.twitter.com/aQVdBT5mJU

— Mark Wagenbuur (@BicycleDutch) April 25, 2022

Fortunately, everything changed in just a couple of weeks of cycling every day. By mid-May, this was the first ride I was confident enough to film. A well-known route, close to home. It may even be well-known to you. This main north-south route has featured on my blog 27 times before, one way or another. On my blog-post map you can almost follow the entire length because of all the blog post locations.

My blog post map shows quite a few blog posts alongside this route.

I later showed an American family from Seattle the same route and they too were quite taken by it:

Cycling in America, you are presented with continuous opportunities to be killed—at each intersection…each car door. In the Netherlands, you can move safely, continuously, with few interruptions. pic.twitter.com/MMC1m8Ivxf

— Queen Anne Greenways (@QAGreenways) June 4, 2022

This intersection is designed with priority for the cycle route, even though a bus route crosses it here (note the bus stop to the left). There are signs and markings on the surface to indicate that priority, but the continuous red asphalt is the clearest indication of that priority. Note also that the bollards to ‘protect the cycleway’ are not up. They pose more danger to people cycling (and all the time) than an occasional vehicle on the cycleway would pose.

I am not going to write at length about this route again. If you do want to know more about its background, you can read the most comprehensive history of it in this post.

And before there are people who complain that the weather is too good, I did also film this in the snow before.

End of the route: the most northern tip of the city at the flood banks of the river Maas (Meuse) which is also the provincial border between Noord-Brabant and Gelderland here.

My physical condition is now improving by the day. Even though I had been walking and cycling a lot before, the physical therapy at the hospital is finally making all the difference! The sessions started on 16 May, but especially in the last couple of weeks I have made big steps. I wasn’t well enough yet to travel to the VeloCity Conference taking place in Ljubljana right now, obviously, but I will (gradually) be getting back to my day job soon and then I feel I must also be able to travel again to film at other locations in the country. So stay tuned for more new material!

This stationary bicycle at the local hospital is my friend these days. Cycling on it is almost not comparable to cycling a normal bicycle because you have to pedal much faster. I blurred out my progress (and other private details) on the clip board, but rest assured: that progress is clear and good.

This week’s video: my first recorded post-op ride!