The Worst Bike in Holland

There was no way I was getting on that bike.
The seat was up to my shoulders. If I fell, which seemed likely, there would be no helmet to prevent my skull from cracking. And hang on, no brakes? What kind of bike doesn’t have brakes?
“It’s a fixed-gear,” explained Liza, my Dutch Couchsurfing host, securing a boombox in her front basket. “You pedal backwards to stop.”
“Ready?” called Liza’s boyfriend Jasper, perched on his own sleek bike.
I murmured an apology to my poor, oblivious parents back in the USA and vaulted onto the torn seat. The bike teetered forward and I trailed the clinking of beer bottles in Jasper’s backpack alongside the canal.
The first sign of Queensday Festival was the tag sales. Every house we passed had vomited VHS workout tapes and 1980s costume jewelry onto their driveways. Then, everything was orange. Orange afro wigs, orange boas, orange twisted balloon hats. Utrecht’s regal university buildings, 30 miles outside Amsterdam, stood next to stalls selling Vietnamese egg rolls and kids with faces painted like Spiderman playing keyboards for change.
We thankfully dismounted, and I followed Liza and Japser to the booth, a roped off square among the bustle. Jasper helped his Singaporean friends unload their plastic lawn chairs, I arranged them in a circle, and Liza whipped out the boombox and hit play.
I’d never played musical chairs to electronic dance music before. We charged passerby one euro per game, but because I was in with the hosts, I got to play for free. Between rounds, I helped Jasper unload the contents of his backpack, thereby discovering my now favorite beer, Hoegaarden.
After just three hours of this, with a belly full of white ale and a brain full of new facts (like how gum is illegal in Singapore!), we abandoned the booth to watch Jasper play bass in his ska band. I don’t like ska. But who cares? While dancing wildly underneath the black sky, a raindrop splashed on my cheek. I then remembered how we were getting back to Liza and Jasper’s house.
By the time the concert wrapped up, it was pouring. I greeted my old enemy, wiped the cracked leather seat with my damp orange T-shirt and heaved myself onto it. We embarked, still unsteady by the canals, and through the blur, I lost Jasper and Liza. While I teetered on the giant bicycle with no hand brakes through the chilly rain, a boom of thunder rang through the cobblestone streets, and I laughed at how absurd it all was, how scared I felt, how I’ve never been more alive.