Ethansapien sapien to Homo Neanderthalensis

Naturalis
Ethan went to the Naturalis here in Leiden a week ago with Deborah and today I got to go with him.   Spectacular.   This is by far the best natural history museum I've been to and possibly the best science museum overall.

As a kids science museum it blows the NEMO out of the water (har har, see the NEMO looks like a boat on the waterfront in Amsterdam. Blows it out of the water. It's a doubly nautical reference, that's why it's funny...) It's a ton of fun and dense with science.

Lots of those bones the devil put in the rocks to make us question the creation story along with pickled and stuffed specimens less than six thousand years old. They're currently running a special Darwin exhibit.  He would have been 200.  If he had been a sea turtle.  Instead he's dead.  If you hadn't heard.

Like the NEMO, the museum itself is a very nice piece of architecture.  Unlike NEMO, it's not particularly stunning from the outside (not terrible either) but a really remarkably nicely thought out interior.  

Bikes of the day

These cargo bikes were parked outside the museum. They are fairly standard examples of commonly seen cargo bikes. The first is actually a trike, the second a bakfiets. They are both doubly long compared to our base model bakfiets ( a double bak ??) and I imagine when fully loaded with kids, the trike is a lot easier on the upper body.  When not loaded with kids, they can haul a lot of stuff.   

People talk about traditional Dutch bikes with a lot of enthusiasm. I'm not so keen on them.  Traditonal Dutch bikes don't offer any improved functionality over better handling examples from England or Italy, they're just easier to sit on in ergonomically poor positions.  

These cargo bikes are the real gems of the Dutch cycling culture.  You really don't need a car in a country this dense and in fact a car is just a burden to park and maintain.  The biggest version of these bikes offer the hauling capacity of a small pick-up truck.  Sure, you may get where you're going at 10 kph, but in the city you're not going to manage more than 25 kph in a petrol powered truck anyway.  

Perhaps the cargo bikes are not quite as much a piece of the national identity because they are actually not that old in the NL and the Danes were building similar things commonly decades earlier. I'm also quite interested in the mass-produced version by Gazelle.  

Anyway, if you don't currently have a high capacity bike like an xtracycle these are a good option and can now be had in the US either imported or homegrown.  If you already have an xtracycle, it's prbably not worth the cost of switching.  Even starting from scratch, I would consider the xtracycle superior for many, many applications.  Of course, if you have the means, have them all. 

A Yankee in William of Orange's court

Bike of the day

We got Ethan a new bike.  The landlord had left a kid's bike, but it was abit too big.  Ethan could and did manage it, but the awkwardness of it took the fun out of it.  So for 40 euros we got a whole lot of little-boy happiness in the form the The Fox, our new/used bike.  He's been making good use of it.  

Gratuitous bike pics

While we're posting bike pics, here are some gratuitous pics of mine from last week on the ride to Delft.

 

A construction zone too far

The ride to Amsterdam last friday was meant to be 39km according to Google maps.  There is much construction along the way and it wound up at 60 km.  On the way back, I figured out my mistakes, but still came in at 45 km.  I don't think it can be made shorter.  This makes it really time consuming to do regularly.  With all the stops for little towns and construction, I can only average about 24 or 25 kph, so it's almost two hours each way.  I can go by train, including the travel at each end by bike and foot, in about 45 or 50 minutes.  The ride to Delft in contrast doesn;t cost me any more time than the train.   It's a straight shot down clear path and I can manage 27 kph with little trouble and actually punched out  a 30 kph ride, fully loaded, the other night when I was needed at home. 

Cultural observation

There are helpful, courteous, outgoing Dutch people.  Lots of them. 

Living in a city, one can easily be left with the impression that the Dutch are a people with the anatomically surprising ability to actually turn their eyes to look completely and only into themselves.  They tend to ignore others in clear distress. They will push their way past a slow moving oma in a line without seeming to even notice. They generally give the impression that they cannot cope with the notion that the other objects moving in the world around them are actually people like themselves.   They are, in a word, inward-looking.   This, I am convinced is entirely a city thing. 

Thomas commented to me how nice it is when in the US to be standing on the street trying to decipher a map and have a total stranger offer to help unsolicited.  He also noted with some chagrin that this doesn't happen in Holland.   He's wrong.

Three times on my ride Friday people offered help to me completely unsolicited.  Once, a jogger on the path offered help while I looked at a map.  Again, while looking at the map, a small pack of older ladies offered help and patiently worked through my broken Dutch to confirm that , yes, I was on the right path, no I should not cross the A4 at the next opportunity, but wait till Nieuwe Wetering.  And finally, two very friendly construction workers, again in a patois of my broken Dutch and their broken English, were very helpful at a construction impasse.   

These were all clearly country folk.  I had been warned prior to my visit that the Dutch country people might be a bit insular, but aside from the lack of English, which is no bad thing in my view, the country Dutch have been much more pleasant to deal with than the supposedly cosmopolitan city Dutch.  They smile, offer aid, and seem happy to interact with other people.  I really really like the rural Dutch.  

Perhaps I am just a multicultural hayseed.  

Leiden to Delft

I am a rotten photographer

But that doesn't stop me from trying.  Mr friend Taco thought the ride from Leiden to Delft might be boring.  I assured him it was not and that it was quite pretty.  

So this past Monday I took the camera and randomly took pictures as I held the camera in my hand and rode.  I started just outside Leiden and kept snapping right into Delft.  I then mounted the camera on my handlebars for the ride home in the evening, but gave up because they were all motion-blurred.  I left a few of those at the end.  I am afraid I did not make my point very well and may have confirmed his worries instead.  

Video

I still maintain it is a lovely ride.  Twentyfive km through horse farms, and wild preserves, and a yacht club/goat farm, and small cities.   The goat farm/yacht club had a sign advertising goat meat and mutton next to the pen.  I thought that was just adding insult to injury.  I hope they have the decency not to teach the animals to read.

It was about -1 when I started and only got up to around +1 or +2 so the ice was quite thin, but stayed on many to the canals.  There's a picture of some ducks breaking a little trail through the ice with their feet.  It was pretty funny to watch.

Here is a quicktime video of the photos.

Stills here.

Killer ducks

I see packs (ok flocks maybe) of these black birds with ivory beaks.  I asked Thomas if he knew what they were.  He told me, but I have now forgotten.  I have forgotten because my brain was overloaded with his warning that they are quite aggressive.  I'll be sure to pack my holy hand grenade of antioch.

Civilization

The thing you might notice is that the bike road is everywhere well maintained.  This is not some nature preserve, sight-seeing trail.  This is how people get around. It's how I go to work in Delft.  This is the norm.  The voting population demands well maintained bike roads.  They get salted long before the car roads.  My second week here, they closed the A4 for a bit because of the ice, but the bike trails were salted.

Stan Lee makes road policy

With great power comes great responsibility.

In the country, the road is wide enough for a car and two bikes to pass.  Cars are allowed but in a reversal of the perverse US policy, bikes always have the priority.  Imagine that, the guy in a two ton (or here more likely one ton) killing machine bears a greater burden of responsibility  than the guy on a fifteen kg bike.  Country speed limits are typically 50 kph , sometimes 60 kph, and usually in town it drops to 30 kph.  

If there is a bike-car collision it is almost invariably the legal fault of the car.  This policy has a noticeable effect on driving habits.  I have not yet been given the old right hook here ( a driver passes on the left then makes a quick right turn cutting off the biker).  It is an almost daily occurrence for me in the States. 

A fly in the ointment

The one thing I object to here is that small motorcycles (aka scooters) are mostly treated like bikes and are allowed on the bike-only trails.    Little old ladies and sensible folk are fine, but there is often some teenager zipping along at well over the speed limit and menacing the rest of the trail users.  I don't know why these vehicles are not treated the same as full-sized motorcycles since most of them will go a good 80 or 100 kph and could easily hold their own on regular roads (not the superhighways).  I never see any policing of these guys, so there is a bit of wild-west attitude.  Occasionally there is a recognition of the insanity and scooters are signaled to the main road.

Word of the day

begrijp.  Understand.  Ik niet u begrijp.  A.u.b. sprekt u langzaam.  I don't understand you.  Please speak slowly.  

Slow Sunday

Bikes of the day

Mine.

In orange you will see my go-fast bike. It's very light, short of wheelbase, quick-steering, and the handlebars sit several centimeters below the saddle. I immediately notice a change of a few mm in the positions of the seat or handbars. Specifically, it has a custom lugged steel frame, Dura Ace drivetrain and components, Brooks Swallow saddle, and 28mm Continental road tires. It's comfy and when I'm in decent shape I can (solo) average 31 kph in low wind over 100km. I did not bring this one with me and I miss it.

In white you can see my commuter/light-touring/randonneur. It's a Surly Cross-Check frame. It's fairly heavy. The handlebars sit level with the seat. the wheel-base is a bit longer. I have racks mounted front and back. I have the Nitto Noodle bars and like them. I have the Shimano Nexus 8 speed internally geared hub. It's a nice drivetrain, but really, really heavy. I run Conti CountryRide 37mm tires. I've got the Planet Bike Cascadia fenders. They're nice and long for good puddle protection. The racks are Surly's Nice Racks. They're powder-coated cromoly and just bullet -proof. I usually hang Ortleib Office bags on the back. Unloaded, the white bike gives up about 2 kph to the orange one and with loaded office bags, another 2 kph. It's very comfy, giving a fairly up-right position on the tops and a decent tuck in the drops. I'm using the HubBub adaptor to mount the shifter. I've read complaints, but I have made it work pretty well. Getting it set properly is key. I used a bit of the leather bar wrap on the end of the HubBub to help snug it.

The Surly works well in all the situations you'd use a Dutch bike and it has the advantage of being fast and comfy for longer rides (to Delft and back for instance). The one place that it fails is at the train station. I couldn't bring myself to leave this bike at the train station. It's not the theft that worries me. It's not very hard to be much more secure than the rest of the Dutch bikes. The problem is that people at the bike parking stalls have no respect for bikes. They literally shove them in any which way they can. For going to the train-stations, one must really have a cheap bike to which one is not in the least emotionally attached.

Sugino BB warning

One word of warning: I went with Sugino cranks and the matching Sugino BB. The BB had a bearing failure quite recently after only 1000 km. I won't be buying Sugino again soon.

Gotchaday

Adoption bonus

Gotchaday is the extra holiday you get when you have an adopted child.

One year ago today we got Leif. Here are the boys on 24 January 2008. It seems like we've always had him. Ethan claims he can't remember not having a brother.

To celebrate we had chinese food from Eethuis Li, our new favorite local dive, and cake.

Tired boy

We drove Leif to exhaustion at the market today.

Big old church

Here's a big old church because you're supposed to take pictures of big old churches in Europe. It's Hooglandse Kerk here in Leiden. To tell you the truth, I get more excited about small old houses. It changes one's perspective to walk into a 16th century house that is not an historical landmark but just in use. You can be born live a full life and die on time scales that are short in the consciousness of the local people.

Word of the day

Eergisteren.  The day before yesterday.  

Vandaag morgen gisteren en overmorgen vandaag eergisteren zal geweest worden.  Tomorrow today will be yesterday and the day after tomorrow today will be the day before yesterday.

See the word from a couple of posts back.  

Biking to Delft

Luke, use the Garmin

 

One of my new colleagues at TU Delft is a fan of the Star Wars series.  Yes, imagine, an engineering prof as sci-fi fan.   Hard to believe.  Anyway it reminded me of something that struck me when I started trying to pack some Dutch vocab into the old hat rack.  The Dutch for father is vader.  George Lucas is as subtle as a fork in the eye.  

Nobody compensating for anything here, nope, not at all. 

I have failed my technology

So I decided to bike to delft today.  It was about 4 degrees, balmy compared to last week.  I mapped a 24 km route.  I also had the new Garmin with the extra fietspad (bikepath) maps.  Things didn't quite work out.  I wound up going back and forth across Zuid Holland (South Holland) till I had racked up 38km in 1:45 .  I was a little miffed about the garmin.  So coming back I used google maps printed at the office.  

I realized as I came into Leiden that the garmin hadn't failed me, I had failed it.  I had misunderstood the directions in a crazy little intersection of two canals, three major roads and an uncountable number of bike paths.  That set me on a path that went way too far east (though it was very pretty) and thus the 38 km.  Initial conditions are so very critical. 

The short route was 24 km right next to a lovely canal almost all the way.  I'll take pictures next week.  It's very pretty, going through farm country with very active sheep and dairy farms.  Some of the little communities like Leidschendam look like really nice places to live for someone working at Delft. 

Word of the day

Schat. Like many Dutch words, this one requires a throat-clearing midway through: a bit of an 's' then clear the throat, then the 'at.'  It means a treasure and it is used colloquially to say that "You're a treasure," that is "Jij bent een schat," as a phrase of endearment.  The diminutive form "schatje" might be used with one's SO, but not otherwise.  

Milestone

I find news casts are great for learning Dutch.  Unlike in the US, speaking clearly and properly seems to be a job requirement for news readers.  Kids shows are usually good too.   I'm still at the simple conversation stage, though I find I can get through entire social transactions as long as the other speaker is willing to go slowly (A.u.b. spreekt je langzaam).  Speed matters because I am still translating backward and forward and my brain does not work that fast.  

Tonight, I passed a milestone.  Without thinking about it, I listened to 4 or 5 sentences in Dutch on the news cast about a local building plan and I understood it without translating in my head.  As soon as I realized this I lost it, but it was pretty cool.  

A few more weeks and perhaps I will at least be able to understand without translation regularly.  I have always found that producing the language without translation takes much longer.  We'll see.

Group meeting

My main agenda at Delft today was Taco's group meeting.  Here that meant an audience of 6 faculty and one grad student.  I spoke about contrast modulation for about 45 minutes.  Questions were many and insightful.  I really like the group here.  

You're older than you've ever been and now you're older still

That's a little They Might be Giants

TU Delft

So I've spent the last couple of days at TU Delft.  It's a nice place.  Quite different from VU with it's own charms (it's not different by being nice, it's just different and nice).  I've met a number of really interesting people: Hans Blok: Ad de Hoop, and today Geert Jan Olsder.  Prof. Olsder is a really nice guy on top of being a great mathematician and a collaborator of my friend and colleague, Tamar Basar .

I'm in the easiest building to find on campus, the EWI, 23 stories in a perfectly flat land with nothing like that tall till Rotterdam.  

I might get some science done soon.  I spent a lot of time talking with Bert-Jan today about nonlinear inversion methods.  We'll see where that goes.  I'd like to interest him in my contrast modulation idea.  

I meandered a bit on the way in and have these jems to show for it. One is a drawbridge, and one is the oldest remaing city gate in Delft.  The city gate is 500 years old.  The arches along the side house the sort of openings that fan out to the inside for better shooting lines.  So now would you like to pay our tax?

The Garmin

Well, Like two years ago when I broke down and bought heated undergarments for winter motocycling, I have taken a step into dotage I swore I never would.  I bought a garmin 250 gps system.  I got the extra card with all the cycle routes in Holland on it.  I'm giddy.  I'm embarrassed.  It's ok, yesterday was my birthday.  I'm 37.  Old.  Very old indeed.  I'm biking to Delft tomorrow with some confidence that I won't wind up in Belgium.

The Birthday

Yeasterday was my birthday.  At school Ethan discovered that kids get a crown of paper on their birthdays.  So he made one.  So I wore it.  All day.  I'm pretty sure it's only for kids.  At school.  

Anyway, people are very nice to any who appears slightly mentally handicapped and accompanied by a small child, which is how we went shopping yesterday afternoon for the garmin and a few other thing.  I got plenty of "Fijne verjaardag" which is really nice, but also usually reserved for kids.  Here though I think this is ok as the dutch can often seem a little dower, but at the same time really celebrate the beautifully strange, wild, and unexpected things.  Like a camel walking down Herengracht in A'dam monday.  

We had a nice dinner out.  The trick to fast service here is to go for chinese. I generally like slow service, but not with the kids in tow.   So for my birthday I got  dinner, a crown for the day, cards, some fine chocolate, and some bathsalts.  I'm pretty satisfied, though a little frankincense would have been nice.  Now I smell like vanilla coconuts.

Boy, I think the drugs are working.  I should go to bed soon.

Bike of the day

No great words or cultural observations, so we'll try a new catagory.

A very nonDutch bike in my view, but I loved it.   It looks a little like a pre-war BMW stripped of the motor and given pedals.  I'm pretty sure that was the intended effect.  If I discover that this is a production machine I can get for less than body parts, I must have one.  It is clearly only useful as a citybike, but what a lovely design. If the mechanicals are well implemented, it looks like a superb design. Notice the shaft drive.  Much like the motorcycle community, there is now a fight bewtween belt drive and shaft drive for the market of high-reliability, low-mess drivetrains.  

Anyway, I took this foto right infront of the Boterhuis cafe in Delft square.  I don't have enought detail for  a maker.  Front and back appear to be sprung.  Brooks springer saddle (a whole lotta suspension for that bottom) and despite the physically huge headlamp, it looked to be battery power and thus likely LED.  Hopefully I'll see it again. 

Not the word of the day

I do have a new favorite, but it is unprintable.  I am enormously enjoying to learn to curse in Dutch.  I can now curse well enough to start a fight in at least 8 languages.  You really only need to learn the word for "mother" and say it with a fair bit of sneer and derision.  Everybody loves their mama.

OK, my not-word-of-the day means to make the sex act with ants.  Say that in your best Borat voice.  It means to be fussing over silly details and to be really obsessive about it.  It's a great word really and I find myself using it a lot.  I will probably be introuble over it quite soon.

One week in

Excuses

OK, so the pace has fallen off a bit.  First I suffered unusually badly from the jet lag (my ever greater age?).  Then, we were having too much fun to stop and write the blog.  

Touristy stuff

We've done a few touristy things.  We went to the museum of the big old windmill in Leiden,  Molen van Valk. I went to Delft to work and the family came along. They went to a tile factory and Ethan painted his own tile. I'll post a pic when we get it back from firing. Delft china really is pretty.

The return from Delft was a bit ugly.  Deborah started coming down with something involving a fever and sore throat.  We then had a walk that was too far for an already-tired 5-year-old.  So I wound up carrying him for a km or two.  Then we missed the train and had to catch the next.  Then when we got back we decided to try the bus system and wound up waiting a long time for a bus.  My Dutch is getting better though and I managed to navigate the system talking to busdrivers in the local tongue.  I don't think anyone else found this comforting.  We still had to walk half a km or so after the bus and poor Ethan was about to bust a bladder.  He made it with me carrying again and running.  The one-hour trip had taken almost three.  All in all, a good work-out and a fun day.  Deborah has sworn off the busses and will only bike to the city center for the train now.  

A cultural observation

I managed to get a bank account.  Americans may not appreciate that this is a real accomplishment here.  They need proof of residency here and back in the us, passport, a letter from the host institution,  and various and sundry other bits of bureaucratic detritus.  

Anyway, some fellow Americans I met had not had such good luck and after a little conversation I think I know why.  They expected it to work and were a little upset (though I expect still perfectly nice) that it is not a simple matter of walking in and opening an account.    I expected failure and only showed mild disappointment when I was told that it would take a few days to process.  My disappointment elicited a respond of eager helpfulness and concern and got the application expidited.  

The Dutch are at once dogmatically egalitarian and still somehow caste-aware.  I let it be known that I was a university professor ( a fairly high-status position here ), but only by way of giving my card with all my address information.  I never said "Oh, I'm a professor and I need this done promptly." I took the attitude that I was just a little guy caught up in a confusing system and I was completely appreciative of anything my friend the clerk could do.  If he couldn't help me further, that was ok, I was sure he had done his best to help me since we're just in this together.  Generally, this is the right attitude in Holland.  I like it like that.  I am just a little guy trying to get by in the world and I do feel that we are just in this all together. 

The system here has a negative compressibility.  Start to demand things be done and they will get swallowed in the vestigal remains of the Dutch empire, the bureaucracy.   Appear the pleasant and innocent victim of the same bureaucracy and people jump to help.    

Science 

I have checked in and gotten offices at both Vrije Universitieit (VU) and TU Delft.  I have met a lot of interesting people, but so far the high-light is Hans Blok.  I haven't really done much myself yet other than chit-chat.  That should change this coming week with some real work.

The Family

The family seems to be settling well and adjusting to the Dutch life.  Deborah loves the relative simplicity of the lifestyle here.  I agree.  No bloody car and biking is easy because everybody bikes and the bikes rule the road.  Marilee is doing really well, especially considering she's never before been outside the US and she's got a broken arm.  I don't think she's learning any Dutch, but she gets out there and isn't intimidated.  

Ethan started school today.  He is learning a little Dutch, but I would not by any stretch say he speaks it.  He had a great time.  His teacher looked a little amazed at the end of the day and told us that he just watched what was going on and followed along.  He got on well with the other kids and built with blocks and played tag.  It helps that the Dutch have muchlower expectations for their kids at this age than we do in the states.  They are just learning their letters while Ethan and his classmates in Illinois were reading simple books.  Anyway, he's the greatest boy ever and continues to amaze.  

Leif is finally getting on schedule and is happy to always be on the go.  It's his favorite phrase now actually: "Go, go."  The Dutch word lief is pronounced the same way as Leif and means "sweet."

Pics

Ethan at the playground by his new school.

People skating on the canal.

Deborah with Leif in the bakfiets.

The boys help me make use of the jet lag insomnia and build the bike and tagalong.

Leif: toolmaster.