On the bicycle paths in Friesland, exposed and always headwind, it was a well-known phenomenon: the Puch parasite. Cycling students who clung to a fellow student with a moped, so that they did not have to pedal themselves. It was nicest if the person on the moped put his foot against your luggage carrier. The armhang variant was a lot heavier.
You’ve been seeing them again lately. But now they are e-bike parasites. Schoolchildren, but also adults and seniors. There is, however, an explanation. Nearly a million new bicycles were sold in the past year. And for the first time, most of them were electric bicycles. There are now about five million on the road. Then things happen more often. You see more people with a dog on an e-bike, people who slalom dangerously on an e-bike and people who drag or push someone on an e-bike.
At first glance you still think: Sweet. Two people who like each other. But on closer inspection it looks more like the classic parasite cycling. That does not affect the social side effect, by the way. There is something very cosy, something Joop ter Heul-esque, to go from A to B tangled and swinging. And it’s also so nice post-corona, cycling with arms.
You hear your mother’s voice again: “Perilous. Stop that immediately.” But then you can also get your rebuttal from the bold: “It’s really not going that fast, he hasn’t even been staged. Otherwise I just need an e-bike.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 12, 2022