Without a Traceroute

Well, I’m discovering that just like beater cars, old junker bikes have lots of things randomly go wrong with them. I was biking into town yesterday when I heard a distinctive pop-hiss as my rear tire went flat, so I walked it to the closest bike shop I knew.

They sold me a new inner tube for €5, and tried to sell me a whole new tire which, “starts at €50.” There’s no way I’m going to pay the entire price of the bike again for a new tire, so I turned that part down. I also declined having them install the inner tube for €15 thinking it would be a quick and simple process to do myself. After doing some more research, I’m starting to rethink that position.

The fact that it’s the rear tire means that I’ll have to deal with disengaging the gears + chain, this is made more difficult by the fact that Dutch bikes have the chain and gears hidden away behind a plastic chain-guard thing (which is probably good for protecting it). Furthermore, Dutch bikes don’t seem to have the clamp-style brakes I’m used to on the rear wheel. There are rear brakes, I just don’t see where they are or how they work. Also, removing the tire to get access to the inner tube is normally done with a specialized tool (that I don’t have), although I could maybe cheat and use a screwdriver or something to pop it out of the rim.

So I have to make some kind of decision, do I just pay the bike shop to do it and have a working bike more quickly with more money spent, or do I try to do it myself and learn some stuff about bike repair while saving money. I am very loath to sink any more money into the whole having-a-bike thing than I already have, but on the other hand, the longer I’m bikeless the more I’m wasting on busses.

On the other hand, I could just buy a smart car:

After dealing with bike-related irritation, I went into Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh museum. It’s way overpriced at €12.50 (and no youth/student discounts, unless you’re under 17), but it was a very nice museum. It was interesting to see an entire museum devoted to one artist; you could definitely see how Van Gogh progressed in his technique. The details of his life seemed pretty sad, though. He failed as a religious missionary, so he decided to become an artist. His art was essentially ignored his whole life and he relied on his brother for financial support. Then he went crazy and eventually shot himself. Being posthumously revered seems like small consolation.

They also had stuff from other artists who were Van Gogh’s contemporaries/inspirations. I thought this one was pretty well done, especially with the ominous shadows on the right.

Finally, the top floor of the museum was given over to temporary exhibitions on loan from the Stedelijk Museum which is undergoing renovations. There was a big exhibit on Kazimir Malevich, who did some really cool stuff, like this:

But also did really lame stuff, like this:

I actually walked through the exhibit in reverse order, so I assumed that he started out drawing simple geometric shapes on white backgrounds (he even did a whole bunch of white-on-white paintings, which sounds like a joke except I saw one in the museum) and later learned how to make awesome things. It turns out I was wrong. He started out cool, but later founded an art movement called Suprematism, which, as far as I can tell involves using only red, white and black to make paintings an eight-year old could do with stencils, and then making grandiose claims about how your art “will not be copies of living things, but will themselves be a living thing,” and how a square represents “the supremacy of pure sensation in creative art.”