“I liked the perversity of it,” he said. “I liked saying: ‘Anyone can do this. It’s normal.’ I never ride with a helmet either, even when people are telling me I’m an idiot. Riding a bike should be normal, and you shouldn’t have to wear a funny Styrofoam hat.”
One day he collided with another rider, tearing a gash in his suit sleeve and another in his pride. Today his suits reside in an office closet, and he cycles to work in jeans and a polo shirt.
Would he have gotten in the accident on a Dutch bike? He laughed. “Probably not,” he said. “I was riding with no hands, and the guy came out of the bike lane. If I’d been on one of those, I would probably have been going in more of a straight line.”


The guy would be a lawyer...