I remember what it was like to drive a car. When all you had to worry about were simple things like obeying road signs and traffic signals, not killing various pedestrians and animals, wearing your seatbelt, leaving the proper amount of distance between you and the drive-through window... those were the days. Cars were my friends back then, protecting me from the elements and permitting me to reach my destination in a timely matter. Now they hunt me for sport.

Welcome to Leuven, land of bicycles and blood-thirsty cars. And a monster hill whose sole reason for existence is to thoroughly embarrass a bicycler with her inability to reach the top without first wheezing like a cat with a hairball. Then again, the car speeding up behind her on that hill-- its tires thudding to an infinitely excellerating candence, pounding against each and every cobblestone as it bears down on her, its driver hunched over the wheel smirking -- all but guarantees that she will reach the pinnacle in one manner or another (although whether she is seated upon her bike at that time or is instead a newly mounted human hood-ornament has yet to be determined). Connected to Leuven is a conveyance culture I never experienced in the States, one in which bicycles rest somewhere between utter convenience and instruments of gory death.

Cars in Europe would appear to have inferiority complexes, perhaps as a direct result of the fact that most of them are about the size of your average suitcase. Because of this, they possess an insatiable need to impress upon everyone just how powerful they really are. Pedestrains, while readily available and relatively mobile, evidently don't provide enough sport for the typical car. As a result of this, the bicycle becomes the central form of amusement as cars seek to prove just how close they can get to the bicyclers without technically maiming them ("Clipped him!"). Serving as further motivation for cars to utterly terrorize bicyclers is the Belgian concept of a four way intersection, the kind in which not one of the four converging streets has a stop sign. The bicycler is therefore left at the mercy of not only one but typically two or more cars, each one eagerly waiting for the bike to make its move. What usually saves the bicycle from destruction is the late-dawning realization amongst the cars that two of them charging the same moveable object just might not be the best of ideas. That and the rush of sheer adrenaline through the veins of the bicyclist that surges her across the intersection at speeds she had only before associated with hummingbirds and slingshots.

At the other end of the spectrum is the interaction of the pedestrian with the bicycle, a relationship that is equally fraught with power struggles. Pedestrains realize that they aren't the desired prey of cars nor the natural enemy of bicycles, and therefore turn this ambiguous state to their own advantage. In doing this they still realize that accidently getting hit by a car would probably hurt a bit more than a similar incident with a bike, and therefore choose to harass the beleaguered bicycle. This can take many forms, the most popular of which would appear to be darting out in front of a speeding bike with the selfless intention of helping the bicycler test just how well her brakes are working that day. If the aforementioned brakes are not working the bicycler is then granted the rare opportunity to see how well she can avoid on-coming traffic as she swerves to miss the pedestrian.

This does not remain a one-sided battle. Pushed beyond their limit, some bicyclers revert back to past archetypes and aggressively defend the small plots of road that are designated as theirs with an admirable ferocity. These strips of road are colored red (with what I assume is paint...) to designate that they are meant only for bikes, and woe to the unwary pedestrian that should venture upon such sacred demain. Seizing their singular oppurtunity for just revenge, bicycles will Frogger that pedestrian until all that remains is a shattered shell of a person, forever unable to cross a road without hearing the imagined ominous whirring of an approaching swarm of bikes.

The interactions between bicycles also vary according to the current situation and the relative mentality of the individual bike. As bikes tend to be solitary creatures, they often shun the direct company of other bikes and instead charge through life independent of one another. There are certain areas within the bicycle mentality, however, where being isolated is evidently a bad thing. The most prominent example of this is parking against walls, where bikes are intimidated by the thought of being alone and instead layer themselves against one another in rows three deep. While this perhaps helps to assuage the tender physche of the third bike, it effectively assures that the bicycle at the base of the newly formed wall o' bikes has all but become a structural fixture, never again to budge from that spot.

When bikes do swarm together, be it either by default or choice, they also have a few games which they like to play with one another. One of the two most popular is the "Speed-up, Sloooow-down" game, in which the head bike decides to see just how many changes in velocity it can complete before the bike behind it ends up inadvertantly ramming its handlebars into the lead bicycler's spleen. (I am not sure about the actual object of this game, but I think it has something to do with learning the Dutch words for "internal bleeding" and "compound fracture.") The second game is not unlike the first, but this involves the less expected "Complete stop with absolutely no warning whatsoever." (Also known as the "You-do-that-again-and-I'll-kill-you" game. Fun for the whole family!)

Never before has been getting to class (alive) been such an achievement for me, one in which I daily test my coordination and lack of spacial comprehension (but there really was enough space between those two cars for me-- it was the bike that messed up my calculations... and that one car's sideview mirror...). I think of the day when I will have to give up this daily thrill of riding a bike, telling myself how much I will miss this bond between bike and bicycler, the sensation of being the hunted that keeps outwitting the hunter, the sheer physicality of pedaling up hills and racing down streets, the union with nature as I face it unsheltered. And then I laugh really hard.