Name: Joolie Kasmire (United States,PhD Candidate, TBM)
Price: €400
Brand: Strida
With its small wheels, bright yellow color and unusual A-shaped frame Joolie Kasmire’s bike is a bit of a novelty.
In fact, a friend of hers once described it as a clown bike. “I guess Strida is more common now, but when I first got it no one seemed to know what to think of it,” said Kasmire.”I got stopped and asked about it at least once every couple of days. One time on the train some tourists were so interested in it that I showed them how it folded and unfolded, and they took a picture of it.”
Originally from California, Kasmire moved to the Netherlands four and a half years ago. She chose her unique bicycle for practical reasons. “It folds so fast!” says Kasmire. “The manufacturer says seven seconds, but I am not quite as fast as that,” she admits. She lived in Amsterdam, Leiden and Rotterdam before moving to Delft, so she did quite a bit of train commuting. Instead of leaving a bike at each location, Kasmire preferred a bike that she could easily take with her.
Kasmire calls herself a cautious rider. She said it seems to annoy some people that she gets off to walk her bike through narrow lanes. But that doesn’t mean she can’t have a little fun on her bike once in a while. “My bike doesn’t have gears,” she says, “but because the wheels are so small, it is effectively in a very low gear all the time. Not fantastic for covering long distances quickly, but good fun for blasting past people on big bikes when we all start together from a green light.”
When asked what she thinks about cycling in the Netherlands, Kasmire exclaimed, “I think it is fantastic! I especially love that I can go between towns as well as just across town on a bike, safely and comfortably. My only complaint is that, as lovely as it is to bike in Delft, the old, narrow, winding streets can be difficult to navigate and there is never enough parking.”

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