Solex Lady

This is the beginning of one of my many story ideas for a recurring character of mine that I wrote about five years ago and never published. Like most everything else I have attempted to write it is incomplete, but I share it here because it is appropriate for the spring season.

Solex Lady

By Cuirbouilli

A Vélosolex was a motorized bicycle.  A small motor was mounted above the front wheel and delivered power by means of a ceramic roller that spun against the tire.  The French manufacturer Solex marketed them to the public after World War II and they became tremendously popular throughout Europe during the 1950s and 1960s.  The Solex bicycle went out of production in 1988, but apparently the bikes had a cult following that persisted to the present day.

Chuck would call a Solex a moped.  He would never consider it to be a serious means of transportation.  If he took a tour through the countryside back home he would much rather do it in a car or at least on a motorcycle.  People rode bicycles for exercise and mopeds were for kids who couldn’t afford enough gas for a car.  

The idea of riding a motorized bicycle twenty miles just to look at flowers was not exactly his idea of a relaxing afternoon.  But, then again, he wasn’t Dutch.  Chuck was an American on a business trip in the Netherlands.  

Chuck was a fifty-one year old engineer who worked for an electrical equipment company in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  Several of the parts that his company used were manufactured at one particular factory in the Netherlands city of Rotterdam.  Chuck was head of his department and once or twice a year his company sent him to Rotterdam to help design new parts.  

His company paid for courses to teach him the Dutch language when he first started going years ago.  He actually learned more by simply talking to native speakers and over time he became fairly fluent.  He discovered that most people in the Netherlands spoke passably good English as well, but they were impressed that he could speak their own language.  That was part of the reason he was the only person his company ever sent over.   

Chuck didn’t mind traveling, although the excitement of it faded a while ago.  Often times he saw nothing but the airport, the factory, and his hotel room due to the limited time of his stay.  On the other hand, there were only so many windmills, castles, and marketplaces to see, and honestly they all looked about the same to him anyhow.  

His wife never went with him.  They would have to pay for her airfare, she didn’t like to fly, and she had absolutely no interest in seeing Europe.  Thus, most of the time he made the trip alone.  The folks he dealt with were very accommodating and arranged transportation, dinner reservations, and provided entertainment if the schedule allowed.  Sometimes he might argue that they were a bit too accommodating.  Today’s excursion would be a good example.  

The engineering department he was working with was going on a so-called “Free Your Mind Event” that Saturday afternoon.  It was a team-building event that was mandatory for company employees, but also meant to be fun.  

One of the engineers became sick with bronchitis and was unable to attend the booked event.  Chuck was stuck in Rotterdam until Monday evening due to a technical problem in manufacturing and had nothing in particular planned other than maybe some local sightseeing.  The other engineers encouraged him to come to the team-building event in their colleague’s place, assuring him that he would have a good time.  

When he pointed out that he would make an odd number they told him that a couple other people would probably join the tour and even out the group.  He reluctantly agreed to go along, although he actually had been looking forward to just relaxing in a cafe with a good book.  

The excursion for the day was something called a Solex Tour; a leisurely ride through the countryside on antique motorized bicycles.  It was the middle of April so the famous tulip gardens were in full bloom.  The route they were taking was supposedly quite scenic.  

The team-building aspect of the outing came once they reached their destination at a designated park.  Refreshments would be served and everyone in the group was supposed to take part in some brief sporting activity.  Then they continued on a route that led back to the starting point to return the bikes.

There were seven people in the group from the engineering department including Chuck; five men and two women.  The manager, a friendly fellow named Hans, picked Chuck up at the hotel.  They drove some distance outside of the city to a building that reminded Chuck of a police station.  

Their group met in the parking lot.  

Everyone except for Chuck took off their regular shoes and put on wooden klompen painted bright yellow with a matching design.  The manager presented Chuck with a pair of similarly painted wooden shoes to signify that he was part of the team.  Chuck thanked him for the shoes, but declined to wear them because they might aggravate his heel spurs.  At least that was the excuse he gave them to be polite.  In truth he wasn’t too sure about riding a bike in a pair of clunky wooden shoes.    

The group went inside the building to register.  A dozen black bicycles were parked inside a brick courtyard.  The vintage bikes were well-maintained.  They had a swan-neck frame with flat handlebars and metal wheel guards.  Aside from the small old-fashioned engines mounted above the front wheels, they kind of reminded Chuck of girls bicycles when he was a kid back in the 1960s.  

He was well aware that the distinction between masculine and feminine was often less rigid to Europeans than it was for Americans, but he soon learned why the Solex bikes did not have a horizontal crossbar.  

It was sunny, and about 52 degrees Fahrenheit and Chuck had worn a heavy windbreaker in anticipation of chilly weather.  He was not thrilled when he was informed that he would have to swap jackets for the ride.  There was a ritual costume for riding a Solex.  To get the full nostalgic effect everyone who took the tour had to don a long leather coat and an old fashioned motorcycle helmet.  

Upon entering the building their group was ushered into a large room that resembled a warehouse.  Four dozen brown and black leather coats hung on a long line of racks along one wall.  Most of them looked like old military coats and were quite weathered.   

Chuck found a helmet that fit his head and picked a dark brown, double-breasted leather trench coat with three rows of buttons.  Any luster the coat possessed had weathered away years ago.  He was too self conscious to wear a shiny black leather coat.

He pulled on his coat and belted it, catching a whiff of deodorizing spray.  He joined the rest of his group in the courtyard who tried to encourage him that the the tour would be fun.

Chuck was already aware of the bike-riding culture was extremely pervasive in the Netherlands.  Fashionable women in Dutch cities commonly rode bicycles to and from work in full-length leather coats, skirts, and heels.  It was something rather foreign to his conservative American experience.  

There was one more couple on the schedule who had not arrived yet.  The guide said they would be have to leave without them if they did not show up in the next five or ten minutes to keep the group on schedule.

At that very moment he heard the sound of a woman’s heels clicking on the flagstones outside the gate.

“Maybe that’s them now,” the guide said.

A striking young couple walked into the courtyard.  One glance at their outfits made it obvious that they were there for the tour.  The man and woman were both wearing long double-breasted black leather trench coats.  The dark-haired man carried two helmets by the straps in his right hand.  The lovely blonde who clung to his left arm tugged him enthusiastically as she spotted the group.

Continued at http://lctdadrms.blogspot.com/p/solex-lady.html