title: Bike Snob Abroad: Strange Customs, Incredible Fiets, and the Quest for Cycling Paradise
author: BikeSnobNYC
description: BikeSnobNYC (a.k.a. Eben Weiss) is the blogger behind bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com, a massively popular cycling blog. He also writes a regular column in <em>Bicycling</em> magazine. He lives in New York City.
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  _Prologue_
  
  
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  I've often said I'm fortunate to have grown up when I did. Void of video game
  consoles and social media, after the gambit of Hogan's Heroes and Gilligan's
  Island reruns and Saturday morning cartoons were watched on TV, there was my
  bicycle. My internet was the neighborhood, my friend's houses and schoolyards
  were the websites, and my browser was my bike. I would not have had very many
  friends, or much of a social life as a kid, without it.
  
  
  
  
  
  I don't remember how many bikes I had, or how many miles I put on them; I just
  remember always having one, and always being somewhere on it. Ever since I
  begged my parents to take the training wheels off my first one, I knew somehow
  and sensed something special and amazing was in store.
  
  
  
  
  
  Fast forward 30 plus, OK, 40 years, and instead of bikes piled up on Johnny's
  yard where my buddies and I were having peanut butter sandwiches and milk for
  lunch; the sea of chrome is now in the parking lot of a res