The ride I'm thinking of happened last spring in the Netherlands, where I was doing a six-month exchange as an engineering student. I'm from Vietnam, so I grew up riding a motorbike, not a bicycle, and I was honestly a bit nervous about cycling any real distance.
One Saturday my classmates Lotte and Ben suggested we ride from Leiden to the coast, which is roughly twenty kilometres. We hired bikes from the station and set off around nine in the morning. The route took us past fields of tulips in stripes of red, yellow and purple, then through some sand dunes where the path went up and down and I had to pedal surprisingly hard. We stopped halfway at a tiny café for apple cake, and by lunchtime we could smell the sea.
I enjoyed it for a few reasons. First of all, the scenery was unlike anything at home. In Ho Chi Minh City the streets are packed and noisy, so gliding along a quiet path with nothing but wind and birds was almost surreal. Secondly, I felt a real sense of achievement. I'd been worried I'd hold the others back, but I kept up, and when we reached the beach my legs were aching in a satisfying way. But I think the main reason was the company. Lotte and Ben were patient, they waited at every junction, and we chatted the whole way about our families and plans. That day turned two classmates into proper friends, and whenever I see a bicycle now I think of that ride and the smell of the North Sea.