It was on a stormy night in December in 1853 that Cornelis Jacobus Zadelbult decided to leave the inn, thousands of miles away from his beloved Amsterdam. Rain and hail set in and pained his face. However, Cornelis didn’t care because he had always been a tough sailor. Cornelis didn’t like to travel on foot. It was not fast enough and besides, his clubfoot was playing up again and although he wasn’t the smallest man alive and his hands were huge, he was a little worried about any possible thugs.

Dragging himself along, he tried to stay close to the houses, even though they had turned dark as well. All of a sudden, a figure appeared out of a narrow and dirty alley. Instinctively, Cornelis clenched his fists and prepared to fight. But the figure motioned him to calm down. Under the light of the lamp post, he noticed that this peculiar character was wearing some sort of a Sherlock Holmes costume. He looked up at Cornelis with an appealing look. “I need money,” said the man in English to our astounded hero, who thanks to his many travels abroad managed to speak different languages and recognised this language to be English. “Would you like to buy this bike from me?” he showed Cornelis a strange looking, orange coloured apparatus. “What a monstrous piece of machinery that is!” thought our Cornelis and the peculiar man demonstrated what this thing could do. “What the devil is this?” thought Cornelis. “This is an instrument that can efficiently take you from one place to another by means of paddling on two small blocks! And the seat reminds me of a saddle on a horse’s back. What an incredible invention!” Cornelis didn’t have to think twice and bought the instrument immediately.

The next day, the ship “De Neeltje Jacoba” left port to sail home, with Cornelis’ new found treasure safely stored on board. A month later, Cornelis’ new means of transport was reported in the local newspaper because he had been entertaining the Amsterdammers by demonstrating to them how this new ‘thing’ works. The locals were a little afraid at first and everywhere Cornelis went, people cried out ‘ikes!’ which was a much known old Amsterdam expression at the time. This word eventually turned into ‘bikes!’ a corrupted version of the original ‘ikes!’ which naturally turned into ‘bike’. So. There you have it. The beginning of our present Orangebike.