[00:01:09] Mickelle: Today I’m joined by someone that I am very excited to talk to and has been such a really lovely part of living in Amsterdam. Today I have on Warren Gregory, the Flower Bike Man who makes bikes in the heart of the city. Amsterdam. Warren, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:01:26] Mickelle: I have been really looking forward to talking to you. Thanks for agreeing to come on on this very rainy day in Amsterdam.

[00:01:32] Warren: Yeah, nothing else to do today but talk.

[00:01:35] Mickelle: That’s true. That’s true. Well, I’m really happy you’ve agreed to come on and talk to us because your artwork has been something that I’ve seen in my time in the city and actually A mutual friend, Laser314, really suggested I contact you in my journey with House of Peregrine.

[00:01:53] Mickelle: And I said, yeah, I know that his work, this is something that I really

[00:01:56] Warren: He’s been supportive since, for me, from, since I first got here. He’s, But I’ve also known about him for years, so it was always a mutual thing. I just never got a chance to meet him yet.

[00:02:06] Mickelle: Oh yeah, you haven’t.

[00:02:08] Warren: No, I was supposed to meet him at your, your get together, and yeah, Michelle wasn’t well, and I didn’t want to leave her, so.

[00:02:13] Mickelle: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. That’s

[00:02:15] Warren: kind of half the story of my life.

[00:02:18] Mickelle: Yeah, I can imagine. Well, I want to start, so we have a mutual love of Amsterdam, but we’re both not from Amsterdam, so I want to tell your story. Where did you grow up? Tell us that story and we’ll, we’ll get into your, your relationship, your love story.

[00:02:34] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:02:35] Warren: Yeah. This whole story really is it starts with a love of bicycles, really. I mean, it starts more than 20 years ago because really what happened 20 years ago, I couldn’t walk. I was had multiple surgeries on my back, bad accidents when I was younger and By the time I got older, and I’m married with Michelle, it started really coming bad, and I ended up in a wheelchair for a while, and Michelle was working for AOL, you know, America Online.

[00:03:03] Warren: We’re both in Florida, and we both were managers for them, and, but I went down. About a year of not walking, I got really fat. Really fat. Almost almost 200 kilos. You wouldn’t recognize me. And after I could get onto a cane again, I went to see my grandmother in Ocala, Florida. And she was really my, my biggest my biggest fan, I guess.

[00:03:24] Warren: She’s my grandmother. But when I went to her house with Michelle, she go One look at me, my 200 pound belly sticking out, and I’m on a cane, and I come to her house, and she looks at me, Warren, Varken, she says to me. My grandmother has Dutch in her. But I never heard a single Dutch word in my whole life, and she screamed this at me.

[00:03:44] Warren: And I didn’t know what it meant. I hadn’t been to Amsterdam yet. I knew it meant pig. She called me a disgusting pig, and I said, Grandma, I had surgery. I don’t care. You drove your car here. You should have rode your bicycle here. When I was a kid, she gave me a bicycle every, every couple of years, a new bicycle.

[00:03:58] Warren: I rode my bicycle all over Orlando, Florida. Every street in Orlando as a kid. Well, anyway, so she’s yelling at me. This hurt me bad. You know, it was more of my mother than my grandmother. And so I went home and I started riding that bicycle she gave me. It was one of her ex husband’s old Cannondale. Very expensive bike and well, I started losing weight.

[00:04:18] Warren: Started, stopped drinking sodas and eating junk food and being depressed and riding my bike farther and farther. And right away I lost you know, 25, 30 kilos. And Michelle was happy and then she came up for vacation. And at that moment, I was like, well, let’s get out of here. Let’s let’s go to Amsterdam and Paris, you know, let’s do a proper vacation.

[00:04:38] Warren: She had good time, good money. And so we booked flights. We came to Amsterdam and, and eight days in is when it all happened. You know, eight days and we were staying at the Renaissance right there on the single, and we had two more days to go, but we’re going to Paris for 10 days. And we’re sitting there in the single and Michelle looks at me and she says, Warren, this, this place is amazing.

[00:04:57] Warren: You know, you can, you can ride your bicycle here. You could get healthy here. You can smoke marijuana here. And you know, maybe I could switch my job. Maybe I can find a job here. And right then I canceled Paris, went back to the hotel, said, Hey, we want 10 more days here. Paid premium for that. And we never been to Paris since.

[00:05:17] Warren: We stayed 10 more days here, explored, and then went home. I got on the internet, started sending out her resume everywhere, and setting up Skype interviews. And then five months later, she landed a job with TomTom as a management, and they had just opened. And so, yeah, five months later, we’re packing up.

[00:05:36] Warren: So, we just got into a mortgage agreement with a house, got out of that, sold everything we had, and we were going to be emptied out. There we go. And that’s where the story changes. That’s when it becomes tragic almost. We get here and we did rent a nice houseboat on a canal. Just the front part, and that was 750 euros a month back then.

[00:05:58] Warren: And what year was this? 2004. 2004. Okay.

[00:06:02] Mickelle: So we’re, we’re in 2004. You guys leave Florida for Amsterdam bound, and that.

[00:06:07] Warren: She has a contract job. So of course we have money. So I rent a nice front half of a clipper ship houseboat, proper Amsterdam houseboat. And yeah, that was nice until right then she had seizures.

[00:06:20] Warren: We didn’t know what it was in Florida. We thought it was sleep apnea. She snores and she had that little jet fighter machine that we moved with every night, put this thing on, like dark, sleeping next to Darth Vader, you know? So but then she had such major seizures into the hospital where she died twice in the hospital.

[00:06:39] Warren: They brought her back and they brought her back without any memories. She wiped out all her memories of her life, her childhood. Yeah, basically everything. She remembered me, but she was kind of hostile. She didn’t trust me at first. She had been in the hospital for 10 days and, and that was very rough.

[00:06:56] Warren: And so I became the go between through TomTom. She couldn’t really talk to them at first. And then they agreed we’ll hold on, we’ll keep her position. Six, eight months, you know, and she gets better, but she never got better. She could never use computers again and stuff like this, so.

[00:07:15] Warren: We held on here a couple years that’s when I first got the idea to get a little boat because we couldn’t afford this, the savings is going, so we bought a little sailboat and tried to hang on on that. But also, she had to go and meet with Tom Tom a couple of times to sign some papers. And park her bike up there at Central Station and well, she came home without her bike.

[00:07:35] Warren: And the second time she came home without her bike, she lost her bike in the station. And it’s, it’s epilepsy related. All these bikes look the same and it started to confuse her and then she just gives up. Someone stole it. I go there and I Dutch cowboy at home.

[00:07:50] Mickelle: Yeah, which is actually a possibility. Let’s just be real.

[00:07:53] Mickelle: Yeah,

[00:07:53] Warren: yeah.

[00:07:53] Mickelle: That’s very possible. It could be stolen. Any of those are possible. Yeah. I

[00:07:57] Warren: knew it wasn’t stolen though because it was an old bike, you know, it’s, it’s not, you’d have to cut the chain to steal it, you know.

[00:08:04] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:08:05] Warren: She’s smart. She, she never will lock her bike up without locking a chain to something, you know,

[00:08:10] Mickelle: that’s, that’s

[00:08:11] Warren: the Amsterdam rule.

[00:08:11] Warren: Two locks.

[00:08:13] Mickelle: Two locks. That’s true.

[00:08:15] Warren: Or at least one that’s chained to a pole, you know.

[00:08:17] Mickelle: Yeah, so Warren, I want to keep hearing this story, but I just want to point out that you guys were already in something that’s super stressful, even though it’s also exciting, which is you’re moving to a new country, a new job, a new phase.

[00:08:30] Mickelle: And that’s already I

[00:08:31] Warren: was still injured

[00:08:32] Mickelle: too. Yeah, you were still injured. So that’s actually a really you guys were doing something really stressful and then something else really stressful happened. So now you’re navigating Dutch hospitals and all this stuff. And it’s really nice, but it’s still just really hard.

[00:08:46] Mickelle: It’s hard. It’s exciting, but there’s just hard things about it. So I just want to mention that if I can. And so you’re navigating this, you get the smaller boat. Michelle comes home without her bike.

[00:08:58] Warren: Yeah. But what I noticed right away from parking at central station and going to find her bike was these a couple of flower bikes, you know, there was a basket with flowers on it.

[00:09:08] Warren: There’s another bike with some red. thing hanging off the back. I saw other people have problems and this is how they deal with it. They decorate their bike a little. And how did you know that? How did

[00:09:18] Mickelle: you know? Oh, so they could see their bike.

[00:09:20] Warren: I’m looking for her bike and I see these other bikes that stand out in the crowd.

[00:09:25] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:09:25] Warren: That was, and I had already seen like little postcards because there’s flower bikes from the eighties. There’s about five women. I’ve met two or three of them. And they started this really in the late seventies, eighties, when Amsterdam was like fighting with cars, they were changing the rules. And these women were putting flowers all over their bikes.

[00:09:44] Warren: And that is kind of who I emulated, who inspired me, these, these group of women. And they’re still out there. They’ve, one of them came up to me when I was being interviewed on Museum Broke. And she said, I’m the original flower biker. And I got on my knees on camera and I kissed her hand. And I said, you are my queen.

[00:10:02] Warren: And then she got 10 minutes on camera. And that was nice because I feel bad about that sometimes. Cause people that have done this for years and then now I’ve taken over the whole flower bike thing and really. I was inspired by the people that have already done it here for years.

[00:10:18] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:10:18] Warren: I just made it bigger.

[00:10:20] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:10:21] Warren: But the reason yeah, is it was other Amsterdamers that made me see this idea.

[00:10:27] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:10:27] Warren: And so she never lost her bike after that and what happened is I liked riding her bike better because you’re riding on a flower bike and everyone smiles at you. And they say, Moi fitz, my first words I learned, moi fitz.

[00:10:41] Mickelle: Beautiful bike, yeah, beautiful bike.

[00:10:42] Warren: Yeah, beautiful bike, or just moi, or you know, gesellig, all these words that you hear just riding your bike. So I put some on my bike too. And then we went back to Florida because yeah, it didn’t work out. She was not going to get better. There’s no other job possibilities.

[00:10:59] Warren: You know, we don’t have work permits. We just have a little sailboat and savings is gone. And I just have a little pension that we live on. And I thought, well, it’s not going to work. Let’s go back. And we’ll do that. Go back to her neighborhood, close to her parents. And that wasn’t a good idea because she doesn’t remember that.

[00:11:16] Warren: She doesn’t remember anything in Florida. She has no idea where she’s going. She remembers Amsterdam. We didn’t know that back then. She forgot everything before Amsterdam.

[00:11:25] Mickelle: Wow. So what happened when you went back?

[00:11:27] Warren: A nightmare for her. Depression and trying to work jobs that she can’t work her, the type of job that she’s qualified for.

[00:11:35] Warren: And she’s going back to Working at a grocery store and they don’t treat her right, you know, and yeah, it was miserable. And then getting lost in her own neighborhood on her bicycle. She can’t drive, so we live in a small town, Tarpon Springs, and everything is close by by. So the city right away knows us as The Amsterdam couple, you know, they don’t realize we’re, we’re actually from there where we fell in love in Tarpon Springs.

[00:12:00] Mickelle: Tell us that story. Tell us the story of you and Michelle falling in love.

[00:12:04] Warren: Yeah, it was both working at a grocery store. I was a manager and she was a milk masha, a dairy girl. She worked in the milk department. And I remember it clearly because I knew she worked there and But one day she was leaving work coming out of the coming out of the back to go clock out and I told the story before because it’s just so perfect.

[00:12:24] Warren: You know how women when they get off work and they take their hair down and they do this little shake their hair out. And then they grabbed her pants and they pull up the pants, and she shook her pants and did her hair, and she’s clocking out and going home. And I watch this, and I say to my friend, Who is that?

[00:12:41] Warren: Well that’s Michelle. Oh yeah, Michelle. Michelle got a boyfriend? And that was it. And I asked her out to the movies the next day, and that was December 11th, 99. And December 11th in 2000, we got married

[00:12:54] Mickelle: in Florida,

[00:12:55] Warren: in Florida, you know, she was staying at my house all the time. And within two weeks she was wanting to move in when it was that quick, her father was like, okay, I got to come meet.

[00:13:05] Warren: He’s got to come to dinner, you know, but now it’s a, it’s a beautiful story.

[00:13:11] Mickelle: It is.

[00:13:12] Warren: I knew it right away. And then, yeah, later with the Amsterdam just ah, became beautiful. Love those memories.

[00:13:20] Mickelle: Yeah. Of course. Thank you for sharing them. And so when you guys were in Florida, you made the decision to go back to Amsterdam because that’s where she remembers.

[00:13:31] Warren: It’s really part of her mother’s decision too. I promised I would never take her away again, you know, this is tough on her parents.

[00:13:38] Mickelle: Yeah. They know

[00:13:39] Warren: their daughter’s sick and they only get to see her once a year now. Other than this, every Sunday they call on the What’s Up and we have a video conversation.

[00:13:48] Warren: Every Sunday it’s, we used to always go for Sunday dinner. We lived close and at least every other Sunday we were at their house for dinner. Right. And laundry too. Michelle would do the laundry. That’s true. That’s true. But back in Florida, she was lost, basically. She knew the basics, but if she got confused, she would have a seizure on the street, on her bicycle.

[00:14:07] Warren: And many people in the town had seen this, they had seen her passed out, ambulances picking her up. Everyone knew.

[00:14:14] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:14:15] Warren: So it turned out it was this one intersection where you’re driving down Grand Boulevard in Tarpon. And if you turn right, it goes to the beaches and the parks. And if you turn left, it goes to the shops and her job.

[00:14:25] Warren: Mm hmm. Well, she’d had seizures there three or four times because she turns right and gets lost in these neighborhoods that head to the beaches, and then ended up, a ambulance comes. They call me. She’s in the hospital.

[00:14:37] Mickelle: Right.

[00:14:37] Warren: And it turns out she’s just confused. It wasn’t really confusion. It was a mental thing that I found out later during therapy.

[00:14:45] Warren: Turning right was something that happened when she was a child in her grandparent’s car. They would always go down that street and turn right and take her to the beach in the, in the park. 30 years later as an adult, she’s riding this, she needs to turn left, but something’s happening and she keeps turning right.

[00:15:00] Warren: She doesn’t know why. So that is where the first decorated flower bike of Amsterdam started. Right on that corner.

[00:15:07] Mickelle: That corner in Vlaardem. her

[00:15:09] Warren: of Amsterdam. It was to remind her of Amsterdam. The bike’s pointing this way. Never again did she have a problem. Actually, she could see the bike in it. She would turn before that intersection, the shortcut, and it just started a memory for her.

[00:15:21] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:15:21] Warren: And then people in the neighborhood said, Hey, I like those too. You know, we’ll keep an eye on her. You can put a bike in front of my house. A purple one, though. And they started requesting colors, and it ended up ten bikes up this street. It was only needed one or two, but 10 bikes up the street and then businesses in town, you know, the first business was a sponge diver supply.

[00:15:43] Warren: And that’s when I made the first sponge by covered with sponges and seashells. And, and it still sits in front of their little their ticket booth where they take people out on the tour boat out to the See dolphins and ocean stuff.

[00:15:54] Mickelle: Yeah. So I’ve been

[00:15:55] Warren: working with tour companies already. .

[00:15:57] Mickelle: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:58] Warren: Tour broke companies.

[00:16:00] Mickelle: So tell me, this is such a beautiful story, I just wanna, for everyone who doesn’t follow you like I do tell us a little bit what is going on with Michelle. What you know, so I know that it’s, you’ve discovered that what happened to her is epilepsy. Right? And then how has that manifested?

[00:16:20] Mickelle: ‘cause it seems like you guys have gone on a journey of. I mean, there’s epilepsy. Yeah, you’ll be on medicine, da, da, da. But it seems like you guys have had an extraordinary experience of helping Michelle in, you know, in this story. But I want to just pause here and tell us what you’ve learned about epilepsy and Michelle specifically.

[00:16:37] Warren: Well, I’ve learned that there’s not enough awareness to, for people to understand what it is.

[00:16:42] Mickelle: Yeah. What is it? Tell us.

[00:16:44] Warren: Epilepsy is unknown of how it started. I mean, People that can get epilepsy can get cured. That’s great because there is a simple reason. It’s either a lesion, a tumor, they’ve hit their head.

[00:16:56] Warren: There’s something, a toxicity, there’s something they can change to fix it. And that’s great for. But for most epileptics, there is no, there’s nothing, or it’s too deep in the brain to do operation on, or they just don’t know why. And this is really bad because you don’t see them. They just stay in.

[00:17:14] Warren: Like now, Michelle doesn’t feel well, and she’s in bed. And once she kind of passes out, you can’t wake her up. She’ll wake up, but she won’t be there. There’s at least eight different types of seizures. People think seizure, and that’s the shaking, convulsion, foaming of the mouth. That’s when it gets too far, that’s a grand mal, there’s aura seizures where you’re sitting there staring into nothing and as many times I ask Michelle, what are you thinking about?

[00:17:41] Warren: And for me, I can’t understand that you can actually think nothing. I mean, I I can’t do that. People go to yoga and guru trainings to be able to try to meditate and think nothing. And I’ve had deep conversation with Michelle and she can clearly, she’s thinking nothing. That’s hard for me to understand.

[00:18:01] Warren: You know, I’m thinking three other things right now while we’re talking. So those are the hardships of epilepsy and, and these types of things will cause weakness then. Like now, she’s had a rough day last night, and today she’s weak. Her legs are tired, When she has a slight seizure, it causes all these muscles and tendons in her shoulders and everything to get tight, and she’s got a really bad neck from it, you know?

[00:18:26] Warren: When she has a big seizure, she will turn, she turns and twists. And so everything in her neck and shoulder is just ripped up from years of this happening.

[00:18:34] Mickelle: Right.

[00:18:35] Warren: So those are the bad parts. So it’s contorting her body. The medicine keeps it from from having the big ones. But it doesn’t slow down the smaller aura seizures, the confusion, just being not there, and she has vertigo constantly, every day.

[00:18:54] Warren: Vertigo, which is it’s a dizzy feeling. It’s more like you know if you drink too much and you get double vision. Yeah. She has this every day, but it’s triple vision.

[00:19:03] Mickelle: Oh, wow.

[00:19:04] Warren: So it’s seen three things and she’ll still ride to the store now She’s gotten used to it now, but I remember years ago She’d be riding behind me and BAM smack right into a bollard, you know into an Amsterdam.

[00:19:17] Warren: It’s boom Michelle again, she doesn’t Michelle finally. She said to me one. I can’t tell which one of you is real. She’s following me It

[00:19:28] Mickelle: sounds like she’s pretty open like I really

[00:19:32] Warren: She doesn’t like to talk about it because there’s nothing can be done. And so she doesn’t want to beat a dead dog. Yeah,

[00:19:37] Mickelle: of

[00:19:37] Warren: course.

[00:19:38] Mickelle: But you are

[00:19:39] Warren: very, yeah,

[00:19:41] Mickelle: but you’re very articulate about the experience. I feel like I have an incredible insight into.

[00:19:50] Warren: I’ve read everything there is to read about it. I’ve documented everything in her diet, you know, I had a nice big book of everything I’ve tried. Okay. Cut out everything spicy. Okay. Cut out all the dairy. You know, let’s, let’s try everything we can try.

[00:20:05] Mickelle: And has there been anything that affects it? Besides your bikes that help her through the city.

[00:20:09] Warren: No, just stress. Keep her happy. Don’t don’t bring home any problems. Don’t create any problems. You know, it’s unfair like in a married couple. You know, you fight. You have arguments, you know. And this is this is necessary in a married life. Because then you make up and you get through it. You know, the problem with epilepsy is It’s not a proper fight, you know, I will always win in an argument, it’s, she will shut down and doesn’t push back, she will never push back, and you know, a man needs that, you know, a man needs his woman to push him back sometimes, it’s necessary in life, so, so I have to be careful with that, you know, make sure an argument doesn’t get too far, it’s difficult sometimes when you’re having your own stress, you know, and you’re looking for that partner to, to help, so that’s the only thing that That I don’t like about it.

[00:20:59] Warren: It’s not fair to her. So, and I have to be careful.

[00:21:01] Mickelle: Yeah, that’s an incredible amount of empathy and insight that you have there. That is, I think it’s just stunning and beautiful, Warren.

[00:21:08] Warren: It’s not that easy. I’ve not been a You know, I’ve been on the other end where I feel extremely guilty after having an argument and she’s in bed crying and passed out for the next day.

[00:21:19] Warren: And because of my fault over, over words.

[00:21:22] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:21:23] Warren: That’s yeah.

[00:21:24] Mickelle: Thank you for sharing that. And so I want to go back.

[00:21:28] Warren: We’re back, we’re back to Florida. We’re back

[00:21:29] Mickelle: to Florida. Yeah. I love these insights and what you’re saying is so beautiful. And so it feels almost, I mean, sacred. The way you’re talking about this, and I know your experience is not sacred, but the way you’re speaking about

[00:21:42] Warren: when you’re in love, when you’re in love, everything about it’s sacred.

[00:21:45] Mickelle: Yeah, I agree. I agree.

[00:21:48] Warren: There’s nothing nothing beats love. The most powerful force in the universe makes you do crazy things. So in Florida, after, you know, after she has these seizures, like I said, 14 times, she was taken to the hospital 14 by an ambulance because she’s in public. You know, she’s unconscious.

[00:22:08] Warren: They take her in. Now, they should know already what she is. Because, you know, they take her in. And in America, they go to the hospital right away. A CAT scan, maybe an MRI, blood test. Five different procedures. By the time I get there, I tell them, No! Stop! And, you know, that’s a 30, 000 bill now. But she doesn’t have money for it.

[00:22:27] Warren: And 14 times, do the math. She, she’s owing 800, 000 in medical bills now. For what? They’ve never done anything to fix it. You know, not a thing to just take her in, do the same tests, rack up these tests. You know, a CAT scan is 15, 000. For what?

[00:22:47] Mickelle: To tell you what you already know, which is that she has epilepsy.

[00:22:49] Warren: Right. You know, we raised money here through GoFundMe and went to the best scientists here, best doctors here, and To tell us the same. There’s nothing we can do. So, but at least here it was paid for by Amsterdam. People that love us and I got a good, okay. Keep the medicine. Keep her, keep her stress free.

[00:23:13] Warren: That’s, that’s the diagnosis.

[00:23:15] Mickelle: Keep her stress free.

[00:23:15] Warren: They want to change medicine, but I don’t like changing medicine. We did it once and that medicine was not good for her. It changed her. So.

[00:23:24] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:23:25] Warren: If it works better, it doesn’t matter because it changed her. So we can’t use it.

[00:23:30] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:23:31] Warren: But after this happening, she wakes up and she wants to know why aren’t we in Amsterdam.

[00:23:37] Warren: This is a constant thing. She like resets to 2004. I have a job though. Don’t I have a job? She kept believing she had a job. And her mother was the one that would see it happen in her house. She, you know, every Sunday, she’d go and do laundry at mom’s house, and papa’s house. And and they would see her have these seizures and wake up and be wanting to, Why are we here?

[00:23:59] Warren: I should be in Amsterdam. Her mother was the one that said, you, you must take her back. You have to go back to Amsterdam. There’s, there’s nothing here for her. There’s, it’s, she loves it there. She remembers it. And people love your bikes here. And, and Tarpon Springs. Now I had at least 10 businesses that had paid me to build a bike for them and put it in front of the shop because the tourists love it.

[00:24:21] Warren: It’s a little tourist Oceanside town. So yeah, it was a part of that little town and the parades and. Made Christmas bikes and everything. And so her mother and I thought, Yeah, Amsterdam will like it. I know they will. This is where it starts. And like what I always like to say is the bicycle saved me first.

[00:24:38] Warren: The bicycle I lost 80 90 kilos from. And now the flower bicycle has saved Michelle.

[00:24:44] Mickelle: So

[00:24:45] Warren: it’s a bike love affair, bike love affair restaurant. So it was her mother in 2018 that said, you, you got to do it. You know, things were not going good in Florida and yeah. So we sold everything again, packed up I packed 10 bikes, flower bikes into a quarter container with all our stuff.

[00:25:05] Warren: Put three flour bakes on the airplane. This is a good, a good hack, an airplane hack, right? For Dutch people. Because we take our bikes everywhere,

[00:25:13] Mickelle: right?

[00:25:13] Warren: You can go to a place with your bicycle. That’s a good idea. Well, if you put your bicycle in a bike box, right? The bike box is actually in the regulations of airplanes.

[00:25:25] Warren: Yes, you can take that instead of a suitcase and not be charged. 70 kilos. You can have 70 kilos in a bike box. So what do you do? You put your bike in the box, you put all your clothes and stuff in with the bike. Now you have one bike, one box, your bike, all your stuff. That’s how we did it. That’s amazing.

[00:25:43] Warren: We put all our stuff in the bike box, and I paid for one extra box, which was a smaller bike, and that was it. And we had barely any carry on, just a tiny carry on. Oh, and our cat, he had to go to, yeah, he’s an American. Oh, good. What’s his name? Sam.

[00:26:00] Mickelle: Sam. Hi, Sam.

[00:26:01] Warren: He has his own Instagram. Lucifer Sam ships cat.

[00:26:04] Mickelle: Nice. We’ll put that in the show notes. I haven’t, I haven’t seen Sam’s Instagram, but that’ll be really fun. So you brought, so I always say I moved here with five suitcases and five people. You moved here with two people, two bikes. And a cat.

[00:26:19] Warren: No, no. 13 bikes. 13 bikes. Oh, because you ship them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:24] Warren: Three on the plane and ten in the container.

[00:26:26] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:26:28] Warren: So when I got here, flower bikes got here at the same time.

[00:26:31] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:26:32] Warren: The first bridge was in Zeeburg. Oh, really? Zeeburg Zeeburger Bridge in the Oost.

[00:26:36] Mickelle: Oh, nice.

[00:26:37] Warren: And that’s where the bikes got delivered, and I lined them up on that bridge in 2018. And people were like, well, what, what’s going on?

[00:26:45] Warren: Who are you?

[00:26:47] Mickelle: I’m back. So, did you have a plan? Like, you, you landed with your bikes in a dream, basically. In a dream that, like, Michelle would feel better here, because this is the place she remembers.

[00:26:58] Warren: She was gonna feel better, and we had enough money to buy a small boat. And that’s what we’re going to do.

[00:27:04] Warren: There was no career type motivation. It was okay. I have this little bit of pension money to live on every month and I can afford to buy this boat and we’re going to just do it because it’s more, it’s healthier for Michelle to be here than not. So we may not be in the right immigration status or anything like that, but I found a way around it all.

[00:27:27] Warren: There’s 150 companies now in Amsterdam that have bought a bike for me. And I’ve never advertised. This is the main thing. You go to my site it doesn’t say I’m selling bikes or flowers or renting them. Well, now, now I am. That’s right. We made the rental bikes. But I’ve never asked, you know, Heineken contacted my Instagram to find out how they could get a Heineken bike made by me.

[00:27:51] Warren: That’s how it always worked. People contact my Instagram, then we talk about a bike.

[00:27:56] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:27:56] Warren: So, so it did work. I mean, we were right. Of course it worked. Everyone loves bikes and flowers in Amsterdam. Of course it worked.

[00:28:04] Mickelle: Yeah. And.

[00:28:06] Warren: And it wasn’t meant to be a business, just as a way to make awareness of our plight of epilepsy and, and our love for Amsterdam and, you know.

[00:28:16] Mickelle: It seems like it.

[00:28:16] Warren: We were forced to give it up. We were forced to give it up, and now I’m taking it back, you know?

[00:28:22] Mickelle: Yeah, it seems like it moves through you. This love of Amsterdam, your grandmother’s Dutch. You have this connection with your bike that gave you a second chance. And now it’s given you the ability to give Michelle what she needs.

[00:28:38] Warren: Yeah.

[00:28:38] Mickelle: And how is that?

[00:28:39] Warren: And anybody, you know, epileptic people don’t get out, you know, they usually get divorced and live alone.

[00:28:45] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:28:46] Warren: You know you don’t see people, Michelle gets out. She wants to do her own laundry. She wants to do shopping, but some days she might not leave for three, four days, maybe a week.

[00:28:56] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:28:56] Warren: A couple of years ago, she didn’t go out for almost a year, stayed inside our boat for almost a year. Wow. That was her trying to get used to, to vertigo that had gotten much worse. So Now she’s kind of used to it.

[00:29:10] Mickelle: Yeah,

[00:29:10] Warren: it’s

[00:29:12] Mickelle: like she gets a new, new challenge or something and then she has to adjust.

[00:29:17] Mickelle: So I’m curious about this. So she remembers being here when you came back, did that come, did those memories come back? And so is that part of what makes it much more comfortable to live here?

[00:29:29] Warren: Some, some. It may have taken her to areas where. Where I know she should remember but doesn’t, but then she remembers, you know, like she knows how to get to most of the center of Amsterdam.

[00:29:41] Warren: I call her and I say, I’m at Vondelpark. She can get there. Anywhere outside that area, she’ll start to get lost. And you know, it’s really just stress level. If she gets lost, she has her phone and she knows she can look at it and help herself out.

[00:29:58] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:29:59] Warren: And do you

[00:29:59] Mickelle: think, do you think the city

[00:30:01] Warren: She doesn’t get as stressed anymore.

[00:30:03] Mickelle: Do you think the city and how it’s How it works in general, how bike friendly it is, how, do you think that contributes to this, even if she wouldn’t have been, had the memories here?

[00:30:13] Warren: Yeah, I think it just makes it easier.

[00:30:15] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:30:16] Warren: For her, it’s a lot of also, she’s always caring for me, she’s always looking out for me.

[00:30:21] Warren: You know, she used to take care of me, so that’s still installed in her, so.

[00:30:24] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:30:25] Warren: You know, she’s always wants to carry things for me and do all these things. So she knows that life is easier here for me as long as I have a bike. Right now, the store is so close. We live in between the Yumbo and the Dirk.

[00:30:40] Warren: It’s like 50, 50, 75 meters to the Yumbo. I really should take my bicycle, but I walk. And by the time I get done with the Yumbo, I’m in pain from walking around the Yumbo and then walk back. I’ve walked 200 meters. That’s too much. That’s too much for me to do. So she does all this walking. I do it too, but then I end up in pain.

[00:31:05] Warren: I wish I could ride my bicycle into the jumbo. That’d be so perfect. But they’ll yell at you if you do that. They get so mad if you try to do that. And I’m like, well wait a minute, you let these people with scooters come in. Yep. What’s the difference?

[00:31:17] Mickelle: Yep.

[00:31:17] Warren: Do I

[00:31:18] Mickelle: gotta have a

[00:31:19] Warren: tricycle? Should I bring my tricycle?

[00:31:20] Warren: That’s your next,

[00:31:21] Mickelle: that’s your next move. I’ll

[00:31:23] Warren: bring my, I’ll bring my Bokfeets in.

[00:31:25] Mickelle: I, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.

[00:31:29] Warren: No, they don’t let you with the Bokfeets in.

[00:31:31] Mickelle: Well, and also the metro. You can’t go on the metro with your Bokfeets, which I think I’m always like, oh. So how un Amsterdam of you. As if I know what Amsterdam’s like, but we always think of bikes being ruling Amsterdam, especially after these ladies took it back.

[00:31:46] Mickelle: Not ruling,

[00:31:47] Warren: pedestrians rule. I mean, if you follow the law, pedestrians rule. You know, they’re number one. You can’t hit them with your bike. You’re at fault. Unless they jump out, you know, if you cross through an intersection and you hit a person, they have every right to step right out on those little zebra lines.

[00:32:07] Warren: You have to stop. Pedestrians are number one. That’s why I carry a music box playing really loud on my basket so they hear me coming and they get out of the road because the bell doesn’t work. You gotta make them think there’s a car with a loud speaker coming up the road behind them.

[00:32:23] Mickelle: That’s so true.

[00:32:24] Mickelle: That’s so true.

[00:32:25] Warren: But the best is seeing them dancing. People start dancing before they even see me. They’re dancing to the music and then I come up and they look and they’re like, Oh my God It’s the flower bike guy. That’s

[00:32:37] Mickelle: right. I actually saw you on the tulip day You rode by my house and I was like, hey, I’m talking to him this week

[00:32:44] Warren: And we were giving out tulips that day.

[00:32:45] Warren: Yeah,

[00:32:46] Mickelle: that’s amazing. Well, I saw you were riding with a bunch of people on the Prinsengracht, and I was like, oh, there’s one. So I see you, I see your bikes and you often around the city. I hope people will wave even more and see when they see you. They do all the time. Yeah, that’s amazing.

[00:33:02] Warren: It’s weird to to be somewhere and people want to take a picture with me.

[00:33:07] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:33:08] Warren: You know, they ask, can I take a photo and I’ll step away from the bike and they’re like, no, no, with you. Okay. Yep.

[00:33:13] Mickelle: Well, as it should be, right? Like you’re the, well, and I think your, your love, your story of your bikes and your story, your love story, which you’re now making me realize because Michelle doesn’t, isn’t as vocal on Instagram, you could get the impression.

[00:33:27] Mickelle: And I love that you have told the story that you’re just taking care of her, which is beautiful and wonderful. But what I have just. You’ve just given me, is that Amsterdam allows it so you can take care of each other.

[00:33:41] Warren: That’s it. That’s exactly it. We we fit in here. It’s working.

[00:33:46] Mickelle: It’s working.

[00:33:47] Warren: Yeah. She’s enjoying it.

[00:33:49] Warren: You know, we have a newer boat now. That’s because of Heineken, really. That big deal, they had charged them the most money out of anyone, because my friends told me to, they’re like, you can’t, you can’t charge them little money like you do, you know, I was like, well, why don’t you go with me and tell them what, what, what the price is.

[00:34:08] Warren: I couldn’t believe they, I could ask for a double.

[00:34:11] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:34:11] Warren: They didn’t care. But that money we put aside and, then we were able to buy a nicer boat and have a little bit more comfort. Now we’re in a Yacht Haven instead of just parked on the side of the canal.

[00:34:23] Mickelle: Yeah. Nice.

[00:34:25] Warren: But I don’t have a studio.

[00:34:26] Warren: So all the work done on bikes is done outside. Really?

[00:34:29] Mickelle: So on site, everything’s done on site.

[00:34:32] Warren: Or just at a park bench in the Northern Park, or I’ve worked on bikes at Vondelpark in Western Park. Just behind a building, next to a trash can, just to get out of the wind. So everything I’ve made has been made on the streets, and everything I’ve made is also the products I buy are from Amsterdam.

[00:34:50] Warren: Action Weaver, you know Bakewilder every Kringloop, every Kringloop Winkle in this city I know, and I shop in, and places will save me flowers, so I don’t order things online. Wow. I don’t care if Action buys it from China. I buy it from Action. So everything I’ve made is made in Amsterdam.

[00:35:10] Mickelle: Very cool.

[00:35:11] Warren: I don’t, I don’t order products. I don’t have an address to have things go to.

[00:35:16] Mickelle: So we our producer Ineke actually saw you working on a bike. She told me.

[00:35:22] Warren: Oh, yeah. She was super thrilled.

[00:35:23] Mickelle: Probably

[00:35:24] Warren: just on a bench somewhere. Yeah.

[00:35:27] Mickelle: And then we tried to send you something, which I still have for you. So I’ll I’ll send it to you.

[00:35:31] Warren: Yeah, yeah. I missed it. It was only there a day or something.

[00:35:34] Mickelle: It’s, I feel like packages in Amsterdam is like a sport. Like, male is like a sport. Yeah, I

[00:35:40] Warren: didn’t know that. I didn’t know you have to pick it up within a certain time. And they used to leave it. It’s like, oh, I’ll get the photo. It’s too rainy today to go over there.

[00:35:48] Warren: Yeah, yeah,

[00:35:48] Mickelle: yeah. Maybe I’ll hand deliver it sometime to you, but I, it occurs to me and I want to make sure we weren’t, but we’re two Americans who live in Amsterdam for very similar reasons. And we’re talking about Amsterdam and our love stories with it.

[00:36:03] Warren: So, why are you here? Where are you from, by the way?

[00:36:06] Mickelle: I

[00:36:06] Warren: didn’t ask.

[00:36:06] Mickelle: No, it’s fine. I’m interviewing you. That’s, you don’t have to ask. I’m from Salt Lake City.

[00:36:10] Warren: Salt Lake City, huh?

[00:36:12] Mickelle: Been there once. Yeah, it’s nice. Well, it’s a really beautiful place, but Amsterdam was just, like you said, you came for ten days and you stayed. You ended up moving back,

[00:36:21] Warren: stayed 20 days and then moving back five months later and

[00:36:24] Mickelle: five months is not that long.

[00:36:26] Mickelle: Yeah, it was for us too. It was like it’s Amsterdam. Two months later, we packed up our house and, and come. And it was very, we didn’t have a medical reason. It’s more like not spiritual, but like a feeling. And this was in 2016. So it was before. This new era of political stuff we have in our country. It was just before that, just this feeling that we needed to go to Amsterdam.

[00:36:49] Warren: I don’t even listen to that. Well, actually, I was fooled by it because when we decided to move back, leave Amsterdam and go back to Florida, I thought, well, you know, Obama’s in, maybe it was right as Obama had won. And things were going to get better.

[00:37:05] Mickelle: Well, they’ve changed.

[00:37:08] Warren: They went back, they went back and ended up.

[00:37:10] Warren: You know, getting a job at Publix, a grocery store, and getting paid, like, nothing. And she had experience. She has management experience. She had experience working in the grocery industry. She already knew everything she had to do. They paid her like, like a brand new employee. And then I watched another brand new employee who was a male.

[00:37:31] Warren: Get 2 more an hour. Same job. She has experience. He doesn’t. And he gets paid more. I’ve seen that first hand. It’s like, what? Warren,

[00:37:43] Mickelle: you seem to be quite a feminist. I like, I think it’s really, you, you’ve credited the, the

[00:37:47] Warren: I’m not a feminist. I’m a realist. You know, look, I would never, like champion for women’s rights and sports, you know why?

[00:37:56] Warren: Sorry, the WNBA is supported by the NBA. People don’t go to it. They don’t go to that for, and women do, but men that like basketball, they only go with their girlfriend. We don’t, you know, there is a skill difference there. You can’t get around that. I’m not a feminist in that support, but I do know that women aren’t paid right in the normal equal jobs.

[00:38:19] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:38:20] Warren: Like in the grocery industry, women are getting less than the men. Why? Doing the same, stalking the job. Yeah. No, it doesn’t. That’s not fair.

[00:38:28] Mickelle: It’s a, you’re a realist.

[00:38:30] Warren: Realist. Yes. I don’t like Trump, but I see some of the things that he pointed out.

[00:38:35] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:38:36] Warren: He’s a realist too. He’s a businessman will screw over his mother for a profit.

[00:38:41] Warren: Do we need that as a president? I don’t know.

[00:38:44] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:38:45] Warren: But I know that he has pointed out a lot of bad things that were bad.

[00:38:49] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:38:50] Warren: So you have to give that to him.

[00:38:51] Mickelle: Has that changed? Like, have you noticed the change from living? Because I think this is something that happens, I think, to everybody who lives in a different country.

[00:39:00] Mickelle: And it certainly has been true for me that I thought the world worked one way and I’ve learned. I guess I’ve seen the cult in every, I always say there’s a cult in every culture and I’ve seen kind of the outside of the American cult, which again, every country has it, but it just happens to be the one I’m from.

[00:39:17] Mickelle: How have you changed? Or have you, or have you always had the same perspective?

[00:39:22] Warren: I don’t know, I, you just see the bullshit easier, you know, cause you’re exposed to bullshit from day one in America. Like commercials, you know, you just see it easier. You see it when they try to do it here easier. You know, like commercials here are just like, oh man, that’s the type of commercial they ran in the 2000s, you know.

[00:39:40] Warren: Ugh. Yeah. It’s just that type of thing, you know. I don’t know, for me. It’s more about safety. I feel safer here. I’m not worried about the guy over there. Is he carrying a gun? You know, if I if I say something, you know mean to somebody is he gonna turn around and beat me up? That’s how I feel. It’s a lot less people are relaxed over here.

[00:40:05] Warren: They’re not quick fuses, you know,

[00:40:07] Mickelle: and

[00:40:08] Warren: that is changing, there’s a little more quick fuses happening and I don’t know if that’s an Americanism thing rubbing off on people or if it’s a social media thing from people being too gratified too much, you know, you can call on your phone and get anything you want now instantly.

[00:40:24] Warren: That’s causing a problem, I think.

[00:40:26] Mickelle: I agree.

[00:40:27] Warren: I think that’s the problem.

[00:40:28] Mickelle: I feel safer here. I want to tell you a bike story I have. It’s not a Flower Bike Man story. But when I was walking, when you have visitors come, they always, they’re on, they’re jet lagged. So often I walk around the city with them at night.

[00:40:41] Mickelle: And once I was walking around the city with my old colleague of mine and we were walking, it was, you know, fairly late at night and we were walking back to my house and in front of my house there’s two or three little kid bikes because I had little kids at the time. It’s a little pink bike and this gentleman who was maybe in his 20s, probably drunk or high, he picked it up.

[00:40:59] Mickelle: And just kept walking. And I said to him, my best mom voice, put it down. And he set it down and kept walking. And my friend just looked, turned to me and goes. I can’t believe you did that. They could have hurt you. And I was like, yeah, you’re right. I wouldn’t have done that in the U S but here people are afraid of mom voices.

[00:41:20] Mickelle: And so that’s my, I feel, I also feel safe here in that way. And maybe again, it’s changing. I agree.

[00:41:27] Warren: You know, I used to ride my flower bike in Florida, I’d ride a pink bike or whatever, but I also carried a pink gun in my pocket everywhere I went, always had a gun. Wow. This is the thing. Love not having to worry about carrying a gun.

[00:41:41] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:41:42] Warren: It’s a lot of responsibility when you actually have to use it, you know, I’ve had to use it.

[00:41:47] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:41:48] Warren: My bike story in Florida. You want to hear it? I’m riding, riding to my doctor on my flower bike on the bike trail in Pinellas County. It’s a 14 mile ride to my doctor, and after my surgeries, and I hear this woman, and this is another reason I never wear headphones, and women shouldn’t wear headphones.

[00:42:08] Warren: It’s dangerous. Yep. I’m riding, I got my speaker box, but I hear a woman screaming, help, help, and then I hear a man, and a thud, and I’m like, whoa, I stopped my bike. It’s just behind there’s a hospital just up a little bit and there’s a nurse out back and she’s smoking a cigarette and I look at her and I said, do you hear that?

[00:42:28] Warren: And she says, yes, I hear it. I’m calling the police. She’s calling the police. I parked my bike. I said, well, I’m going in there. And she says, don’t go in there. I said, hold on, I’m going in there. I pull my gun out. Thanks, son. I go in there, I see the woman’s bike on the ground, into the woods a little. I come around a tree and I see him and he’s got his arm around her neck.

[00:42:51] Warren: He’s pulling her pants down and he’s behind her. And, I came up and I hit him with the gun and I grabbed his hair and I’ll never forget he looks right at me and he’s I was in Iraq. This is what his words were. I was in Iraq. I hit him again. He said it again. I was in Iraq and I just grabbed him and dragged him out of there and got out to the to the bike trail.

[00:43:16] Warren: The police were pulling up and. Yeah. Then they beat the hell out of him.

[00:43:20] Mickelle: Oh.

[00:43:21] Warren: Yeah. He deserved to get beaten the hell out of, but not by the police.

[00:43:25] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:43:25] Warren: Not by the police. Yeah. That, that turned me off.

[00:43:28] Mickelle: Yeah. And

[00:43:28] Warren: I’m standing there and I’m like, Hey can I go to my doctor’s appointment? I, you know, I don’t want to watch this.

[00:43:35] Warren: And they’re like, you come to the station later and fill out a report. I go to the doctor, I come back. By the time I filled out my report, he had already pleaded out. He’ll be getting out in 2030 something, I guess. Yeah. Wow. But that’s America. A woman is not safe riding her bike, you know, that is, that’s America.

[00:43:55] Mickelle: Yeah. I, I have a similar feeling about that and it’s

[00:43:59] Warren: You’re more afraid of being drunk and no one’s going to bother you.

[00:44:02] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:44:03] Warren: Mostly. 99. 9 percent chance you can come home from anywhere in the city by yourself without a problem.

[00:44:10] Mickelle: Yep. On your bike, walking.

[00:44:14] Warren: Any, any, any of those things in the subway, whatever, you’re going to go home every time.

[00:44:19] Mickelle: Yeah. And that’s something that’s really special about the city and I agree that it’s getting A little bit different. I don’t know why because I, I’m not from here, but I do, I do see it as well, but I do really, really appreciate living here and, and also seeing your bikes. It always makes me feel like there’s a little wink.

[00:44:37] Warren: Yeah, it’s funny when people find out the man behind the bikes is from Florida.

[00:44:44] Mickelle: Yeah, yeah, I, of course, I thought that you were Dutch when I first thought about it, but

[00:44:49] Warren: the Dutch roots are there. So I blend in easily.

[00:44:51] Mickelle: That’s right. That’s right. And you know the words. And if you’ve had someone yell at you in Dutch, that’s in your family, I think that might count a little bit.

[00:45:01] Warren: I learned pigment right away.

[00:45:03] Mickelle: That’s right. That’s right. So what is?

[00:45:05] Warren: Actually, I didn’t learn it until I moved here later. I never knew what she had said until I heard the word Varken. I said, that’s what she said to me. And you know, I knew what she said, but she, she said Varken. And then she said, you disgusting pig and, and kept calling me a pig.

[00:45:22] Warren: And then later when I heard, Oh, that’s it clicked back of what she had actually, it was just her instant word from childhood, I guess.

[00:45:30] Mickelle: That’s right.

[00:45:31] Warren: Cause I had never been that I’d always been a healthy boy, always riding, always. You know, I’d never been overweight.

[00:45:39] Mickelle: And your grandmother, I should have asked, did she grow up in the States or did she grow up in the Netherlands?

[00:45:44] Warren: Her parents are from Friesland and Brabant.

[00:45:47] Mickelle: Okay.

[00:45:48] Warren: So, when her older brother, they were, they were pregnant, obviously, and from different religions in 1918, they couldn’t be married in the church. There, there was something wrong with Frisian people versus Holland people. So, so off to Florida they went.

[00:46:06] Warren: Where my grandmother was born is where, I don’t know, the goofy parking lot at Disney World in Orlando. That was where their farm was.

[00:46:14] Mickelle: Oh. Yeah.

[00:46:16] Warren: And Disney bought that up later in the 60s, and no farmland there now, now it’s Disney. My grandmother was born at Disney.

[00:46:25] Mickelle: Your grandmother was

[00:46:28] Warren: born At Disney World, yeah, before it was Disney World, so.

[00:46:31] Mickelle: Wow.

[00:46:32] Warren: I think it’s the parking lot is where their farmhouse was. Somewhere in that, where the parking lot is. That part of that area. And so she grew up on a farm not their farm. They worked for T. G. Lee Milk. And took care of the cows and then they had a little plot of land to grow. Then she worked for Martin Marietta for 35 years out of Orlando, so.

[00:46:53] Mickelle: Wow. Do you ever, do you ever think about that, how you’ve made that journey back?

[00:47:01] Warren: Yeah, it was interesting. You know, that was the reason to come here, really. It was kind of like, oh, some marijuana and see where my roots come from. And then we’ll go to Paris and it was a toss up because her family is like from the Black Forest in Germany.

[00:47:15] Warren: So we were like wanting to go there too, you know, but we ended up just staying in Amsterdam and haven’t been anywhere other than Amsterdam and surrounding areas. So,

[00:47:26] Mickelle: yeah, interesting. And so, cause I often think my family’s not, my, my heritage is not necessarily Dutch, but I often think about the stories we were told as kids.

[00:47:37] Mickelle: Mine was definitely, my family were, were my Mormon pioneers, many of them. And so I always think growing up, hearing

[00:47:43] Warren: that

[00:47:46] Mickelle: story growing up, I think it affects you.

[00:47:50] Warren: I think so.

[00:47:51] Mickelle: Yeah. And hearing that story that your, your grandparents couldn’t be married. So they left the country to, for love. I mean, that, that resonates deeply with me with your story.

[00:48:01] Warren: Yeah, they could be married, but not in the church.

[00:48:03] Mickelle: Right,

[00:48:04] Warren: yeah. But that’s the thing, is like, my grandmother really is anti religion.

[00:48:09] Warren: She’s completely anti religion. She grew up in a farm in under Baptist Southern Baptist type area. And the story she told me is that once a month, you know, or every other month, the pastor of the church would come to their house on Sunday, for Sunday dinner, and and they The family, her father and mother, when he would leave, he would pack his trunk up with eggs and vegetables and food that they would give the pastor.

[00:48:37] Warren: And she always hated that because for the next week, her and her brothers would starve. They would have nothing to eat because they gave it all to the pastor for his donation to the church. You know, and this is that she really hated that, you know, because they would. Be hungry for the next week. And so she was when she raised me a little, she was very anti religion to me.

[00:48:57] Mickelle: I can imagine. She

[00:48:58] Warren: didn’t tell me not to, but she implored on me to expand and look at everything into religion. It’s not about religion more and it’s about you. That’s what she always said.

[00:49:09] Mickelle: And does that, does that still resonate today?

[00:49:11] Warren: Yeah, I mean, I believe in religions, but they’re about people, you know everyone has a right to believe whatever, but in my belief, it’s really us, it’s, you know, religion is in us, God is in everybody, it’s, it’s the reason that you choose right and wrong, you know it from a child, you know, you know it right away when you’re a child, you don’t need someone to tell you, what is that?

[00:49:34] Warren: That is soul, that is God, that is something. And man tries to put a name on it and give it a name, and we really can’t. What name is it? Love. That’s what it is.

[00:49:44] Mickelle: And you said it at the beginning. What did you say at the beginning of our, our conversation? Love is everything. It’s the most powerful. You say it again.

[00:49:52] Warren: It’s love is the most powerful force in the universe. You cannot predict it. You can’t meter it. You can’t buy it. You can’t sell it. You can’t search for it. It just happens. And you don’t know why. So, that is, there’s nothing more powerful than that. The universe is predictability. Everything is on schedule and there’s a reason behind it all.

[00:50:15] Warren: Love breaks that mold completely. There is zero reasons and no one can ever tell you why. They can do science reasons about the about your blood pressure and all these things. That’s actually lust. That’s lust. That’s a visual stimula of something that you would crave, you know. That’s not love. Blind people concur.

[00:50:34] Warren: Fall in love. Why? They didn’t see anything.

[00:50:38] Mickelle: Yep.

[00:50:38] Warren: So.

[00:50:40] Mickelle: That is so true. And I think that that’s what comes through in your work and in your story. And that you run, it runs very much through you, I think, is this love.

[00:50:53] Warren: That’s why I get hurt so bad when people hurt my bikes. It’s like they’ve hurt my child, you know?

[00:50:58] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:50:59] Warren: I’ve lost, I’ve lost 20 of them last year.

[00:51:02] Mickelle: 20 bikes.

[00:51:03] Warren: Very violent. 20 bikes. Yeah. Nine of them have been burnt to the ground, and the others were completely just ripped apart, broken, destroyed. Is this? There’s a stalker out there somewhere.

[00:51:15] Mickelle: Really? People are burning them to the ground, you said?

[00:51:18] Warren: Yeah, nine.

[00:51:20] Warren: Wow. Burnt to the ground. And it was like on every Sunday night, every Sunday night for like six months, something bad was happening.

[00:51:29] Mickelle: Hmm.

[00:51:30] Warren: So do you keep Someone did it. I got videos of the person that put it on fire. You know, a hoodie and You don’t really have a video of anyone. It’s just a, this person shape.

[00:51:42] Mickelle: Do you think, do you think it’s your work or it could also do, do with the symbol of what you’re doing? The bike? I have no

[00:51:50] Warren: idea.

[00:51:51] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:51:51] Warren: No idea. I have speculations on everything, but I can’t. You know, say why maybe it’s my fault because I said something mean to somebody, you know, I’ve had many online stalking to really threaten me online and stuff.

[00:52:06] Warren: Yeah, so I can’t really speculate why all I can say is they’re cowards, because they can’t have a conversation with me as to why because, you know, destroying somebody’s property, there’s no reason for it. So cowardly. And who can this person tell? Can he go on a podcast and say, Oh, I burnt those stupid bikes because I hate tourists.

[00:52:27] Warren: You know, yeah, I can’t tell anyone. So in the end of it all, this person gets a a smile, right? For destroying it and burning it. He stood there and smiled and was proud of his work. That means I still win. I created that for you. You wouldn’t have that otherwise. You’d be a miserable person without anything.

[00:52:45] Warren: Well, now you got to enjoy something. So I still win.

[00:52:48] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:52:49] Warren: Simple as that.

[00:52:50] Mickelle: Yeah. I’m really sorry to hear that’s happening. I’m really happy to hear that you’re able to still win, but I’m really sorry that’s happening.

[00:52:58] Warren: I was getting upset and I just, I took a lot of bikes away and hit them and And I wasn’t going to do anything.

[00:53:05] Warren: And then the Stadster style organization, and I had promised to make them two bikes for the seven 50. And I was like, Oh yeah, that’s right. Okay. I got to make your bike. And then someone else said, all right, I’m obligated now. Damn it. So a little second life and a little different strategy. I’m not going to put them out on so many bridges that aren’t surrounded by friends and

[00:53:31] Mickelle: now

[00:53:31] Warren: where they are, there’s people that are watching them.

[00:53:34] Warren: Cameras and such so

[00:53:35] Mickelle: that’s great

[00:53:37] Warren: or maybe the person got it gave up because I didn’t who knows who knows Well, you’ve but that’s not the point that just hurts me Financially really doesn’t hurt me Emotionally, it’s not going to change anything. Pictures and millions of pictures of those bikes are still out there.

[00:53:58] Mickelle: Well, I want to thank you. I think this is a great place to, to stop. I want to thank you for coming on, but I also want to thank you for your artwork and what it’s bringing to the world and for sharing your story about you and Michelle. It’s really, not only does it touching, but it’s just such a powerful and enduring example for all of us of what it, what love is.

[00:54:23] Mickelle: And so I think you, you live and breathe and exude love. So Warren, I’m just such so pleased I could talk to you today. I really, I really enjoyed talking to you and I really enjoy seeing your work around the city.

[00:54:34] Warren: Like I said, you know, there is, there’s no cure for Michelle. There’s only love. So that’s all I have.

[00:54:40] Warren: Love is the cure.

[00:54:41] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:54:42] Warren: And that will be my forever message, love is the cure, and that fits anything, not just Michelle.

[00:54:49] Mickelle: Yeah.

[00:54:49] Warren: Any problem we have, only love can cure it, and that’s the solve of everything.

[00:54:54] Mickelle: That’s the answer.

[00:54:55] Warren: So if you have love, if you have love, you can give forgiveness, and that’s the hardest point.

[00:55:02] Warren: That’s the biggest thing to solve problems is forgiveness, and without love, you’ll never forgive. So.

[00:55:08] Mickelle: Yep.

[00:55:09] Warren: And that doesn’t mean loving someone else, you gotta love yourself to be able to forgive someone.

[00:55:13] Mickelle: That is so true. Thank you so much, Warren.

[00:55:16] Warren: Have a beautiful day. You as well, thank

[00:55:18] Mickelle: you. Okay, that’s it for today.

[00:55:22] Mickelle: I hope you’ve enjoyed our show. For the latest insights on living internationally, join us at HouseofPeregrine. com to find out how you can connect with our community. Let’s craft our life story with intention, together.