The cool, colorless, concrete corridors of the city were swarmed with swift cyclists swooping and swerving past each other like X-wing fighters in the Battle of the Death Star.  There's nothing quite like the morning commute in Amsterdam.  And then I saw her -- the poor girl -- on the far side of the Wibautstraat.  Her bicycle was upside down, propped up by its seat and handlebars, and she was crouched next to it, desperately tugging at the chain.  The relentless crowd of commuters streamed past, obscuring any accurate understanding of what had actually happened.  I wanted to stream past, too, as I was running late for a meeting -- but felt compelled to stop and offer my services.

"Heb je hulp nodig?"  I asked, with a friendly smile.

"Umm... Yah... Help?" She responded, in an Eastern European accent, apparently hoping that English might serve as a common denominator.

"Do you need help?" I responded.  Her wrinkled eyebrows and wordless gesture toward the bicycle made it obvious that help was appreciated.  So I popped off my bike, flipped down the kick-stand with my foot, and crouched down beside her to assess the damages.

It wasn't pretty.  The girl's long, loosely woven scarf was wrapped in and around and through the chain and the back wheel of the bicycle.  I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have been wearing the scarf while it all happened.  Before I arrived on the scene, the girl had probably tried to crank the pedals a few extra times to see if the scarf could be emancipated -- because, no exaggeration, it was probably wound around eight or nine times.  As I tried looking at it and tugging at the scarf, nothing could be moved any further.  Not even a milimeter.  It was impossibly jammed.  I felt frustrated and exasperated for her.  "I was on my way to work," she offered.  There was very little that I could do, without any tools and without any time.  But I felt that perhaps it was best to simply choose to remain in the impossible situation with this stranger.  It seemed like the neighborly thing to do.  The human thing to do.

I scanned the scene, looking for a solution, and my eyes chanced upon a Kwik-Fit automotive tire store / garage about 30 meters away.  "Let's take it there," I suggested.  And having locked my own bicycle's wheel lock, I hoisted the upturned bicycle onto my shoulder and ambled toward the Kwik-Fit.  I figured they must have a wrench we could borrow, at least.  I carried the bicycle in and explained our plight to the middle-aged Middle-eastern man behind the desk.

"We repair cars, not bikes," he responded to me in accented Dutch.  Typical city manners.  He had no compassion; he was bothered to be bothered with some stupid situation like this on a Monday morning.

"Please," I entreated in my best, most-polite Dutch, "if we could just borrow a wrench, I could fix it myself."  The important man's co-workers, standing on either side of him, seemed more sympathetic.  And indeed, as I sprayed my plea in their direction, as well as toward the bothered mechanic, one of the others offered to go and get me a wrench.

"Just take that thing out of my garage!" the difficult one yelled after us.  "You can fix it out on the sidewalk."  Such classic cynicism.  I brushed it off like a pesky mosquito and thanked the other worker for his help in supplying the key for unlocking our problematic situation.  As I loosened the nuts holding the back wheel in place, we were able to finally slip the chain from the sprocket and create enough slack for us to gradually untangle the scarf from the bicycle.  It came loose in small centimeters at first, then in handfuls of fabric.  Finally, it was free.  Perhaps not ever wearable again, but at least it was free.  She rode off with a smile on her face -- doing her best to make up for time on her way to work -- and I returned to my bicycle with my own quiet sense of liberation.

Sometimes, it's the littlest things that make the biggest differences.