2,500 Bikes Look a Lot Alike At Amsterdam Central

At 5:45 p.m., a hysterical woman with shoulder-length blond hair, a briefcase and a wailing toddler is standing outside the yellow box. The woman is screaming -- in Dutch -- at one of Cullen's colleagues.

"First thing they tell you is, 'My bike was stolen,' " Cullen translates, shaking her head.

Perhaps that is because almost every Dutch bicyclist has had his or her bike stolen -- at least once. An average of 800,000 bikes are reported stolen every year.

Cullen says her first question is always the same: "Have you looked around?"

"They say, 'Yes, of course.' I ask them, 'What color is it?' 'Black, lady's,' they say. I tell them, 'There are 2,000 black lady's bikes here! Put something on the bike you can recognize -- plastic flowers, ribbons, anything.' "

Some folks do that. They twist plastic flowers around the handlebars, they strap black plastic milk cartons to the back, they stick goofy cloth flowers to the seats. A rare few venture from the classic black or gray paint job and go wild -- pink with red hearts, for instance.

At 5:49, Michele Jacobs, moderator for the Radio Netherlands program "The State We're In," is not in a good state.

"I don't know where I put my bike," she moans, scanning a seemingly endless row of bike seats. "Mine's got a high seat -- sticks up way above all the rest. Otherwise, it's a raggedy old gray bike with a smashed-up reflector light."

To make matters worse, it's not really her bike. A friend lent it to her because hers had a flat tire. And she parked the bike here two days ago, making her memory even fuzzier.

Many lost bikes stay lost and become abandoned, another big headache for the garages. Others end up that way because students take off for holiday and leave their cycles parked for months. People lose their keys and don't go to the trouble of replacing them or cutting the locks. Other people simply forget they left their bikes.

Four times a year, Cullen and her crew mark every bike on the lot with an orange tag. Owners are told to tear off the tag when they pick up their bike. After one month, any bike that still has an orange tag is taken away. Cullen says they usually clear out 500 to 600 in each sweep.

At 5:50 p.m., a woman in a tan raincoat pushes her bicycle down the exit ramp, balancing a towheaded baby on the seat and an extra-large package of disposable diapers over the rear wheel. A man in a brown suit struggles to shoulder a cello and remain upright on his cycle.

Suddenly, at 5:51 p.m. -- 13 minutes after she started her hunt -- Mireille emerges from a tangle of cycles. She is pushing a gray one with a thick lock snaked over the handlebars.

A broad smile of relief creases her face.

"I found it!"