I work in Haarlem and live in the Haarlemmermeer so I know what you are talking about

And still the main problem is indeed finding the womens groups around here. There is a club on the north side of Amsterdam which has a fair number of cat. 3 women (so I'll probably join them). And there are three womens roadbike trainings group, one has their meeting point at the east side of amsterdam, the other group at the east side of Amstelveen and the last one is further away at the north east side of Utrecht. But there are less then 500 women in the netherlands who have a competition license and most of them live in the south or east of the country.

And AH does make nice shopping bags, they also now have bags with a hamster on it.