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May 13 Saturday AM 6º C -- PM 14º C cloudy dismal windy Bicycle touring Belgium and Holland Cut off the bike path to head into a town to buy bread and another map. I bought a map and then went and stood in the bread line. My fully loaded touring bicycle was leaning against the bakery's storefront window. A fellow ahead of me, pointed at my map, and asked where I was going. I told him where we were headed and he kindly showed me a good cycling route on secondary roads. The fellow ahead of him spoke English and helped to translate. When I got to the counter I asked for a loaf of whole wheat bread. The worker took a loaf off a high shelf (which looked white to me, but what do I know?) As she put it into the slicer, I said, No. (I didn't want it sliced.) The fella who spoke English saw the white loaf and bread and said, "You asked for whole wheat didn't you?" "Yes," I confirmed. "That's not what I'm getting, is it?" He said something in Flemish to another woman, and then said to me, "It's coming." It's good to have friends in high places. When I exited the bakery (now called brood), he was waiting outside to ask if I needed water. We still had enough from last night's fill up, so I declined his kind offer. Sharon was waiting across the street by a church. She had wanted to look inside while I was buying bread, but the church was locked. I told her about the guy asking if we needed water. "Did you ask him if he could make it in the form of a shower?" she asked. We looked at our new map and noticed that if we had continued cycling along the canal without a map, we would have turned just up ahead and gone southwest. Luckily we stopped cycling along the canal just where it begins to bend down. We cycled north along secondary roads. Most have a bike lane adjacent to the main road. Of course, heading north puts us dead into a howler of a north wind. We struggled to the Dutch border and took refuge behind the now deserted border crossing station. Across the way, the Belgian border station has been converted to a gas bar and restaurant with a bank for money exchange. We ate for a while and then fiddled with the clicking pedal on my neglected touring bicycle (to no avail). We waited hopefully for the wind to die down -- or better yet, change direction. No such luck. I suppose it will blow that way when we return from Holland. To add to our cycling misery, a few drops of cold rain fell. A solitary cyclist on a one-speed clunker laboured past in painful pedal revolutions. Across the way, a trucker meeting of some sort is taking place. When we arrived at the border there were no trucks in the parking lot; now there are forty. They honk their air horns as they pull out onto the highway in one long, steady stream. I'm glad they all didn't have to pass us. That might have beat our Spanish cycle touring record for number of trucks in a row. The legendary bike paths of Holland began. We cycled a well marked route that read Rotterdam. Sometimes the bike path parallels the freeway with only a low hedge between us and traffic; other times the bike path meanders through fields or turns off to go through a town. Either way, the bike path is better than having to constantly worry about cars. Where trees line the path, it is quite sheltered. A father-son training team passes us in the opposite direction. They fly by, the wind pushing at their backs. They are the same pair who passed us yesterday just before we set up camp. It is my Mom's birthday today. I want to phone Dad before he leaves for work in the morning, so I can get the hospital phone number and have him plug in the phone in her room. We turn off the bike path and onto a small road that goes to a marina. We see a phone by the dock. We pull our bikes in through the open sliding bars that secure the grounds at night. A fellow is walking up from the harbour. "You looking for a boat back to Canada?" he jokes. "I thought I would phone first and make sure it's still there," I reply. He says he would normally invite us for supper, but he has been invited to his sister-in-law's birthday party. "Just give us your keys," I joke. He asks where we're staying tonight. "Haven't got a clue," I respond truthfully. "Maybe around here," I say, and point to Dordrecht on my map. "I live in Dordrecht," he says. "Do you have a small backyard for our miniscule cycle touring tent?" "No, I live in a flat," he says. "Isn't all of Holland flat?" I quip, which he wisely chooses to ignore. "You can sleep in the living room and put your bikes in the kitchen," he says. Then adds, "Or else they will go missing." He says, "I won't be home until 10 PM, but with this wind, it will probably take you that long to get there anyway. It's a Force 7 today," he informs us. "What does that mean?" I ask. "It means it's damn windy," he says. Gee, I hadn't noticed. "I don't go out sailing if it's higher than 6." "How high does it ?" "Twelve." "Bloody hell. You mean this is half?" He wisely ignores me again and writes his name and address on the back of an Esso coupon. I glance at the writing. His name reads W. van Verseveld. "William?" I ask. "Walter," he says. "Which you would have got on your second guess since that's all the W names." "Wendy," I say ... which he again ignores. He goes to wash his hands as he's been starting the motor on his sailboat. I make sure I don't say anything about a motor on a sailboat. We approach the phone booth with some trepidation. Phones in Europe haven't always gotten along well with us in the past. And we have neither coins nor a phone card. I figure I'll try some Belgium coins first, and then go ask someone in the marina on how to use public phones in their country. Lo and behold the instructions on the phone are in English. Crikey. I love cycle touring in Holland already. The phone says it accepts credit cards as well as phone cards. To make a call overseas without either credit card or phone card, just push the button marked "Special Functions" it says and follow the directions on the screen. I do. A list of countries appears alphabetically. I scroll to Canada and push the button beside it. It automatically dials. A voice says, "Welcome to Canada." Very slick. Why can't other countries be so phone friendly? I place a collect call to Dad (which Walter said is some birthday present, but typical of kids). Dad answers in the kind of thick voice that sounds as if you have been horse drugged. He says that Mom had her fourth chemo treatment on Friday (two to go) and he was at the hospital late. He says he will wish her happy birthday for us(and Mother's Day too, which is tomorrow). He says Mom has been doing well and is putting on some much needed weight -- she's up from a mere 80 pounds to a whopping 93! Way to go, Mom. Good job. Keep eating. Someone must be slipping contraband in with the hospital food. I plan to phone next on the 21st of June, so they can wish me happy birthday. Mom's sixth chemo is on June 23, and then she is expected to be home by the end of June. We're fifteen kilometres from Dordrecht. I go into the marina's washroom to fill my water bottles. The toilet bowl that greets me is none like I have ever seen before. There is a little shelf before the flush exit hole where your poo would sit for a self examination before making the final long trip. Interesting. I'm sure mine would look like a Snickers bar -- I've eaten so many of them lately. We get back on our fully loaded touring bicycles and retrace our route back to the bike path. As we cycle along, we keep an eye out for a sheltered spot for supper. We stop under a freeway bridge which is sort of sheltered, but it is busy and noisy. I'm afraid that if we stop now, we will indeed end up cycling in the dark. We cycle on and arrive in Dordrecht. We see an info board with the town map. We look up Walter's street name and chart a route. We arrive at his place about 8 PM. The building is a row of flats three stories high facing a small canal. I assume the parking at the end of the street is for tenants. Sharon says maybe they have underground parking. Looking at the canal, I say it would probably be underwater parking. All of the stalls are filled. "Did you notice what kind of car Walter drove?" I asked. "Nope." "How about a license number then?" "Nope." I begin to think Sharon has been getting lax in the observation department lately. "I'm going up to check if he's home," I say. (He lives on the top floor, of course -- great for carrying fully loaded touring bicycles up and down flights of stairs.) Maybe he's back already, I figure. He had mentioned he wasn't in the good books with his brother and wife since his recent divorce ("You're a beast," my brother told me. "But she left me," I remind him.) So, needless to say, Walter isn't fond of going there to visit. I grasp the handrail and pull myself up the first of three flights of steep stairs. I knock on the door. In a few seconds Walter comes to the door rubbing his eyes and glancing furtively at his watch. "I fell asleep," he mumbles. It's the second time today I've been a wake-up call. "I still have to go to my sister-in-law's. Is that right? Sister-in-law's?" I think it will be sister-out-laws. As if he wasn't already on the shit list. He was supposed to go for supper. "Maybe they'll throw me a hamburger on the front steps," he says. We go downstairs together to meet a surprised Sharon. Walter hops in his car. "I'll be back at 10." We take the city map Walter has given us and Sharon and I walk to a couple of nice spots Walter had pointed out. They probably would have been nice too, if it wasn't freezing cold with a strong wind. It is now 4º C. Brrr. We ride our touring bikes along various canals looking at the boats harboured in the middle of downtown. Very cool. The "Big Church" has four gold-faced clocks on its tall clock tower. The downtown area is deserted. It is like we are in a huge open air museum after it has closed. All the streets are brick, cobble, or a mixture of the two. We see some neat views between buildings of the canals and buildings lining the canals. Dordrecht is the oldest city in Holland. It has a charm to it. The building facades are ancient, but glancing through the residents' many glass windows we see modern interiors. We cycle past a bank machine and return to make a withdrawal. The exchange board says 1.13 Cdn $. As usual, my card won't work. We try two other banks, with the same sad results. The banks we tried don't use the Visa Plus system and my Cirrus card has expired. Oh, well. Nothing is open tomorrow anyway and we have enough food to tide us over until Monday. Several people speak to us. Already Holland has turned out to be far friendlier than cycle touring Belgium. It helps when they speak English, too. After an hour or so, Sharon complains that she's cold. I pull on my old rain coat and figure I will probably live. Sharon was complaining the other day that all we do is ride our bikes and set up our little cycle touring tent at night and never do anything different. "I wish we had just set the tent up in that little patch of trees we saw," she laments. "I thought you said you wanted to do something different." "Freezing to death isn't what I had in mind." We cycle to the train station and we were going to go inside to warm up, but we were numb anyway, and it was almost 10 PM, so we cycle back to try and find Walter's apartment building. Where is that church clock tower again? We had thought of going into a café, but when the door opened and a puff of blue marijuana smoke drifted out, Sharon changed her mind. Not that it's my kind of place either. I kidded Sharon that it might be her kind of place, she just doesn't know it yet. Welcome to one of the Netherland's famous Brown Cafés. We pedalled up to Walter's place and I had just pulled out a Snicker's bar and taken one bite when Walter pulled up. Rather than haul our fully loaded touring bicycles up all the narrow flights of stairs to Walter's flat, he decided to look in the storage room. We looked, but decided it would take a month of Sundays reorganizing before we might be able to squeeze our bikes in. There's a balcony, but the corner to get to it is too tight for the bikes to get around. I tell Sharon I'll go up and catch our touring bikes if she throws them up. In the end, we end up taking the steep stairs. Sharon on the handlebars, Walter and I on trombone. Walter's baggage handling career is short-lived as he bends his thumbnail completely back. To get my touring bicycle up to Walter's we decide to unload my bike before bringing it up. This works better in some ways, but entails multiple trips up and down the steep flights of stairs. Inside the flat, we lean our bikes against one another and lean them both against a computer table that lines a wall. These Dutch apartments are small! A small table with two chairs overlooks the canal. There's a floor to ceiling length window. Curtains on two sides with the middle portion pulled up in graceful folds accordion style to the ceiling. A lamp of wire mesh with one centimetre squares is interspersed with tiny mini Christmas lights that twinkle at randomly spaced intervals. "I made it," Walter admits when I comment on it. He works for a steel company. He used to travel a lot to Mexico and Brazil. He's lived in the flat for two years "officially" he calls it, but he's only been here about five months due to hid out-of-country travels. He used to own a house by the town where the marina was, but he sold it after his divorce. Walter has three kids. The oldest girl is 19, another girl 16, and a son, 14. Walter's birthday is December 9. He is 44. He has been thinking about sailing around the world, but hasn't committed yet. He seems like the kind of guy who once he says he's going to do something he does it. "What do you miss most?" he asks us. In a turn of events, I say, "Hot showers." Sharon grins, and adds, "Family and friends." "I've talked to a lot of people who have sailed around the world," Walter says, "and they say loneliness is their biggest problem -- especially if they go solo." I imagine that must be true. Quite unlike bicycle touring where we're right out in the world with the rest of people. Can't imagine there'd be many people out in the middle of the Pacific. "It must be expensive to sail around the world," I say. "Oh, no," Walter says. "People I've talked to do it for $10,000 a year." "That's less than our food bill," I quip. "They catch a lot of seafood," Walter says. And, I'm guessing, they wouldn't eat as much as touring cyclists because their energy output wouldn't be as high. Walter gets three beers from a little fridge -- Lentebok -- made in Belgium. When I comment on this fact, Walter says Heineken is good, but people have drank too much of it and are tired of it. The Lentebok beer is smooth. We have crackers and a French cheese spread. Chunks of light sausage are cut on the side. Ah, fine dining, bachelor-style. Soon it is 1:30 AM. Walter suggests we should have a shower soon as he wants to have a shower and go to bed and three in the shower is a little crowded, he says. "You go first," Sharon says to Walter, thinking he will then be able to go to bed while we shower. "Thank you," Walter says. "But there may be a problem. The shower is in my bedroom." After Sharon and I have finished showering, we look out the window overlooking the canal, street below and busy bike lane. Cyclists are going past under the illumination of street lamps. "All hours -- all the time," Walter says as we watch the constant parade of cyclists stream past. We lay out our bicycle touring mats on the living room floor. Walter says we can stop the ticking pendulum clock if we wish. We leave the clock and shove in earplugs instead. Ticking clocks are not usually something we have to contend with when we're free wild camping in the woods. |
