Biking to Paris (première partie)

August 3, 2010 to August 13, 2010

The Photos

Right before we left Amsterdam, we stayed with Cathelijne and Renée.  A couple we met in Guatemala, who live in Amsterdam.  We got to talking about how awesome it was to meet once and then again so much later and so far from the original spot.  Then Cathelijne pulls out her journal to see what it said about the meeting.  It wasn’t even in there, BUT it did inspire me to track more of the day to day of this amazing bike trip we were undertaking.  So in an attempt to give you, our loyal readership more current information than you have been getting from us, I’m going to transcribe that journaling here for your enjoyment.  I think I will leave it out of the sequence, as other posts finally get written and then possible comment on this portion of the trip in a separate post once I get to it chronologically.  Blogs you can expect to show up later: Costa Rica, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago and Amsterdam.  I guess it’s hard to live and write about it at the same time.

However, as the editor of this rag, I reserve the right to change my mind.  I also reserve the right to add details that I didn’t write in my journal at the time.

August 3 ~ Biking to Paris Day 1  Late start, after several stops to get new center kickstands and food and mailing a package and who knows what else.  Arrive to Amsterdam’s Central station close to 12 or 1 and start the route I found online.  The first result in a Google search of ‘Bike route Amsterdam to Paris’.  After biking around the city for a month, I really thought I was ready to undertake such a trip.  The first day showed me how wrong I had been.  It was hard work, damned hard.  Compounded by the fact that suddenly my derailleur quit changing gears for me.  Now I don’t have much biking experience, in fact I don’t even know how to properly use the gears, but I do know that biking all the way in first gear is going to wear me out.  Despite this hiccup, we have what feels like a long day of biking, accomplishing about 30 miles, to arrive in Utrecht.  Fortunately Cathelijne and Renée suggested a campground for us, unfortunately nearly everyone we asked directions of didn’t know it existed.  Eventually we follow a little old lady though a city park to the road the campground is on.  First night in our new tent, with our comfy sleeping pads and cozy sleeping bags.  It all works perfectly and we sleep cool and snug all night long.

August 4 ~ No Movement.  We wake up to bunnies nibbling nearby and a pond full of ducks and geese.  Spend almost all day in a bagel coffee shop to internet for bike route GPS manipulation and Flick’r uploading.  This gets us completely caught up on photo uploads before an indeterminable amount of time without internet.  The bike shop very close by fixes the shifty cable and tells me that it got snapped by the other repair shop that put on the awesome kickstand.  I’m hoping this trip is not a bike shop to bike shop tour of the Netherlands, Belgium and France.  I also buy bike caps to cover our seats which are super squishy and don’t require us to wear bike shorts but are showing wear.  We head to a great little bar for dinner and then to the movies to see Inception.  What a great movie.  Dutch movie theaters are strange though, because they have assigned seating and despite buying our tickets fully an hour before showtime we got crap seats!  Also at a really intense moment of the movie ... there was an intermission!  Great timing as the line to the restroom testified, but still weird.

August 5 ~ Leave Utrecht.  Long painful day of biking.  Getting out of cities seems to make Gregory tense and hurried.  This does not help when I’m immediately confronted by steep hill climbs and both knees hurting.  Not sure why I am having knee pain but I am.  I put the ace knee wrap I bought after walking across Golden Gate Bridge on my left knee and it seemed to help some.  During late afternoon stop in Gorinchem to rest in the town square, we see a fellow biker with a really cool trailer.  We follow our GPS breadcrumb trail to a ferry dock.  We have NO idea of which ferry we are supposed to take and end up on the same ferry as the biker we had just seen.  Gregory strikes up as conversation with him as we shuttle ‘up’ the river to a tiny Dutch fort outside of Woudrichem.  Bad Breath Albert, our fellow biker, says he’s headed to a campsite relatively close by so we hitch our wagons to his trailer and head there.  After setting up our camp, we head into the tiny fort town to find some dinner.  Looking at the map, it seems the fort is quite separated from the town of Woudrichem, either way it is all of 12 streets and nearly no places for food.  We end up with stinky cheese pizza and thank goodness I have some lunch leftovers as I’m NOT a stinky cheese fan.  Ice cream close by caps the night ‘in town’ and we head back to our campsite.  Albert invites us to a cup of tea, so we spend a little more time talking travel, bikes and GPS’ with him.  While Albert and Gregory wander off to compare breadcrumb trails, I meander over to a couple enjoying their dinner on a beautiful rattan mat.  They are both medical students from Ghent, Belgium and are headed to Amsterdam, also on bikes.  Eventually Gregory shows back up and we all have a great little chat about jobs, dreams and travel.  Eventually our twenty-eight miles of biking calls us to our beds and we say our goodnights.

August 6 ~ Early start.  My left knee is still braced and hurting almost immediately.  We finally eat the 3 sandwiches that Cathelijne made us.  One cheese, one lunch meat and one *Surprise* Hagelslag!  Hagelslag is like high class cup cake sprinkles, but better.  It kinda tastes like Betty Crocker frosting, which everyone knows you can easily eat a whole can of in one sitting.  It’s a Dutch treat usually sprinkled over buttered bread.  Arine in Costa Rica told us it was a ‘must try’ and we had eaten a couple of handfuls out of the box, but this was our first official and correct ingesting of Hagelslag.  It was such a wonderful treat on a morning when we weren’t able to find a cafe for breakfast.  Thank goodness Dutch weather had been cool and we had a great little insulated food pack that came with the bikes.  Yesterday I popped the valve off my front tire.  I was attempting to percussively maintain a bothersome noise and got my foot caught in the front tire.  Immediately after coming to a stop we hear a pop and a hiss.  Damn.  A passing cyclist directs us to the closest bike shop, at least a kilometer off track, and we limp over.  The teenaged boy working at the bike shop was concerned about the wobble he found in my front tire and wanted to disconnect my front brake to reduce the drag.  At the time I didn’t allow it but right after breakfast today, Gregory decided it was better to have no brake than have the drag on the tire.  While crossing on a ferry, Gregory attempted to move his bike and broke several spokes on the back tire.  Once again we hobble to a bike shop.  This place is not on our GPS path but wonderful anyway, repairing the broken spokes and recommending stronger back rims.  We would have replaced them then and there but being a small town bike shop he just didn’t have the supplies to do the job.  He also fixed the bent left pedal I had discovered that morning, which probably was NOT helping my knee.

*On an unrelated note Gregory stated his resentment that I don’t take pictures of him or even of the events we endure.  I’m literally at a loss for how to respond or knowing how to make a change.  I barely take any pictures at all, certainly not any of myself and rarely any of him.  I thought he was content taking his long arm shots.  I am shocked and disheartened to know that he isn’t.

We make it past Breda to Camping Liesbos and get literally the LAST available tent camping space.  A mere 22 miles of pain and biking.

August 7 & 8 ~ No biking today.  Internet and blog writing mostly and yet still no actual blog to show.  We do discover that Dutch soft serve tastes exactly like frozen whipped cream.  Very yummy.  Also discover one of the reasons the camp ground is so very packed.  They have an annual event similar to karaoke that seems to be a big deal.  Gregory checks it out and reports back.  [It] “seemed quite silly but the group involvement was amusing to watch.  Apparently last year the contestant who won the event was NOT from the Liesbos inner circle and created quite a stir … so [even if we had gotten there in time to sign up] we were not allowed to enter the show.”

Random Conversation

Rebecca ~ “I don’t think drinking soup from the bowl is couth”

Gregory ~ “Couth, what do you mean couth, we’re in a trailer park”

August 9 ~ Biking again and with sharp knee pains.  I think at this point I have switched the Ace bandage to the right knee, but I didn’t make a note of it so that last sentence is pure speculation.  Seems like it will be a slow going day of not very fast or far.  Just as we turn a corner, I tell Gregory I need to rest.  We sit down and Gregory immediately hops up and runs into the field across the road.  It’s a strawberry field and my Gregory Rabbit raids it three times.  Those were the absolute BEST strawberries I have had in my entire life.  We later pass a packing plant with accompanying fields for Hoogstraten Strawberries and then shortly later a strawberry vending machine by the same company.  We marvel at the differences between the 3 euro berries and the 4, deciding that we easily ate 3 pints of 4 euro strawberries for nothing.  In Minderhout, the first town we come to, just about the first shop we see is a bike shop.  Not wanting to miss a single stop on the Repair Shop tour, we glide in to see if they have stronger back rims.  He does and even gives us a deal on the price.  Gregory gives him carte blanche to upgrade tires as well and we drift off to find food, drinks and entertainment for the approximately 2 hours we are told it should take.  We discover that we are now in Belgium, nearly nothing is open in this town on a Monday but the ibuprofen is stronger than in the States.  We read in the ‘park’ outside of the church until time to go ransom our bikes and with new back rims and better tires, we hit the road again.  A thirty-six mile day finds us sharing an unspectacular 27 euro meal in Zandhoven then doubling back on our route to camp in a field rather than travel an additional 8 km off track to find camping.

August 10 ~ Early morning awake, but late start back on the road.  We have a fight that goes strange stemming from Gregory’s perception that I’m not that helpful setting up and tearing down camp.  We ‘enjoy’ an 8 euro American breakfast consisting of overcooked eggs, fatty greasy bacon, undercooked cream sauced potatoes and barely toasted white toast... One of the most unAmerican things I’ve ever eaten.  As we are leaving, a woman asks me where we are from and where we are headed.  I quickly tell her the story of two crazy Texans touring through Central America, magically appearing in Amsterdam and then deciding to bike to Paris.  She seems impressed by it all and wishes us luck.  Thirty-six miles later we have a great dinner with camping nearby and wonderful free hot showers.

August 11 ~ Leisurely morning and stroll into Grimbergen looking for coffee, breakfast and WiFi.  Easily find croissants and bready breakfast products.  Barely find coffee.  Don’t even think about asking for WiFi.  At the pub for coffee, I notice they have Lindeman’s Kriek on tap.  Being one of my favorite beers, I have to snap a picture of the tap.  This causes a short conversation with the owner about how good it tastes and then a “Wait one moment, I think I have a something special for you.”  Something special, turned out to be a Lindeman’s Kriek bar mat and I was tickled pink to receive it.  Coffee, followed by reading in the square outside of the church leads to Gregory suggesting we check out my first European church.  Impressive and weird are the best words I can think of.  I liked the fact that the statues were carved from wood and that I could pick out a wool pelt on some saint before seeing a lamb in the arms of some other saint.  We share a very melty lasagna then wander home with enough groceries and snacks for the rest of the day.  We have a brief chat with Ian, a fellow camper from Scotland on holiday with his kids, about camping, biking and ferries from Bruges.  Just before he leaves he comes back over with some Scottish Rock candy to get us through the sugar dips when we are biking.  All in all a great day of rest and reading.  I think we’ll do it again tomorrow!

August 12 ~ I walk back into town looking for a hairdresser and the grocery store.  The hairdresser was closed, but sandwich makings and snacks were easily acquired.  While I’m gone, Gregory makes friends with a guy from the Netherlands who is driving, camping and biking.  I missed the initial introduction and story but apparently he had lost his bike key and thought he was going to have to drive home to retrieve his duplicate.  Fortunately, once the office opened after lunch the missing key had been found.  They talked about various biking things and then he left for his night biking excursion into Brussels leaving Gregory and me to our reading and resting.

August 13 ~ Slow morning but great progress of thirty-six miles.  As evening comes so does rain.  We follow the GPS down a dead end trying to figure out why.  Just as I tell Gregory to turn around and we will go to the restaurant we passed, Low and Behold, a campground.  We race the rain to set up our tent and just make it.  We go back to the ONLY restaurant we saw in town, to be told that they were booked with no available space.  It sounds like total bullshit but unwilling to force the issue (and not speaking a lick of French in the French part of Belgium) we grab canned ravioli and other miscellaneous items at the mini grocery store.  Read until dark and then sleep.

More to come, sooner rather than later!