We celebrated Oma’s 80th birthday on Sunday, June 28, then took a day to recover from the festivities and get organized. In particular, we planned a route based on how fit we’d felt on previous rides and the fact that we would be towing a trailer. Also, we arranged our lodgings, the details of which are well worth a paragraph.
Stichting Vrienden op de Fiets is an organization that publishes a guidebook listing bed and breakfasts that offer special discounts to people arriving by bike or on foot (long-distance rollerblading counts). Exceptions may be made for people who arrive via train to start a bike trip, but cars are right out. So awesome. A friend of my grandparents has used Vrienden op de Fiets lodgings and suggested that Peter and I check them out (by getting us a gift membership, yay!) and we’re really glad we did. We’ve been big fans of the bed-and-breakfast approach to bike adventures since our Ronde IJsselmeer adventure of 2007 (yay not having to tow an extra trailer case full of sometimes-soaking-wet camping gear!), and 18.50 per person per night is about as cheap as bed and breakfasts ever get in the Netherlands. So. Many thumbs up for Stichting Vrienden op de Fiets.
So! With our lodgings mostly arranged, we were all set to head out on our adventure on Tuesday, July 30.
Here we are, Continue Reading »
My goal for Friday, June 26 was to figure out how far we could reasonably expect to ride in one day, and I achieved it — in abundance. Here’s the best approximation of the route I could come up with in Google Maps:
It’s a little misleading, first because of the detour north around the Braassemermeer — there’s actually a ferry at Oude Wetering, which is where we saw this boat, named “Goed Idee” — good idea:
Anyway, after the ferry Continue Reading »
So my quick summary of our five-day ride doesn’t mention that we went for a few rides in and around Oud-Ade before that trip. This post is about the first of those excursions.
To beer!
Just like in 2007, putting the bike together on the first day in Holland proved an excellent way of staying awake and starting to beat jet lag. The next day, after welcoming my brother to Oud-Ade, we went on a little ride through some of the neighboring towns, and picked up some local beer at the Landwinkel (farm store) in Rijpwetering. Here’s an overview of the route:
And here’s some pictures. Continue Reading »
Tomorrow I head back to the U.S. and more than 1 hour of Internet a day, dear readers, and then I will regale you with the full story of this summer’s big bike adventure in the Netherlands (Holland, to be exact). Or at least post more pictures; right now I can’t even figure out how to get the Flickr widget over in the right-hand sidebar to link to the stuff I’ve managed to upload in the days since we got back to my grandparents’ home town of Oud-Ade on the afternoon of July 4. Sigh. At least FFXporter loads stuff in order, with tags…
In the meantime, here’s a link to the Flickr collection that will eventually house all our Holland 2009 pictures and the very briefest summary of our route:
Day 1: Oud-Ade to Scheveningen, via Katwijk-Aan-Zee
Day 2: Scheveningen to Hoek van Holland, via a bit of tourism in Den Haag
Day 3: Hoek van Holland to Ridderkerk, via a trip down memory lane, followed by Maassluis, Vlaardingen, Schiedam, and Rotterdam
Day 4: Ridderkerk to Gouda, via Kinderdijk
Day 5: Gouda back to Oud-Ade
If I’m super-organized about writing things up, eventually each of those list items should link back to a summary of each day of the trip. Right now, dear readers, my computer is running out of batteries and I should be heading back to my grandparents’ house to celebrate my mother’s birthday some more.
We went 30+ miles from home to fern ridge reservoir and back in 94 degree heat. It was wonderful, yet tiring.
Peter, Tracy, and Pepe in front of the east side of the Cascades
This past weekend – April 12th and 13th – we were in Bend, OR. On April 13th we went on a great 42 mile ride around Bend, which is essentially an amalgamation of Routes 7 and 8 of the Deschutes County Bike Guide.
We had a great time riding around in the perfect weather. Pictures can be found in a photoset on flickr.
On September 26, on one of the last beautiful days before the rain began to sock us in, Peter and I went for a wonderful ride up into the hills south of Eugene, through Creswell, on through Lorane, where we had lunch at the deli that used to be the general store. On our way home we stopped by Bike Friday and got a replacement for the part that caused us so much trouble on our Zuiderzeeroute ride, and figured out a few other problems we’ve been having with Pepé, which was great, not unlike the rest of the ride.
Here’s a map of where we rode.
Last Sunday afternoon (August 19) I was running some errands at 29th and Willamette, and realized I really wanted to zoom past both Market of Choice and the bank and ride my bike up into the hills for a while instead. On Tuesday, August 21, I got that wish. We rode Lorane-Fox Hollow (map here) and it was very pretty:
and I was very happy:
There was a big bad climb followed by a beautiful valley and a breathtaking descent (here’s Peter doing his best to brake and hold Pepé steady while I snap a picture of that last):
Also we stopped at an all-you-can-eat blackberry bramble, and that was pretty excellent, too. Whee!
We just finished a great ride. We went counter clockwise around this map. That’s south over Dillard Rd, then up to Mt Pisgah, then up to Glenwood, and then home.
Just as we were cresting Dillard, the valley opened up before us.
It was a wonderful ride and a great day for it too! Now, on to blackberry milkshakes!
Crime and Punishment? Love story.
The Crying Game? Also a love story.
Wait, no, I’m quoting Hamell on Trial when I meant to be writing about our last day of cycling on this particular expedition to the Netherlands.
After our triumphant return to Oud Ade after eight fantastic days on the Zuiderzeeroute, we ate a delicious dinner with my grandparents and showed off our pictures and called my parents to tell them we’d found the most delightful little bed and breakfast for the rest of our trip. Then we went to bed and slept really soundly.
The next morning (Saturday June 30), we awoke and rejoiced at having neither a scheduled breakfast nor a mandatory “pack it up and get out of here” time. Instead, we ate at our own pace, then unpacked and sorted through the resultant piles of stuff. For the rest of the day, Peter gave Pepé a much-needed very thorough washing, the kind that involves taking the bike apart to get at the really grody bits (cough, cough… the chain… cough, cough), while I did a truly epic amount of laundry. Both projects would’ve been worthy of before and after pictures, except that the “before” stages were so gross we’re happy to let those memories fade without extensive documentation. We showed Opa the tiny little trailer hitch part that caused us so much trouble (for want of a nail and all that), and he admitted to having worried that the trailer would be a problem, and dismissed the broken weld as “speelgoed” — a toy.
On Sunday, 1 July, my parents arrived from distant lands, bearing spices (no, really — Costco-sized bulk quantities of black pepper are a much-appreciated gift) and a new spare tire for Pepé! Hurray! (My dad spent some time on the phone with the ever-helpful guys at Bike Friday before eventually finding a suitably high-pressure tire at a bike store in Linden, NJ — thus saving some anxious waiting and FedEx money.) Of course, they got the full slideshow experience, too. That night, we went to my cousin Stéphanie’s graduation party.
Enough, you are saying, when did you go biking again? Okay, skip forward a day to Tuesday, July 3 (and I feel I should mention that none of the preceding days have been dry ones, although the weather cleared delightfully for the afternoon of Stéph’s shindig). The plan: go for a shortened version of one of the rides in our bike routes around Leiderdorp book, the Kagerplassenroute, which circumnavigates (albeit somewhat broadly) the Kaag, a lake quite central to the van der Gaag family’s experiences in the Oud Ade area. (Oma and Opa vacationed at a houseboat, the Hou ‘e Zo, on a nearby lake, het Vennemeer, for years before retiring to Oud Ade: some of my very earliest memories of visiting them in Holland involve summers spent on “de boot,” which in many ways served the function of a cabin in the woods, only with lots more playing on the lake.) The plan was to finish the loop during the morning by taking a ferry across the Kaag back to Oud Ade, where we would join my parents and grandparents for a boat ride in the same area that afternoon. I was excited to see the Oud Ade-Warmond-Kaag area from land for a change, and Peter was excited to go for another bike ride, and both of us were looking forward to an afternoon of boating.
So. As we had for many days of our big trip, we woke up early that Tuesday morning and ate a big hearty breakfast and disregarded the weather outside (the trend all week was rainy mornings and possible clearing up during the late afternoon). Soon we saddled up and rode off in the general direction of Leiden. As we turned to cross a polder towards Warmond, we noticed a large group of cyclists headed that way from the other direction. Turns out our route for the day overlapped somewhat with that of the Laura — the national fietsvierdaagse: four-day biking event (there are also four-day walking events, and most of them are regionally based, but the Laura is nationwide with different routes of equivalent length for different regions). So that was sort of crazy for a few kilometers there — so many people, and no fewer than two cafés set up as official Laura break points, including one where participants could collect stamps to prove they’d gone the day’s distance (it also had a very tempting sign saying “later is weer doorpedalen/ nu eerst koffie en gebak halen” — there will be pedaling on later, but now first get coffee and pastries). Also it started to rain, and navigation was a little tricky — after eight days of remarkably well-signed route, you could say I was a little spoiled. But on we went, through Warmond, into Sassenheim and on into Buitenkaag, where despite all the navigational hooh-hah we were so ahead of schedule as to seriously consider finishing the whole route all the way through Oude Wetering, Roelofarendsveen, Rijpwetering, and back to Oud Ade. However, as the Oude Wetering back to Oud Ade part of that route was old hat to us by that point, and we were more interested in boating than cycling and didn’t want to risk returning to my grandparents’ house too late, we decided to take the ferries, first from Buitenkaag onto Kaag island, and then from Kaageiland back to Zevenhuizen, just outside Oud Ade.
Holy schnikeys, especially that second ferry. As soon as I was back on the water, all my feelings of being completely lost evaporated. Turns out I do know that part of the world pretty well — just not the land. We returned triumphantly to Oud Ade, trying not to notice that even the ducks had fled the wind-and-rain-swept water for the relative shelter of the polders, and turned up on Oma and Opa’s back porch a little wet, and Pepé in particular a little filthy, but all the better to show my parents that if just one morning’s riding in the rain could kick up that much dirt, just imagine — or not, if it you’d rather not trigger your obsessive-compulsive tendencies — what eight full days would do. In other words, we were ready to go boating.
Which we did, despite hilariously awful wind and rain that forced us to shelter under bridges whenever we got the chance. Peter got to open a few bridges (an essential part of any Dutch boating experience is working the draw- and/or turn-bridges across the sloten) and Opa took us all out for one last koffie met appelgebak at restaurant Kaagzicht before we turned back across the Kaag, eventually riding almost exactly as the ferry had taken us and Pepé a few hours before. I spent the rest of the day happily meditating on the two different perspectives on the landscape around Oud Ade — one old, one new. It was a wonderful, low-key ending to an amazing trip.
So. To bring everything back around to Hamell again,
Crime and Punishment? Love story.
The Crying Game? Also a love story.
And, to paraphrase just a bit, all this [censored] about the bike trip? Ultimately boils down to a love story. I could not have done this trip without Peter’s strong legs and even stronger enthusiasm pulling me along, and he could not have played fast and loose about lodging and scheduling without my best little innocent Dutch girl charm. We were greater than the sum of our parts on this adventure, which is to say we were just about every kind of awesome.
I love you, Peter. Thank you for a fantastic ride. Here’s to our next, and many more.
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Tracy, Peter, and the pushmi-pullyu
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