These 2 oldies (did I really say that?); we are preparing for a bike ride of some 850 or 900 k’s depending on where you check. Sadly we are not training as much as we should, but we are getting together the bits and pieces that might just make the trip manageable and we are now the proud owners of Lycra.

We both have nicely padded bike shorts so that our tender parts remain intact after spending many hours on bike seats. I want you to know though,  just in case you were worried about it. We will be wearing lycra covering things. We do not intend to inflict the sight of us  in Lycra on the eyes of the world. It might cause mass hysteria or some such. I don’t want to explore what harm we may cause.

We also have mirrors on our bikes, fingerless leather backed bike riding gloves (to manage the grip as your hands become sweaty), decent panniers, and bike helmets. We look almost “cool”

or should that be “hot hot hot”  because we will be wearing lycra and feeling very very hot under the August sun.

So if you see a news item somewhere in the month of August of two people in Lycra visiting many bars and cafes on the route from Haarlem in the Netherlands through a bit of Germany and some sections of France, all relatively close to the Rhine it just could be us. Now it will be us if the persons described are as follows – two older people, one with grey hair and the other bald with whiskers speaking with an unusual accent for these parts, so maybe they could be from New Zealand – Yes I think that would be us. If they are described as last seen entering a bar or cafe, sweating profusely and gasping for cool clear liquid, Yep that would definitely be us.

Take note of that news item cause if we do not arrive at our destination in Untersiggenthal in Switzerland you may be the only person who knows exactly where we have been and then the search for two oldies in Lycra can begin.

We are having major computer issues – laptop is having its hard drive replaced – you know the one – slot out, slot in – but here in the Netherlands it takes from 2 to 4 weeks apparently. So far we are in week 3.

Don’t think Acer and Computerland are doing any kind of quick turn around. PITY

I am using the Dell “Blue Screen Queen” – which as the name suggests crashes all the time with pretty blue screens

So the quick update is – we leave 12 weeks tomorrow – to cycle to Switzerland and then return home to retire, somewhat earlier than initially planned. But then we didn’t know that a permanent job doesn’t mean that in some work environments. Here Best Beloved was forced to retire as he had hit the magic 65. So no it turned out to not be a permanent job.

But now we are in go home mode. It is amazing just how much we are looking forward to it now that we have no other option. A New Zealand pension would mean we would have to live on the streets here – so we are going home instead of taking up that option.

But of course there are many bonuses such as family and friends, special grandson,  great fish and chips.  Can’t risk starting a long rave now just in case the computer does that blue screen dance again so this is over and out.

12 weeks till we leave.

Tonight at den Uiver we enjoyed great jazz, and we talked to the many people we have got to know there over the last 2 years.

Sorry – gotta go now

12 weeks

Swan walking to me on frozen canal, for bread

We arrived here in the Netherlands at the end of August 2008 after a winter in New Zealand sorting out our lives in preparation for a new life in the Netherlands and of course heading directly for winter there in the Netherlands.

It was a beautiful winter, there was some snow and there was ice – really iced up canals. We walked around with our eyes wide and exclamed at the beauty of it all.

Best Beloved even walked on the ice and got very excited about it – so excited he wanted me to do it as well, but he also kept on about don’t fall, don’t slip, don’t …. So I decided to leave him to do it for us and I just took the photos. That computer is being a pain and I can’t find the photos – but trust me I did take a photo or three of Best Beloved walking on water and will add them when I locate them.

Winter decorations shrouded in snow - it is profile of St Bavo Cathedral in main square - winter 2009/10

Looking out the window - Vejle, Denmark 27th Dec 2010

We will be leaving here in the Netherlands summer, and will arrive in New Zealand in September heading for a New Zealand summer. I am kind of looking forward to a full summer even though I find New Zealand summer humidity draining. I didn’t realise that there would be low humidity here in the Netherlands and my asthma is much better here in the Netherlands than it has ever been in New Zealand.

There is one other factor though, and that is I am allergic to the wonderful group called “New Zealand trees”. They, the doctors, made that discovery in 2004. So maybe it is not the humidity but the general environment we’ve lived in as we have always managed to plant many many New Zealand trees if we were not already sharing our living space with them.

So that will be a big challenge for us – living in New Zealand without being in close proximity to New Zealand trees.

Snow scene outside our door Jan 6th 2010

So there are many pluses and minuses. On balance it is time to be home, and I cannot wait for regular hugs and maybe smooches – although grandson will be 8 this June, so hugs and smooches hmm – we will wait and see.

Grandson watering our garden 2008

Wikipedia:
Sea change or seachange is an idiom for broad transformation drawn from a phrase in the song “Full fathom five” in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and connotes a transformation.

In short – no we are not

A beer was needed to cope with the ride through cobbled streets in Bloemendahl

We are not in good shape for our ride – but we are working on it.

And we will have time to do it, the trip I mean, after all Best Beloved will have retired – (forced to retire, unheard of in New Zealand), so we have nowhere to be at any specific time in the month of August or indeed September, other than having promised grandson we will be home in New Zealand mid to end of September.

There are 31 days in August and we plan to leave here on Friday the 5th. Why Friday the 5th? Well it is rubbish day, so everything not on its way to New Zealand already, and not suitable for recycling at de Schalm, will be in the rubbish bag and out for Friday morning early and then we will leave. We will not ride far on that day as I think we will be quite tired – so somewhere handy in the Netherlands that we have not yet visited – and then we might have a rest day Saturday.

We do plan on an average of 50k’s a day with a stop every 3 or 4 days so we can see actually see interesting places on the way. Now of course we can change tack at any time.

Why do I say that? Well I do have asthma and wind gets me badly – so if it is too windy we don’t want to be too far from a rest place or a train option. That is part of our planning to follow a picturesque route, but never so far from a rest or train option that we have problems if my breathing goes to the pot. My asthma is not extreme, just a bit annoying at times.

We haven’t fully worked out the route, so worse case scenario is that we will need to ride 950k’s and if we did that without rest days then we would need to average 36.53846 k’s a day. If we can ride 50k’s a day then the riding will take 19 days and that means we have 7 days up our sleeves as rest days which could mean we have 2.7142 days of riding before we have a rest day. Now that isn’t so bad – 3 days riding and a rest day. We can do that.

We also have a really great backup plan!

Son lives in Switzerland – so if we are too far from the train and too far from a bed – we will simply phone him as long as our mobiles are charged and say “come and save your parents”. And he might just do that for us.

Ready to go to the Beach at Parnassia

Now our training program is already to pot – We don’t ride our bikes in the wet, cold and drizzly weather as we don’t wish to risk a fall and bones breaking right now.

Our training program is defined in this book Cycle for Life Bike Basics + Body Basics + Challenge yourself, by Nicole Cooke – Olympic Gold Medallist Beijing 2008.

And NO it is not about cycling in the Olympics – it is about being the best and the fittest cyclist you can be from food, clothing, trip planning and then there is that word “FITNESS” planning.

Sadly the 3 x 8 week training programs we hoped to complete are now not possible. Why is that? We have only 22.4285 weeks left so cannot complete 24 weeks of the recommended training programs. So it is good there are trains, sons, rest days, and time up our sleeve.

And it will be an adventure however we get to Switzerland in August 2011.

Gunwale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The gunwale (pronounced /ˈɡʌnəl/ “gunnel” to rhyme with “tunnel”) is a nautical term describing the top edge of the side of a boat.

So I guess that filled to the gunnels means in slang terms – full almost to overflowing. I do not know if this is an English slang phrase or if it is a uniquely New Zealand or Australian phrase.

Sinterklaas arrives today at 1pm by boat and will alight at the Teylers Museum after travelling along the Spaarne on his journey from Spain. And we will be there and record what we can of this event as a Mormor and a Grandad from New Zealand. I was born in Denmark – hence Mormor, Grandad was born and bred in New Zealand.

We did not know about Sinterklaas in November 2008. We were in Delft when we saw our first Zwarte Piet (from behind), and then we tried to find out all we could. We did not discover enough as we did have enough information to begin with. Our reading skills were nix, nil so we could not extract enough from the local papers and for all we knew that lone Zwarte Piet in Delft may have been a local actor from a show or ?? Of course the shop windows were full of them, Pebernoten were everywhere, but we still missed the arrival and departure so didn’t understand the significance.

In 2009 we stumbled upon the parade on the day Sinterklaas arrived in Haarlem. He was riding his grey horse and had many Zwarte Pieten helpers. We also stumbled upon his farewell from Haarlem in early December – and it was such fun.

Today we will be there ready.

There you go – we have succumbed to the lure of the car.

Tis out now – we have driven ourselves by car – not public transport and bicycles in the UK

We arrived home Sunday night, 10th October rather late, after a 10 day journey from Haarlem by train, via Ghent in Belgium, on to Calais in France, to catch the P&O ferry to Dover and then believe it or not by car via many places to London and by plane back again to the Netherlands.

What can I tell you about this wee trip. Well, it was expensive, the food and the accommodation was excellent everywhere, and we saw Henry IV, part 1 at the reconstructed Globe in London. And we drove down country lanes that in New Zealand we would not consider driving.

You know all those wonderful crime series on TV, nice, genteel ones like Midsomer Murders and Inspector Morse where they drive on very narrow country roads at great speed. You simply cannot ever do that, the roads are so narrow, the hedgerows so high and in need trimming that so many signposts are hidden in the bushes. You cannot ever see a car coming towards you. On those wonderful shows they must organise it absolutely so that no cars, trucks, bicycles, tractors, farm machinery, horses, pedestrians, cows, etc can possibly be driving, riding or walking towards one.

Those roads are as they look on TV – but they cannot ever be driven at more than 10 miles per hour.

And then you have to consider the weather on a trip to the UK in October, or even at any time if the weather information that is absorbed over a lifetime is sort of accurate. The weather was beautiful all the way to Dover, and to that car, that all important car and then it started to rain. It rained all the way to Salisbury, the wind blew like crazy when on the beach at Bognor Regis, and then we bought umbrellas and the rain stopped. Not another drop for the remaining 8 days.

We did a great deal of exploring, visited cathedrals, saw the White Cliffs of Dover in sunshine, ate at little pubs, slept at B&B’s, Stonehenge, Bradninch – birthplace of Best Beloveds Grandad, and generally had a ball – there are some good stories to be told and I will – later.

Oh dear, such heart in mouth stuff, in London we saw cyclists (definitely not something that I could do, in London I mean). If Princess Beatrice can be in a car crash with her huge Beemer mushed between bus and coach on Hyde Park Corner roundabout, then consider the cyclist in that spot. I just couldn’t do it.

And we both had haircuts in Chinatown – Now is that brave or what?

And we nearly understood the English as she is spoke – by people everywhere there, and we did nearly understand it all – thank goodness for English TV shows in New Zealand, otherwise it could have been double Dutch to us. And nearly all those speaking English thought we were Australian. HHHmmm!!!! Nearly.

Saturday – the Annual floral parade to Haarlem, from Noordwijk – so if you are in the Netherlands and close to Haarlem or anywhere on the route – check with your hotel concierge – because this a parade that should be missed.

The world, including New Zealand in flowers

The theme this year is “Journey through Europe”

This will be the 63rd year of this Floral parade. It is a 40km route from Noordwijk to Haarlem. It should arrive in Haarlem at around 9pm. This year the parade will also travel along the Keukenhof Parade Boulevard at around 4pm – so if you are there stay and watch. The parade will have about 20 floats, around 30 floral and fragrant luxury cars as well as bands and marching teams. All the floats and cars will be decorated with millions of flowers.

It was a great sight last year through the dreadful drizzle and rain. check the weather here – at time of writing this the weather forecast was fine – SO this year it will be an even better event.

I wonder if they also have a competition to count the flowers.

We took this photograph of the world in flowers on Saturday 17th April when we rode our bikes out to the Keukenhof Gardens. This is land art, don’t you think?

Official figures show a dramatic reduction in the number of bikes stolen in the Netherlands last year. The Dutch are well-known as a nation of cyclists and bike theft causes much irritation.

Just over half a million bicycles were taken in 2009 compared to about three-quarters of a million in 2006. This is down to measures taken by the government, the cycle sector and the police. New bikes are now routinely fitted with hidden chips which can be used to identify their owners.

Quality certification for cycle-racks and locks has also helped, as has the construction of more racks, some of them patrolled, in cities and at stations. The creation of an official register of stolen bicycles has made their recovery easier.

© Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Other Miscellaneous Facts

The April 2010 population of the Netherlands was 16,603,575. and there were 500,000 bikes stolen in 2009. I found that there were 13,000,000 bikes in the Netherlands in 2005. If I find updated figures I will add them to this post.

The Netherlands has the total area of 41,526 sq km (16,033 sq miles), of which inland water accounts for more than 7,643 sq km (2,951 sq miles). The land area is 33,883 sq km (13,082 sq miles). The land area increases slightly each year as a result of continuous land reclamation and drainage. It is bordered on the east by Germany, south by Belgium, and west and north by the North Sea, with a total boundary length of 1,478 km (918 miles), of which 451 km (280 miles) is coastline. Data is from the Encyclopedia of the Nations

New Zealand, which we think of as quite small is the 75th largest country in the world with an area of 270,464 Km2, is more than 6 times the size of the Netherlands, has an April 2010 population of 4,364,134, probably has only 500,000 bikes in the entire country.

Could that mean that the stolen Dutch bikes are in New Zealand?

New Zealand includes Antipodes Islands, Auckland Islands, Bounty Islands, Campbell Island, Chatham Islands, and Kermadec Islands. It excludes Niue (260 km²), the Cook Islands (236 km²) and Tokelau (12 km²), as well as the Antarctic claim of Ross Dependency (450,000 km²). It is the third largest country in Oceania.

Dutch lovebirds often hold hands while pedaling

That is as much geography and social information I can provide today.

In the Netherlands one buys Chips / Frites at a Chip Shop or is it a Frites Shop. It comes in a paper cone and it is slathered with mayonnaise and/or ketchup or some other saucy offerings and is often served with a serviette (necessary with all that sauce), and a little plastic or wooden fork – which is also necessary with all that sauce.

Just as well they walk and ride bikes – alot.

I have been so desperate for fish and chips in Amsterdam that I could smell it somewhere – with vinegar, and that is great memory. It may not have been a real smell as the source could not be discovered.

But when I have purchased the smallest amount of chips – the horror that ensues because I do not want any sauce means they try to fill my cone with even more chips – and that is not easy, and I don’t need it. I do however appreciate the effort.

BUT what I really want is Fish and Chips – and they do make deep fried battered small fish pieces – it is Kibbeling an extremely common snack for the Dutch. You can buy it somewhere at any time of day or night. It is always available at a market from a mobile Kibbeling or general fish stall. Kibbeling is crispy deep fried cod and the Dutch also like it served with augurks (pickle gherkin) and mayonaise or other sauces.

Kibbeling is an addiction for the Dutch.

Just as well they walk and ride bikes – alot.

But how come they have chip shops or stalls and they have fish shops or stalls – and they both create deep fried foods – but they cannot buy it at the same place which means it is nigh impossible to eat it together.

Huh

Now I know the New Zealanders out there are doing a collective what *&^%^&&* and a deep sigh (OOOOOHHHHHHHH), because they know and understand what I am missing and they also know and understand just what the Dutch are missing

Fish and Chips, with a piece of lemon or a splash of vinegar, maybe some mayo, maybe some tartare sauce.

Me, I am just hanging out for plain fish and chips with a piece of lemon, or a dash of vinegar.

Just as well I walk a lot, and ride a bike – a bit.

Because I may have to become addicted to Kibbeling and Chips as well, as it is as close as I can get here, to Fish and Chips.