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May 9 Tuesday Cold 8º C windy rainy miserable Bicycle touring Belgium It was totally overcast. I thought perhaps it would just be a grey dismal day. We packed up our cycling gear and pushed our fully loaded touring bicycles into the forest to avoid the dewy grass. I am wearing my new cycling shoes for the first time. Inside the forest it is still night. We cycle along a country road. We cycle past fields of sheep contemplatively chewing their cuds. They look like oversize rabbits, their nose wiggling while they chew. The little lambs are chubby. I notice a bus shelter with a phone inside. Good idea. When one gets tired of waiting for the bus they can call a cab. We cycle past a town named Holler, so of course I did, much to Sharon's disgust and the locals dismay, no doubt. I can hear them now: "Tourists. They think they are so original." or "Why do they always do that?" "Do what?" "Holler." "Darned if I know." Cycle touring Belgium, the land of unpronounceable names, we came to the town of Weiswampach. There was a store that looked like a camping supply store. Since we are down to one candle for our handy bicycle touring lantern, I went in to check for more candles. They had two. "Do you take French francs?" I asked a bent old woman who looked as if the flame had gone out of her long ago. "No." "How much are the candles?" "Cinq-cinqante," came the reply. We cycled to a bank to see if I could get some Belgium francs. Can I use my Mastercard with the expired date? No. Can you phone I asked? No. (That's the trouble with being on a long cycle trip ... things like credit cards expire. We had made sure to ask if our four-digit pin number worked in European auto-tellers; we had neglected to ask for a new credit card with a far in the future expiry date.) "How much is the exchange?" "Twenty Belgian francs per Canadian dollar or 6 Belgian francs per French franc. All of a sudden things cost double what we had thought. I liked it better before I knew what the exchange rate was. We cycled back to the camping supply shop and discover the old lady strewn about in her junk shop. She looks at me blankly, as if she has never seen me before. I guess she doesn't recognize me with money. "Bougies," I say. Still no flicker of recognition, but she gets them. I hand her a hundred franc note. She wants 8 francs more. A hundred and eight francs (over 5 bucks) for two little candles? That is a lot more than I thought I had first been told -- 55 francs. I remove my hundred from her hand and as I take my leave, she is saying something unpleasant to me in German. (I now realize when I asked her how much the candles cost, she told me the price each, not the total amount for the two candles. Ah, well. Saved five bucks.) We have money, so we cycle to a grocery store. Sharon buys chocolate-covered waffles (only in Belgium, I'd say, but I'm certainly not complaining) and buns that are kind of like cinnamon buns with raisins and have pudding inside them. As we get ready to cycle out of town, it begins to rain. We pull on our cycling rain gear. I add plastic bags over my new shoes. We cycle for a while. We pull our fully loaded touring bicycles to a stop in a forest and huddle under a tree. It rains harder. Should we call it a day and set up our cycle touring tent in the forest? The sun comes out of a blue hole. We decide to eat lunch and then decide whether we should continue our Belgium bicycle tour. It begins to rain. We go into the forest and set up our two-person cycle touring tent. The weather alternates rain and shine for the rest of the afternoon. Rain. Stop. Rain. Sun. Rain. Sun. Rain. Wind, too. Sharon casts one wary eye upwards to the heavens. She ruefully observes that it had looked like a low water consumption day and had poured out two jugs of water to lighten her load. They certainly would have come in handy for cooking and washing up. |
