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May 21 Sunday sunny 15º C Bicycle touring Holland American-style breakfast of eggs and bacon. Then we packed up and hit the road on our fully loaded touring bicycles. We had a great visit with the Schriks. As Girard says, we were usually laughing, or trying to think up the word. Rick wants to get a bagpipe from Scotland. I told them to get him a cat, put it in a bag, and squeeze it. Sounds the same. Tons of people are out on bikes. The bike trails are congested. People are riding in both directions on the bicycle paths. In the wooded sections it is dangerous to pull out and pass the person on on a slower moving bike if you can't see far enough ahead. Some Dutch cyclists ride side by side, which makes Sharon and I crowd way over with our wide panniers and bags on our touring bicycles. This must be the most bicycles after China. We go to the beach and see the North Sea. There is a bike trail through the dunes. Dutch people have told us that the people who dig a hole in the sand and lay in it are Germans. They like to do that. They've been doing it since 1945. Now I know what the shovels are for that I pass that hung on posts at various intervals. Bike traffic quiets down for the last twenty kilometres into Den Helder. We want to take the ferry to Texel, the largest of the Wadden Islands. It is only a twenty minute ferry ride. We ride down main street and turn left at a sign showing a boat. There is a bike path on our left, but horrors! we didn't see it when we turned at the lights. We still haven't got used to riding against traffic on two-way bike lanes. A guy, apparently in a rush to catch the 6:30 PM ferry takes exception to our being off the bike path. He squeals out when the light changes, lays on his horn for a long blast (the "get out of my way -- I'm going to run you over" horn blast). He scrapes by us so close that he knocks my mirror off. That's about half a centimetre from my hand. I only got four of the six numbers on his license GX05 dark blue car. I say to Sharon, "And the car drivers have been so tolerant and considerate of cyclists -- except for that one exception." "That's a mighty big exception when the exception kills you," she says. We miss the 6:30 PM ferry by one minute. It's still in dock when we arrive, but by the time we get to the bicycle ticket window we watch it pull away. Just as well. Who knows what I would have done to Mr GX05. Obviously a card carrying member of the Mad Hatter Society. The next ferry is 7:30 PM. We sit and eat by our fully loaded touring bicycles while studying the ferry sign. It costs 17 guilders each to cross to the tiny island. There is a grand total of 46 kilometres of riding on it. After eating, we decide it's not worth the cost or the trouble to bike on Wadden Island. We turn our touring bicycles around and head off along the dike. We find a camping spot on the edge of town ,down by the canal amongst tall weeds and trees. Four spots have already been tramped down. We go back in the trees a little ways to be out of view and sheltered from the cold wind blowing off the water and set up our Kelty bicycle touring tent. |
