|
Blind Cyclists? Woke up at 2:30 a.m. Church bells did go at night. I laid awake until it got light around five thirty. Then I felt tired again. I phoned Bob and Amy to see if our Mastercard had arrived. It had. Sharon and I wanted to visit the Kröller-Müller Art Museum in the Hoge Veluwe National Park so we arranged to meet at their house that evening or the next morning. The admission charged to gain entry into the National Park included the museum. There was a map board with a path marked "white bicycles." I though it must be for blind cyclists: "Those Dutch think of everything!" I said to Sharon. There were many white bicycles in the park. The white bike concept had started in Amsterdam. The idea was to have a platoon of bikes available for people to ride from place to place. When you arrived at your destination you just left it there. Someone else could take that bike and ride it to where she wanted to go. It had been a monumental failure. Everyone rode them to their house, painted them red, blue, green, black - anything but white. Apparently the government lost thousands of bikes. The only place white bikes were left was inside the park -- where it was a controlled fenced environment. We visited the art museum. There were many Van Gogh's. A lone Picasso. Weird modern art. Was that stuff done by normal people? It was wacko. My favourite was "Wife." A few dashes. Must have caught her on a good day. People yawned -- exciting stuff. There were some nice frames. I liked the painting of Venus and Cupid stealing honey with bees buzzing around Cupid. Standing naked like that he appeared somewhat apprehensive about his vulnerability. Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters (In the basement of the Rijksmuseum I had seen a similar painting with harsher features by another artist.) We left the museum at closing time. I saw why the white bicycle idea needed work. The remaining bicycles had problems -- chains were off, tires were flat. Never be the last to get a white bicycle. At seven-thirty we were eight kilometers from where Bob and Amy lived and hadn't eaten yet. We pulled into a forest and set up camp with a legion of mosquitoes. |
|
|
Book Info