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Cuckoo We were back with the windmills at Kinderdijk. I finally saw a scene I was waiting for: A cheerful old man attired in somber black garb complete with black beret pedalled by on a clunky black one-speed in oversized bright yellow wooden shoes. We sat at a round stone table admiring the scenic view of the windmills. Fishermen cast their lines into the still water. Across the canal a bicycle leaned against a wooden windmill. On the opposite bank were rows of windmills. From where I sat I looked around and counted eighteen windmills. Sharon sewed material from my old pants onto her decrepit front pannier covers and a bright tea towel from Sardinia with a scene of kitchen items on her rear cover. When she was finished her pannier covers looked much better. We had gone through three hundred seventy-five yards of thread according to the label on the empty spool. We stopped at a restaurant near the windmills. An old guy sat fishing. When he caught one a waitress excitedly ran out. I figured someone in the restaurant had ordered fish. That was what I called fresh. And here I had only been kidding when I ordered fish and asked: "What's taking so long? Do they have to catch the thing?" A couple stopped to chat. They lived in the Netherlands and were flying to Florida, cycling across the bottom of the States to Salt Lake City where they planned to fly to Winnipeg before continuing to cycle to New Brunswick and finally back down to Florida. In the winter they planned to cycle Greece. Next summer: China. They had cycled most countries in Europe, but said they didn't like Europe because there was no where they could go and not hear traffic. They cycled in Australia for a year and had met a grand total of thirty other touring cyclists. We went down to a tunnel that crossed under the Maas River. A caution sign warned: Four percent grade! Steep in Holland. We rode as far as the bridge into Zeeland. I asked two kids if there was a picnic table nearby. They thought hard, then said "No." We figured we would just pull out the ground sheet, when they suddenly remembered there was a picnic table near the golf course. Sure enough, following their directions, we found one lone picnic table set up on a lawn beside a skateboard ramp. On the other side was a tranquil view of boats in the harbour. But we couldn't see them because the table was set behind a row of bushes. The Dutch didn't have that picnic-table-set-in-a-scenic spot figured out too well. I discovered they didn't even have picnic tables figured out too well when I went to slide my legs under the table and couldn't. Across the water we saw giant modern propeller windmills, their blades churning the air in a futuristic manner. We went back to the forest path where we met the kids before dinner and without hesitation plunged in. We had learned that the longer one pondered the more suspicious one looked.A cuckoo bird relentlessly called over and over like a stuck record. I shoved my ear plugs in so far they seemed to touch my brain. All was silent. Except my brain repeated the cuckoo sound over and over. |
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