11/18/04

Welcome to the winter of our discontent...this line has never had so much meaning in my life. Today was crazy. It started out like most mornings. Caleb and i ate breakfast in our tent to the sound of strong wind and rain hitting the roof of our tent. Ok, we pack our stuff up and get ready and start to follow the signs toUtrecht There are roadsigns for bikes just like there are for cars inHolland. pretty nice. We had biked about ohh, 18-20 kilometers, it was very cold and raining fairly hard all day,prettywindy. We were getting along ok though. Then all of the sudden Caleb's rack on the back of his bike breaks. A clean break,no fixing option. So we are out in the middle of Bumblef*** Holland (A beautiful place even in the rain, I might add) and stranded with all the stuff from Caleb's bike. We will have to take a pic of our bikes all loaded up somtime cuz it really is a wonder of eningineering in pacing that we can bike and carry all that stuff. Actually it often falls off and we have to re-engineer a packing solution. So we decided that I would stay with the bags and my bike and Caleb would bike back to the nearest town(about 2 kilometers), to find a bike shop and get a new pannier. It took himabout 50 mins to bike in, find the store,buy a new pannier and put it on and bike back. Not bad. Meanwhile I was becoming the bride of frankenstein in the rain. I have never been so happy to see Caleb in my whole life when he came riding around the corner on his bike with a new pannier intact. So we loaded up Caleb's stuff back on to his bike and started off to our way in Utrecht again. About 3 kilometers down the road Claeb discovers he has left his eyeglasses at the bike store in the town back a ways. So we turned around and rode back to the bike store together. Because of the extreme cold and so much rain and the problems we encountered we knew we had to find shelter for the night very soon. Caleb thought he had seen a camp site back about 6 kilometers or so. Unfortunately we never found the campground. So by then we were both in need of food, shelter and a bathroom very badly. We stopped at this supermarket to get sandwich makings. We are both totally soaked and wearing half our gear covered in plastic garbage bags. We looked like street people easily. We walk up to this Dutch girl working at the meat counter who could speak very little english and asked where we could find a toilet. She said she wasn't supposed to let us use the toilet but she would do it for us. She looked like she felt so sorry for us. It was hilarious. And when we went up to pay for our food Caleb reaches into his pocket to pay for the groceries and pulls out all this change and counts it out. We must have looked so pathetic. Caleb and I have laughed about it now. WE walked out and ate under the supermarket awning to avoid the rain. How romantic? hehe Tuna sandwiches with belguim bread and yogurt shakes. It only cost us 3 euro though! So we get back on our bikes and decide to find a hotel or hostel in the area to stay in and try for Utrecht the next day. But no hotels were within reasonable price ranges that we found. Then we saw that it was only 7 kilometers back to Amsterdam (you have to sort of back track to get from Haarlem to Utrecht and basically pass by Amsterdam). So Caleb says, lets just bike back to Amsterdam and camp at camping Zeeburg in Amsterdam and then get train or bus tickets to Spain within the next 2 days. This whole time it is gettting colder and raining harder. So the heading south to warmth is a plan Angie strongly endorsed at this time (remember Jen and Melis? 1993 eurail trip old skool yo!) We biked back to Amsterdam to the campground and set up our stuff in the pouring rain. Both of us absolutely chilled and drenched. We stripped and got into the tent and warmed up and held down the tent. Literally. The wind blew so hard the stakes came out on one side of the tent. Phew! We were just happy to be out of the wet and cold. All together we figure we spent about 11 hrs riding in the cold rain...sweet sleep..zzzzz