The road less traveled

Ok, so it's been a long, long time since I posted to this shi!!y blog and if you're reading this it means you probably don't have enough to do in life.

As most, if not all, of you know, I just returned from 16 days in Europe on a cycling vacation with my brother and my dad. My bro lives in Amsterdam with his wife and kids so it gives us a good starting and ending point for cycle tours.


Smiling and well rested at O'hare prior to the 8 hours in a flying sardine tin. In order to make a nickel (or not) the airlines flying the trans atlantic routes pack as many as humanly possible into the planes. We flew on 747's each way with 3/5/3 seating and about six inches of leg room. Oh well, it's affordable to go that way. Last I checked, passage on the QE2 was somewhere around $4000 so the $850 for KLM ain't bad.



I decided that in order to not lose what miniscule amount of fitness I had, I would take the Bianchi San Jose single speed cross bike. That way, any hill would have me humping the 55 pounds of bike and bags with no option of shifting. That turned out to be some serious workouts as a result, with more than a few hills of anywhere from a 1/4 mile to several miles in length. You learn how to muscle the bike with your upper body pretty good.



In case there are any doubts as to what cycle touring is really all about, let me lay them to rest. It's about doing one thing so that you can do two others with relative abandon: ride miles to eat and drink beer. I'm sure you're all shocked at the admission, but it's true. It doesn't even matter what kind of beer it is (as if you have any choice- more on that later).



We started out the tour with a train trip to Koblenz Germany leaving from Amsterdam's Centraal Station. You'll never see more bikes in one place in your life. It borders on silly. The pic above doesn't even do it justice. There are probably 10 times that many bikes parked in and around the Station.



This pic is of us leaving my brother's on the first day, heading for the station. Look in the background at the street. There are way more bikes than cars parked. Notice the lack of helmets on my bro and me; with rare exception, I have never felt the need to wear one while cycling in Amsterdam. Drivers naturally give bikes extra room and the traffic laws favor bikes over cars to a large degree.

More tomorrow.....