Trains, Planes, and Bicycles: Antwerp to Rotterdam

It was a long day and we got a late start. We are armed with a map of Belgium that includes bike routes. We want the feitzen route 5 to the Rotterdam. The good news is we have what seems to be a good map of Belgium's bike routes. The bad news: we don't have a map of the Netherlands. Literally, we will cross that bridge when we come to it-it crosses the maes river- but then well be off the map.

I like the train station at Antwerp.

I want to dispel any notion that 'they' eat better than us. Fast food in Antwerp's endless suburbs sucks. But it was a suburb and we were hungry. It reminded John of Indiana.

This is a bike lane in Suburban Antwerp. Red brick lanes all the way to Amsterdam. It's elevated above the street and often also below the sidewalk. The best ones allow parking Between cars and bikes, offering great protection to riders. I wish they would do this on Cesar Chavez street in San Francisco rather than the proposed huge median. Colored bike lanes are also novel but seemingly obvious and cheap.

It's not strictly good to have so many bike lanes. We got lost near Flanders field. We found a bridge and fort the Nazis destroyed. John contemplating the rubble. This railway bridge used to run to a nearby airfield.

While the Low Counrries are famous for beer, bikes, chocolate, refer, hookers, tollerance, and being bruralized in wars they also have an population of water fowl in both diversity and quantity. This is maybe a more banal example--and definately a bad photo--these birds snorted at us in a threatening way. I would not have noticed the birds had I traveled by train.

Bunker next to train tracks. It's important to protect your train tracks.

The blue is the bike route.

We saw so many spandex street gangs.

Everyone loves to show off their artillery, even if they surrendered in 8 days.

This was the most beautiful part of the ride, through a marsh in a national park. Note that this road is for only bicycles and pedestrians.

We were tired, cranky, and very hungry. We were blessed by an angel, a Flemish angel, who gave us bread, chocolate, meat, cheese, and beer. We ate and made ammends. We are not sure we will make it to Rotterdam. We are sure we can't do it before dark. We may spend the night in the town of Roosendal? It's on the map.

We got to Roosendal. It sucks. We would rather sleep in a pile of hay. We carry on, 60k from holland. Unfortunately, we don't have a map of the netherlands and don't know precisely where Rotterdam is. "there will be signs" we say. "I don't know where we will sleep tonight, but it will be a good story" we say. "you don't want to die without good stories" we say.

We push on. The sun is setting.