A wonderful day

Greetings to all from Brussels.

I've been procrastinating about starting my blogging career, since I wasn't sure that I have anything fascinating to contribute, especially after reading Dale's first posts. But today made me sure that I had to let you all know how much fun we're having, along with a few frustrations with modern technology of Garmin and Pythagoran theory (more of which later).

Flying United to Amsterdam was one of the more unmemorable experiences of my life - full plane, airline food (I made the wrong choice - chicken instead of pasta), but that got filed into my forgotten memories file once we arrived at our horse farm/B and B. Susanne and Han are wonderful hosts, and we will be looking forward to visiting them again on our last evening in Amsterdam. They have two huge Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs, far sillier and more playful than dogs bred to hunt lions have any right to be. The dogs were a good omen for our success, as my wife, Ann, has said: when Dale and I lived to Botswana, I had a RR named Bert, who was a crazy animal that I loved dearly.

Sunday was Prologue Day. After doing 15 miles around the center of Amsterdam with rest stops at every traffic light, I was ready to declare the toughness of the Tour as much over-rated, so I was really looking forward to a 145 mile ride from Rotterdam to Brussels on Monday - this is being said by someone who has done a century in the past, but the long distant past. And it turned out that the ride was a blast. We rode westwards to the coast and then along the outer islands, gradually moving to the south and then to the east. Lots of windfarms dot the coast, which has some large white sand beaches that must be packed solid with vacationers once the weather becomes warmer. While we were on the coast road, we made good progress, but once we moved back inland, progress slowed. The problem, we are discovering, is that you, Mr. Joe Public, can not do the Tour of France route: Lance and his competitors got to ride on national roads which are closed off for the day of the Tour and otherwise closed to cyclists. We got to ride only on roads that allow bike riding, and that means that our course deviated quite a lot from the Tour route, usually adding miles to the course. And this is where the Pythagoran stuff comes in: somehow the official tour route turned out to be the hypoteneuse of the triangle, while we were fated to ride the other sides of each triangle - and your knowledge of geometry, of course, means that you know that we got to go further. But the compensations for all the detours is riding on these minor roads and tracks, and going through pretty little towns off the beaten track. Gwen, who is our invaluable support crew, found us an incredibly beautiful town to have lunch in today - fresh strawberries and tomatoes that tasted like nothing we've had in the States for years
The Netherlands has an incredible network of roads especially for cyclists, separate from the roads for cars, etc. This country is a paradise for cyclists, and it is not surprising that you see cyclists everywhere, young and old. Maybe bike lanes everywhere would be a good, cheap and effective way of reducing America's health costs and obesity problems.
We ran out of time today, and so covered 125 miles while sorting out teething problems with the Garmin and heading up several deadends and diversions. But we were riding, and that was the delight. Our learning will help us to reduce the problems in the future. And we have realized that, rather than stress over whether we can cover exactly the route that the 2010 tour took, we can use the official route and what we find on the ground to create our own unique version of the tour that we will remember for always.

Tonight, a quiet evening, and not too late to bed, to be ready for tomorrow's stage to Spa, and who knows where - the magic of finding out.