Well, we now know what we forgot…I am sorry to say that this blog could be a bit boring as we seem to forgotten the cord to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer. Oh well. UPDATE 7/4/11--WE HAVE PHOTO TRANSFER. FEAST YOUR EYES BELOW!
Apart from the cord, everything else is just dandy. The flight was fine—definitely worth the extra $30 to choose the row with only two seats. Finding the taxi to the rv rental shop was a bit of an adventure (our flight got in at 6:10 am and I’m pretty sure the guy overslept) but we eventually made it, put together the bikes and off we went!
The RV is pretty standard. I don’t think we would have wanted it any smaller. It’s got a bed above the cab area and a bed in back. Obviously we aren’t planning on using both (unless we really get in a big row!), but its nice to have the bed in the back for stowing things.
The first night we drove about 3 hours before the 27+ hours without sleep got the better of us and we pulled over in a campground outside of Colon…along with about 1000 other people. Yikes. The Euros really do like the RV action. Also, just as a side note, the Autobahn left lane if for those moving in excess of approximately 110 miles per hour. Our taxi driver from the airport was missing a hand that he told us he lost in an autobahn accident at 230 kph! I would be SOL with the governor set at 107 on the Focus. I would however, fit right it with the station wagon as that seems to be the preferred style of vehicle. No SUVs, just lots of very cool diesel wagons.
Day number two started with a drive to Gent, where we again settled into a nice campground on the city edge with approximately 1000 other people. We were now in Belgium so we went about our Belgian business. We took the 75km “Leitstreek” tour of the countryside in, out, down and around the little villages and farms. We saw some shit you surely wouldn’t see in America: a human powered “party bus” contraption where everyone on board is pedaling their own stationary bike type thing to propel themselves down the street at 10 km p/h—all while some lady in the middle is dancing an exhorting people on with the obligatory Euro techno music; some guy motorpacing his buddy down a city bike path (mopeds are allowed on the bike paths; and speaking of mopeds we witnessed a mother “duck” on a moped leading about a dozen other “duckling” moped riders in what must have been a moped driving class. Everyone was dressed exactly the same and the mother duck had a big flag and sign to stop traffic and let everyone pass. Very amusing. (We have subsequently witnessed at least five or six identical scenes. Apparently moped classes are very big here.) One other thing that you wouldn’t find on an American bike tour route was the dedicated bike ferry crossing. Now, we got a pretty late start on our ride. No one told us there was a ferry. And no one told us that the ferry stopped at 6:00 pm. Hmmmm. With some decent directions and some pretty good dead reckoning we found our way back home to complete our Belgian day with a couple of orders of very tasty frites…no mayo though.
Belgian day number two. Not such an auspicious start to day two we attempted to move the Starship Enterprise to the center of the Ronde de Vlaanderen in Oudenaarde. Apparently, the campsite listed our 2009 “Camping and Caravaning in Europe” seems to have closed. (A bit of a side note mea culpa here…I was too cheap to shell out $50 for the 2011 version of the book, so I paid $15 for the 2009 version. I now know why it was $35 cheaper...). After a bit of an adventure finding someplace to land the RV, we found a nice parking lot in a nature preserve and set off to follow part of the Tour of Flanders route. The not so auspicious start continued as Hannah got some genuine Belgian road rash after crashing on the cobbled SIDEWALK less than 50 feet into the ride. Its not too bad. I just makes her look like more of a bad ass. Once we got on our way, all can say is…WOW!! That is some cool shit! Almost all of the roads are really just glorified sidewalks and driveways 10-12 feet across at the most. We mashed our way up the Eikenberg, the Kwaremont, the Paterberg and of course the Koppenberg. If we had method of transferring photos you would have visual proof of Hannah and I grinding our way up the fabled cobles. We both rode them all…no walking. (Hannah gives a shout out here to B. Dagnon lending us the compact crank.) I’m pretty sure the “THOR!” I saw painted on the road was not for me.
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| GRINDING UP THE KOPPENBERG! |
Between our rides on the first two days, we got to see some amazing countryside that you could never find without bikes. Windshields suck. Bikes rule! But, y’all knew that already.
This brings us to day number three. We are soon headed of to the Ronde de Vlaanderen museum where I spotted some free wi-fi and hopefully will post this blog. Were headed off to Paris today (maybe with a stop at the Forest of Arenberg and the velodrome in Roubaix). We’ll keep y’all updated as we can when we get a phone number. Peace out.
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| THINKING OF TRADING IN THE RV |
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