The road so far...

I'm in an internet/phone center in Gent, Belgium right now, its sunny and early, and already I've ridden past three medieval churches and one medieval castle (complete with moat).

I had intended to make this a long post chronicling my three days on the road, but these wierd belgian keyboards have a bunch of letters in the wrong place, so its slow going (if you spot misplaced 'a' 'w' 'z' 'q' ',' or 'm's, now you know why).

I left Amsterdam late- as is befitting a Vancouverite, and had a hell of a time getting onto the 'Landen Fietsroute' - the special marked network of paths that make a bike route from (in my case, though I believe there are up to two dozen nationally) Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Finding the fietsroute, to get on it, was one thing - staying on it was another. Let me warn you right now, beware these routes! You are so busy looking for the next sign to let you know ARE paying attention, some major intersections are mysteriously unmarked. To make things worse, my (specifically reccomended) map, showing the fietsroutes, was only available in the next-to-useless scale of 1:300000. Day one I managed about 70 km I believe (.. starting to seriously think about investing in a bike computer).

Rotterdam. Very differet from Amsterdam. You can feel it immediately, everything is spread out wider, there are more green spaces, the pace is more laid back, and modern archicecture is dominant (thanks to the near complete destruction of the city by bombing in WWII.

I rolled in at about 7 pm (after scoping out a 'you definitely should not camp here' euro nature park for potential places to sneakily camp), and fell right into Groen Voltage - another squatter meetingplace. Sone (sp?), behind the bar saw me outside looking confused, came outside, and asked me if I needed anything - Internet, he told me, was inside and free - qnd wouldnt you know it, they were starting a Voku in about 10 minutes. Cheap food and beer, good conversation - and, it quickly turned out, a place to stay (much thanks to Carly for offering up a spare bed at her place) - luck was with me again. One of the other kids at dinner also tipped me off to the local choppermakers who, after some confusion I found the following day (photos to come whenever the photos end up coming. Sorry guys - its bugging me too, though its probably helping me stop using photos as a blogging crutch). Joris, who's shop it was was a little apprehensive at first, but (as apparently with most dutch people) opened up somewhat after I forced my personality on him. It probably helped that I had a polo mallet on my bike (what the hell is that? - bike polo! here's some websites you should check out) and that told him a little about my trip and the bike folks at home. He told me about the FBI bike festival in Amsterdam in July (DAMN), and showed me two bikes he was bringing - the coolest custom chopper I've yet seen, and a stretch mini he was building for a Mini bike race(!!) at the FBI - get this - frame height restrictions, crank length restrictions, and ,ax 12 inch wheels. intense. I told him about the 'alley kitten' races at home, thanked him, and hit the road.

My detour to joris' shop cost me some time, and it was almost 2:30 when I hit the road. Some nice countryside and a couple of ferry rides were the days highlights - spots of heavy rain, and a long detour/ lost spell (as a result of the bloody fietsroutes) were the lowlights. I had aimed to make Antwerp that night - even had somewhere to stay set up courtesy of couchsurfing.com - but ended up frustrated at my low mileage and cruising the rural byways just outside of Roosendal at dusk looking for stealth camp locations. Stands of trees dense enough to obscure me and my bike, that are also accessible by road are harder than expected to come by. I eventually found a piece of neglected/ for sale property right next to the rail line in which I could hide out and set up camp. My sleep was punctuated by loud trains and dreams of tornadoes.

I took the previous day's lesson to heart and got an early start the following morning. Ditched the fietsroutes and road in the bike lane on the highway. And then, before I even knew what had happened to me I was in Belgium. In my peripheral vision I see a blue squqre with a ring of stars, 'Belgie' printed underneath. The licenseplqtes now all have little Bs on them, insteqd of NLs. Europe. No 'Borders.' I don't think I'd seriously considered that until I saw it in practice.

Anyway, looks lke my internet time is up, so I will have to finish this story later. Medieval Gent awaits!