The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

Entering Holland was a breath of fresh (smokey) air, nothing really got easier, but you relaxed a bit.  Much of this trip has been like that, everything comes in waves, just when you are getting used to the challenges of a certain area everything changes and you are once again facing a new set of challenges which seem just as frustrating as the last. Holland and Blegium however, were that sweet time where you were used to the problems of Northern Europe and could just smoke- I mean ride the wave.  We took an extra rest day right away in a small town just across the border, Levi needed to recoup from a freak chair dancing injury,  we even became regulars in the local coffeeshop.  It was a  coffeeshop like I had never seen before, they are, if you have never been in one, almost exactly as you might imagine, a lot of Reggae playing and a lot of comfy places to sit and a lot of young giggling men.  This one though reminded me of what it would be like if your local bar sold marijuana (It looked astonishingly like the Old Colony in Provincetown), before they opened there were regulars lining up to get that early morning pick me up, the woman behind the bar was in her 50's and lively and friendly, someone was always shooting a game of pool, the decor was wooden stools and dart boards.  It was a booze free bar, very strange. 

Although we were less perturbed by the challenges, there were certainly many, we did a 100 mile day purely by accident riding well into the night in search of a certain hotel, just barely making it in before 8.  We found The Netherlands to be the most frustrating place to ride a bicycle yet, paths were too well marked and "scenic" for their own good, we spent hours zig zagging across the countryside while just trying to go in a straight line, often 60km would morph into 100km.  But we took our time, first meeting up with a friend, Carl who we met while studying in Vladivostok.  He was now back in Holland studying and met up with us in Utrecht (if you are a student in Holland you get free train travel).  We spent a day with him, walking around Utrecht, a very nice canal city south of Amsterdam. 
We also met up with a friend that Levi, Nate and myself had met on the Camino de Santiago three years ago.  Bert lives in Leuven, Belgium, and he showed us a wonderful time. Since he is a former pilgrim, he knew just what to do with us, immediately taking us to the washing machine and getting our clothes started, and taking us out for some delicious Belgian Waffles.  We wound up staying 2 extra days with Bert, we were just enjoying his place so much and getting everything ready for, what was in our minds,  "the last cruise" down to the South of France.  We had plenty of time, the Belgian roads had straightened out a bit and we were prepared for anything.  We had felt this way before, in Chita, in Novosibirsk, hell in Perm we bought suits we were feeling so good (yes I have been carrying a suit for almost 4000 miles), always to be crushed, and find a new obstacle to overcome.  But this time it felt complete, we had come almost 8000 miles, we have only 1500 left and we have plenty of time, we only have to be in the South of France by the 5th of December.  We were leaving the 12th of November, according to any numbers we crunched we could still take our time, although not as much as we could have had we not spent 2 days with Bert and a day with Carl, but those were both well worth it.

We left Leuven feeling quite jolly, next stop we pick up Adrian and take that final trip to Porto! as we pulled out of the city limits, we were hit by a brutal headwind, we were 85km from France and immediately in my mind I thought, "well we probably won't quite get to France today, but early tomorrow, either way.". The hills were finally growing again as we rode towards the French border, the road strangely turned into a quasi Belgian Red Light District, so Levi and I decided to call it quits, one guy we talked to about long bike trips before we left, always talked about the days where the winds were too tough and you had to "pack it in early" it was one of our favorite phrases and acts. 
We "packed it in early" at a Formula 1 a French hotel chain that I remember as an ultra modern, ultra cheap hotel from when my family used to stay at them in Europe, they now appear to be Ultra worn and Ultra dirty, what I remember as a toilet that went through a cleaning process like a self cleaning oven when I was a child appears to be a toilet modeled after a portapotty where the toilet flushes when you unlock the door.  The bunk beds that endeared me so much as a kid because they gave the room that  feel of adventure, now make me cringe as I wonder if my bike trip might end because of a freak Formula 1 accident.  None the less they are cheap.  We got ourselves out of the room the next morning, even managing to tear ourselves away from the BBC, a gift of Western Europe to the Idiots.  We packed up the bikes just as the wind began to whip the flags into frenzy, we stood in awe watching out day flap away in the breeze as a terrific rainstorm moved in, in a matter of seconds. We looked at each other, all suited up in rain gear, "I'll ride in the rain, but this is a storm, I don't need to ride in this". Walked back into the Formula 1 and booked another night, sadly the program that we had been watching on Lima's declining water supply was over.  Still the Idiots were feeling pretty good, we spent the day just lounging, using the Formula 1 internet, not even for anything really productive, unless you count following World Cup qualifying.  The next day we got out there again, the rain was minimal, the wind was blowing pretty hard, but that wasn't going to stop us. Nor did it stop us,  what did stop us that day was TNT, or tires n' tubes.  One of the toughest things about a flat tire, is not changing the tube or pumping it up, it is finding what caused the flat, because more often than not it is still in the tire ready to cause the next flat just a few km down the road.  On that stretch of road I had 3 consecutive flats, I traced each hole in the tube to the tire but still could find nothing. Every 10 kilometers for 30km I was getting a flat. Finally as we ran out of patched tubes, it was raining so everything was wet, and Sunday so you couldn't just buy a new tube, we came upon another Formula 1, "35k seems like a good riding day to me. "
At this point we knew that we were going to have to start doing some riding, we were still in Belgium!!! We woke up serious the next day, I went to the bike shop and bought two new tires for my bike and some new tubes and we got out there.  The wind was again whipping, ever since we had left Bert's we have faced a brutal 20-30 mile an hour head wind, everyday the forecast says it will die down but it never does. We rode though, through clenched teeth and with heads down we battled against the wind seeking 10 miles an hour.  After a certain point the wind changed to a cross wind, maybe we should have known then, but it wasn't until we had done another 10km that we discovered we had turned the wrong way, our map can be blamed for this one, although it is a 2009 France map, all the road numbers are wrong and most of it can be at best be considered a general sketch of how the roads lie. 
But the map wasn't going to refund us our money or our kilometers, we still were not out of Belgium, in fact we were closer to our hotel than the border. We just wanted to be magically lifted back to where we took the wrong turn at least then we could make some progress today.  We decided that hitchhiking might get us what we wanted.

I don't know whether the Belgians don't know what hitchhiking is, or whether they just choose to ignore hand signals, but we gave it a good hour and a half, thumbs out, in no other hitching situation on this trip had we had to wait so long, not even on the dirt road in Chita. People did stop, but for some reason they didn't understand what we wanted, they would always ask where we were going and what we were doing as if putting our thumbs out meant we were seeking friendship.  Eventually they would ask, "So what do you want?" we would tell them (mind you we only stuck our thumbs out for cars big enough to accommodate us and our bikes, so usually vans).  They would laugh and say "Oh of course I can't". It happened 4 times, a bizarre experience.  Eventually we had to get back on the bikes and ride, we did reach France, not as far as we wanted to go, and it wasn't a cheap hotel night but we made it.  On the map we had moved 35km, our odometers read 88km a rough day. 
Each one of these days had brought a new level of frustration, getting lost being the pinnacle.  Yesterday as we left the hotel I was determined to tackle the day frustration free, we were in France now, they don't seem to have bike lanes, you can just ride on the road, which for us is a great victory, we are free again.  We got out on the straightest road we could find and headed to a Formula 1 about 90km away.  It was a great day in many respects, we did not get lost (caution: I define being lost as having to turn around completely and backtrack) the roads were fairly clearly marked (I have discovered a way of interpreting the discrepancies on my map, D1044 is for instance N44 on the street signs, just a little extra calculation to challenge you). The road was as direct as possible, as straight a road as I have ever seen (rough with the hilly surroundings).
The wind however was spectacular, each day instead of decreasing I would say the wind has gotten better, France and Belgium have surpassed any other place we have been by far in strength and consistency, we did however manage to keep ourselves counting our blessings for the day (after a lost day, any day where you make positive gain all day is victory), and managed to stay frustration free.

We did 120km (maps are an imprecise science) in perhaps some of the roughest conditions to date, certainly since Ukraine.  We crawled into the hotel room like beaten men, and tried to interpret the forecast tomorrow, "okay well those clouds are moving out, I think it should get better, god knows it can't keep up like this forever." We ate a huge meal, as if we had done 200km, it sure felt like it. 
This morning the sun showed itself, the clouds were gone for the first time in a month or so, there was a faint hope.  We exited the town again, slowly climbing a hill, with each meter the wind grew, finally we reached the top, was it possible it had gotten stronger? The wind was so strong today we gave in after 35km, when you are only going 8 miles an hour sometimes you just have to  "pack it in". 

It has been 7 months since we left Vladivostok, and only in the last month or so, since we entered the full on Europe section of the trip, have we been able to sit back and really reflect on the Russian section of this trip.  It is really an incredible sensation, I look back at the guy who made it across Siberia and wonder if it is possible that I am still him, there have been so many changes since then.   Some parts of this bicycle trip feel like you are being torn down and rebuilt again and again.  Chita you thought you could accomplish anything now that you had done the off road, bicycle rack trouble and food poisoning brought you back down, but you slowly built yourself back up, fixed the racks as best you could and ate packaged foods, by Krasnayarsk you were king of the world again, talking big.  The flats and wind of Novosibirsk brought you back down, showing you a new immense challenge, by Perm you were buying suits because "you had never met anyone better" and you had just ridden across Asia. Road frustrations and disappointment in how "European" European Russia is, brought you crashing back down.  It is going to be interesting to see what might happen to you, if as I am beginning to think, you will face a twenty to thirty kilometer and hour head wind from here to the South of France.  What is a person who battles the wind like after a steady 2 weeks? Crazy I guess.
ellski