12 June 2007 23:21

I want to start this entry by stating that I am no more injured then the last time I posted. Nicole is similarly unscathed. Xena is fine and in my possession. I still have (afaik) all my stuff (except for a handkerchief which I was fond of, alas). Almost all of it is in working order.

I am on a train. When I post this to my blog, I will be in Den Haag. I will now pause for a moment to go find some wood and knock on it.

When I last typed, I believe that I was sitting in a laundromat in Antwerp. I think I wrote about the cathedral. Did I mention that I left Xena tied up outside directly outside the main entrance? Whenever she is alone in a strange place, she fears being left there forever and so urgently tries to attract my attention so that I can come rescue her. She barked loudly the whole time that I was in the church. I could hear her barks echoing. I’ve come to like the acoustic of external dog barks resonating in large stone vaults. However, I can see how others might not feel the same way. But it really gives a feel for the resonances of a space.

Anyway, when I came out to get her, the ticket seller yelled at me for a bit, saying that everybody was scared to come in because there was an alarming, barking dog next to the door. I apologized profusely and felt really guilty. What if somebody’s vacation was ruined because they were too frightened to see the cathedral and they only had half an hour of opportunity to do so (because they went to the museum first or something)?

We biked to Mechellen. The trip was uneventful. Painfully uneventful. Some folks yelled at me for letting Xena run along side the bike in the woods. The LF 2 is really poorly laid out for a long section of in Belgium. It has no signs and it’s really boring. Also, people who live close to Antwerp are often unfriendly and hostile and scowl at you in a threatening manner when you say hello as you bike past. And some of them seem to like to deface signs for bike routes. By spray painting over them so you can’t read them, or drawing in new arrows pointing in wrong directions or taping over parts or removing signs entirely.

When I got to Mechellen, though, I pulled out my Routard and started calling the three listed hotels. None of them took dogs. In the Netherlands, every hotel takes dogs. In France, people adore dogs. Even in Germany, people are quite warm feeling towards dogs. I think Belgians are desperate to differentiate themselves from their language-sharing neighbors. As such, they’re not too fond of dogs.

A friendly older woman approached me and started telling me about her bike tours. She gave the excellent advice of calling small towns’ tourist offices before 4:00 so they could book you a hotel. Great advice. She also said I probably wouldn’t find a hotel at all for the evening. Yikes.

There may or may not be a lot of hotels in Mechellen, but they’re not well marked. In Antwerp, I sort of walked around, looking for hotel signs and knocking on doors. Apparently, I was very, very lucky. Anyway, I biked past and so went into a very swanky looking hotel. There’s no camping around there, so I was kind of stuck. But they didn’t take dogs either! The woman at the desk, though, was awesome and called a much more moderately priced hotel and booked me a room.

So we ended up at the Hobbit Hotel. I mention it by name because the owners are REALLY REALLY nice and are just starting out and want some publicity. So it’s a typical utilitarian two star, but with really good service and good breakfasts. The owners eat the same breakfast as the guests, so it’s tasty even if there wasn’t an excess of choices. Also, as much espresso as you want. Also, there’s wifi in the bar area. It’s free, but you have to ask about it before you can get the password. They also offer secure bike parking and I think also bike rentals. It’s about 2 km from the center.

I booked two nights because of the cathedral. It’s carillon has the most bells in the world. UNESCO lists it as a world heritage site. They have regular concerts, three times a week when the carillon school is in session and one time a week in the summer. The concert was the next day at 3:00. So we walked around, got some food, went into a bar with a gay flag, got some more food and generally slacked until the concert, which lasted a little more than an hour. It was widely ignored by one and all.

Sometimes, laptop artists worry about something often called “performance aspect.” What this tends to refer to is the visual component of performing an instrument. For instance, if you go to a piano concert, usually it’s possible to see the pianist. You can see her gestures and get a sense of her musical interpretation by how she moves her body. This extra-musical information is widely believed to be the main reason that people pay to go to concerts. If you want to listen to the Goldberg Variations, for example, a CD of Glen Gould may be the best possible musical way to hear it. But if you go to a concert, it won’t be as polished, but you can see the pianist moving around. So goes the common wisdom, usually offered as reasoning for why laptop music is lacking.

I bring up performance aspect because carillon concerts have none. Was I listening to a live performance? Was I listening to a MIDI file? I don’t really have any way of knowing how “live” is really was, except that bells were actually ringing. The process that activated those bells, however, was invisible. Does the lack of performance aspect make a difference to carillon concerts? Is this why virtually nobody else was paying attention (or are they not as tickled pink as I am by hearing Strangers in the Night dinging out of a church steeple?) I once heard Carmen performed at the Grote Kerk in Amsterdam and others were listening. I think I have too little data to draw conclusions, but it’s something to think about. Nobody whines that they can’t see the bell-ringer.

After that, I wanted to go into the cathedral, but I really did want to upset anyone like I had in Antwerp. The cathedral had a very large square in front of it, filled with hedges. I tied Xena up, to a tree in the hedge, far enough from the door that nobody would be alarmed to enter, but close enough that it would be clear where her owners were. There didn’t seem to be any residential houses nearby. The French and the Dutch don’t seem to mind barking dogs too terribly much, so I figured it was ok.

The church had an amazing number of relics. They had St Celestine, who is rumored to have some sort of prophesy (and who is my patron saint, according to me), and a bunch of other saints. So many relics! It was awesome! No cathedral is complete without having several display cases full of human bones. Also, they had the most amazing pulpit ever. I can’t even describe how florid it was, covered with animals and plants and saints and crucifixion, frogs, snaked squirrels, apples, all so very ornate and overdone and carved in wood. Pictures will be forthcoming via flickr.

After a while, Nicole got worried about the dog and went outside to check on her. The police were holding her leash. Some woman with two dogs had come by and become very worried about our obviously abandoned dog. (You can tell she’s abandoned because she’s wearing a collar has no water bowl near her). The woman offered her water but she wouldn’t take it! Clearly, this calls for police intervention. Nicole false claimed to have been unable to hear the dog barking. The police gave her a talking to, but let her keep Xena. You can’t take the dog in the church, you can’t let her bark outside. The hotel folks would have been happy to look after her (almost too happy, though), so I guess that was a solution. Also, it’s a solution to take turns, which is what we did with the city museum and the other church that we visited. I told the hotel owner about this when we came back for the evening and she was shocked. Belgium has too many laws, she explained.

The next day, as we were checking out, she asked if we’d forgotten anything. The dog, maybe? It would be ok if we forgot the dog. Xena is charming to everyone, except to cops and concerned ladies who offer her water.

We started down the path to Leuven, the home town of Stella Artois. The bike route took us down a canal. For the whole day. On the same canal. Although we were instructed to cross from one side of it to another at the halfway point, so I guess that broke up some of the monotony. At least it was easy going. And people started to become more friendly again, which was a relief. Also, the last bit smelled like beer. mmmmm

We got to Leuven and Nicole asked me why it was famous. I suggested we stop for a beer (maybe a Stella) and look at the guidebook. As we got to the Grote Markt, I said, I’m going to guess it’s known for it’s beer, it’s cathedral and it’s stadthuis (aka, city hall). That thing was ornate when it was built. But then, on the advice of Victor Hugo, they decided to cover every possible nitch with statues of notable personages from the region. The effect is astounding. It puts Brussels’ flamboyant Hôtel de Ville to shame. I’ve never seen so many statues at such high density. And at the base of every statue were a bunch of tiny bass reliefs showing even smaller people. It’s amazing.

We sat down in a café facing the stadthuis and asked for a beer recommendation. The waiter brought us really strong beers. Biking in the hot sun + really strong beer = unable to walk afterwards. Nicole was more steady than I, so she went first into the cathedral and then I went. The inside is charming, plus the altar of the previous church still exists under the newer church. And they have lots of relics. And a life-size carving of a falling horse as at the base of their pulpit, so complete that it actually has a carved asshole.

The town is a college town, and thus has lots of vegetarian food at reasonable prices. I found it to be entirely charming and worthy of a longer visit than I allocated for it, but when I went to find a hotel in town, they were full because of some university event, so we went on to go camp as we had originally planned.

My fietsroutsen maps of the Netherlands have campgrounds marked on them, which is a very useful feature. My Belgian maps not only cover far less ground, but don’t mark campsites, only mention their general vicinity. Some of them have had signs from the bike routes, so I just hoped the one right outside of town would be similarly marked.

I thought we might have gone too far when we passed the gypsy camp. (like, with real Romas), but when we got to the top of a hill and could see nothing but rolling fields in every direction, I knew we had gone too far. A family biked up behind us, so I asked if they knew where a campground was. They lived next to one, but it “wasn’t wonderful” and the owner was “kind of crazy.” How bad could it be? I just want a flat spot and a shower. We biked with them the way there. They explained that the path we were on was only for bikes and agriculture. Also, it was the hilliest part of Flanders. I think I broke a speed record for the dog trailer. They also talked a tiny bit about Waterloo. Napoleon was defeated because he failed to account for the little hollows that run through the hills.

The route was beautiful. Rolling fields (of barley!) on either side. Farm houses in the distance. Moody, grey skies. It was the prettiest part of the trip.

We got the campsite and the owner was, as advertised, kind of crazy. The campsite had a large grey, greasy lake in the middle in which steely grey fish would slither around, just beneath the surface before returning to the murky depths. The fish were huge. The lake was a breeding site for mosquitoes. He insisted the water was lovely. Spring water! Drinking water before it got in the lake. You can’t drink the lake water, but right before it goes in, you can. We asked where the showers were. “The toilet is over there, go to the end and then up, you understand?” Showers? “The toilet is over there, at the end.” I started to become suspicious, but he started asking questions about our dog. Was she friendly? Had she ever bitten anybody? He proclaimed his love for animals and said that if we ever came back riding a live elephant, we could camp for free! He kept talking about this for a while and the light was fading, so we rushed to set up the tent as fast as we could when he finally wandered off.

Nicole went to powder her nose (for European readers: she went to use the toilet). She came back. “It’s uhhh rustic. You’ll need to jump over a trench to get there.” Good gods, open sewers! ewwww! I went, past the moldy, mossy, abandoned caravans, marked with yellowing “for sale signs” and there were slugs in the toilet. (Not, like, in the building. I mean, in the bowl. I peed on a slug.) I told Nicole that I didn’t think it had been cleaned since the Carter administration. She pointed out that there was no Carter administration in Belgium. We started joking about what political event had lead to his abandoning toilet cleaning. Maybe it was personal. Maybe his wife left him and he didn’t realize they needed cleaning. Or maybe she had died. Maybe she had forgotten to clean them one day and he had killed her and left them unkempt in warning and protest. As it got darker and the skeeters swarmed, this theory became more ominous. The frogs screeched their mating class in the background. The birds screamed like banshees. It was the loudest campground ever and it was all animal sounds. The less than quarter moon was hidden behind a cloud and I could hear the large fish darkly rising to the surface to snatch bugs from the air and splashing back down to the opaque bottom. Why had he asked so many questions about how mean the dog was? Why was there nobody else in the campground? Who owned all the greenish empty caravans? What happened to them?

We finally went to sleep, although I woke up about a million times. why had the frogs fallen so quiet all of the sudden?

When we got up in the morning, he was no where to be seen. The showers . . . yikes, I wouldn’t have mentioned them either. And did I mention how weird the water tasted. Drinkable lake water, eh? We packed up as fast as we could as the greenish clouds swirled menacingly overhead. Xena, usually eager to frolic in campgrounds sat nervously near the gate, anxious to leave. the bottom of our tent was covers with odd roundish, slimy, oozing creatures.

We peddled up to the top of the hill, where we had last seen the bike route and spent a while riding through the town, until we came back to the inexplicably grey camp ground. The route went right past it. And then around the back. And then meandered and then came back to the other side. We didn’t see a single person. I started looking for signs from the Blair Witch movie. That’s how today started. It got better. And then it got worse.

8 June 2007 15:54

No better time for typing than while sitting at a Laundromat. They should come with wifi. Today, I went in the cathedral while Xena barked her little doggy self dizzy. afterwards, the ticket sales person yelled at me for tying her so close to the cathedral. I think I’m very lucky that she did not call the police to have poor Xena removed. There has got to be a way to get her to stop barking. She only does it when I’ve left er alone and she fears that I will never return. When I’m around, she never makes a peep.

The cathedral had a lot of Mary in it, as was to be expected, but also a lot of St Christopher who was the partron of some of the guilds who decorated the church. There was only one reliquary with two saints in it, but I could not tell who they were or what parts of them. Relics have fallen out of favor and aren’t boasted in the same way they would have been in the past, alas.

The church has an astonishingly tall steeple, all filled with bells. An incredible, unbelievable number of bells. They give concerts there during the summer, starting next week . Alas, I will not get to hear the huge number of bells playing live, but even just the hourly chimes are fairly impressive. They do trills on the bells, something one hardly ever hears, in my experience (which, admittedly, is not vast). The church has two organs. One of them is the older one, but they also have one from 2003, designed specifically to play the works of Bach, but, the informational sign added, it’s ‘touch’ allows works from many periods to be played.

While English speakers don’t often hear of new organ works, there is actually a quite active school of organ composition in Mexico. And of course, there’s Henry Brant and others in America turning out new works. Bach is ok and all, but you’d think there’s already an adequate installed base of organs for playing his works.

The church also had quite elaborate confessionals. This is a wooden structure designed to hold one officiating priest and two sinners (who may also be priests). The priest is in a chamber in the middle and the sinners are situated on either side, in a sort of a nook equipped with a kneeler. It is enclosed on three sides and has a bit of a privacy shield. The priest turns his attention to sinner number one who has a script. “Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been [x time units] since my last confession. Since then I have [ list of sins ].” Then the priest talks for a bit about the sinner’s sins, possibly offering advice and assigning the sinner a penance, which is to say a list of prayers that the priest assigns for the duration assigned. When I was a youth, it was usually three ‘Hail Mary’s and an ‘Our Father,’ but it could be a great deal more to be repeated at specified intervals. If you die before these are finished, the dogma used to state (and perhaps still does? the afterlife has changed a lot in the last few years) that you would have to go to Purgatory until your prayers were completed. But back to the sacrament. After the priest assigns the sinner a penance, iirc, they say the act of contrition together and then the priest offers absolution, which is the assurance that God has forgiven all of the sins, including the ones the sinner forgot to mention, but not including the ones he or she omitted on purpose. After this is completed, the priest turns his attention to sinner number two. Meanwhile, sinner number one makes the sign of the cross and vacates the confessional so that a new sinner may sit and wait for the priest’s attention. It’s a sin to try to overhear the hushed conversation on the other side, although if you did, you could confess it right away, at least.

The confessionals in Antwerp feature extensive wooden carvings, including pained looking saints. That carved saint weeps for your wrongdoings. I would feel intimidated to have so many holy figures so pained by my surreptitious glancing at images of naked ladies. Alas and woe. St Peter weeps!

Today, I learned that map of the national bike routes in Belgium is out of print. Nobody seems to have any copies left and nobody can say when it will be printed again. I did find a map to get me as far as Brussels. It’s not until I leave there that I run short of map.

7 June 2007 22:01

Today, I awoke and then went right back to sleep. A bed! a mattress! Pillows! The hotel guy had been a bit disparaging about the room. “It’s very small.” But you can walk upright in it! And I don’t need to sleep on the floor! Amazing! But alas it was just for one night.

I tried in vain to find maps. I bought a book about Belgium. The Routard was the best one. French travel books are better than English ones. Everyone should learn to speak French just so they can read the poetry of the Routard. I bought chocolate. I searched for a new hotel room. I found one. I ate some food. I ate some more food. I walked around a bit. I ate some more food. And then the whole day had evaporated. Nice!

There are statues of the Virgin Mary everywhere in Belgium. Roadside shrines abound. But there are especially a lot in the city of Antwerp. She is the patron mother goddess saint of the city. Anybody who put a statue of her on the side of a building got a tax break. (Protestants were not so welcome in town for a long while.) The statues here often involve her holding a baby Jesus. The city hall has one such statue. It’s hundreds of years old, but I’m curious about whether or not there’s separation of church and state. I saw a little brick house holding an electrical transformer, which had a tiny chapel dedicated to Mary sticking out of it. I don’t know if the electric company was angling for a tax break (or if said break sill exists in modern times), but this was clearly semi-official at least and also clearly relatively recent.

In the roadside chapels, it seems that Mary is much less likely to be holding Jesus. There’s often a smaller statue of him to Mary’s right. Another saint might be at her left. (Her left, not the prayer’s left.) Often these chapels have candles and little notes addressed to Maria. Interestingly, the smaller side placement of Jesus suggests that he’s in second place. Which is sort of logical given that he’s the kid and all. But, looking at all these chapels dedicated to her, I think there’s some truth to protestants’ charge that Catholics worship Mary. And that she’s a goddess figure.

She’s an interesting Goddess figure in that she’s usually not at all feminist. Her presence is often reactionary. She was obedient, submissive, etc and her high status makes women feel more represented. Places with a high level of devotion to Mary tend to have a lower level of feminism.

Also interesting about Mary is that she’s both Maiden and Mother. She’s rarely depicted as a crone, even at Jesus’ death or afterwards. In the Middle Ages, before the Assumption of Mary was invented (in the current dogma she had her own, personal rapture), the dormition of Mary was a popular devotional image. Dormition meaning death – the final sleep. But now, she is forever young – depicted as the same age whether she’s holding Jesus as a baby, weeping at the foot of the cross, or ascending into heaven. I know of one sculptor who is making images of her as a crone.

Finally, what’s interesting about Mary is her relationship with Jesus. Mary is the queen of heaven. So what does that make Jesus? He’s not the prince of heaven. There is the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. God is three persons, but also one person. St Patrick explained this with the shamrock: three leaves but one plant. But the reason it’s a capital-M Mystery is because it’s unexplainable. If Jesus and God the Father (and the oft-forgotten Holy Spirit) are all equal and there’s only one god, then they must all be that one god. So Jesus is his own dad. Jesus and God the father and the holy spirit are all king of heaven. Which means that when the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, that was the same god who is the Father who is Jesus who is the Holy Spirit. Which is to say that there’s a lot of precedent in the west for deities getting a free pass on the incest taboo and I think Christianity is not an exception to this.

Anyway, Belgians seem to agree that there’s something about Mary and so the stick her every where. But there’s an important difference between countryside shrines and city statues. The city statues are for Our Lady of tax evasion. As mentioned above, having one on your street exempted you from certain taxes. Therefore, all the city ones are officially sanctioned. Also as mentioned above, the almost universally have a crowned Mary holding a crowned baby and the country side ones often do not, but rather have a giant Mary standing over a small earth and a snake.

The urban, official Mary is Mary the mother. The rural Mary is Mary the independent power. If Mary is popular among the people, it’s natural that she would be the subject of the town’s cathedral and the patron of the city. But the subtle differences in her presentation reflect differing heirarchies. The Mother Mary is the submissive servant of God, although a queenly one. The rural Mary is much less reactionary in her iconography. One could believe that her image would inspire devout women to excel instead of submit. By putting an official image of MAry around the city, civic and religious leaders were able to take a popular movement and channel it into submission.

In other news, my landlord left a comment on my blog before I called him. In it, he was threatening to call interpol on me. I’ve never been an international fugitive before. I know what you’re thinking, “what could possibly be so illegal in the Netherlands?” Fear not, I was not abducting and murdering cute toddlers. No, my rental contract had expired and so he was contacting all sorts of people telling them to cancel their contracts on me. Like my insurance company, which I guess is not going to reimburse me for my stitches (at 17€ each).

In most states in the US, when your rental contract expires, your tenancy shifts to something called month-to-month. This means you have to give 30 days notice before you leave and you just keep paying rent to the landlord. Is this not the case in the Netherlands? I was paying my rent every month. Except this month, apparently I’m paying an extra supplement in the form of out of pocket expenses incurred by having my insurance suddenly cancelled. I suppose I should have verified that he received the email that I sent him with my new phone number when I first got the phone.

Um, other news. Xena is acting weirdly freaked and I don’t know why, but it might have something to do with being in a loud, strange city. Children stare at the bandage on my chin. My mouth is all swollen and apparently I’m even less intelligible than usual. I really want a chiropractor to fix my neck. I can almost eat. My ear hurts from my jaw smacking the ground. I recommend avoiding smashing your chin into the pavement. Also, Nicole looks horrified whenever she sees my gash.

Tomorrow, I’m going to go look inside the giant, lovely cathedral and I will find a map of the route to Brussels, damn it!

Geeking out

I tried to find a map of the national fietsroutsen. First I went to the fnac. A thought occurred to me. They have GPSes! I made a mental list of the features I want:

  • small
  • light
  • tough – crash resistant and weather proof
  • mounts on handlebars
  • has color graphic of a map
  • has map of national bike routes

But wait, why am I carrying around this giant computer if I could have a tiny one? A cheaper one that’s not also my musical instrument?

  • USB in for a real keyboard
  • drivers to get data from my digital camera
  • a text editor (feature set for this to follow)
  • wifi – so I can upload my text and pictures to my blog
  • bluetooth to talk to my cell phone (or USB is also ok)

When I was a kid, my dad worked as a hardware engineer in silicon valley. He told stories about many interesting folks he met through his work. One of the guys he met was one of the first mobile computing people. He rode his bicycle around the US, towing a computer. This was in the 1980’s, before things were overly mobile. He had a wireless connection via satellite. And instead of blogging, he wrote tech columns. While biking. He had an awesome keyboard: seven switches on his handlebars. He memorized the ascii code sequence for the alphabet and for punctuation marks and typed in the code directly via the switches. I want this keyboard. I acknowledge that I will have to build it myself.

But if you can type and bike at the same time, why not make a text editor especially suited to this? First of all, if you’re typing like this, you don’t want to have to hit save, so you shouldn’t have to. It should just save diffs automatically. And those diffs should have a time stamp and also a location stamp. Because it’s a GPS. If you write something about how lovely the wildflowers look, it would know where you wrote that. I acknowledge that I may have to write it myself, so the computer better take third party applications.

In fact, why not correlate the GPS coordinates with all your data? If you synch the time between the bike computer and your camera, you can put an exact location on every photo.

So I flagged down a fnac clerk and explained that I wanted a small computer for my bike that had maps, knew where I was, would talk to my phone, and could have a keyboard attached. He told me no such thing exists. I don’t believe him because I went later into a travel store to find a compass (the McGyver method of finding north with an anlog watch doesn’t work so well on cloudy days) and I saw they had a CD ROM of all the bike routes in Belgium.

While I’m thinking of the bike computer of d00m, it should have other features, like remembering my route, knowing witch way is north, calculating my speed and distance for the day and other, probably standard GPS features. But why stop there? It should communicate with Google Earth / Google maps and be able to download and deal with third party content from these services. If I want to make out a fietsroute myself, I should be able to mark every sign on the route with the device and then upload it to google maps or online bicycle communities.

So, any of you geeks out there, what should I get? A Palm with a GPS attachment? I don’t want to break the bank, but I don’t want to break my mac either. I’m really lucky it still works after I crashed the other day. I will make certain to always cushion it with bread and oranges, but it’s too useful to me to risk in this way. I mean, why do I need a super-powerful computer to catalog photos, create text and surf the internet? A tiny, smaller thing should be fine. I’m taking suggestions.

6 June 2007 23:20

Oh my gods, I’m in Antwerp!

I learned a few things yesterday. Not like, about myself. When people start talking about their recreational activities and learning things about themselves, it’s because their recreational activity sucks. Also be aware of words like “tough” and “challenging” and phrases like “pushing myself” and anything involving “limits.” These key words signal people who like to punish themselves. They do things like run 26 kilometers for no good reason and learn something about wanting to barf while running. I learned nothing about myself, but did acquire information that may be useful to travellers:

If you walk up to a stranger and, without any polite words or words in their language, ask where to find a bank AND you’re covered in blood, the person will be happy to help. In fact, strangers will offer to do a lot of things, like drive you to a doctor.

Also, I learned that Bromptom’s messenger-ish bag’s support frame is pretty tough and will protect a laptop from death. Also, bike gloves are great for preventing road rash. Oh, and I learned it’s important to look where you’re going. If you’re gazing off to the side at deer and some fool road engineer decided it might be a good idea to put a huge wooden post in the middle of the road, you might hit the post. Your bike will stop, but you will not. I took my first trip over my handlebars and landed on my hands and chin. My hands are fine, but my chin was not. I’ve got three stitches in it now, but all of my teeth are still in place. I got stitched up and was back on the road in about an hour.

So, yeah, I was looking at deer and ran into a pole. I remember seeing the pole in front of me and thinking I was going to hit it. Then I remember flying through the air and I remember hitting the ground and thinking “oh good, I’m ok.” And then I noticed that Nicole had fallen too and I wondered why. And I saw people stopping in alarm, so I thought I should get up off the ground and try talking to them in broken Dutch. Somebody alerted me that I was dripping blood everywhere. I asked if the dog was ok. She was fine. Her trailer hadn’t even tipped over. She wasn’t even freaked out very much.

A passerby and the postman had a discussion and decided that I needed stitches, since the bandaid that Nicole handed me wasn’t really helping. The passerby drove me to the doctor and had a talk with the receptionist, explaining what had happened. The first thing they did was tell me I would have to pay cash and ask if I had the money. While I was leaking blood everywhere. That conversation would not have occurred in France. There, they stitch first and ask about money later. But in Holland, I can drip blood on the floor while folks discuss my ability to pay.

The stranger who gave me a ride to the doctor waited for me the whole time and then gave me a ride back to where I crashed and Nicole and Xena were waiting. Nicole had righted my handlebars and checked my laptop for visible dings and removed smashed things from my bags – including an orange and plastic wine glasses designed for camping. Alas, my wine glasses are dead. But my laptop seems ok. And then we biked slowly for a while longer and stopped to camp for the night.

I don’t want to say that it was anybody’s fault but my own that I ran directly into a pole. But. Why the hell would you put a pole in the middle of the road anyway? It’s dangerous! A car that hit it would maybe not hit bikes on the other side, but certainly hurt the occupants of the car. Those poles would not be legal in California. Markers have to break away in a crash or cause a vehicle to glance off of it. The start of barriers, where a car could smash into the end and cause injury, are padded. they have big reflective garbage cans full of sand at the start of every barrier on the highway. Ok, to be fair, if I had run into a barrel of sand, I still probably would have fallen and my chin would still have hit the ground, but I think those poles should go.

Anyway, after biking a while longer, we stopped in Essen, Belgium. For those of you following along on your Landlijke Fietsrouten maps at home, Essen, Belgium is not the same town as Essen, Germany. There are several important differences. 1. One of them is in Flanders and the other is in Germany. 2. One is a famous city and the other is a tiny village. Anyway, we went to Essen, where, ironically, I couldn’t eat so much because smacking your chin in to the pavement is much like getting a big punch in the jaw. I couldn’t open my mouth very far and it hurt to chew. I drank a liter of the soymilk in my bag. It was light! Curses! Why would anybody want low calorie soy milk?

A guy at the campground said he knew another guy who could fix the wheel of Xena’s trailer. Nicole ran her bike into it and it was all askew in a comical sort of way. If you ever want people to stare at you in the border region of Belgium, bike along with a huge bloody bandage on your chin and a dog trailer with a warped wheel. Anyway, the bike fixing guy seemed a bit, well, off. So instead of having him spend the whole next day fixing the wheel, Nicole and I walked to dinner.

It’s hard to eat when you can’t really chew or open your mouth. Also, vegetarians are sort of at the mercy of the chef. You usually only have one option. “It is squishy?” I spent 2 hours mushing up my pasta with my fork and slowly putting it in my barely open mouth. I went to the bar to pay and a drunk guy looked right at me, surprised, and made a comment to the great amusement of all gathered there. The bar tender declined to translate. An old drunk guy started talking to me in English. He wanted my address. He wanted me to know that he had connections in California, with a very sexy lady. “Not a man, a sexy lady.” Oooo-kay. I got my change from the bartender and was leaving. The drunk old man said, “you’re a very attractive person. A man or a woman, I don’t know.” Apparently, he’s bi-curious. I’ve got nothing against bi-curious folks, but I do try to avoid them in bars because often they’ll want to kiss you and then run away. My heart gets broken too easily. I did not tell him he would break my heart and his boyfriend’s too (not to mention the sexy California T-girl), but instead said “me neither.” He called back “You’re neither?” but I was already out the door.

And today, after getting a bike shop to de-warp Xena’s wheel, I biked to Antwerp. We went back across the border to get back on the Fietsroute and followed it for 50+ kilometers. This evening was the first time I felt brave enough to try the laptop. It works! (so far) Those of you following along at home will not that we’re late in arriving in Antwerp. Oh my goodness, we got lost around Breda. We spent half the day sightseeing and the second half of the day lost. Somebody put duct tape over many of the signs for the LF-13b. Is the route closed for some reason? Is this a joke? Why would you put duct tape over the signs? I cursed the LF-13a/b for being confusing and poorly marked and it extracted revenge in the form of blood.

We went in wrong directions for hours. My landlord called my school and left a message saying that my rental contract had expired. My school called me, while I was pondering which way to go. So I called my landlord, who explained that he’s been reading my blog. (Hi Yuric!) So I’m not being evicted. Hooray.

I’m too tired to continue for now. Perhaps I’ll find wifi tomorrow.

2 June 2007

I am sitting in a tent in Dordrecht. It is 22:37 and the mosquitoes are swarming. Little bastards. I was supposed to be much further along today, but for some reason, I left map 9 at home. We spent all of yesterday and part of today on map 9.

The major cycle routes here are (mostly) very well marked. But not always. Much of today was spent going in unplanned directions. One of those directions took us down a tractor path through a line of canals (pretty normal) but which were supplied by working windmills like you see in the Holland Dutch Delft pottery stuff (not at all normal). some guy was mowing the lawn in front of one of them. Xena stopped to relieve herself. always a good citizen, Nicole stopped to pick up after the dog. “What do I do with this?” she asked the lawn mowing guy. He told her to throw it in the canal.

Dear citizens of the Netherlands, Your canals are really lovely to look at, especially in the summer. They have blooming lillypads, ducks and other waterfowl, moss, little bridges and cute little boats and sometimes awesome windmills. But they would smell a whole lot better if they weren’t also full of cow shit. Sincerely, me

Yesterday, we biked from Den Haag to Gouda. We followed the major cycle route. They have routes like highways for bikes all over the country. They’re perfect for tourists. They take you through the woods, in twisty paths around fields and canals and through historic centers of adorable villages. They add several kilometers to the trip, but it’s still great. Except the marking is sometimes lacking. So there are maps you can get, which also list fun things like ferry crossings and camp grounds. Today, Xena had her first ferry ride.

I think a skeeter just bit my foot through my socks. gah!! bastard. I should put on toxic bug spray.

Last night, we camped near Gouda. We were biking in Gouda, on the LF-02, hoping to stop by the VVV (tourist office) around the central train station, when an old woman and a little girl stopped us to ask about the dog. I explained in broken Dutch that we’d towed her from Den Haag and wanted to camp tonight and continue on to Brussels in the morning. The woman didn’t know about camping, but soon assembled a small crowd of passersby to solicit opinions. One woman knew exactly where the camp grounds were. Another biking by, heard her describe the route and stopped her, since the camp ground is closed for a week.

If some stranger asked you about camping in your town, would you know two alternatives?

So she described another camp ground, 10 km away and described the route in detail. We got there and soon figured out why she knew. In addition to caravans (known to Americans as “RVs”) and folks in tents, there were a bunch of tiny cottages. The cottages all faced a road on one side and a canal on the other. Almost all of them had a small boat on the canal. All of them had a little patio by the boat, with a little umbrella. The camp ground was full of people. I’m guessing many middle class people have these little summer cottages that they come to on weekends. They were charming, but packed together at very high density. This is amusing about the Dutch. They escape from their high density cities to go to their high density camp grounds.

We went to the bar seeking food, but, unsurprisingly, they only had bar food. I had friend cheese. Nicole had a burger.

We sat down next to a Dutch woman who had lived in Dallas for 22 years. Then she came home because her father was dying and she realized she had enough of Dallas. She was talking about taking care of her dying parent while her marriage fell apart, something I can also speak about. And we talked about how loss makes you really see the beautiful things in life. The conversation got intense. Nicole started to cry.

Today, there is no bar, except for the mosquitoes. Alas, I am the bar, as is Xena. I forgot to put her pesticides on her before we left, so this morning I went to a pet shop and bought flea and tick stuff to put on her. I asked if they had stuff for heart worm. The pet store clerk didn’t know what I was talking about. I hope this means that it doesn’t exist here. Her immunity from last month has not faded away yet. I will ask again in another shop tomorrow and I’ll ask after that. Maybe there’s heartworm in Belgium but not here.

Today, after we passed the windmills, the tractor lane got very narrow. We let Xena out to run along side the bikes and stopped after a while to give her water before we went on. We gave her the very last of the water. Alas! So we biked on some more kilometers until we came to a grocery store. I was hungry, which is bad for being in a store, but also very thirsty. they were having a sale on soymilk. There is now 2.75 liters of soymilk packed on the front of my bike. I purchased one liter more than that, but then drank it quickly. Things not to do: chug most of a liter of chocolate soy milk and then go to get a heavy dinner. *urp*

I am suffering from massive pack creep. Not only am I taking around the computer which I am not typing on, but also a small coffee-making setup. It includes a tiny gas stove. A tiny pot for said stove. Two gas cartridges. An adaptor for the other kind of gas cartridge in case those two run out. Two 0.25 L cups with coffee filter attachments and little tote bags for them. And bag of ground coffee, stored in a plastic container with a scoop. Also, I have two settings of silverware, two plates, two wine glasses, two napkins, a cutting board, a cheese knife and an insulated container for food and an insulated wine holder, which is, alas, empty, or the mosquitoes might be getting tipsy. (little bastards).

Now is time for sleep.

Off to Belgium by Bike

I’m leaving in the morning, but tonight, while checking my email, I find that some guy has written a novel in responce to a snarky post I made in 2003. Not exactly timely, but I think I will address some of his points.

I was intrigued by your inquiries as to why artists tend to be leftists. However, your current theory, that leftist opinion is clearly the end-result of higher-level thinking, and therefore, people who think critically will become leftists, doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for critical thinking.

Well, it was a snarky post. I can think of several non-leftist artists off the top of my head, some of whom are quite good. Including fascists like the Futurists, Ezra Pound and Hitler’s filmmaker whose name is escaping me at the moment. Clearly no political philosophy is required for the making of art. However, it is often the case that art is created by outsiders and outsiders are less likely to be conservative as a rigid system of social order tends to exclude them. If you are trying to create a space for yourself in the mainstrem by expanding the definition of creative expression in your culture, you’re going to favor things like change and inclusion.

Engineering is freakishly challenging. Engineers have to ask questions. Good engineers orgainize what they know and don’t know and find out what questions need to be asked. There are whole systems in place to prevent decisions being made based on “gut emotions.” So why is it that so many engineers tend to be conservatives?

Asberger’s Syndrome
No, really, being conservative in America is often linked with a lack of empathy. anyway, a lot of Engineers are white, many are male and almost all are upper class. These factors don’t tend to encourage empathy. Also, the questions engineers ask about problem solving don’t really apply to trying to gain empathy about another person’s problems. They’re different sorts of problems with different kinds of solutions and which need different sorts of skills.

t seems to me that, in the West, the arts have been supported predominantly by wealthy patrons, some of which happened to be heads of state, so technically, paid for by government money. That’s entirely different from the sort of governments we have today . . .

Building national identity is still a major task of government or the country will fall apart. Major effort and energy is invested in this project. It’s sad that America no longer prioritises fine art as a part of national identity.

Ironically, the non-linear (leftist) tax system of the U.S., which taxes richer people at a higher % rate than poorer people, is taking much of the ‘surplus’ money away that used to be used to support the arts.

Um, so Trump, his surplus taxed away, forced to choose between waxing his yacht and commissioning a symphony, picks the yacht. My eyes well with tears for this cultural loss.
Every other first world country in the world and quite a few in the second and third world invest public money in art, not relying on the surplus whims of the well-heeled.

So maybe, for the sake of argument, we should clarify what we both mean by “capitolist system.” Capitolism, as I understand it to be defined, is the free and peaceful exchange of goods and services.

Thanks for the deinfition, as I’ve never even heard of “capitolism.” I would have guessed it had something to do with seats of government.

Under the marxist system, everything people make is taken from them, and in return they receive whatever the planners have deemed necessary and fair for them to have. Obviously, someone who produces a ‘non-practical’ good (like art) is going to be more pleased with this system than someone who produces a ‘practical’ good (like wheat or toaster ovens). This begs the question, is life really full if only the practical is taken provided for? On the other hand, is life really full if every detail is controlled by some gov. bigshot?

I want to know if life is really full if you’ve got mental health problems and have become homeless. Cuz that doesn’t seem all that peaceful or full to me.
Also, why would toaster oven makers be opposed to getting aliving wage? I’m confused.

You dream of the socialist utopia where people will be free from the toils and daily grind of work. I’m sure everyone would love to switch from occupation to occupation, but, please, explain to me, rationally, how this would work.

Um, there’s, like, this famous quote by Marx where he talks about having different jobs at a different time of day and they include occupations like farmer and poet and um, yeah, nevermind.

Can you point to one example of a community (or nation) where this ever happened without the system going bankrupt?

I always thought the Soviet Union went bankrupt because it was stuck in a destructive and expensive arms race with an agressive, wealthier world power. But maybe it was because everybody kept switching jobs.

People actually achieve freedom to do what they want without being oppressed by the demand of life (gotta-work to eat, gotta eat to live) in the pseudo-free-enterprise system of America and other countries. They do it by sucking it up, putting in some hours into providing services that feeds people’s bellies, then cutting back their expenses to what is really necessary (which isn’t much, considering that most of the world makes it by on less), and then pouring their energies into services which feed people’s souls (like the arts), or whatever they feel like. Besides, people who spend too much time in one discipline often get lost in it, and lose the ability to relate to other people (and the rest of life). This is an ever-present danger to specialists, like scientists, engineers, artists, and the like.

Ah, see, suffering for art is very healthy. We have a better system when only the idle rich have the resources to create. All you poor folks with creative ideas should just suck it up. You can paint nights. Just quit sleeping.

Explain what you mean when you say that “corporations are basically feudal and anti-democratic.” I’m fascinated by the comparison.

Oh man, it’s too late at night for this.

The prisons are full because there are more criminals than ever before (and a well-funded police force to put them into a forced wellfare state). This is indeed due to a lack of education, but not of the sort that can be fixed by an increase in federal education spending. The education deficiency is one of morals, not one of knowledge . . .

Racial and economic disaprities in prison populations reflect moral disparities in social groups as a whole. It’s a little known fact that rich white folks have really great morals. Really, really great. My morals can totally beat up your morals.
I have got to go to bed. I don’t even know where to start with this.

Hot Power Brick

Lately, I’ve been noticing the smell of hot plastic, whenever I’m on my laptop. Just now, I tracked it down to the power brick. It’s the Apple one that came with my laptop when I purchased it in North america. Now, I’m using it in Europe. I thought these things could deal with international electricity differences without problem? Should I get a step down converter? Could it be something about the particular power outlet that it’s been plugged in to? What in it could break to cause this change, but still allow it to deliver power? Could it just be the unusual way in which the cable was coiled around it? If I do nothing, will it catch fire, resulting in massive data loss and the death of my sousaphone? Is it possessed by demons? Can this kind of problem arise from being stuffed into a messenger bag and bouncing around on the front of a small bicycle bounding over cobblestones?

This situation is suboptimal, but at least I found it before it burned a hole in a sofa cushion.

Update

computer store dude says to keep using the adaptor until it dies a natural death. I think I’ll keep it more on the floor and less on the sofa, and not leave it plugged in when I’m not around to look at it.

More offline blogging about France

When I last left you, a perpetual scholar of the French Academy was starting her speech. You do not need to skip ahead, as I will not recount it here. I was not standing at the side of the parade route paying rapt attention. I was sitting on the curb with my head cradled in my crossed arms. I dreamt that she talked about Joan of Arc’s blog.
There is widespread consensus that Joan of Arc was illiterate when she started her career, but some scholars believe that she gained literacy by the time she died. Orléans was her first campaign, so the chances of her being able to write by that time are very low. She dictated some letters to the English, but she didn’t write them. Therefore, alas, Joan of Arc could not have blogged her campaign against the English at Orléans unless she dictated it or perhaps did audio posting via her cellphone. What would her blog have said? I sense a work of fiction in my future.
I awoke as a show of French military force rumbled up the street. Tanks, troop carriers and soldiers marching in dress uniform. The announcer gave statistics about who had just come back from Afghanistan, who was about to go and how many had been killed or injured there. Then came the gendarmes, also in dress uniform, marching with bayonets affixed to their machine guns. These military police are used domestically to quell unrest at demonstrations, like the one I had seen the night before. Then, came the firefighters in their shiny silver helmets and with their big red firetrucks. For the first time, the crowd applauded. They’re not too taken with the Gendarmes, but everybody loves a firefighter.
Then, more speechifying. Then the civic / religious parade started in the opposite direction. The Joan of Arc character rode up the street on her horse in show armor, smiling and waving at everyone. She looked radiantly happy and overwhelmed by the moment. You could almost imagine the real Joan of Arc with the same expression. The Orlánaise girl was enjoying the attention, but knew she was standing in for another figure. Joan of Arc might have enjoyed the attention as well, but herself put all the credit on God and the patron saints of the city.
She was followed by a bunch of pages and knights in period dress and then by other folks in period dress including the dancers from earlier and people with what looked to be relics and people whose idea of period dress got farther and farther afield until it devolved into men dressed as wizards and other such silliness. There were also altar boys, town leaders, regional politicians, priests, bishops, archbishops, honored guests and people with various flag sashes pinned to them. There were boy scouts and girl scouts and gymnasts and jugglers and basketball teams and rowing teams carrying their boats and every other civic organization in the entire department proudly marched by.
Nicole and Xena and I went to the medieval market to get lunch and drink mead. I made the only notes in my journal of the entire trip:

8 May 2007, 17:30
I am sitting at a table at the medieval market in Orléans. Xena is sitting at my feet, leaning into my leg for reassurance. Today, she has been surrounded by crowds and subject to barking dogs, marching bands, drum corps and a couple of canons.
I am waiting for Nicole to return with mead and a crepe made from ostrich eggs. [Here] there are also breads and sheep cheeses in traditional styles. Behind me, there is meat smoking over a small wood fire and a few meters to my right, there are sheep awaiting their edible fate.

The people in silly costumes from the march started to come back into the market. The march is exceedingly long and goes all around the city. I don’t recall if Joan dictated the route for the thanksgiving parade, but I believe she may have. It goes from the cathedral, down the main drag, across the bridge and along way down the road on the other side, certainly farther than the city extended when she was there. Perhaps there was a monastery or other shrine at the end. Then they come all the way back. Hours later, exhausted gymnasts and scouts, with encouragement from the parents, finish their long trek around the city.
The Joan of Arc character was in front of the Cathedral where another part of the ceremony took place. Then, they marched to the city hall where some of her colors and banners were retired to wait until next year. She looked exhausted, like she wanted to climb down from her horse and fall asleep right at it’s feet. Again, I can imagine the real Joan of Arc, who had an injury and who had barely eaten anything in the last day, after having lead charge after charge against the English. She would have been even more exhausted. But with a sense of duty the modern girl went on, to the museum to store the rest of her armor for the next year. It poured down rain for this last kilometer. And then she went on to return to normal life and her relative obscurity. Perhaps even now, people she knows are complimenting her on her good work, and next year, people will remind her of, but in the end she holds a place held by hundreds of other girls. Joan the Maid went on to the next town to beat the English there and the next town in victory after victory until the whole Loire Valley was in the hands of the Armagnacs.

May 9

The next morning, we broke down our camp to head the same direction that Joan went. She had with her local guides. We had the camp ground director. We intended to follow the Loiret for a very pretty shortcut through small, lovely villages. But the director sent us off in the opposite direction and then I misread the map several times and we found ourselves on the opposite side of the river than our planned route, with no crossings for quite a long time.
The roads along the left bank had steep inclines, leading to charming tiny clusters of houses, made out of rock, lining narrow cobblestone streets. Chickens hid behind the high walls, heard but not seen. An old lady here and there peeked her head out of a garden gate, preparing to visit her neighbor or ride her motor scooter to the next town with a bakery. It was on one of these steep hills (beside a charming town, leading to a bridge over a small stream) that my gear shifter ceased functioning. I tried shifting it furiously from low to high gear to make it pop back into place, but all I succeeded in doing was getting it stuck in the most difficult gear.
Only one bike has a trailer hitch, so there was no trading dog dragging duties. I carried on, going up steep inclines at slow, difficult paces. My camera batteries had died overnight, so I have no documentation of the steely grey skies threatening rain as the wind blew against us. Nor the outrageously orange wildflowers in large fallow fields on either side of the road. Nor the trees, blowing in the wind. Or the small stone towns. Or the Renault mechanic who said the gear shifter was too complicated for him to fix.
We came to a town with a basilica and a tourist office. This town, like all the others for the last 30 kilometers, had no bike shop, but the town across the river, Meung sur Loire, did. So we crossed the river and went straight for the tourist office there. The desk clerk directed us several kilometers away to a non-existent bike repair place. Fortunately, some locals told us where to find a repair shop – about 3 blocks away from the tourist office. The shop adjusted the cable and fixed the bike in about 5 minutes and charged nothing.
After my bike was fixed, I went back the the tourist office to ask about camping. The municipal campground was closed. I had to go only 7 km to the next town. And so I did, on the hot, sweaty, windy, buggy main road, choked with rush hour traffic, while the humid sun beat down on me. I got to the camp ground and nearly fell asleep while checking in. “Are you tired?” the camp ground guy asked in French. I told him my tale of bike woe.
I did not return to Meung Sur Loire, but on the way to bike repair, we passed the Joan or Arc marker on the side of a building, detailing her stay in the town. When she arrived in town, she first captured the bridge fortifications and then, like us, sped off towards Beaugency.

Biking in Prague

I want to make some notes about biking in Prague. First of all, you should find a bike map. there are posted and marked bike routes and you should know where they are. Second, have your hotel on the castle side of the river, somewhat north of the castle. The ground there is flat and in the newer sections, there are less cobblestones. Third, have a bike with a lot of gears. three is not enough if you are towing a dog, for example. Fourth, the sidewalk’s cobblestones are much smaller than the street’s cobblestones and will make you feel less shaken to bits. Also, the traffic is scary and the sidewalk feels safer, even if slower. The natives seem to use the sidewalk. Also, the natives wear helmets, which is a sign that you should too. Sixth, watch out for doors. People do not look before jumping out of their cars and could easily smack you. Prague is definitely a ‘bike to the edge of the section you want to see and then park your bike’ kind of town.