September 12 - It's All About Timing

Saturday - Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel to Hoofddorp
Doug used the hotel's pubic restroom just before we left and just had to go back in with his camera :)

The skies are cloudy and they predicted rain today but it never happened.

Passing through Moodrecht on our way to the ferry.

The crossing is pretty quick so we had barely paid for the trip when it was time to get off the ferry on the other side.

We crossed over the IJssel so that we could rejoin LF2 before it reached Gouda, a city of 70,000.

This is a road not a path and it has two way traffic, though it is more likely to be bikes than cars.

Gouda was first recognized as a city in 1272.

A typical front yard in this area.

The white triangles are yield markers for all vehicles.These happen to be on the bike path. but roads use the same symbol. The right of way tripped us up a few times in The Netherlands because drivers often yielded even when we clearly had to yield and often had already stopped. Later we were told that there is a law here that any accident involving a bike and a car is always considered the fault of the car driver. This has had a direct impact on creating cautious driver behavior.

As we were taking pictures of this canal, we thought "This is a lot like Amsterdam, only without the crowds."

The coffee comes to you.

Turns out the crowd was at the street fair a few blocks away in the market square!

City Hall.....not quite as ornate as Lueven's but not by much.

It is a whole booth of the city's namesake cheese.

Ahhhhh!

It is so different just being one of the crowd.

Notice the white lights in the top around WACHT. They are counting down the time to the green light. It is very handy!

Here you don't have to worry about adding water features to your landscaping because water is everywhere.

Yes, it does look like a construction project but you are headed the right way. Just be patient for a couple of more blocks.

The dark green line is LF2 and it really does go out in the middle of the water as it heads north out of Gouda.

A beautiful wooden kayak on the water path next to the road.

There were houses along many of the dike roads in the "lake". There was a postal box too, by this house, where we mailed daughter Lori's Netherlands postcard.

The roads were so narrow that a boat seemed like a wise transportation choice in some places.

Our first sound of the day came as we passed large flocks of geese and swans "talking" across the water. One group of swans flew right in front of us which was an awesome sight. It just happened too fast to get the camera out of the handlebar bag. Sound #2 came just after lunch on the outskirts of Bodegraven. The road that we needed to cross was filled with a constant stream of honking, shiny semi truck tractors without trailers. Unsure of the significance, we just watched until the last one passed and there was finally a break in traffic. (i.e. no pictures) On the other side, a local woman told us that the truck parade was a fund raiser in support of the handicapped and that there was a handicapped person in the passenger seat of each truck, thus all the clapping from the bystanders.

More cheese in Bodegraven.

And Street Fair #2 for the day.

#3 sound of the day. We enjoyed listening to this group for quite awhile. We also chatted about our trip with the husband of one of the singers.

It takes a lot of cows to make all that cheese!

We passed the turn onto this part of the route twice before we decided we really were supposed to go through this pasture.

There was a handy gate at both ends. We could still hear the truck parade off in the distance. It sounded like it was circling us.

Sure enough we crossed paths with the parade again in Papenveer, 2 hours after our first encounter.

This time we could appreciate it a lot more and we think that a couple of the truck drivers actually recognized us from the first passing, giving us a smile and a wave.

Yep....Street Fair #3 in Langeraar. We are beginning to wonder if we will ever get to our destination!

When we told the local that helped us navigate the area that this was our third fair of the day, she said this is just a typical September Saturday.

It is paved!

We said goodby to LF2 a mile back. We actually rode past this spot 4 years ago on a blustery, thunderstormy day ride.

We finally reached our Hoofddorp lodgings at 6pm. After dinner we took the shuttle to the airport to check out the supply of bike boxes and find the Icelandair check-in counters. They are at opposite ends of the terminal. Even at 9 pm the airport was hopping. Now we found out why so many of the area hotels were fully booked and prices were high. The IBC is in town, a mass media conference that brings 55,000 people from all over the world to Amsterdam for the week. It ends Tuesday. From Donna's journal "A long but really wonderful day!"