Day 5 and 6

As you can tell, we’ve been incommunicado since Saturday.  Our barge doesn’t have internet except for emergencies, so we have to wait until we get to a port that has free internet.  This port, Antewerpen, does have internet, but it’s too low to be of any use.  So, I guess we’ll take our laptop into ‘town’ tomorrow and try to find an internet café. 

This cycling trip, so far, has been everything I/we imagined.  It’s absolutely wonderful to cycle through the countryside.  The weather forecasters here have the same record as ours do back home – Sunday which was supposed to be terrible weather, it turned into a lovely day.  It was cold, but we still managed 55 kms .  Bruce  is having no trouble keeping up, in fact likes to ride right behind the guide if possible, b/c she’s quite the ‘quickest way from point A to B’ person.  I was concerned about being able to keep up, but I’m having no trouble.  We’re both having sore butts – 1 hour a day, doesn’t prepare one for 2-4 hours of cycling per day.  Bruce was quite pleased when our guide stopped us after the 1^st hour and told us to ‘’keep our blood sugar levels up”, so we wouldn’t get dizzy. 

Yesterday we went through small towns, farms, etc.  The trails are mostly fantastic, but we did cycle on gravel, wet mud, and the worst:  cobblestones (a free cellulite buster!)  Wow, that totally shakes everything up.  We’ve been cycling on top of dikes, beside dikes, and today we did a tour through a big city, with a lot of vehicle traffic and ‘rush hour bike traffic’!  It was a little challenging, to say the least.   For your information, if a road in Belgium is painted red, you can drive on it in a car, but bicycles have priority.  Also, we went to this place near Antewerpen, got into a huge elevator (it took 18 bicycles plus riders) rode down 31 meters (100 feet), then rode underneath the Schelde River for about ¼ mile, with three lanes (2 bicycle, 1 pedestrian),  another 100 feet, up the elevator to street level and were near the city town square.    We have one boy on the tour with his grandparents.  He’s 11 and he took a fall, b/c he always wants to be right behind the guide and as expected, he’s not too observant.  He weaves back and forth, rides through all puddles and holes – just usual boy stuff.  He’s doing quite well, for being the only child on a tour of adults.  We also have one honeymoon couple.    We told them there’s lots of advice if they need it. The rest of the couples are about our age.