When I woke up this morning I was greeted by the soft chirp
of birds singing out my window. “Wow”, I thought as I grabbed my shorts, T-shirt,
and flip-flops, “Another beautiful day here in Sittard, who would have guessed?”
I ripped open the window shade, my eyes already squinting in anticipation of
the brilliant sunshine when… 
This happened.
Last time I was here I thought it rained hard the first few
days, but now that I’ve seen the rain today, I would like to retract that statement
and say it drizzled for a few days. This is rain, this is epic. It’s the kind
of rain where you have to be extra careful when hydroplaning through a puddle
that you don’t accidentally run over a fish. I mean, we are in The Netherlands,
I’m kind of scared the dike might overflow.
However, despite the monsoon, we did manage to get out for a
fun ride this morning with lots of puddle jumping and rooster-tailing, and I’m
pretty sure only a couple of us will get Giardiasis from the water splashed up
into our mouths. On most of the rides we’ve done in and around Sittard we’ve
just been riding the road, simply and unfortunately because we just don’t know
where any mountain biking is. I don’t mind, though. To me, it’s the roads and
villages along them that define a place and always keep reminding me, in a good
way, how very far from home I am. The little towns you pass by every ten
kilometers or so are very euro. You know when you watch a stage in the Tour de
France and the helicopter camera floats over a quaint medieval outpost with the
spider-webbed cobbled streets and the lazy town square and you say to yourself,
“Ok, every town in Europe can’t be like that…”? Well, from my limited
experience, they are! The sidewalks are scrunched into the brick apartment
buildings leaving just enough room to turn on a dime and avoid the speeding
rally cars racing through streets obviously originally designed for horses and
carts. When riding through town you can almost see how the shops were arranged
in the order of need; first the bakery, providing The Netherland’s staff of
life, followed by the butcher (how does one expect to work the farm all day without
ample protein?), then the produce market (maybe, I mean what does lettuce do
for you after meat and bread?). This is all followed by the café (because what
would the world come to without a day started by coffee and a croissant? The Dutch
may not be French, but they’re not animals).
After you pass all these simple necessities you’re just
about out of town and on your way to the next one, except for perhaps the
flower store. It appears they take their flowers seriously here.
Getting to this point, however, is actually harder than one
would think. Every cyclist makes the mistake when coming over to Europe and thinking
that just because it’s the birthplace of cycling and it’s so much more popular
over here that it’s any safer to ride your bike. Sure, The Netherlands has the
most best developed cycling infrastructure I’ve ever seen. The miles of painted
red bike lanes through every town even into the country is a modern marvel, but
get out of the bike lane, or into one of the areas that is lacking one and
watch out. It’s not like the US, I mean, I have yet to come across someone honking
and shouting expletives at me while flipping the bird, in fact it’s completely
the opposite. Here bikes and cyclist are just so ingrained in the culture and
daily life that most drivers simply don’t notice you. You’ll be flying through
those same medieval streets half an arm length away from the apartments to your
right and a driver will come up on your left with even less gap than the most
anti-bike red-neck back home would dare try; it might mess up his car! Cyclist
in Europe have almost become an invasive species. Over here, we’re like pigeons;
it you hit one, who’s really going to notice?
After riding, our day pretty much stalled out for a little
while. We watched some of Le Tour, but soon became bored by that. Don’t get me
wrong, I like watching road racing more than your average mountain biker, but
over here they show the entire stage. From two in the afternoon when the stage
starts, about four hours south of us, till they finish about four hours later
they show the entire 220 kilometer race. It’s awesome, until the novelty of it
wears off. At this time we switched to Netflix (AKA- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).
We thankfully did have some of our day taken up by cooking, though.
In an effort to decrease the amount of young, semi-professional cyclist dying
of starvation every year, USA cycling arranged for us to have a cooking class
last night where four of us were able to prepare dinner for the entire camp. It
was actually really fun. We got to wear aprons and drape towels over our
shoulders just like the pros!
I was assigned salad duty (anyone who has hung out with me
for any amount of time would know why. I really dig salads).
The other three (Garret, Carson, and Steffen) were on the
main course- baked halibut with mashed potatoes and vegetables in a cream curry
sauce. I felt like they drew the short straw.
With pretty limited cooking knowledge between the four of us
I think we did a pretty good job. The salads seemed to be a big hit (probably
because I cheated and put bacon in them), but the real star was the entrée.
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