Sunday my trip completely switched gears, as I went from on-my-own, figuring everything out seat-of-the-pants, to being on a tour where everything was taken care of. The last thing I had to figure out independently was how to get myself to our meeting point, outside the Starbucks at my old haunt Sloterdijk Station. I got there with plenty of time to spare and those of us there early grabbed a big table in Starbucks, where we were joined by other trip participants as they trickled in. The first people I met were two women traveling sort of together. They were individual travelers who had met on a previous Backroads trip and had decided to do this one together. They both looked to be my age or maybe a little older, which immediately assuaged one of my fears: that I was going to be the slow old guy amongst a group of hardcore cyclists, much as Valerie’s cousin Paul had been the old guy among a much younger group on a long-ago trip to Belize (my introduction to active/adventure travel). Tannie (a feisty woman from Chambersburg, PA) told me right up front that she was 69 years old, and I found out somewhere along the way that Ellen (semi-retired and recently divorced, from Lewes, DE) was 64. Those two became sort of my buds for the trip, since we were among the minority of trip participants who weren’t traveling with some sort of partner or family members. Next to show up was a group of six women - obviously a family. They turned out to be three sisters in my general age range, originally from Peru but long-time residents of Miami, their slightly older cousin, and one of the sisters’ two 20-something daughters. We met one of our trip leaders, Becca, who checked people off on her checklist as they showed up and collected everyone’s food allergies and restrictions. When I overheard one of the three sisters say that her food restrictions include pork or shellfish, it confirmed what I had already suspected, that the group of six was Jewish. I commented to her that I usually just say “vegetarian” rather than spell out the intricacies of kosher rules, thereby exchanging gang signs so that we knew each other were Jewish. It turns out Ellen is Jewish too, but I didn’t find this out until much later. As other participants arrived I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only guy on the trip, though roughly three quarters of the group of 25 were female, and I was something of a curiosity for being a married guy traveling alone (apparently it’s more common for wives to travel without their husbands - like the Real Jewish Peruvian Housewives of Miami were doing - than for husbands to travel without their wives).
We were ushered onto a bus, which shuttled us to Edam - the first of several cheese towns on our itinerary. Along the way Becca and the other American trip leader, Sean, gave us an overview of how our days would go, and what we’d be doing that day.
At Edam we were issued our bikes, and we met the other two members of our Backroads team, Babette and Nicky, who are both Dutch. While Becca and Sean rode with the group, Babette and Nicky handled the support logistics: driving the support vans, setting up food at rest stops, and so on. As they issued bikes I discovered that only two of us had opted for drop bar "performance" road bikes; the rest of the group was split between easy-riding flat bar hybrids and eBikes. Seeing that mix of bike selections further erased any anxieties I had about keeping up with the group. The other road bike rider was a young woman named Sarah who was a recent MD/PhD taking a quick break before starting a fellowship in cardiology. Another anxiety of mine assuaged - our group had an in-house cardiologist! Sarah was outlier to the group as well, being both another solo traveler and at 30 the only Millennial outside of the Peruvian daughters. She was the most powerful rider of the group (not surprising, being half as old as the rest of us!) and usually jumped out and rode ahead of the pack every day. She’s a little intense, but always in a positive way. A thin, high energy little woman, she reminded me of a little of a younger version of Valerie’s friend Laura, but with a very positive attitude.
Backroads provides a couple of support vans throughout the trip, so every day you have the option of riding the whole route or bailing out at one of the rest stops or lunch and shuttling the rest of the way by van. There’s an app which provides information about each day’s rides and routes, and each bike is equipped with a Wahoo GPS device loaded with turn-by-turn directions for the day’s rides. Since you’re following the GPS, not the leader, you can ride at your own pace - stop to take a picture if you want, take a break, explore a side road, whatever. Very cool.
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| One of the Backroads support vans |
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| Another surprise - a Jewish cemetery in Edam |
The long ride for the day was Edam to our lodging, the Hotel Duin en Kruidberg, about 30 miles. Along the way we got acquainted with our bikes (the road bikes had electronic Shimano Di2 shifting - also very cool), got our first taste of the beauty of the Dutch countryside as well as how to navigate the extensive bike path system, and saw our first windmills. Our lunch break was a restaurant waterfront at Twiske Lake. The Netherlands, being partially below sea level, has a lot of waterfront: lakes, canals, rivers, and oceans. I think just about everywhere in the country is waterfront. Nice weather, and a nice first ride.
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| Typical scenery |
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| First windmill sighting! |
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| One of several little ferries along this ride |
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| More Dutch countryside |
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| The Hotel Landgoed Duin & Kruidberg |
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| My room at the Duin & Kruidberg |
After settling in we met out on the patio for a welcome cocktail. In retrospect, this was a strangely stiff gathering - everyone was a little formal and reserved, whereas after a day or so together we were all much more relaxed. In part, I think I just happened by chance to speak first with some of the more reserved people on the trip. I met Michael, a retired high-powered attorney and law professor of some sort and his wife. Michael turned out to be really nice once you got to know him, but he’s quiet, which initially I misinterpreted as standoffish. His wife radiates a little more of an Upper East Side vibe - so I misread them as being a little snooty. I also talked with a couple from Rhode Island. She is an internist; He designs sonars for a living, so he and I had some things to talk about!. They had left their two young children home with the grandparents and amazingly, several days into the trip when I asked them how the kids were doing they said they didn’t know - that their (and the grandparents’) philosophy is out sight, out of mind, so they hadn’t spoken directly with the kids since they’d left. They were very nice and were among the stronger non-eBike riders, so I hung with them while riding a few times over the course of the week.
Over dinner, things got a little weird. The meal itself was fine, if striving a little too hard to be fancy. I had the white asparagus appetizer, then the vegetarian main dish was in effect a gussied up veggie burger on a plate with artistically arranged vegetables. Dessert was lychee nut custard and coconut cake with lychee nut ice cream on a rosewater emulsion base - all presented as little blobs which looked like maybe food from Star Trek.
The weird part wasn't the food, which was actually OK. Rather one of the couples at my table was a little, umm, odd. The woman of the couple had had perhaps a bit too much to drink, and was going on about her view of the differences between men and women: how men are hunters vs. women being gatherers, and how that affects all sorts of behavior, such as the ability to navigate, or knowing about flowers. She somehow segued from that into how time isn’t real, and ultimately wound up expressing her discomfort with the number of Asians and Mexicans in the area where they live in California. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt - figuring maybe her conversation was influenced by jet lag and alcohol - but she definitely had too many toes over the line into racism towards the end of her monologue. European dinners are long (our dinners were typically 2-3 hours); by the end this one started to feel very long.
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