The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.

Saturday provided a break in the clouds so I packed my bags and took off from Antwerpen. Jeff had shown me this incredible network of bike paths that spiderwebs across northern Europe in a sort of international connect-the-dots game. It's incredibly simple - all I had to do was go to the website (here), click on the point where I wanted to start, click on the point where I wanted to end, and then print off the cue sheet. I taped my cue sheet to my front rack and started off towards my cousin Greg in Eindhoven. 

So serene

I was slightly disrupted leaving the city of Antwerpen because of construction, but I met up with two old men pre-riding a Trappist brewery tour and they were looking for the same route as I. Once I got into the countryside the only times I got lost were when I missed a sign while sprinting through a yellow light (if you can ever consider what's done on a touring bike to be sprinting), and once when I couldn't believe the route went down a singletrack dirt path. The route followed a canal bike path almost the entire way, and I think the largest hill I went over was actually a bridge.

How do Belgiuns become world-class cyclists if these are their hills?

When I got to Greg's, 130km later, he was in the middle of fixing his friend's Dutch around-town bike. I was presented with the choice of checking out his relatively small town of Eindhoven, or rallying immediately and taking a train to Amsterdam. One of the things I learned in Colombia is that if you're going to spend a night in a big city, it should be a Friday or Saturday. It was Saturday so I got a quick shower and we were on our way.
Then Amsterdam happened. We got home at 8am.

Days abroad can not be wasted, so I woke up a few hours later and started checking out Eindhoven. Greg and I rode around town for awhile before passing the stadium where the local team, PSV, was playing. We posted up at a tent across the street with food and beer, and stuck around until just after canisters started exploding in celebration of a goal.

Greg pointed to a concrete tube connecting the stadium to the train tracks and explained that if the hoodlums get too crazy the visiting team uses that to get out safely. Fortunately there were no riots after this game.

That night we hung out in the town square. Bars lining the street set up huge seating areas in the square where you can get the full menu, but sit outside. It was a beautiful spring night to sit and catch up with Greg since we hadn't really hung out as adults ever.

I thought I'd leave Eindhoven Monday morning, but with the clock continuing to advance I decided it would be better to wait a day. I did some grocery shopping, checked out the feasibility of going to Norway or Sweden, and hung out at a bar called AltStadt that had free Wifi.

I think Greg and I were riding the only bikes in town without a chainguard

On to Antwerpen

Riding Belgiun backroads

When I went to sleep after leaving Paris I saw lots and lots of red lights blinking about a kilometer or so away. Upon seeing the landscape in daylight, I realized they were all windmills. I was slightly disheartened realizing I was starting a ride across France's windy countryside, but it turned out much better than some of my previous windy touring days.
There were lots of small towns, and lots of war memorials, and lots of pedaling, but generally my second day was uneventful. My biggest surprise was finding I had crossed an international border into Belgium without so much as a street sign. All the license plates went from having an FR designation to a B, and that was it.
I rode a few more kilometers and then found a huge field to sleep in, right behind an American chain hotel. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling rain start, and quickly pulled my tarp over my gear and myself. The rain stayed light through the night but by morning it was raining steadily and socked in. While I generally try to eschew American institutions abroad, a rainy morning is no time to be proud. It's amazing what a little bit of bandwidth can accomplish, and after a few Google searches and VOIP phones calls I rode to the train station where I was wisked away to Antwerpen.
I was headed to Antwerpen to see my friend Jeff from Pennsylvania. We met 10 years ago when I shadowed one of his work days for a high school project and he hasn't been able to get rid of me ever since. On one was home when I arrived - apparently a highway bridge collapsed, there was a major gas leak, and a steel factory exploded spewing molten metal all while he was trying to take a friend to the airport. Some combination of this shut down the main highway in Belgium leaving them to drive around in circles for about four hours with two children in the car. Yikes!

Poured to the top, without spilling a drop!

This is a bar with character

I spent a few days hanging out with Jeff and his family. I crushed some cobbles, checked out a dirt jump park built through a WWII anti-tank fort, and sampled a restaurant style that is both awesome and troubling at the same time - the "frituur" where literally everything except your drink is deep fried. Mostly though I just enjoyed the Belgiun culture and tried to stay dry.

Dirt jumps in the shadow of a WWII anti-tank fort

I don't know how Belgiun people stay healthy with these restaurants around

Bonjour de Paris!

I skipped the last two weeks of ski season and hoped a flight "across the pond" as people love to say. I always thought calling an ocean a "pond" was stupid, but after flying across both the Atlantic and Pacific, I have to say, the Atlantic is tiny. I booked myself a long layover in London so I spent 16 hours exploring the city before continuing on to Paris.

Tower Bridge in London

After a few days in Paris with family, I hastily google mapped a route north towards Belgium. As soon as I took off I realized the directions were terrible. On top of that, Paris has multiple names for a lot of their streets (like Manhattan's "6th Ave" is also known as "Avenue of the Americas"), but none of the names are actually marked. Europe has a tradition of putting signs on corners that tell you what attractions are down different streets, but that was worthless since I don't know the city well enough to get a bearing off of tourist attractions. Instead I made a habit of asking where I was every kilometer or so, and eventually made it towards the edge of town.

Rollerblading and breakdancing are still cool in Europe

As I rode out of the city the neighborhood got worse and worse. A fully loaded touring bicycle sticks out just about anywhere, and I was getting nervous as I continued to search for my route. I turned on to the street N2 in northern Paris and went for about 15 minutes without seeing any signs confirming I was still on the correct street. I asked someone on the sidewalk and they told me I was not on N2 anymore. Disheartened, I asked two more people and they also claimed I was not on N2, instead saying it was way back where I came from and they didn't know where it went, or where the next street I was looking for went.

My GPS was dead, I couldn't find my location on the map, and I was starting to panic. I decided I needed to get the GPS working because riding back through where I had just come from was not an option.

When I wrote directions on a piece of cardboard and wedged it into my front rack, I should have known I wasn't adequately prepared

I picked the store that looked most likey to have batteries - an unpolished middle-eastern grocery store with all the madness and mayhem stereotypically associated with a bazaar. Terrified that my bike would disappear if I left it for a second, I parked it so the wheel was visible out the door and ventured into the shop. Just as a point of reference, I was held up with a knife in Pablo Escobar's hometown and I was substantially more worried for my safety in this moment. I made eye contact with one of the employees and held up an old battery, feeling waves of elation when he curtly nodded at me and reached behind the counter for a pack of new ones.

Once the GPS was on it instantly confirmed I was on the route I needed, and I continued riding out of the city as kids throttled wheelies down the center of the main street on two-stroke dirt bikes.

Paris goes from the scariest neighborhood I've ever been in to a field within about 2 kilometers.

Navigating in the country side was just as difficult, but at least the GPS was working and it was further between turns. I was still jet lagged and just so elated to be out of the city I continued riding until midnight, when I finally pulled off and slept along the driveway going into a battlefield memorial.

(click to enlarge)