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