Inspection and Improvisation on the Coffee Ride

Friday it went below freezing, and the forecast is for below-freezing temperatures all week, next week. During the day it should stay cold also. So the talk in Holland (and other parts of the Netherlands) is all about skating--lake and canal skating, that is. For the time being, however, the East winds have brought us sunny skies and dry roads. A few degrees below freezing is nothing for a cyclist with eight years of Milwaukee under his belt (thankfully, it's still bearable for the Utrecht delegation also), and so I rode into a large, bright red sun this morning to get my Saturday meet-in-the-middle fix, but also to see how the ice was growing along the route. The ride was fine, and so, on the way home, were the legs; however, we still have quite a ways to go with the ice. Many small waters were still partly open, and everywhere the ice looked awfully precarious, maybe not even one centimeter. In several places it was strong enough to support a duck (or koet, as the case may be), but I don't see us out on real ice before Wednesday. I was first to enter De Vuursche Boer this morning and was sad to hear that the coffee machine (at least the part that makes the foamy milk) was still broken (it broke when Joan and I were there yesterday for a pancake, fortunately after our first "koffie verkeerd"). Putting a spoonful of whipped cream from my apple pie into my regular coffee saved the day. There was a new sign in the Polder Bethune, where inhabitants are trying to prevent the establishment of a wetland on what for many years has been farmland. It compared a polder without farmers to a red light district without prostitutes--not sure how many government minds that is going to change. Along the Vecht river there was a moderate headwind most of the way, but the cool conditions didn't keep several folks of my parents' generation from riding around without anything on their heads. I even suspect one grey-haired dude of looking funny at my balaclava.