::DAY 5: A Bike Ride to see Vincent & Lovely Deventer::

Bikes. High-heeled women heading to work. Families flocking to church. Red-bricked lanes beside every road. The Netherlands = biking. And still, we managed to avoid it entirely apart from this one day in Hoge Veluwe National Park.

These were not just any bikes. They were White Bikes. Thank you Luud Schimmelpennink. Cool concept, free bikes. In practice, however, it means a rough ride. At least for me it did. I managed to bike a few kms on a rim out of necessity, but I do not recommend it.

I do not love biking. I would far rather pound the pavement with my runners, but I did it for Vincent. He and I had grown pretty close this year, and seeing that thick impasto right up close was a marvelous thing.

Lured by the fanning arms of a Deventer windmill, we parked and made an afternoon of this pretty town. The windmill was in working order. The men were hauling huge logs into place in preparation for the fair that weekend. Dad commented that there is no way we would have been allowed to be inches from the huge moving parts of the windmill in Canada without thick rope cordoning us off. For the most part, I liked this free and easy way of things, until we found Norah hanging out of our fourth story hotel window in Brussels. . .