This day ranks right up there with some of our hardest days.  Bottom line is we got spoiled with all the flat terrain in Netherlands and the Flanders part of Belgium.  The rest of Belgium is downright hilly.

Leaving Rochefort, we started climbing immediately.  We had successive climbs and descents.  I was clocking the climbs and they were of the two mile long and lowest gear variety.  Nice coasts downhill but we froze on the descents.  After almost two hours, we had covered only about 15 miles .Very demoralizing, but the terrain improved after St. Hubert.   From there the terrain became rolling hills.

The salvation of the day was the tailwind for the last 20 miles or so.  It was just what we needed to finish today’s ride on a positive note.  We left around 8:40am and didn’t get to our hotel until 5pm.  We covered 74 miles which is a little more that Brian and I are comfortable doing in a day at this stage of our lives.  Only one more day of riding and it should be a short one, around 30-35 miles.  Then we have a four and a half hour ride back to Amsterdam.

We leave Chris at the Trier, Germany train station so he can catch the first of six trains he needs to ride to get back to Kopelain (sp?).  The biggest bummer for Chris is that the first train from Trier doesn’t leave until 8:30 tomorrow night and he’ll have to ride and switch trains all night.  Beth, Brian and I will be sleeping soundly in our hotel in Amsterdam tomorrow night.  We’ll be thinking of you Chris.

A view from the window of my room at our hotel in Rochefort.

Getting ready to roll out this morning.

Chris making final preparations for today’s ride.

After two hours of climbing and descending, our first rest stop on some church steps in St. Hubert.

A monument/memorial at the base of the church steps. Major battles in WW I and WW II were fought in Belgium.

Brian taking a break. For some reason, we didn’t eat much today.

A view of the countryside from this afternoon.

Afternoon break along some narrow agricultural roads. Very rarely did we come upon cars along these roads, fortunately.

Welcome to Luxembourg. I entered my third new country on this trip. Not much of a sign but more than Belgium had.

I’m having a blast and am already making plans for next year.  Even though it rained most of the day, we enjoyed the scenery.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to take pictures when it’s raining. Here goes my attempt at today.

The most elaborate church I have ever seen. Leaven, Be

Morning break after getting soaked.

I forgot to count so Brian forgot to suck in his gut.

The dirtiest my bike has ever been. The picture does illustrate the real thing.

The scenery was spectacular but it doesn’t show on a cloudy day.

Brian and I are waiting for Chris to finish climbing this hill. It only goes one way.

A nice beer in the lounge of the hotel after a long day.

A street scene in Rochefort, BE.

Typical rain shower on today’s ride.

A picture of Beth and my dessert which followed our best meal yet. Served in the French style.

Google maps failed us today.  Took us on gravel paths almost impossible to ride.  We had to walk almost a kilometer on one of the paths.   Also met a Belgium named Yeve, also traveling to Rochefort.  Rode with him until Namur when he took a different route.  Brian and I wished we could have taken the route he had mapped out.

Today was supposed to be 71 miles but I suspect it was more.  I don’tknow the exact mileage because my odometer got too wet in a rain shower this morning and stopped working.  Tomorrow is about the same distance but it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow.

Since I got so many replies to my picture blog (thanks Mark, you were the only one), I’ll try again.

Welcome to Belgium.

Brian and Chris standing in Netherlands and Belgium.

One of our bike paths today. Most of our day was spent on bike paths.

First rest stop in a bird viewing tower. It was raining lightly The cover was well timed.

Afternoon rest stop.

View of the grounds of our hotel.

Resting in a rocker at our hotel.

Not much scenery today other than the old part of Tilburg which we rode thru at 7:30 am and the jarring cobble stone streets of Leuven at the very end of today’s ride.  Off and on drizzle but not an issue.  A strong headwind kicked up our last hour or two.  Leaven, Belgium is typical of the towns we have been staying in with an old town square.  Covered 67 miles.  Tomorrow is our longest day of riding..

If I can get pictures to send, I hope to do a blog in pictures ala Mark.

Bike Parking Lot in Amsterdam

Leaving Amsterdam. First Morning

Classic Netherlands Landscape

Taking a Break on a Bikepath Next to a Canal

Lunch in Delft

Leaving Delft. Day 2

Picture on a Bouncing Bridge

Hope you enjoyed a sample of Day 1 and 2 pictures.  I’ll try to post more tomorrow but internet is fickle and I am having a hard time adding pictures.  57 miles today.  No rain and mild headwinds.  Perfect temps for riding.  Rain in the forecast for tomorrow’s ride.

The Netherlands is flat, and we are loving it.   Arrived in Amsterdam after flying all night and rented a car and drove to our hotel.   Balance of yesterday was spent getting acclimated to the 6 hour time difference and putting our bikes together.   Managed a little sightseeing in Amsterdam last night before getting as much sleep as possible.

First day of biking was also our shortest this trip at 41 miles.   Got rained on, at times pretty heavy, but a good beginning to this 3 country bike tour.  Chris did an excellent job navigating using an app on his iPhone.   We rode the entire distance on bike paths or dedicated bike lanes in Amsterdam and the two other cities we passed thru.

We are amazed at the amount of bike infrastructure, both in the cities and in the countryside.   More than even Denmark.   It seems everyone rides a bike to go shopping, commute to work and/or school, and just biking around.

Bikes have the right of way over cars and pedestrians.   Intersection traffic lights have special green lights for bikes.  I am loving this bike culture.   Wish we had it in the US.   Maybe someday if we keep pushing for it.  It is no wonder we hardly see any obese people with so many people riding bikes.   I have taken pictures of bike parking lots which are huge.   I will try to figure out how to download to my blog later in the trip.

Longer day of riding tomorrow but it looks like we have to go thru Rotterdam, a large city.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rain free, one of the few this trip.   I will enjoy it and hope we dodge the rain drops on the days to come.   Wishing Mark and Matt were with us.   Already thinking about trips in future years.   Ted, this morning our hotel had a devoted section to gluten free breakfast.   I’ll keep looking for you.

We didn’t have to do any compromising about when breakfast would be because we were told that the earliest it could be was 7:30 a.m. It was a bit of a bust though – it didn’t feel like there was enough food for the guests who would come after us. The breakfast also lacked variety – no hardboiled eggs, nothing resembling cereal or muesli, no yogurt, no fruit – just rolls, bread, butter, jam, cheese and lunchmeat. At least we could make our sandwiches, and since it was going to be such a long day, we each made two. Somehow, I was even able to stuff them into my very small bag without totally crushing them.

This was the day that I was most worried about on our trip; not only because it was our longest day, but also because I was worried we might have a strong headwind so close to the west coast. However, the forecast for Saturday called for rain and a tailwind, and it was correct.While we did get wet and a little cold (and I even used my rain jacket for the first time since Ystad to Malmoe), the 12 mph tailwind and flattest terrain of our trip made this one of the easiest days for us. My legs didn’t hurt, my knee didn’t hurt and my butt didn’t hurt either. I spent the majority of the day in the big chainring and often looked for gears that were bigger than I actually had.

We had some minor trouble finding our way out of Ribe and worried that the overnight rain on the cobblestones might cause us to slip and fall, so we walked our bikes out of the center. I was a little overdressed and had to stop to remove a hat and the rain jacket I had put on way too early.

Once we got on route 11, traffic heading in the other direction really picked up – most cars had German license plates and most were from cities in Schleswig-Holstein. It reminded me a lot of the Saturday morning Ocean City handing over of keys that we luckily no longer need to partake in. Eventually, the traffic would pick up going our direction, but by then we were on roads that were a bit wider.

We accidentally ended up on a highway again and took a break under a bridge while we debated the best way to get off it. I was for walking our bikes up the on ramp with the cars heading in our direction, but we ended up crossing 4 lanes and kind of doing the same thing since we couldn’t quite get to the off ramp. We navigated through Varde a little and I ended up accidentally losing the guys while getting on 181 (sorry!). They still would have found it without me having gone back for them.

We took another short break in Noerdre Nebel when the rain started to pick up. My dad and I started to get a little cold here, so I opted for the rain jacket and my dad opted to cut the break short to get moving (and warm) again. I’d say that both were good ideas.

As you can probably tell from this blog entry, the day was basically uneventful. The rain died down, the sun came out, the landscape outside of Hvide Sande was beautiful and the ride was easy. Tim got another flat that he first tried to pump out without changing the tube, but he eventually changed the tube. As far as I can recall, I led from at least Hvide Sande and didn’t feel like I was doing much of any work. We stopped at a small shop at one point along the way and bought some candy bars and soda (lunch of champions?). My dad wanted to buy Neil a truck but had no way of carrying it – but you could tell he was excited to see his grandkids again (as I was excited to see my own kids after a week)!

We arrived at the vacation house about an hour before my wife and family. Some of my clothes had even become dry by this point despite the heavier rain (my shoes and socks, however, were still pretty soaked and I really couldn’t wait to take a shower).

Bike lane along route 181.

Typical scenery for the day.

We have arrived. The guys prepare to break apart their bikes.

At any rate, it feels great to have ridden across Denmark – it was one of my goals for a long time. Back when I was studying in Kiel, I had this completely ridiculous phantasy of biking around Jutland and studying Danish dialects, particularly along the border between Germany and Denmark. I remember even thinking that I should get a big Amazing Race style rucksack for this, not realizing at the time that it’s impossible to bike any significant distance (or at all?) with such a backpack on. However, I did make it across the country with just a backpack. Although I should have gone with the medium size (and may switch at some point), I would like to thank Osprey bag, my Cube cyclocross bike, Google Maps and navigation, the iClever Bluetooth keyboard (best $16 ever spent? – this thing is maybe 5 mm thick and weighs 200 grams at most) and my Tigr bike lock for making this trip possible. But more than the inanimate objects, I would like to thank Tim and my dad for making this trip a reality, as well as my wife for allowing me to go on the trip and taking responsibility for the kids for a week.

The keyboard I used to write all my blog entries – even after being reunited with my computer.

Lastly, I would like to thank Denmark for its commitment to cycling – the bike lanes, cycling-specific traffic lights, bike clover leafs, etc. I’d love to come back and do some of North Jutland or other places we missed. It was an amazing adventure that I’m anxious to repeat. Vi ses igen!

If I remember correctly, the compromise Friday morning was to meet for breakfast at 7:15 a.m. We each had our own rooms in Soenderborg, so I slept quite well. I succumbed to peer pressure and made a sandwich at breakfast to take with us on the way to Ribe. By the way, this was the painting I was facing while eating breakfast. Beth, can you evaluate this hotel art for me?

Hotel art of the day.

The day was just gorgeous. For the first time, I felt compelled to take my phone off my bike’s stem just to take pictures of what I was seeing while cycling (it’s not easy getting it off the stem while riding, nor is it easy to take pictures while cycling.) I didn’t do this enough, unfortunately.

Dad speeding out of Soenderborg.

A picture that didn’t come out as well as it should have. It’s hard to frame while riding.

We took the bike path coming out of Soenderborg and ended up going through a clover leaf made just for bicycles. The guys were really impressed – as we’ve all been with the bicycle infrastructure in Denmark. The constant question: why can’t we have this in the States? It’s truly been a breeze cycling through Denmark.

Speaking of a breeze, we had a tailwind mostly all the way to Ribe, which made it all the more enjoyable. I think Tim suggested that we head north towards Vaernes along the coast between Soenderborg and Aabenraa instead of heading straight to Aabenraa, so thank you, Tim. This was probably the prettiest stretch we did, rolling hills, sheep, a fjord to our right – I have to come back here at some point and bike this stretch again.

Aabenraa Fjord

We bypassed Aabenraa and skipped Haderslev entirely. I’ll show you these cities one day, dad. On the way out of Aabenraa, I saw my first lawn-mowing robot doing a very haphazard job – definitely not making baseball field lines.

We continued to make great time but this is where I started to get really hungry – my constant problem throughout this trip: I can’t stuff enough food down when it’s time to eat and just need to eat more frequently than the guys. One rule of cycling is if you’re thirsty, it’s too late. You have to drink in anticipation of thirst. The same applies to hunger. In other words: I was about to bonk. I told the guys “I’m a little hungry!” meaning “I’m starving!” (because I didn’t want to interrupt our pace until I couldn’t take it anymore), but it was two against one and they were loving the pace, so we continued for another ten minutes until we came to hill and took a break. I then proceeded to eat more than my stomach could handle and felt totally sick. I think if I join the brothers in another BBR, we’re going to have to do a little more compromising with regard to eating.

But after eating, I did get the energy I needed and pulled way out in front of the guys without trying… until my butt couldn’t take its sixth day in the saddle. First it was my legs holding me back, then my knee, now it was my rear end.

We pulled in to Ribe quite early – a little before 2:00 p.m. Our hotel was “Den Gamle Arrest” – the old prison. We hadn’t told my dad where we were staying that night, so when we pulled up to the hotel, Tim said “You’re under arrest!” My dad didn’t know what Tim was talking about at first but once we told him we were staying in an old jail, his reaction: “Cool!” Tim ended up not being a big fan of the place, but my dad loved it. It was right in the middle of the main square, so the location couldn’t have been better.

The proprietor gave us a history lesson of the place as well as the city and suggested a walking tour that we weren’t really up for. After showering and changing, the guys headed to the main square and started ordering beers, but it took a while for them to get served (they even switched restaurants since no one came by at all at the first one). The beers served at the Dagmar, by the way, are excellent. I particularly liked my Belgian IPA from Schioetz. We had a nice discussion with our waitress about living in Denmark – born in Germany and a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina, she’s been in Denmark since she was four years old.

Probably the best beer in Denmark.

We headed for the church tower and climbed up to get a bird’s eye view of the city. This was my third time climbing the tower and I remembered that I learned the German word for “steep” climbing it with Antje back in 2004.

A view from this tower.

The brothers.

The church in the main square.

We walked around the city a bit before returning to the Dagmar for dinner and more beers. It again took a while to get served, but the dinner was great. I had the spicy spaghetti primadora which wasn’t spaghetti at all but rotini, which was more preferable anyway. Based on Saturday’s ride, I think my carbo-loading attempt worked. It was either that or the banana split on the Belgian waffle (my first banana split!).

I finished the evening by watching the Olympics on Danish TV for a while until I finally was tired enough to sleep. Dad’s snoring wasn’t that bad.  

Our prettiest day yet.  Bright blue skies with big puffy clouds.  Warm enough to shed the arm warmers for the first time.  57 miles of mostly flat roads with bike lanes in the populated areas.

A. Map of part of today’s route instead of a historical marker.

A sample of the clouds we enjoyed at our lunch break.

Are these clouds better than historical markers or what?

Enjoying a well deserved rest with Friday.

A view of the Ribe skyline/church steeples from miles outside Ribe.

Guess what Brian is doing in the Ribe town square?

The view from the top of one of those churches we saw from miles away. That is the North Sea in the distance.

A pic of the riders from the top of the church tower. 260 steps up and 260 or 1 steps down.

Ribe town square. Larger open spaces than in the others we have seen.

This is our hotel for tonight. It was built in 1535. For over 100 years it served as the town jail. It’s right on the town square.

View from inside our hotel. They never took the bars down.

Brian’s room tonight. Chris and I are hoping that solid wooden door blocks out his snoring. We should have found a place like this earlier in the trip.

https://brothersbikeride.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2930&action=edit#

Since I had announced that I was going to go to bed no later than 9:00 p.m., I let Tim talk us into meeting for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. I guess I was too tired to fight?

It was a mistake.

First, at breakfast, I just couldn’t eat the amount of food I wanted to eat. I just couldn’t force it down. I felt like I had had enough coffee – it was delicious – but I guess no amount of coffee is enough for a 6:45 a.m. wake-up call. Coming out of Odense (by the way, I didn’t get to show the guys ANY of the city and I feel bad about that), I was yawning non-stop. My legs felt fine, my knees felt fine, but – especially after our first rest break – I kept scouting the shoulder of the road for a nice place to take a nap.

I was able to talk the guys into spending some time in Faaborg – I’m not sure if I spelled it out, but I figured we might as well since otherwise we’d probably just be waiting for the ferry. Coming into Faaborg, there was a long downhill that felt great. We got a lot of speed and it must have lasted over a kilometer. I’d hate to have had to climb that!

As we were walking into the center of town, a fellow cyclist named Jess commented on the Bike Friday and we got to talking about his annual ride to Paris. It turns out that his wife’s cousin lives in Quakertown and he’s spent some time in Pennsylvania. Small world!

I absolutely needed a cup of coffee and got one at Cafe No. 2 in the middle of town. I also treated myself to some delicious pancakes since my breakfast had been a bit on the light side. If we were doing the Souther Tier, I’d be totally on board with the ‘nothing but cereal bars / make yourself a sandwich for lunch from the breakfast tray’ habit, but in Denmark, there are towns in between our stops that offer actual food options. I don’t know – a cereal bar is nice when you’re in the middle of nowhere (and we have been in the middle of nowhere from time to time), but I can’t do it day in and day out when it’s not necessary. For a ride like this, I need real food.

Back when I lived in Greenpoint, I would occasionally ride to Nyack on Sunday mornings with a coworker named Mensur. There was one morning when I was running late and just stuffed a bunch of powdered mini donuts in my mouth before heading out. I’m sure you can guess the end of the story, but I totally crashed a few miles before we got into town. We stopped at a cafe frequented by bikers and I got myself the largest meal they had. Mensur warned me not to and said I was going to throw up. I scarfed it down and led the whole way back. Food is fuel, folks.

Anyways, we left town with plenty of time to get to Boejden for our ferry. We took the noon ferry and I had my daily hotdog while making our way from the island of Fyn to the island of Als.

Compared to yesterday, today felt like a rest day. Once we arrived in Als, we only had 18 km to go. I saw no need to rush since it wasn’t even 1:00 p.m. and there was no way our room would be ready, so I just sat back, let myself get dropped and reminisced about the time Antje and I spent biking around Als in 2004 just a couple of months after we started dating.

We made it to our bed and breakfast before 2:00 p.m. The proprietor seems to be one of the handful of Danes whose English is not better than my Danish, so I ended up using more Danish today than I probably ever have in my life. Anyway, she commented on how fast we arrived – that’ll happen if you’re leaving around 7:45 a.m.!

Once we got to our rooms, I really just relaxed – washed my biking clothes in the sink, let them dry out on the porch, took a nice long shower and followed with a nap while the guys had a beer in town.

My dad and Tim had agreed to meet for dinner at 5:30 p.m. I hadn’t known this, but I ended up knocking on my dad’s door at that time to see if he had come back yet. He was totally out of it when I woke him up and asked me to repeat what I had said when I apologized for waking him up. He told me the dinner plan and asked me what time it was. I erroneously told him it was 5:00 and went back to my room when Tim came down and immediately knocked on his door. I felt bad about giving him a non-existent half hour, but at least I let him sleep for the maximum amount of time.

For dinner, we all had burgers – my body’s just been craving steak and burgers since we started this trip. I’m going to have to try to eat something like pasta tomorrow to carb up for our last leg.

Google Maps took us through Fangel – where Beth and I stayed (“in Odense” hah!) back in 2001. Fun times were had in this hotel.

Tim approaching the ferry to Als.

Where we got out dinner. Store bøffer Små priser

The bridge to Dybboel on the mainland peninsula of Jutland.

Tim in front of Soenderborg Castle

A street in Soenderborg

Dad had been relegated to the alcove of our room in Roskilde so Tim and I could get some sleep. I didn’t hear a peep from my dad’s section of the room, but I again had trouble falling asleep. Tim’s snoring was minimal – more like occasional pseudo-snoring sounds. Quite a change of pace from the previous night. But it was hot in the room and I just didn’t feel ready for bed at 10:00 p.m.

Breakfast was crazy – I think our hotel was filled with a tour bus from China. Tim went down first (he was dressed before either my dad and I were up) and had to fight to get a spot and people kept cutting in front of him in the coffee line. When dad and I finally came down, it had died down a lot, but it was still pretty hectic. They were lacking a few things you’d expect, like cheese, but they had these great mini croissants, so I ended up having three of them.

The weather couldn’t have been better and my legs felt great. I spent a lot of time out front throughout the day (except for the end… we’ll get to that). We also finally saw our first horse on the bike paths – this was something I had been waiting for throughout the trip because the bike paths between cities here are just filled with horse poop. I kept thinking to myself: all this horse poop and no horses? Anyways, after passing a group of high school students on a bike excursion, my dad swerved – it looked like to avoid something – like horse poop, for example. Instead, it turned out he had a flat. Changing his tube was a group effort, with me doing the least amount of work. It took a while, but I once we were up and running again, we just took off. I felt so good, I was singing to myself. My dad and I were up in the front when he asked if I had seen Tim. I thought I had seen him in my rearview mirror, but just as he asked, I couldn’t see him at all. So we stopped and he walked back about a 150 yards and met up with him. I eventually rode back to discover that Tim also had a flat and had yelled to me to hold up. I guess I had been singing to myself too loudly to have heard it.

Changing dad’s tire. A group effort – sort of…

Where we stopped to change dad’s tire. He couldn’t have picked a better place to get a flat.

Changing Tim’s tube.

Afterwards, we tried to stop a little less to make up for lost time – it was our third longest leg of about 70 miles. We rode into Slagelse – one of the few cities in Denmark that was on my list of towns to see (and just about the only one I haven’t seen before), but Tim let it be known that he preferred to avoid cities altogether. Still, we saw the main square and a group of some 20 people on horseback (they looked like part of a riding group or perhaps even police). The town looked far smaller than I had imagined, so it didn’t matter that we really didn’t stop at all.

We continued on to Koersor – where the bridge (and train tunnel) over (and under) the Store Baelt / Great Belt is located. I made the guys stop at a grocery store because I was out of water. We continued on another 3 km to the train station, got tickets and made our way to the tracks. I wasn’t sure that the train to Esbjerg was going to stop in Nyborg across the belt, so I went back to the shop in the train station to make sure. I also got my daily hotdog there (wrapped in bacon!). I was told that all trains that stopped in Koersor were local and so we only had to wait a few minutes to catch a train.

The ride in Fyn continued to be easy, but it was a hot day and I had run out of water again. My dad apparently had a hole in his backpack’s water reservoir, so he was out as well. We stopped at a bakery roughly 15 km outside of Odense around 4:00 p.m. There, we bought a bunch of water, cola and snacked a little. I was still feeling great.

But once we remounted our bikes, my right knee started aching. Around 4 km outside of Odense, I couldn’t even bend it – it could be bent, I just couldn’t make the motion of bending. I spent a good 2 km trying to pedal solely with my left leg and another 2 km in a super low gear, which just wasn’t helping. We stopped and even adjusted my seat a little – still no relief.

We eventually made it to our hotel – a Best Western (and probably the nicest Best Western in existence) – around 5:00 p.m. The guys took the stairs up to the rooms while I took the elevator.

Ever since it rained on the first day, I had been having trouble charging my phone. Our room suffered from a lack of outlets and I had to get on my hands and knees to try to get my phone to charge. While doing this, my knee POPPED. It was very audible and I felt like my whole upper body had dropped by a centimeter. When I stood back up, the pain was gone. My knee was fine. I can’t tell you how relieved I was.

The guys had already started drinking when I got the restaurant – again, attached to our hotel (I took the stairs down!). This was a NICE restaurant, e.g., our starter course was spinach-stuffed tortellini with caviar. We kept noticing that luxury cars kept pulling into the parking lot. I had three large beers with my meal and after such a long day, was starting to doze off while finishing up. When we went back up, I borrowed Tim’s charger to see if I could get that to work with my phone (it did), then tried my charger on his Bluetooth keyboard (it didn’t work) and then went to the hotel’s reception to ask if they had a charger from their lost and found I could have (they had a box of about 30). Charging problem solved.

I fell asleep around 8:45 and slept until dad woke me up around 2:00 a.m. I was wide awake for about an hour and dad started to do a much toned-down version of the propeller snoring from the other night. I listened and laughed a little and just let him do it for an hour until I felt like I was tired enough to fall back asleep. Then I took my mom’s advice and said “You’re snoring” (I didn’t preface it with “babe,” by the way) and he stopped. Silence for the rest of the night. Well done, mom, well done. I asked him about it today and he has no recollection of waking up or anything.