The Oldest Bike Shop in the World

Rinia Fietsen boasts a long history. The shop has been in the same family for five generations since 1893. They have been in the current location since 1905, in Makkum, The Netherlands. Lucky Ramona and Joshua.

We tend to wander into bike shops wherever we are, and sometimes we even need things. During our day in port with the Maybe, we wandered into this shop and got things we needed and things we didn't even know we needed.

My rain jacket was toast. During the week or so that we were in Amsterdam, the sleeves had started to, literally, rot. Tiny dots of mold were appearing at the cuffs of the sleeves and along the bottom hem, and the rubbery coating was cracking. Time for a new one, apparently that one wasn't built to withstand the kinds of days, weeks, I put it through. So I got a fancy, breathable, long enough for cyclists with little tightening thingies wherever you might need them type of jacket here. They also had rain covers for your shoes, which you'll see later on. 

But besides spending a bunch of money here, we met the owners and chatted bicycle stories with them. We told them about the Bicycle Kitchen and the labor of love that it was for us for quite a while. And unlike many mechanics we've interacted with along the way, they didn't have to suppress a cringe when we said we were mechanics. In fact, as soon as we said it it was like we were part of the family, their family being that of bicycle mechanics - clearly we are of the same tribe. They were excited for our trip, and we showed them the blog of course. 

And then they gave us a discount on all that fancy stuff we bought! So nice! They join our friends at Orange20 in LA and Cranky's Bikes in Santa Barbara as trip sponsors, in that way.

We learned a lot about cycling in the Netherlands.  The reason bicycles dominate the Netherlands is because until the 1980s the economy was such that no one could afford cars so the transportation infrastructure was built around bicycles.  We also had an introduction to electric bicycle mechanics.  It turns out that those electric bikes can be plugged into the computer. Can you imagine? Take your bike to the shop so they can plug it in and adjust the electric assist? Unreal. They each have an individual program that makes it so the rider doesn't even notice the help they're getting. We haven't mentioned it before, but we were passed going uphill by greying grandpas and grandmas carrying groceries often enough to recognize the electric assist bicycle. We experienced them in Germany, too. 

We also saw a lot of lovely things that you can really only buy in the Netherlands in great variety. Below you see an array of child seats, and the kind of windscreen that Joshua likes the best.

I like this seat and windscreen combo, available in many colors and patterns:

And the slaaprol. For babies who fall asleep on their faces.

A nifty piece of bicycle history, that Rinia Fietsen, something we might not have found if we'd gone looking for it and people who gave us a bicycle blessing before we were on our way again. Thank you!

The Maybe

We did it! We got on a boat! The day started out grey and rainy - inoffensive and unsurprising. Many boats were trying to leave the Amsterdam Sail area, it was a bit crazy to motor out of there, but we made it, bikes above deck in the drizzle. The day was supposed to be calm. We were heading towards the Ijsselmeer, an inland sea, and the water is shallow and surprisingly not salty. The plan was to go to Makkum that day and then make further decisions about where to sail next.

The crew:
Skipper - Steve
1st Mate - Louise
2 other full time goofballs - Emily & Fred
Trainees/Temp crew goofballs - Phil, Jan, Pascale, Edward, Ramona, Joshua

Steve was undecided about how far east to travel. They needed to get the Maybe back to Whitby, England by Aug 31st - west and a little north. Meanwhile Bremerhaven was having their big Sail 2010, just a little bit further east. Although there was enough time to go to Bremerhaven, they would need to get out of there a little early to get back to Whitby on time. And there was always the question of which way the wind would blow.

Back to the inland sea. The first part of the day was uneventful. Motoring through the weather, hoping for sun and even getting little tastes of it.

There was even some singing as Louise guided the boat across the shallow water.

l-r: Pascale, Emily's & Edward's heads, Fred, and Louise

A sail was raised, to help us along, because there was a bit of wind to use.

After a couple of very minor locks, where we tied up and almost immediately the gates opened on the other side, it started to blow. In fact, we were pushed around quite dramatically in the last lock, and the bigger sail boat coming in behind us scraped most uncomfortably against the side of the lock as it struggled with the sudden bluster. Joshua noticed that the wind gauge at the lock was recording an 8 on the Beaufort scale - something we did not understand yet but now have a pretty thorough sense for. But at the time, everyone just shrugged and kept on going.

As we were sitting down to a quiet lunch, one jib up (that's the sail), the boat started to buck a bit. Nothing crazy at first - then suddenly we were heaving. Crew ran above to take down the sail, and Joshua and I followed. We were quickly told to clip on and sit down, out of the way.

Waves were splashing up over the decks at this point. Already. Where are we again? Inland sea? The bikes were being washed quite well - boy were we relieved to taste fresh water as it splashed into our faces. Fred gallantly tied the bikes down a bit, so they didn't go flying overboard, meanwhile getting pounded by a few good waves and cursing like a... well... sailor.

Phil was at the helm, Jan seated next to Joshua on the deck nearby. Jan said to Phil at one point, 'What do you think, Phil? 7?8?' Phil responded, 'Yeah, maybe an 8,' and just then a wave splashed up straight into his face, to which he responded, 'Okay, a strong 8.'

Joshua and I weren't really ready for this, especially not our stomaches. All I wanted was more lunch, as eating helps me with sea sickness. But there was no way I was heading down below decks again, the way we were getting tossed about.

All in all, it was kind of gleeful. The sky was beautiful, sometimes we got spots of sun between rain, the water was very warm, warmer than the wind, so being splashed wasn't all that bad. Steve finally forced me to put on some proper gear, his one-piece foul weather gear, which was pretty amazing. I kept insisting I wasn't cold, but he knew that that was all I could become, sitting still up on the wet deck watching the weather.

But rolling over waves gets exhausting. The motion of seasickness bucks inconsistently. Not just a few of us were laid out, either below in bed or up on the deck, just barely staying awake. Fred told us the last thing we wanted on deck at a time like that was cold, tired, wet people, and then he and Emily promptly fell asleep curled up together next to Joshua and I.

Unexpected weather. Inland sea...

No tragedies. We didn't learn a whole lot more about sailing than we already knew, except to expect the unexpected and know your safety protocols no matter what is planned for the day. Nobody's life jacket inflated accidentally due to the water that was everywhere and the bikes got the washing they had needed since muddy Netherlands adventures the week before. And neither of us succumbed to the overwhelming urge to toss the contents of our stomaches. As it mellowed out a bit, Emily brought up tea even, and Joshua got a much needed piece of dry toast.

Meanwhile, Steve put me at the helm as a fantastic distraction to my wooziness. That really worked. And it was a lot of fun. I navigated along a channel, which was around 2.5 meters deeper than the keel at many points, and sometimes dropped to 1.5 meters. Scary. But I just kept aiming for the guide buoys and watching the heading. At one point a gigantic cargo ship was coming to the same buoys as the Maybe, at a place in the channel where we had to make a fairly sharp turn, and I think not a few members of the crew swallowed their fingernails while I managed to cruise just exactly where I needed to be and made the turn without smashing us into the other ship.

Full on - and better after a turn driving. Wish I could have kept that suit for Norwegian snow play.

Almost to the port at Makkum, the British flag and beautiful Dutch sky

Almost to the dock! How calm the water looks

Still windy and with a good amount of chop for an inland sea, we motored into Makkum at the end of the day. Exhausted. The dock felt good, and dry land felt even better. The weather report called for 9s, an even bigger day of wind, on Tuesday, and much of the coming week it was going to blow the wrong direction for them. Easy to get to Bremerhaven, perhaps, but a battle to get back to Whitby, for certain.

As we had a number of good laughs over dinner, and everyone started to relax over a beer or a bottle of wine, Steve announced that they would stay at the dock the following day. No sense in going out again to just get beat up some more. Whether they'd head further east was still undecided, but it wasn't looking like they'd bother. And although we were oh so tempted to stay on board - I mean, we'd only gotten on the water for one day! come on! - and we figured a couple of weeks in the UK would be awesome, we decided that we were not, in fact, heading west. Through the day at port we discussed our options, and finally we decided that we'd just have to leave our new friends and go with the wind across the Netherlands, through Germany again, and north through Denmark to the ferry at Hirtshals. After all, this is a bike trip.

We did stay on the boat one more night, and stayed out late having a good time with our new boat buddies. Steve got us to the bar early, and we just drank beer after beer - outrageous amounts, really, but luckily we were well practiced. Wednesday morning we got up fairly early and put all our bags and bikes on the dock. As we packed up, they shipped off, with just a couple of minor bumps as they tried to get out from between the ships in front and behind them - okay, maybe they lost a piece of rail to a stuck bumper and managed to snap a rope still tied to the dock. But they headed for home, their last sail at the end of a good long season for them, and we just hoped they didn't have to face too much rough weather to get back to England.

Untie the boat

Lookin' pretty fine - thanks Maybe

Map of Amsterdam, NE to Cuxhaven, DE (Aug 23rd-Aug 30th)

We took the Maybe! But only as far as Makkum - one day on the Ijsselmer, which is a fresh water, inland sea. The map below is wrong in two ways. Firstly, we took the Maybe from right in Amsterdam all the way to Makkum, but of course google maps can't route that. When we got off in Makkum on the 25th of August we rode east, with the wind, across the northern Netherlands and camped outside Drachten, at Bakkeveen. The next night we stayed at Englebert, on the far side of Groningen, where we had spent the afternoon. The following day we made it back to Germany, riding all the way to the border town of Nieuweshans in big rain and wind (rainy days these all were), then north against a huge headwind towards the ferry at Ditzum for Emden, where the Ems River (a river we had met at it's source back near Rheda-Wiedenbruck) meets the North Sea, where we stayed in a hotel for the night (Aug. 27th).

Our first days back in Germany were also very rainy, and we kind of hurried across northern Germany. From Emden on the 28th, we raced across the landscape on the Ems-Jade Canal, which cuts straight across the landscape towards Wilhelmshaven, where we stayed again in a hotel (we thought we wouldn't make it all the way, and then when we did power through we were there late and there were no campsites). In the morning of the 29th we took a ferry across to Eckwarderhorne - this is where the map below fails the second time, as google doesn't know about that ferry apparently. Again we raced across the landscape, with help from the wind, making it to Blexen on the far side of the Weser River (an old friend), where we took another ferry, to Bremerhaven (where Sail Bremerhaven was going on - we had hoped to take the Maybe that far, but they didn't go). So that's two ferries in one day.

At the end of that long ferry happy day, we stayed on the slightly less windy side of the German dyke holding back the North Sea, in Cappel-Neufeld. We enjoyed some pretty fantastic days on the North Sea as we cruised north to Cuxhaven. In Cuxhaven, we planned to take another ferry, across the Elbe to Brunsbuttel.


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Horsies for Allison

For commenting so much and asking for more - clearly one of our biggest readers...

This is the tiniest pony (it's a baby)

and it's having a good butt scratch...

Sea horsie! They had babies at the Oceanarium in Hirtshals...

Sail 2010 and our new heading

Perhaps you don't know this, but our plan was to get to Amsterdam, and then maybe go to Norway. Or maybe south again, and make our way to Morocco. But we basically thought that after Amsterdam we'd be forced to choose a place where we might work again a little.

We have been frugal.

We spent a couple of days wandering in and around Amsterdam, before hunkering down to the task of finding a way to our next destination, whatever that might be.

Amsterdam looks like this

Construction. That's not a canal yet, just the photo of one.

A yellow pumpkin growing in a fence.

We went to the Heineken Experience, which is cool when you're checking out the large-scale brewing set-up that they used to use. Also cool, in a way, was the 'Brew You Ride' which is kind of a 4-D experience of sorts. Lots of giggling. There's a whole advertising room, with a bunch of gigantic TVs showing different images with loud dance music playing - makes you want to drink a Heineken. And then you get a couple of free beers.

We ate out at a Spanish Tapas Bar, where we ordered Paella - yuuummm. The street we were on was moving, but not super busy. Then we went around the corner a couple of blocks and came upon the Cover Band Battle. A fella did a surprisingly fantastic Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam's I'm Still Alive. Then we walked around and saw this! Mendo!

Sail Amsterdam 2010 is happening right now - 5 days of hundreds of ships and boats crowding the canal just a block or two away from Paul & Marieke's flat. Lucky us. It is a madhouse over there, but in a controlled, calm, fun, relaxed way.

In the foreground you see tiny sailboats, those are piloted by children. On the right in the water you can see a splash, where some kind of wakeboard via zip line thing is going on. And then there's that gigantic sailboat. Not to mention the hundreds of people walking along the canal.

Hundreds of people, moving somewhat like the bike traffic - calm, close, mostly avoiding each other. But sometimes they do run into each other, just a little. And then they just ignore it. Nobody was getting frustrated about the slowness of the crowd, or how some people just stop in the middle of the path to take a photo. They just go around. Patience.

And in the water, everyone is floating on a loop.

Royal Navy of Oman

White pelican!

Giant. Amerigo Vespucci.

The photo below was really not about us. I was hoping to get a shot of the woman with her baby carriage, carrying a tray of beer. Yes, there was a baby in there, too...

From the rooftop of Paul & Marieke's we saw this baby cruising by. Must be another canal over there.  (Hint - look for the mast and sails on the skyline).

And we also got to see a lot of these.

Fireworks, Thursday through Sunday. And they are outrageous!

On our tour of the tall ships, we saw a little sign about the Maybe, with a piece of paper taped up that said they were looking for anyone who wanted to come aboard and sail with them to Whitby, England, via the Fresian Islands and Bremerhaven, Germany. Intriguing. We thought about it a minute, and decided to check out where Whitby is, and the Fresian Islands. What did we find? Whitby is just south of Newcastle. So we went back to meet the folks. They are very nice, and welcoming. Fred, one of the crew, tells us that the bikes shouldn't be a problem and that they're not sure if they're stopping in Bremerhaven. 

We have been looking for ways to travel to the UK, and we'd settled on a ferry from close to Amsterdam to Newcastle. We'd even bought the ticket, thinking we'd travel north into Scotland and then take a ferry over to Bergen, Norway. But we haven't been able to find a boat to take us from Scotland to Norway, and the only option is to fly. We entertained that plan until we found out that our bikes would go standby - maybe they'd fit on the plane, maybe not. And if not, they'd come on the next flight. Probably.

So a sail boat, to Whitby... 

In the end we decided to check it out and make sure we could take our bikes on the Maybe without getting them encrusted with salt. We also decided not to take the flight, but to see if we could ride the boat as far as Bremerhaven, and ride our bikes from there to the ferry from Denmark to Norway. As of now, we're getting on the boat tonight or tomorrow morning. And they will probably drop us in Bremerhaven, unless they don't go that far, in which case they're dropping us somewhere north and east of where we are now. Which is basically good. But the captain has already said he'll figure out a way to convince us to just stay on the boat all the way to England.