Robb riding through the Belgian countryside.
Saturday morning we awoke to a bright, shining sun—a
wonderful sight, though after the previous day I had to wonder how long it
would last. The air was still cold, made worse by the fact that the dampness
still had not left. But at least we wouldn’t have to endure too much - today
was the day to complete our trip, 40 miles to Brussels.
Our ride began smoothly, our legs fresh from yesterday’s
rest. While Belgium does not have the separated bike routes of the Netherlands,
we were happy to ride on real black-top and had no difficulties with any
drivers. Heck, it felt better than being up in the Netherlands. A slightly
amusing irony, given that Hanne had told me her frustrations in getting anything
comparable to their northern neighbor built due to Belgium’s endless
bureaucratic wrangling.
Cars get knobbly roads, we get blacktop. This seems right.
Marmite is as appropriate for Belgium as it is for the Netherlands. Photo by Robb.
Taking a break with the ponies. Photo by Robb.
Mid-way through the ride, however, a problem did rear its head:
Robb’s left ankle began to feel more and more painful. We initially just slowed
our pace to try and keep it from getting aggravated, but the problem kept on
getting worse. Finally, I suggested Robb try wrapping his ankle in an Ace
bandage to provide some lateral support, which seemed to do the trick.
We ultimately arrived at Brussels at 4 in the afternoon. After
making our way to the hostel to deposit our luggage, we went to explore the
city and celebrate our accomplishment. The center of Brussels is a confused
winding of streets, with many tall buildings imposing over us. Though what
particularly struck me was how international everything was—on one street you
would find several shops whose signs were primarily in Chinese, and a few
blocks down would be the Somali area. The benefits of being the European
capital, I suppose. We filled ourselves with Chinese food (how long I have
missed you) and further beer, and subsequently headed back to our hostel, too
tired to stay awake until midnight when the clubs would begin hopping.
Brussels! Photo by Robb.
Many, many things were named after Leopold II. The guy who presided over this?
Brussels, ever more.
The Chinese area of downtown Brussels.
We're done! Beer time!
We woke up around 9 on Sunday, both of us ready to head home
and conclude our journey. The sky was sputtering down cold rain again, either
as if to encourage us to leave or just to serve as a final reminder of Friday.
But no matter. We packed and rode down to the train station, ready to take the
high-speed train home. The prospect of this gave me a deep, nerdy joy; be it
the many hours I spent playing Railroad Tycoon II in high school or just being
a transit geek, I had always wanted to take a real high-speed train but had
never had the opportunity before. And now, the TGV!
TGV! Image from Wikipedia
Okay, so this was the extent of my prior experience with the TGV. Whatever, it's still awesome. Game is Railroad Tycoon 2, image from here.
And no, no TGV. After waiting for an hour to get our ticket,
the receptionist curtly told us that we would not be allowed to take our bikes
on the TGV without having them be packaged up first. Turned out that neither of
us had thought to double-check whether the TGV trains would simply let us bring
our bicycles on, and unlike almost any other train I had seen in Europe, the
answer was no. Well fine—how about some alternate trains through Germany? No, we’d
have to bag them up as well for those, too. Well, is there any route we could
take? Yes, a series of commuter trains that would take us to Basel. But the one
route for the day was full up on all of four bikes. We could try our luck on
Monday. This was untenable: I had a lab presentation to prepare for, and Robb
had a class to teach that morning.
Well…fuck.
We left the ticket counter to try and figure out what to do
next. Robb wanted to just get a ticket for the trains to Basel, and just play
ignorant about it being full on bikes. But this was not something I was
particularly keen on—he spent about $200 on his bike, I spent a good four times
that on mine. If my bike got kicked off anywhere, I’d want to follow.
Well, could we take a plane? There was an EasyJet flight
that night that would drop us back in Basel at midnight, a train to Zurich
after that, and, most crucially, a kiosk at the Brussels airport that would
package our bikes for us. But were they open? After several minutes of ineffective
fumbling around on my phone, I found their number, called them, and found they
were! They closed at 6:30, which gave us plenty of time to make it over to the
airport.
Was there space on the flight? Again, yes! Two slightly
pricey seats available, but that was fine. We just needed to get home, and
there was no sense in rejecting this good fortune. The extra cost could simply
be chalked up to the “check whether you can bring your bike on the train, you
twit” tax. Tickets were purchased and we went back to the hostel to wait out
the last few hours away from the chilly train station we were currently sitting
in.
4 o’clock rolled around, signaling the time to saunter our
way up to the airport. We emerged from the warm hostel only to find that not
only was there cold rain, but Brussels was seeing us out with a stiff wind as
well. Fine, I thought, let’s just get the hell out of here - ten minutes later
we were at the train station (different from the first) to make it out to the
airport.
We entered shivering, and in our ability to make intelligent
decisions turned out to be rapidly diminishing. This was a BAD thing. First, we
accidentally ended up purchasing bus tickets to the airport instead of train
tickets (couldn’t bring our bikes), a waste of several Euros each. Second, we
had an inordinate amount of difficulty getting the train ticket kiosks to work
properly. But worst, right as we were about to board, an announcement played on
the station’s PA system about our train. Speaking with a nearby local we were
told to go to a different platform than what was listed on the board. This may
have been a correct instruction and we simply boarded at the wrong time, or
perhaps something was lost in translation, but the end result was that we boarded
the wrong train, a fact that slowly dawned on me as I saw the city fading away
but no airport in sight and the train showing no sign of slowing down.
Instead of making it to the airport we arrived in Leuven,
some 30 miles East of Brussels. Worse, this being a Sunday, there were few
trains that would take us back to the airport and the next one would be cutting
it dangerously close for reaching the bicycle-packaging kiosk in time. Robb
immediately took off to look for a taxi. Leaving the station, we saw a small
semicircle of taxis available and, even better, one of them was a van. Good,
this would work.
We approached the van’s driver and asked if we could get a
ride. The driver hemmed and hawed, saying that he really didn’t know if he’d be
able to fit our bikes and generally not being enthusiastic about the whole
deal. As Robb argued with him, I quickly dropped my bags on the ground, grabbed
my wrench, and pulled off my two wheels. I subsequently opened the back of the
van and stuffed my bike inside, excitedly exclaiming “See? See? It fits! We can
make it to the airport, let’s go!” The driver gave me a dirty look, but finally
acquiesced. Forty minutes and another eighty Euros later, we finally arrived at
the airport, still with enough time to make it to the baggage kiosk.
The kiosk itself was a disappointing looking affair, just
two guys sitting in a small shed with a machine that would rotate a stand and
cover something in saran wrap. I somehow had gotten the impression that they
would have been a large established store with all sorts of strong, sturdy
bicycle boxes available. That’s certainly what I expected for the price they
were charging. Still, they would wrap the bikes and EasyJet would then
subsequently accept the bikes as checked luggage. Good enough.
We walked up to the shop and asked to get our bikes wrapped
up, and were told to disassemble our rides. Any help? Well, they had an Allen
wrench somewhere, but I ended up having to take out my tool-bag and we had to disassemble
the bikes ourselves. Robb was seething at this indignity, and was tempted to go
up to the shop owners and demand a partial refund if we wouldn’t get any help
in taking apart our bikes. I argued against it, just wanting for the day to be
over and not in any mood to deal with any more fuss. I was fine with taking
apart the bikes. What I would be less fine with, later, is the fact that
plastic wrap offers little protection against your usual airplane luggage
handling routines.
This is not an effective way to protect your bike. Photo by Robb.
But that ordeal was finally over and we could go slump in
two seats at the gate. After a few hours of waiting, we finally boarded the
plane back to Basel, painfully exhausted but glad that, no matter what else
would happen that night, we’d at least be in the right country.
So excited that we finally get to go home, Robb is given the strength to carry all our luggage (minus bikes).
We landed, picked our bikes, and somehow managed to jam
ourselves into the bus back to the train station (a tight fit with the bikes).
Waiting for the train to arrive to take us back home the two of us violently
hacked off the saran wrap, desperately trying to do as much as we could before
we had to board. We managed to remove all the plastic and put the wheels and
handlebars in approximately the right place before we boarded, enough to make
sure nothing big was missing.
That left the train ride home to make the bicycles actually
rideable. This, however, was almost too much. I was cold, I was damp, I was
tired, I had spent the past 12 hours dealing with one frustration after
another, I was on a train that would rock every several seconds, throwing me
off my footing. I was angry and the world and at Robb and at myself. And I was
confronted with this:
WTF is this nonsense? Photo taken later, at a more rational time.
This is a Woods-Dunlop valve, and how I was supposed to get
air into my bicycle’s tires. I had heard of them before, but despite 3 years of
bicycle co-op work I had never seen one in person. There is a time and a place for novelty. This was not it.
I did what else I could with my bike and Robb’s. This
was not easy, as “rational” and “methodical” were not in my toolbox at the
moment. I swore and I whacked the bike. I nearly lost my footing several times as the train clacked on the rails. I reached a point of near-uselessness where I had to simply sit down in a seat and browse the internet on my phone for ten minutes just to calm down slightly. In the end, I was able to reassemble everything in the correct spot, reposition the brakes,
and straighten out the wheels after the beatings they took being loaded into
the plane’s cargo hold--or at least enough that the bikes could limp home. But this left my tires, again.
There are a few websites that tell you how to inflate a
Woods-Dunlop valve; My phone let me access them. They are not incorrect. But, there is a sin of omission on these sites. Woods-Dunlop valves look very
similar to Presta valves, which require you to unscrew a tip in order to be
able to inflate the tube. If you unscrew a Woods-Dunlop, all the air can
escape. Meanwhile, with a Schrader valve (auto tire) you need to press the
center pin in order to inflate, which a pump will do for you. For a
Woods-Dunlop, what I thought needed to be depressed would only move if you
unscrewed the valve, letting air out.
To properly inflate this type of valve, you simply apply a
lot of pressure to the end and the air makes its way in. Nothing gets unscrewed.
This was not explicitly spelled out in any of the sites I looked at. The valve
is a marvel of engineering and simplicity, but this was completely lost on me.
All I knew is that something had to be done and I wasn’t have any luck. The
train reached Zurich and we debarked, my tires half-inflated after a process of
just dumb futzing around with the valve until something seemed to work,
somewhat. It was enough to limp home on, so Robb and I said our goodbyes and I
slowly cranked the two miles back home. 2 AM I stumbled in through my front
door, finished.
The trip left me with a few parting gifts. The most
prominent among them was a cold that slowly developed over the next couple of days
only to leave me a wheezing, snot filled mess come Thursday. I had always
thought the “keep warm or you’ll catch cold” was a bit of a wives tale, but in
this case it seemed to be sage advice. The freezing rain of the Low Countries
would be in my heart—well, more accurately, my sinuses—for the next few weeks.
The other gift was the realization that saran wrap is a rather ineffectual way to prepare a bicycle for the rigors of airline travel. After my quick repairs on the train ride down, I had to do a much more extensive round of fixes to get the bike back in rideable shape.
No bike stand? Just get some bungee cords and set things up in your own lab!
The plastic chain casing was no match for a good thwack during plane loading. This is a Solitons and Vinyl Tape approved repair procedure.
Even with all of this done, there still were a few
persistent issues that could not be fixed without a visit to a bicycle shop. My
bicycle emitted a terrible squeak as I rode even after my ministrations, a
problem that required a bicycle shop visit to fix, though something I would
have been able to do myself, given the proper tools. Oh how I miss having a
proper bicycle co-op at my disposal.
I’m glad I tried the trip, though had I foresight into the
amount of headache involved I probably would have passed for the ride to happen
at a more amenable time. I’m certainly game to try more bike tours, though I’m
going to have a much higher standard of planning for future routes. And I
certainly want to see more of Ghent and Belgium. By bike even.
Photo by Robb.
In the late springtime.
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