Between Maastricht and Wormer, in a delusional parallel reality

The narrow cycle path along the Juliana Canal is in abominable condition. It is full of potholes and cracks just past a steep berm full of stinging nettles. But it is a beautiful Saturday morning, I am driving through South Limburg in a perfume of high summer scents. I see castles and ancient farms, the low sunlight makes a green conflagration of the farmlands, I am concentrated and fresh, what can happen to me.

This. My bike hits a pothole. The blow launches my pannier. It lands on the verge, rolls back down in a pestilent manner, slowing down, seems to continue to simmer in the nettles, but then dives, very heavy, into the canal.

Overexploitation

This is how my monster bike ride from Maastricht to Wormer begins. When I was eighteen, I rode it with a school friend in one day. Since then I regularly wondered if my body, worn out by looting, could still handle the blow. I never quite knew whether it was vanity or concern. In the month before my 57th birthday, I just decided to give it a try.

According to Google Maps it is 247 kilometers from my hotel in Maastricht to my parental home, where the journey should end just like it was then. With an average speed of twenty, it should take me about sixteen hours, including breaks. The weather conditions are perfect. Little wind, bearable temperatures.

The Zwaluw is not a racing bike, but I keep my target pace pretty well in the morning. The Maasroute is also a bit of an old-fashioned course. He partly leads you through Belgium around the meanest hills of Limburg. Only after 120 kilometers does the hunger start to undermine morale. After lunch in Oss everything goes again, only a ferry on the route is in the way: that is due to a lack of staff, what’s new in the Netherlands, three days out of service. The alternative route is seven kilometers longer. Fortunately, the ferry from Lith to Alphen is beautiful again, the land of Maas and Waal a dream of Dutch prosperity.

slot machines

Then the Betuwe. Along the way are the fruit machines of the growers, a healthy variant of the croquette from the wall. Behind a glass of fruit and fruit juices, contactless payment and unlockable. In a daze of joy, I empty a three-quarter liter of apple juice in one gulp. Haven’t I had the worst? wrong. After the ferry at Amerongen, after 170 kilometers of cycling, the sign welcome on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug kills the last illusions. I get over it with the courage of despair, then the crisis follows. I get lost in Utrecht. My phone is empty, and nowhere the expected bicycle signs with ‘Amsterdam’. Finally I find the bike path along the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, where the overdose of kilometers reveals its drugging effect. I get lost in a delusional parallel reality. The bow waves of the freighters quench my thirst, the birds right above my head satisfy my hunger. The summer scents come in like an intoxicating substance. The wind feels my skin like a cool hand I could grab. It’s almost beautiful, if it weren’t for the fact that I still have 40 kilometers of toil ahead of me.

At a McDonald’s I fill up on a cheesecake and a coke with ice. Like a ghost I roll through noisy Amsterdam, which lives in a dangerously high gear: all action, nothing reflection. Get out of there. After the overcrowded ferry to Noord, silence sets in. The Zaan region is balsam. It is midnight, windless darkness. The unruffled water of the Zaan reflects the light of the factories in a festive Baroque style. Someone recently asked me if I was happy. I said I was in the lucky circumstance without being able to be sure. But now it’s me. I am stronger than I thought, I saw a beautiful country, I believe in life, I am not defeated after 270 kilometers of stairs. Aging is gaining patience what you lose strength. At half past one in the morning I reach the village of my childhood on my father’s bicycle. He stayed up for me, that moves me. Respect, he says. And I am proud as the child that man in his most beautiful, naive dreams should always remain.