Road racing

I got a chance to borrow a bicycle for few weeks. And not just any bicycle, but a real road racing bike (sounds even cooler than what it really is :-). Besides hockey, biking really fast through the streets of the Netherlands with very tight outfits is one of the national sports here. I have so far only experienced the slow rolling with my hippie bike. Putting on full biking gear including click-to pedals was somewhat scary. The first time we practiced in our front yard multiple times clicking off-clicking on-clicking off and me getting more scared by the minute. 

The one racing bike that lives with us

It took quite some persuasion to make the next step and get out to our street. And I definitely did not want to go there while the neighbors' kids were playing out. Probably all the dutch kids here spend 50% of their waking up time on bike, so I was  planning not to go there to humiliate myself, or even worse, get instructions from 7-year-olds :) In the late hours of the day I did some circles on the street and actually the faster I went, the easier it got!

After that, we did few biking trips around ~40 kms in the surroundings of Utrecht. It was nice to see the country from a different perspective, while going through country side, forests and hills (yes, we found even those in these flat lands..!). I was convinced that I need to get me a bike also and add it as not only exercising routine but also a way to see enjoy the outdoors and maybe improve my navigation skills.

My goal is to train enough so that I could participate on a bike riding event for girls, one being mid-September in Den Bosch the distance being either 35 or 69 km. First step is then to shop a bike for me. Next week we are going to visit the Bianchi store to see what kind of bike would be good one. My selection is at the moment based solely on color & looks, but somehow my selection of the nicest bike also seems to be the most expensive one..

Gardening

Today while the Dutch guy went to enjoy a biking race called "Hell of Heuvelrug" (which would be enough to keep me away at least), I decided to continue with some gardening work since the weather was also perfect.

Our garden is somewhere between Babylon's hanging gardens and a wild meadow, to which we every now and then try to do something to keep it completely taking over the house. Since every Dutch home seems to have a perfectly maintained garden, we are a happy exception of that. The amazing thing with the other gardens is, that you rarely see anyone actually doing garden work. I've yet to find out the secrets of Dutch gardening. Netherlands is also the only place where I've seen those geometrical shapes in trees, that I thought were mainly only in Donal Duck.

The stones ARE actually there! (notice the big pile of green stuff in the lower left corner)

After some time I was able to get our patio visible again and create my own blogging corner there. As a result of this heavy gardening during past days we've got few regulars hanging out here as well. One brown and one black bird, who are enjoying the nice and fresh worms that we have exposed while turning everything upside down and a cat that looks exactly like Garfield. He definitely enjoys chilling out in our relatively relaxed and wild garden. Maybe it is the only place where he can dream of being a lion in the savannah, following the prey while being half hidden in the lawn/meadow.

Is there any way to save these..?

Garfield

Tomatoes!! 

This looked really nice in the garden store. We try to keep it looking nice.

Apparently it is really bad apple year throughout the country, not just in our tree. However there's at least three apples!