Zandvoot to about 20km north of Egmond und zee
My situation isn’t good. It seems I have a very small window of oppourtunity to pitch my tent after night falls, and before the rain starts. In the fading light I can see the clouse and the haze of rain approaching, behind me, to the east is lighting, but I can tell from counting the seconds before the hearing the thunder, that it is some way off. My choice of site is a little exposed too, which is why I have to wait for darkness, to keep me hidden. And I rode past so many better spots!
I was enjoying cycling in the evening too much, and don’t regret continuing on. I would have missed the sunset over the ocean, and the offshore winds scented with rows and rows of flowers.
The rain has started. The lighning is very close now. I erect the fly in record time, and throw my belongings beneath it. I can see hail falling too. But this doesn’t last long. I have time enough to put up the tent inner, pack every thing into the vestibule, and strip. A crtahs of thunder announces more rain, but I am inside with my sleeping bag pulled around me, wondering if the wind will take my tent and how waterproof it really is.
The day hadn’t got off to a good start. I slept in a mess of my own belongins, an abandonned reorganisation that I had to untangle, and put everything , in tis right place. And Rose needed my attention. The headset is centering, which probably means it needs replacement, wich is something I notice before I left, but ignored.
While tightening the fornt wheel cones, to remove a tiny bit of play, I noticed that the quck release skewer seemed a little bent. Once I returned the wheel, the brakes were misalligned, And still, despite my adjustments, the creak persisted,.
Already Rose feels like an extension of my own body, so a creak feels as if any other of my limbs had a twitch or arthiritis.
With all of this, it was’t until about ten theat I limped out of Zandvoor. Despite loosing the LF1, I still rode through some incredible landscape of dunes and forest.
At Egmond und Zee, weary and Hot from an awesome stretch of coastline, pushed at highspeed by the wind, I took a moment, to dip my feet in the water, and wash away the grease on my leg.
By six I was getting pretty anxious about where to camp, so that I wasn’t enjoying my sourroundings, only seeing them in terms, of their potential to hide my bright red tent. Getting a flat tyre snapped me out of it. I repaired it at a service station, where I also replenished my water, and calmly cycle on in the cool of the dusk. My saddle creaks like the deck of a boat.
