After the strife of Monday, things calmed down a little bit. I presented my slides about Buddhism in the Netherlands in class, which I thought went fine on the whole. Class that day was shortened since all Marcel had planned were the presentations, so I got out at 6:30 rather than the usual 8ish. Since the weather had finally warmed up I decided to go for a bike ride to the outskirts of the city. I didn’t really go anywhere in particular, I just basically rode until the bike paths ran out, which happened to be in a small neighborhood somewhere north of the city, I believe. On the way back, I decided to do some writing in Flevopark, which is where and when the incident with the three women and the small dog occurred. I timed the entire trip perfectly so that I was pulling up to a park bench to sit just as the final song on LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver ended. It felt prophetic.
After writing for a while my iPod battery died, so I decided it was probably time to call it an evening, and I had to ride back to Funen musicless. Later in the evening a few of us went to a pretty cool bar whose name I unfortunately do not recall. Duival’s or something, maybe. Beforehand, we decided to do a little pregaming, and I naturally brought my Kisses From Russia, hoping some sad soul would drink it before I resorted to just dumping it down the drain. Nick took on the Kisses challenge, and to every one’s amazement and disgust, he really liked it. He offered to buy me a beer in exchange for the rest of the bottle and I was like Yes please mate. Problem solved. Christy’s bike had a flat tire so I carried her sidesaddle to and from the bar. On the way there a debate ensued as to who was the sidesaddler in the situation and who was the sidesaddlee. I contended that I, as the one carrying a passenger on my bike, was the sidesaddler, mostly because I it abundantly obvious that the sidesaddlee was the person who was hitching a ride. Looking back now, I feel like both terms probably refer to the passenger and that we probably haven’t yet come up with a satisfactory designation for the one who actually does the biking. If there are any linguists or students of semantics out there, any thoughts?
After getting back to my room, I decided it was probably a good idea to smoke was was left in my grinder. Why I felt that this was I good idea I do no know, but I proceeded to do it anyway. Before I knew it, it was 2:30am and I was walking to Texaco to get some food after eating everything left in my apartment. I bought two items from the little self service windows. I have no idea what they are were, but I remember thinking that they tasted like fried meatloaf. Take from that what you will. After devouring both of those, I picked a package of stroopwafel off the shelf, followed by a bag of Doritos, followed by a Kit-Kat Bar as I waited in line to pay. When I got to the window, the woman at the counter mentioned that they had a special on candy bars, and that I could get a second for only 25 eurocents more. Knowing a deal when I saw one, I grabbed a Snickers and paid. I’m sure the woman got a good laugh out of the whole ordeal.
Back in my room, I listened to the new Portishead album as I ate. I remembered being floored by a couple of tracks in particular, Nylon Smile and The Rip. I have never heard music like this before, I thought to myself, the pain, the beauty, it’s amazing.
After finishing the album I decided it was high time I watched the most recent episode of John Adams. I think I fell asleep in my chair pretty quickly after that, though I remember being floored by the intensity and veracity of the portrayal of John Adams’ struggles as Vice President to George Washington. Around 5:30am I actually crawled into bed and called it a night.
I woke up late on Wednesday as a condition of my less than wise decisions the night before. I had hoped to go on a long bike ride that afternoon, but by the time I was up and at ‘em, I felt it was too late to depart on an extended ride. Instead, I rewatched John Adams and picked up on many details I had missed the previous night. Like the fact that George Washington named John Quincy Adams ambassador to the Netherlands. Eat it, “Professor” of Amsterdam. [watch for the payoff to this joke in a future post]
And that was Wednesday.
Thursday I actually did wake up in decent time and therefore set out on a bike ride at some point in the afternoon. I decided to take a different path this time and before too long I found myself in IJburg, which may or may not actually be part of Amsterdam (I kind of doubt it, but at the same time, the tram travels there, so maybe). IJburg is a fairly new development right along some unidentified body of water. There was lots of construction going on, but I felt that regardless, somewhere on this island (I’m pretty sure it’s an island) there had to be a beach. I was vindicated in my search for a beach when I saw a group of people biking together and I decided to follow them. Soon, I (along with the people I followed) were surrounded by sand and water and waves and even a dune or two. It was a pretty small beach, just a peninsula out into the water (maybe it was a large lake or a bay of some sort. I’m fairly certain it was not the Atlantic) but I had plenty of space to remove myself from the group of little kids and their parents who were right down by the water and retreat to a bench farther up the beach. I read Then We Came to the End until I was too cold to sit still any longer (I was wearing a t-shirt with no jacket since it had finally broken 50℉). I decided to again go back a different way than I came and this time ended up biking around an open field of hundreds of acres, broken up only by the occasional bike path. I briefly considered biking to Muiden after seeing signs for it along the bike trails, but I decided instead to make that an entire day some other time.
It was around this time when the back wheel of my bike began to make an obnoxious clicking sound on every single rotation. It’s annoying, but now I can tell how fast I’m going by how constant the click is; when all I can hear is clickclickclickclickclickclick I know I must be flying. I tried to determine the root of the problem, and I came to conclude that one of the inner spokes is getting caught on a seam in the plastic casing surrounding the chain. I haven’t been able to figure out a good way to fix it yet, so I’ve taken to just turing up the volume on my iPod when I ride. I did however decide to stop by FEBO on the way back and grab a burger, fries and shake, which I ate while I sat and read a bit more. The Dutch may not have figured out how to make a hamburger as delicious as us Americans, but man, I will never get tired of their fries. Later in the evening all the cool kids got together for dranks. And it was fun.
Friday I woke up around 9am, filled with the knowledge that I had a 1200-1600 word essay due at 5pm that afternoon which I had not done the research for nor did I even know what the topic was, other than it had something to do with immigrants in the Netherlands. After a bit of scrambling to find the articles that I should have read over the past two or three weeks, I took off for the library to work. By 1pm I had all my reading and research done and even had a brief outline, so I decided to had back to Funen, take a break, and watch the episodes of The Office and 30 Rock that had aired the night before. Just before 2pm I began writing in earnest and had a paper I was reasonably happy with that fulfilled the requirements done by 4:55. Success. I briefly thought about taking another bike ride, but didn’t really feel up to it. Instead, I got ready for Saturday, the day Nick and I had chosen to travel to Brussels in order to see a Star Wars exhibit. Check back soon for all the gory details.
new post………………….