White Nights and Windmills

Down time.....Sunday to Wednesday

Sunday

I decided to try one of the bikes .....after all I'm in the Netherlands....land of bikes, bikes,bikes and wonderful bike paths. There are 3 ladies bikes here.....one I tried before has a back pedal brake and I'm not comfortable with it. The best one has a child's seat on the front and the back and the front kids seat feels strange hitting my chest, and I found the key to get it off but can't seem to budge it, so that one is out. The last one is the one I took out on Sunday....I drove about 2 km and found a couple of caches......but then on my way back disaster hit.....I lost my balance and either my shorts or my backpack got caught in the seat which is really too high for my and I had a tumble.....not to bad, no broken bones just more of my pride. I know I can adjust the seat but I can't seem to find the right wrench in the garage. Anyway I walked the bike about 3 kms back! Oh well......it will be my feet to take me places......probably better for keeping me fit.

Oh and I sent about an hour and a half skyping with Curtis....instant messaging because my webcam is not being recognized. He and Natasha are doing well and looking forward to coming to Vancouver in November

Monday

Woke up this morning to another skype by messaging with Marg, my Australian friend who will be leaving for Los Angeles next week and the arriving in Vancouver August 12 to pick up her van (Canadian Joy which has been in my driveway since her visit last year) to continue her exploration of North America for a few months

I decided to hop the train and go and explore Leewarden on Monday. it is a bigger town than Sneek and is the place where you change trains to get to Amsterdam, about 20 minutes by train from Sneek. It also has a tourist information office, that was first on my list because I wanted to find out how to get to one of the islands north of here that I would like to go to next week. After getting the information I needed and a ferry pass that I can use when I take the trip, I followed my GPS to explore the city. A very busy town....lots of shops and people. I met some other cachers who helped me with a cache close to the edge of one of the canals.

I wandered up and down the streets and in and out of shops for a few hours enjoying the weather and the town.

I have been spending time in the evening watching the Commonwealth games on BBC.....there is not a lot of coverage of Canadian athletes though.

Tuesday

Finally got the webcam working with my skype and chatted with Carol for while.

I explored a different area of Sneek today using the GPS and the caches to guide me. I found one and didn't find another, met some Dutch cachers and helped them find a cache that I previously found. I think I walked about 6 km today.....I need to check the gps to keep track of how far I have gone.

Sneek is getting ready for Sneek Week which starts on Thursday. More on that later.

The town is getting ready for Sneek Week!

Wednesday

I put another few kilometers on my feet today. Last night I figured out that there were some challenge caches in another area that I qualify for. So I walked out into the farmlands and into one of the little towns and then back into Sneek. Finding caches in another country, in another language can be confusing and hard work. Google translate is helpful but some of the terms and expressions used cannot be translated very well!!!! The cache owners have been helpful with some of my calculations and translations on the harder caches.