September 7, 2022 to September 8, 2022
Days 29 & 30: Rest days in Deventer
When the Dutch family stayed with us in Denmark last month they had originally planned to stay two nights but needed to extend for a third night due to Lego House being sold out the day they planned to go. We were trying to build up some karma ahead of our own trip so of course said yes, but we couldn’t have imagined how directly the karma would come back to us until we saw the forecast for lots of rain this Thursday. We would need to stay in Deventer for three nights instead of two. Our hosts could hardly say no.
They might have been regretting it after the first night though when Kevin woke up screaming every couple of hours. Lucky he is so damn cute! It was Jurgen’s day off from working in his circular economy consulatancy job and he took me to see a “nature playground” that he helps to manage. It was down by the river and looked like a very fun place for kids to play, with trees to climb and fallen trees making bridges to cross, stepping stones and mud slides. Hopefully one day we will return when Kevin is a bit older as I think it is such a great place for youngsters to play and enjoy the outdoors.
After that I helped Jurgen take apart a wooden pallet, one of 13 he is disassembling in order to reconstruct into a cupboard. It’s inspiring to see how much they are able to reuse things, such as the new desk in the boys room that is in fact an old door.
After lunch we walked to a cafe also on the river where we met up with an old friend. Susanne had spent three years between 2014-16 cycling the long way to Nepal with her partner at the time, Martin, and we had stayed with them a couple of times in Rotterdam after they had returned. At the time we sensed a bit of a conflict about what each of them wanted next in life. Now five years on they have gone their separate ways - Martin is cycling in South America and Susanne is settled down and now has a very cute two month old baby boy, Elias with her new partner, Rinke. It was really nice to see her again and to compare notes on becoming parents, and to be reminded about what it was like when Kevin was the same size as Elias, and not capable of doing things like this:
Jurgen and Barbara had received another warmshowers request from a “French-speaking Norwegian”, which sounded interesting. He arrived in the late afternoon, a well-dressed, tanned, very French looking man from Oslo called Jonathan. The explanation for the mix was a French mother and Norwegian father and he had been brought up in Norway but was currently on a ride to France to see family with a destination of Bordeaux.
It wasn’t until later on that we got the full story and it was a quite extraordinary one. Jonathan had been working as a programmer in Oslo and one day just had enough. He had been working with an older overweight colleague one day and thought “I don’t want to end up like this guy” and he had pretty much just got on his bike and cycled away. He didn’t have any of the gear, he hadn’t planned for the trip, he just started cycling his bike, bought a tent on the way, bought some bags. It’s a very romantic idea, like something from a movie, to just simply have enough of the rat race and get on your bike and cycle off, but this guy really did just that!
Jonathan has got a potential new programming job starting the first of January, but I wonder if he will be able to go back to it after this adventure, which it was obvious from listening to him has opened up his mind to a lot of possibilities. I’m not sure if me talking about the way I cycled for ten years will influence him too, but I am going to be very interested to keep in touch with him and see where this journey is going to lead him.
To round off our eventful Wednesday we went for an evening swim in the river. Actually we swam across an inlet of calm water over to a sort of island on the other side. Robin had challenged me to a race and he ended up winning although I was hampered by the rules of the race that meant I was only allowed to use one arm! It was nevertheless a fun and refreshing way to end another hot sunny day.
But this morning brought with it the forecasted rain. Jonathan nevertheless rode on, while Dea, Kevin and I settled in for our extra rest day. After all the excitement of yesterday, today was fairly uneventful, but it was just really nice to hang out with this lovely Dutch family who have become good friends in such a short space of time. We have really a lot in common and feel inspired by how they have raised their two kids in a small house and with no car, much like we plan to. And of course taking the boys on cycling adventures too. Having met twice in a little over a month it feels strange that we won’t see them again for a long time, but I am sure we are going to keep in touch and that we will meet again someday.
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