Day Twelve: Apeldoorn: (Year 12: 1979)

October 2, 2017

Joshua came to us in 1979, on our 12th wedding anniversary. He is the only one of the four children that was born on the west coast. With the advent of Joshua, our family was complete and we continued to raise the kids on the farm.

Earlier in the year (or late in the previous year) a man came to our door with the idea of building a boat in a vacant field that we had. He would build a boat shed first, and live in the back of it. When the boat was finished in a little over a year, he said, we would be left with a nice boat shed. The man was Dan and he soon brought along his girlfriend, Candace. The boat took a little longer (10 years longer) than expected, and in the meantime we acquired the best of friends. 38 years later, we still live near Candace and Dan!

Candace gave birth to Raine, at the same time as we had Joshua. So Joshua and Raine got to grow up together on the farm. The farm also had a little rental cabin. It meant that at any time we needed people for a party or a potluck, we could run around the land and gather an instant crowd.

Dodie presented us with baby Joshua, on our 12th anniversary. Great present!

With so many kids around we had an interest in children's musicians. One of the best was (is) Raffi, who we had first heard as a "normal" performer at folk festivals. But Raffi soon evolved into one of Canada's most prominent makers of kids music. Naturally a song like Joshua Giraffe was a favourite of ours:

-----

Yesterday's walk gave me a certain idea of just where we are in relation to this town. There was no use going all the way downtown, though, because most things were shut tight. Today, the bike shops remain closed, so we are pretty much just stuck in the hotel room.

The hotel is backed up against the Het Loo Palace, which is a former royal hunting lodge dating from 1686. The palace is a museum now and has some nice gardens, so we took Dodie out for a walk there, to get her smooshed leg moving.
The walk was good, but Dodie did not make it far enough to see any gardens, even with two sticks.

This where we are. The palace is on the left and the bike shop is on the right. Downtown is out of the frame, quite a bit over to the right.

Tomorrow the challenge increases, as we will try to walk to the bike shop - about twice the distance.

Here is one demo (minor) Dodie bruise. We hope to get her back on a bike very soon, but how long will it take?

I went out in a taxi to the accident scene and retrieved our bikes, which had been stored with a nearby family. They were extremely sweet and I hope I thanked them adequately, though they spoke only Dutch.

We brought out the heavy equipment to retrieve the bikes from the house near the accident scene. That's Bert, the taxi driver, and the nice lady from the house.

Looking carefully at Dodie's bike back in the hotel room, the situation is clear. It took the hit on its right side, amidships. This bent in the rear rack and the right pedal arm. But most importantly the rear wheel is now pointing out to the left. That is, the Bike Friday hinges and connections where the rear stays join the frame are bent. We sent some photos to Oregon to see if they think in time it can be fixed. But the Friday will not be finishing this trip, that's sure.

The bike is resting with us in the hotel room now, but it has to go home in a box. "Home" means it will go to meet it's maker - Bike Friday in Eugene Oregon!

We fired up Skype last night (our time), and were cheered to be able to raise some of the Seattle family on the screen. A good one was Violet (and Laurie and Dave) who we reached on the soccer field. Violet's energy out there was invigorating. But perhaps most touching was a school assignment that Avi had done. In part he had to write a note about someone inspiring, and he chose us. Laurie posted it in the Guestbook, but here it is again. We are so tickled!

BIKE FRIDAY update.

We had used shipbikes.com successfully in the States, and had hopes for their international version, Shipbikes International to get the Friday back to Oregon. But on the phone just now Shipbikes put the cost of the shipment at $300-500. If accurate, that's wild for one suitcase sized box. Maybe we should check that directly with FedEx.

To cover the question of whether it is even worth it to get the bike back to Bike Friday, we sent them some photos and then called. They began with a lot of oooh, this is really bad, which put Dodie into tears. They could hear her crying in the background, and seemed to put some extra thought into it. They will be sending us further thoughts, but for now the Friday is on life support but not in the dumpster yet. One current idea is to ship it to the hotel at the Paris airport, and if they will hold it, to then take it on the plane with us.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0