MURP'S HOLLAND..................the Bicycle Diaries Pt II.

"De Rode Fiets". 
Gemert, the Netherlands.


A little bit of Old World Charm.
Having been raised in a small town in Ireland called Bray, 21km(13mls) south of Dublin, population around 24,000 (at that time), and working and traveling in a 
65km(40ml) radius of said town, I grew up with tractors sharing the town streets along with cars and delivery bicycles.
It was still an age where empty milk bottles were left on the front doorstep at night for the following mornings 5am milk delivery. Many mornings I woke up to the clank of the milk bottles as the milkman removed the emptys from the little 6 bottle metal carrier and replaced them with full ones.


Cycling around Elsendorp and the surrounding areas, I get to encounter a whole new level of Old World Charm that brings me back a little in time, where small towns still have market days in the square, and you still have deliveries to your door. 

Here in Elsendorp at LBS, a rolling supermarket arrives once a week filled with most everything you need, from coffee, tea, fresh fruit and vegetables from local farms, and bread and pastries from local bakeries, of which there are many in the area, and I try my best to avoid them, as the selection of pastries is nothing short of sinful.

A Thursday morning market in Bakel, the Netherlands.

From what I have seen, there are markets in different towns most weekday mornings from 7:30am to midday.

I have come to really enjoy my cycling here, it slows me down enough to 'smell the coffee' so to speak, and taking just one camera with one lens keeps it simple.
Less is more. 

On a recent Sunday morning cycle, I came across a gathering of 50's Opel's in the cobblestone square of a small town, it could be right out of Cuba actually, except the old Opel's were too mechanically correct and perfect.

As I was about to leave the square I heard the beating of drums.
Oooh, a public hanging perhaps?. It sounded like a death march, one of those 'Condemned Man' type of beats.
Maybe they still have the Guillotine in these parts. That'd be a treat for sure. 
Nah, thats in France.

Ooh, these people look very serious, maybe there is going to be a hanging after all.

Ok, good, finally, somebody is smiling. That's got to be a good sign.

Right?.

So when I got back to Ad at LBS I was explaining about some of the stuff I photographed and mentioned about the parade.
So he says "Oh, my father was probably in that parade".

Sure enough, I inadvertently photographed Ad's Dad, Mr. Donkers Sr.

I wish I could say the ride back was picture perfect, but as is the norm in these parts the weather changed in the blink of an eye, and looking at the sky, I new I was in for a soaking.

And of course when there's a good storm in the afternoon, that usually means that there's going to be a nice sunset later on that evening.

And there was.

The next post here on my photo journal will be Pt IV of my Mobec Duo-Drive Sidecar Build.

Have the day of your choice,

Murph.

BAD WEATHER................makes for good pictures.

The weather here in Holland can change drastically from hour to hour.

When I arrived here in Elsendorp in the Netherlands on April 29th, the weather was still a little chilly, in the 40's at night, up to the 60's in the daytime. Then as May turned into June the weather got progressively better, temperatures climbing, falsely lulling me into getting used to the onset of summer, a seemingly elusive season here in Holland.

Not so fast.

Before I knew it, a week long series of storms and generally overcast days put it right back into April weather again.

And now it's half way through July and after a warm beginning of the month, again the weather takes a turn and the grey skies roll in and the massive storm clouds form in early morning, depressing most here, but for me, it gives me and my camera a spectacular palette of colors to photograph and a chance to test out just how waterproof a Nikon D3s really is. 

Remarkably waterproof actually, and I speak from firsthand real world experience.

But I digress.......

This was a very colorful and fast moving storm cell that rolled through Elsendorp  at about 5:30 am on Sunday, July 8th,lasted all of 6 minutes.


I usually set my alarm for 5am, I get up, take a peek outside at what Mother Nature is setting up in terms of weather and associated cloud formations and color palettes, and depending on how interesting it looks, I'll reluctantly forgo my morning coffee for the sake of art, and sluggish and bleary eyed head out with my camera. If it doesn't look too promising, I fire up my MSR Dragonfly camp stove and get my Turkish ground coffee going and do some photo editing instead.


This particular morning was looking good, real good. No coffee for me.

The metadata capture time of this image is 5:40 am.


I had intended to go out that morning and shoot the rising sun (or rather the revolving earth turning to reveal the sun), but looking west, the storm cell that was approaching looked a hell of a lot more interesting and colorful than the sunrise. It also looked like I was in for a soaking.
  Rolling and boiling dark grey clouds were picking up speed, colors were getting weird, Twilight Zone weird, they were picking up and reflecting the colors of the orange sunrise to the east which gave it an almost theatrical feel to it.


A voice, in the distance, "You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop......."?.

This was the last shot I took that morning, capture time on the metadata is 5:46am, so all of this happened within a six minute time frame.
The sky let loose what seemed like a few million gallons of moisture, I got soaked, my camera got soaked, but, it's a Nikon D3s, waterproof as I found out when I got back to LBS. Those things are tanks, best camera I bought.
 I threw my gear into the sidecar, jumped on the bike, and rode the 3 kilometers back to the house.
After the storm had passed on, all of 10 minutes later, the rest of the day was grey, wet and generally crappy.

Interestingly enough, the following morning was, for all intents and purposes, a nice, relaxing morning, clouds drifting slowly, taking their time going where clouds go in the morning. Morning cloud meetings maybe?. Moisture content checkpoints along the hemisphere?.
It seemed like an apology of sorts really, for the anger and the mayhem caused just one day prior.
Probably not, it's just weather, right?. 
Nothing to see here folks, move along now.


And here's an interesting, odd, and annoying little ditty for you, annoying for me anyway.
It doesn't get dark outside here in Elsendorp until 10:45 pm, and it gets light at 4:50 am. It's a little disconcerting for m going to bed at 10:30 while it's still light out, it feels like I'm in the movie Insomnia in the scene where Al Pacino tries to put anything and everything up against the window in his motel room to block out the constant daylight in the northern parts of Alaska, as Maura Tierney ( the innkeeper) looks on with a bemused but understanding look on her face.


But I digress yet again.....

I took a little ride the other day, over toward Oudedijk, the road that leads from the village of Odiliapeel to Middenpeelweg, or more commonly known as the N272 roadway.

Upon approaching this sign, I had a flashback for a moment, the last thing I expected to see in the Netherlands was a town called America, but there it was, dead ahead of me.
A town of about 2100 inhabitants in the Dutch province of Limburg and named after the continent of the same name, America, the Netherlands, even has it's own Facebook Page.

No America, or is it leaving America?,
This could be interpreted in a few different ways, but here in Holland it just means that you're leaving the town boundaries.

Some upcoming posts here on Wherethehellismurph.com that are waiting in the wings are Pt II of "Murph's Holland, the Bicycle Diaries" which will be up this coming Monday, and Pt IV of my BMW Mobec Duo-Drive Sidecar Conversion that I came over here to the Netherlands for in the first place that will be posted the following Sunday.
If you missed out on the beginning of the build you can always catch up and read about it on these links,


Pt I HERE

Pt II HERE

Pt III HERE

Meanwhile I just got back from leaving America again, and cooked up some grilled chicken with garlic, green peppers and some onions and my secret ingredient...... 

Well, what did you expect?. I am Irish after all, and Celtic Sea Salt is by far THE most wonderfully tasting salt I have EVER tasted.

It's best when used raw, no cooking, like on salads or a diced or sliced avocado with freshly squeezed lemon juice, but the trick is to put the Celtic Sea Salt on the avocado after you squeeze the lemon juice on, otherwise it just washes it off.
It has a great moist sweetness to it, and a sprinkle is a great accompaniment to a fruit salad, sounds strange, but the sweet and bitter of the fresh fruit with the hint of minerally flavored salt work perfect.



Have the day of your choice........


Murph.

MURPH'S HOLLAND..................."The Bicycle Diaries", Pt I.

In this new series of images that I have just started here on the blog called

 "Murph's Holland,The Bicycle Shots", I set myself an assignment of only shooting what I see from my morning bicycle rides while here in the Netherlands.

My morning bicycle rides here in Elsendorp started out as a way to get a little exercise and stay fit on the road, but as my fitness level started to improve and the distance I am able to ride increased, I started to see all sorts of 'Kodak Moments' as I rode, so one morning I decided to bring along my camera backpack with my smaller backup camera to my Nikon D3s, my Nikon D700, and my favorite all around carry lens, the Nikon 28-300 f/3.5-5.6G ED VR.

The mill in Milheeze, the Netherlands.
Called "Laurentia", this mill was built in 1890, and is one of the 1100 + working mills in the Netherlands today. 
There are over 4,000 Windmills in the Netherlands, but the Dutch only count complete working mills for their database.

Initially, getting on the bicycle and going for a ride was purely just to get a little exercise and stay in shape. The Batavus is not even a performance road bike, just a regular 3 speed sit up style typical of the type of bicycle ridden here in Holland, but the Netherlands has so much natural beauty and great bicycle roads that it overrode my initial plan of just going for a 10 or 20 mile cycle to work out.
 I never really thought I would put up much mileage on it. But it's the only bicycle I have available to use, it's free and I don't need any special shoes or tight shorts, so I just adopted a 'make the best of what I have' attitude and went with it.


After seeing some of the images I took, I started to look at my morning bike rides in a completely different light, since my motorcycle, soon to be sidecar( actually, it is a sidecar now, the sidecar was officially attached yesterday) is still not ready, and I have time to explore on my hands, and cycling is a great way to get around Holland.

Riding a bicycle to photograph has another benefit in that you'll run out of things to photograph in a 50 mile radius pretty quick, so I'm now planning a week on the road on the bicycle, just a sleeping bag, 1 camera, 1 lens, thats it.

I have no panniers on this bicycle, so I may start to look at Marktplaats here, the Dutch version of Ebay, for a cheap used pair just to carry water, some fruit and energy bars. I'm kinda liking the simplicity of it all.

I am considering putting a small bike rack on the back of the sidecar outfit to carry a bicycle full-time as I travel, and incorporate it into my RTW as an alternative form of simple, cheap independent travel and also as a fitness medium. 

Willibrordus Church in Bakel.

Have the day of your choice,




Murph.




















Coming next week on WherethehellisMurph: Part III of my Mobec Duo-Drive BMW Sidecar Conversion: