Well, A Day Above Ground

I knew the risks. I really did. The NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, that is, the Dutch railways) had red boxes all over the internet schedules I printed the night before. Still, I launched. The plan: train from here to Alkmaar in the center of the North Holland peninsula, bike the half hour to the North Sea and down the coast as far as I felt like, Zandvoort for sure, maybe Noordwijk if the Wind Gods smiled. Ha.

The chaos was even worse than the updated MAP (105 kB) shows.

The train from Bussum to Weesp was late. This in turn made me miss the train to Amsterdam Centraal--half an hour lost. The next connection to Alkmaar was on time but stopped in Wormerveer, and everyone had to get off. The tracks were messed up between there and two stations up, Uitgeest. Everyone ELSE got on a bus, but with my bike I had to, well, bike to Uitgeest. Not happy. Waited for the next train to Alkmaar. It is almost 1 pm before I get on the bike. Very poor form, NS. And not to be outdone by the NS, local road work on the southwest side of Alkmaar added twenty minutes' riding time.

The sun is already on its way down before I get to to Egmond aan Zee, a delightful little village on the North Sea, with a very high dune perfect for a lighthouse. The weather was a little cold but otherwise glorious.
 

From Egmond, winding my way down brick bike paths. Dodging lots of bike traffic--I think everyone was commiserating about this being the last good weekend of the year. Of course all this talk was in Dutch, so it's entirely possible they were talking about kidney surgery.

Castricum aan Zee looks great on the map, but it amounts to two dunes, each of which topped by a beer hall and a mobile-phone tower. And bicycle parking of course.

Practically all the Dutch resorts on the North Sea are extremely pleasant little villages, but the beaches themselves are, well, crude. The pavement just sort of deteriorates by the meter, and you're on sand. That's it. Wijk aan Zee (pictured above) is a perfect example. This is where I sat for lunch (4 pm), which I opened and promptly spilled into the sand and wind. Not a good day.
 

Since the Beverwijk train station was only a few km away, I went exploring south to the mouth of the IJ river and through the local industrial area.

I wish I hadn't. Not to mention: yet another bad omen. This is just 2 km south of Wijk aan Zee. I rode for twenty minutes past a hell of smoke, noise, rusting factories.
 

And finally there are too many bad omens to deny. My luck seriously ran out. The ferry across the IJ wasn't running. It was beginning to get cold and dark. The combination meant I needed to head straight for the Beverwijk train station and get started home. But they were running fewer trains, and Beverwijk's (one) ticket machine was broken, and the line was so long to the ticket counter that the train left before I could buy mine. The next station, Heemskerk, was only 4 km up the tracks, so I started for there--that station was closed today, no trains at all. The only station in the area that I knew for absolutely sure was open was...the one I rode in on that morning--12 km away. The direct road is closed for construction. I would have been laughing at this point, but my face was beginning to get stiff from the cold. I dodge traffic through Assendelft, apparently the only town in the Netherlands who hate cyclists enough to provide no bike paths. I get to Wormerveer (that's why my route on the bike map looks so odd), and of course the train is late. The connection out of Amsterdam Centraal is late. The connection out of Weesp is late, and there is no place to sit. I bike home from Naarden-Bussum in the dark. I eat as though I hadn't eaten all day (which was almost true). I drink a liter of water and a half-liter of coffee and wrap myself in two blankets. I sleep like the dead.

Americans say "any day above ground is a good day." Maybe. But next weekend I think I'll stay in my little apartment and read.