Lisboa, Portugal. Hashish anyone?

We have made it to the original destination point! After one hell of a fight against the universe. It seems the universe did not want us to bring our bicycles to Portugal. I'll try to explain this really quickly. We bought tickets to go to Portugal in Paris. We got to the train station with the understanding we did not need our bicycles in boxes. We did need boxes. So we got a refund because we would have missed the train. So we were sent to another train station for another train that we do not need boxes for. We got on the train and went to Irun Spain. Upon arrival, Steve goes to make sure we can get our bikes on. It seems you cannot take bikes or any oversize luggage on the train to Portugal. Nightmare continues. So after being severely frustrated, we get a refund and lose 10% of our money. The lady tells us to take a bus. The buses only go to local spots around Irun. So there is no bus in Irun for us and nobody speaks English and our Spanish is non-existent. So we decide to go chill out and breath and assess the situation. In the end we decide to go to Madrid and try our luck there. We wait until 10pm and we go to our platform to board the train. The conductor guy says you cannot bring the bicycles on the train after we were assured to the point where the lady who sold us the ticket even circled bicyclettas on the ticket. So I, Kevin am like, 'The bikes are coming with us. There is no way this is happening again.' Steve goes and speaks to a guy and he agrees. So we get the bikes on and get to Madrid. We go to the bus terminal and the bus company informs us no bikes are allowed after we called ahead and were assured very pointedly that we could bring the friggin' bikes. So Steve talks andd talks to this lady who speaks very little english. To make a long story short we find another bus company who allows bikes in boxes and we find out that Spain really loves Jesus and they are on a 4 day easter holiday where absolutely nothing is open and there are no boxes for bicycles or boxes period for that matter. Nobody knows where we can get any cardboard at all that we can tape together to make a box with. So we rent a car and drive to Lisboa with our bikes hassle free and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Unfortunately Steve has to make the 6 hour drive back to Madrid with the car and take a train back. Steve forgot his wallet with everything he needed and a 6 hour trip is looking more like a 12 hour nightmare for my poor brother. Everyone send Steve some good warm, I'm sorry the universe is against you feelings!

Ahhhhhh. So here we are in Portugal. It is warm and sunny and the people are very friendly and english speaking for the most part. This makes life a little easier even though I enjoy the challenge of the language barrier from time to time. We are staying at a super nice guy named Vasco's place for a few days. Intelligent fellow with lots of really amazing books I'd love to read. He lives near the university in a great apartment with the internet and nice big kitchen perfect for hungry cyclists to prepare meals of 6000-8000 calories.

We walked around downtown Lisboa yesterday and soaked up the sights and culture. Culturally it is quite a scene. Lots of cafes where they will bring you extra things that you did not order like cervesas(beer). You have to be careful about that. One also gets offered hashish at least once every 100 metres. Seriously. We got offerred hash at least 40 times yesterday from sketchy guys you wouldn't buy a match off to start a fire with let alone some nice smoke that could be a chunk of dirt or something cut with turpentine for all you know.

It is really cheap to live here. Wine is $1 Canadian a bottle. Seafood and other delicacies are pretty cheap. Not super cheap, but good enough for the shoestring budget we are currently on. After the financial kick in the crotch one experiences in Northern Europe, especially France, things seem cheap here. I'm seriously hurting from the prices up there. Number one rule when travelling to Europe. Always ask what the price is before ordering things. Especially litlle things like hot chocolate. We got gouged for a $6 canadian hot chocolate in France. It seems $5 and $6 is the norm for coffee and hot chocolate. Un-be-frickin-lievable. I wanted to cry for a moment. You can get a bottle of wine for $2 but hold the hot chocolate please, because I don't have my gold bar to stir the thing with. Ouch!

The Portugese are pretty laid back people. Except when they are driving cars. My goodness. You want to talk insanity. Everyone drives about 140-160km\h no word of a lie. I had guys and girls passing me at speeds in excess of 180km\h I'm sure of it. There are some very scary stats coming out of this country surrounding the car culture. Portugal fought 2 wars back in the 70's. I believe Tunisia and Morroco were fighting for their independence. More people died in Portugal on the roads in one year than the number of people that died in fighting those 2 wars on both sides, including civilians. Portugal is the worst place for car deaths in Europe and is 3rd on the world scene. So we have been told repeatedly to seriously, seriously, seriously watch out on the roads. The car is a symbol of status for the Portugese. Much like North Americans they identify it as part of there personality. Traffic jams are regular, as there are 750,000 people living in Lisboa and the population explodes daily, as another 400,000+ people drive in. There are 4 tracks of trains with a train leaving every 4 minutes to commute into the city, yet people still choose the car as the popular method of transport even though the highways transform into a parking lot on a daily basis. They also have 4 subway lines and old school trams that run throughout the city.

Agriculturally speaking, we are having a hard time finding organic food, but fortunately, food production to my understanding is not anywhere close to as chemical dependant here as in North America. Agricultural production in Potrugal is not set up for monocropping huge agribusiness where you always run into huge pest problems. Europe also doe's not allow any North American meat into the continent because of our gross production habits. They are intelligent enough to realize that pumping big amounts of hormones, steroids and antibiotics into animals is not only unecessary and disgusting, but it is unhealthy for human consumption. I mean we wonder why our daughters are growing breasts at 8 or 10 years old. We are what we eat. So all you non-organic meat eaters out there in North America, stop supporting this industry. Try writing a letter inquiring about this and check out the bogus propaganda you get back in return. The Portugese are still not however, anywwhere close to providing enough food for there own people.

So that's the scene here. We are going to start cycling from the most westerly point in Europe (that's 30km's outside of Lisboa) on Monday and we will keep everyone posted!

Is anyone actually reading this or are we burning up our money on overpriced internet shops?

Chez Paris

So we have made it to Paris! After a week of consistent headwinds we arrived in Paris on Friday night. What better way to start training for a ride of this magnitude then into 20 - 40km/h winds. At times it was even stonger than that, but you when your born and raised deep in the belly of Hamilton your prepared for everything!

What can I say except it has really been an amazing experience thus far. Belgium was equally as beautiful as the Netherlands except of course they pale in comparison in regards to the bicycle. We found a decent amount of cycling routes, but the culture is definitely not bike centric. We pedalled through some really pretty old towns. Every town has as a very old feel to it, dominated by a large church or two and downtowns with other large old buildings that date anywhere from the 16th and sometimes the 15th century on. We made our way through Poppel, Merksplas, Lille and Lier to name a few. The cities feel really huge to me. They are unlike the suburban wastelands we call cities in North America. The housing is much more dense and centred in the city for the most part. The city of Lier seemed massive to me and then I found out it had a population of 80,000. I thought it was at least as big as Hamilton. The downtowns are generally pretty packed with people popping in and out of shops all day long. It is getting more carcentric as we move south and the people are becoming less and less friendly it seems. A fella in a prdouce store put it to me like this. "People are becoming more and more concerned with money and getting rich. They are less likely to smile and greet one another and are always in a hurry to get what they want when they want it." After I left his shop I noticed it immediately. It has been a challenge for me to get smiles out of passer bys. They sneer at the two new people from out of town even when I smile and say bonjour. Sometimes you get one back, but for the most part people don't really give a fuck it seems.

Brussels was next on our list of big cities to pedal through. It is kind of a dirty place away from the downtown. We took the worst road in and came through the heart of there industrial giants. Being from Hamilton we revelled in it. Breathing the pollutants deep into out lungs to mingle with the heavy metals of our Hamiltonian past. There is a huge arab/muslim population there. Lots of good food. Again the people were seriously distant. I can't understand it.

Downtown Brussels is a sigh to behold. The grand Square I believe it is called it is fantastic. All the buildings are from the late 17th century and are full of detail I've never seen the likes of. Gargoyles adorning every arc. Sculptures of saints and knights and other members of royal families. Some of the buildings were adorned with gold trim and some of the scultures are green from the rusting copper. Truly breathtaking. We stayed at an amazing hostel called Centre Vincent Van Gogh for 16euros and the beer was 1.30 each. Not bad even when converted to the diving loonie. There was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60 women to 10 men there. A bit overwhelming but a great hostel all around.

The next three days we pushed on towards Paris into more killer headwinds. We went through a really nice city called Mons. Very old. Another great example of pedestrian friendly downtown squares with no cars except those that are delivering goods. North America really is backwards in the way we design our cities and plan our neighbourhoods. It is truly sad. Don't get us started!

After Mons we were into France and vast expanses of rolling green fields and hills that really pushed us to the physical limits that are bodies could handle. At times we were pushing into 50km winds uphill and we were moving at a turtles pace of 2-5km/h. Gruelling days. We endured two days of killer wind and 40km progress here and 60km progress there and we got to Saint Quentin. We could see it from a great distance away. There was a frickin unbelievable 11th century church that was one of the biggest I've ever seen. Very impressive. Every little hamlet we rode into in France had this awesome medieval feel to it. This is of course because most of the structures are medieval. Old stone walls and no windows on the houses. Just little peep holes to open to tell outsiders to bugger off. Just like in an old movie. Most of the towns have old castles that are falling apart, some with moats around them. Really storybook kinda quality.

Unfortunately we cheated and took a train away from the open fields and killer winds and went to Compeigne after arriving in Saint Quentin.

We rode 100kms that day from Compeigne to Paris and we were blessed with calm conditions and amazing forests the whole way in. An excellent ride.

I can't even describe the beauty of Paris from an artitectural standpoint. Everywhere and anywhere they can over do adornments on buildings they did. Sculptures, trim, gargoyles doors crevices, lets throw a miny tower here on the corner because we can. Just breath taking. I didn't really want to come here but I am glad many people told us we have to chack it out.

So that's it for now. We are heading to Portugal tonight and we'll update y'all sometime soon again. Sorry no pictures yet! Soon to come.

Myn Hollands is niet zo goed!

That is what we have been saying to almost anyone we approach for directions. Pretty funny. Sometimes they say what? So we say it again in our best dutch accents.

So here's a quick update. We're in Lier Belgium today. We rode 65km's in some serious headwinds. Yesterday was even worse. We experienced 40-60km/h. We rode at about 10km/h. Beautiful forests in the south of Netherlands. Kampina Wildlife Preserve in particular was really nice. Forest and marsh and songbirds and huge cranes. Really beautiful. A town called Oisterwicz was particularily wonderous. All of it was engulfed in a beautiful forest that tamed the headwinds for us.

So we are heading to Paris for Friday then traing to Portugal. If anyone has any contacts for us or can do any research in the area of organic farms and phone/e-mails for them we would be eternally greatful as finding farms and riding and eating and sleeping and e-mailing can really drain two hammers out. Please any info like that to us at two_hammers@yahoo.ca

Thanks and much love to anyone who reads this. Post comments we like that!
Shout out to Mike for the first posting!

On the road again...

So we have now left Amsterdam. We cruised up and down and all around Amsterdam on the bicycle. Totally amazing. The most efficient transportation system I have ever seen. Hats off to the urban planners in the Netherlands. They have it going on. Lots of trams, buses, really small cars and most of all BICYCLES! Bicycles like you've never seen. Thousands of bicycles. Millions actually. The Netherlands has a poulation of about 15 million people and somewhere around 19 million bicycles. Steve and I were both blown away. When we landed it was around -10C. That didn't stop anyone from bootin' around on the bikes. There's almost no parking downtown. Cars have to yield for pedestrians and cyclists, except at the traffic lights. But for a large part the downtown shops and busy streets are closed to cars. They were packed too. Amsterdam's population is about 1 million.
Other than that we checked out some of the finer things in Amsterdam like the coffeeshops and the infamous red light district. The attitude towards drugs is sooooo liberal. They were no shortage of coffeshops to purchase some of the finer Hasish and Buds from around the globe. As for the red light district. We walked up one way and had enough. We got offered every drug imaginable and some we couldn't imagine I'm sure. We seriously got offered drugs about 20 times in ten minutes. Sketchy.

So with that our fun was over and we decided to start riding. Steve's a little heavier than I am, but hey I'm the little guy. The first day we rode 40km's to Utrecht. Beautiful ride with the winds at our back. It rained off and on the whole day with a high of maybe 7C. We met a really nice fellow named Robert who invited us to his place for dinner and a nights rest but we settled for a warm beverage at the local pub because he lived the 30 minutes the wrong way. So we finished our ride into Utrecht after feeling lost for most of the day and we stayed at a hostel for the night. Utrecht is a really nice city. Picteresque, canals through the downtown and old buildings everywhere. 9 organic grocery stores in total.

This morning we ventured to S-Hertogenbosch around 60km's. It rained for most of the day but we had a serious wind behind us. We crossed the 3 largest rivers in Europe today. The Rhine, the Lek and the Maas. I think that's right. We saw a couple windmills and passed through some other small towns. Pretty much every town is beautiful beyond anything I've seen. Compounded by the fact there is almost no car traffic during the day or at rush hour in the downtowns. Seriously try to imagine Hamilton or Toronto with car free downtowns and tons of people flying around on bikes. Ahhhhhh.

So that's that. We're in Den Bosch now after a good cycle and strecch and we'll post again some other time hopefully with photos when we figure that out!

On European Soil!

Hello anyone who is reading this. Steve and I have landed safely in Amsterdam after a nine hour flight. The flight was pretty unevevntful aside from meeting the Ultimate Fighting Champion in O'Hare Airport! I wanted to take him on but Steve theought it wasn't a good idea since we were starting this ride soon. You know how it is. We both enjoyed the finest Hindu meals that United Airlines had to offer. Lentils, rice and naan bread with a list of ingredients that would twist anyones tongue.

We're now staying at a global freeloaders house in the east end of the city. For those of you that don't know what Global Freeloaders is, it is an organization of people that are willing to house people for a day or two and are in turn housed when they travel. Philippe met us at an organic farmers market and brought us back to his place for some cheese, bread and salad. Very nice.

Now, unfortunately I have to go to bed as I have been conscious for too many hours. Until the next post!

Steve and Kev