Our first day of bicycle touring in Belgium promised to be as dreamlike and easy as we had imagined. Paved single lane bike paths criss-cross the entire country, what drivers are on the roads share them graciously, and every ten kilometers or so is another town with its own brewery (or selection of breweries) and boulevard cafes in the midst of a medieval cityscape. Each intersection is numbered marked with a clear green sign, and a straightforward and intuitive map lays out the entire network with easy to follow icons for each of the junctions.

We left Roeselare for Ieper just moments after our declared 10am departure time. Not really. I believe that we finally locked the door at R&Breakfast at a little past 2. But after only about ten minutes of riding we found ourselves immersed in all of what Belgian bike touring has to offer, and followed a bike trail for several kilometers. I don’t even like bike touring, but this was pretty cool.

Before long, however, we came to a juncture where our three map resources disagreed. We found ourselves at the edges of two maps, where they overlap, only each map (produced as part of the same box set by the same publisher) showed a slightly, but substantial, difference in the orientation of the roads. Tom’s iPhone said we were many kilometers away from where we were pretty sure we were. So logic told us that at least two of the mutually exclusive resources were wrong, and it didn’t seem entirely impossible that all three could be misleading and that we really were doomed.

Tom and I were left to our intuition, which we both admitted had been spotty recently. Fortunately there are a lot of cyclists in the area, and apparently this spot is confusing for all of us. We were standing at what amounted to an occlusion in the trail and a trickle of other riders began to pile up around us.

I believe that the following interactions generally looked something like this:

Photo compliments of Tom Robertson.

I first reached out to a German couple who were just leaving the pub across the street. It went something like this:

Me: Excuuser mij, waar is Iepen?
German Lady: (looked very uncomfortable, shook her head no, and avoided eye contact)
German Guy: Ik spreek Nederlands niet, sprechen sie Deutsch? Parlez-vous Francais? English?
Me: No Francais, English. Do you know how to get to Iepen from here?
German Guy: No English.
Me: Se habla Espanol? Usted se sabe si se puede ir a Ieper de aqui?
German Guy: Ack! Nein Spanish! (German guy then began an onslaught of directions in German, of which I understood none. On seeing my glazed over eyes and the downturned corners of my mouth, he turned around, waved his arms dismissively, and walked away.)
Me: Dank u!
German Guy: (Did not reply, except to continue waving his arms.)

Fortunately, by the time that exercise in futility had passed, a group of middle-aged ladies on cruiser bikes had begun to amass.

Me: Excuuser mij, waar is Iepen?

At that point, I realized the problem with learning how to ask just one open ended question in a foreign language. I received a deluge of what may have been helpful information, but did not understand a word. In the future I will work on learning how to ask more “yes” or “no” questions.

One of the members of their group spoke a little bit of English, and so we made more headway.

Belgian Lady #3: Iepen, yes?
Me: Yes.
Belgian Lady #3: Have you tried to go down this road here? (She pointed towards a dirt road that a ways further petered into rough gravel, then doubletrack, then a cow pasture with an unwelcoming German Shephard.)
Me: Yes. I don’t think it’s that way.
Belgian Lady #3: Where did you come from today?
Me: Roeselare.
Belgian Lady #3: Roeselare . . . Roeselare!? That is not very far from here. (I am not sure if she tried to mask the condescent in her voice or not. If she did try, she did not do so very hard.)
Me: Yes, I know.

We carried on for a few more minutes in a convoluted mixture of broken English, their Dutch, my “Dutch,” and emphatic gesticulation. Tom and I reconvened and decided to try the dirt road again, but with more fortitude this time. The newly formed Belgian posse (now six strong) seemed perplexed that we had decided to go the one way that we had just said we had been, and that was not the right path. Nonetheless, after our newly found fortitude still proved to be insufficient and we turned around, we found that all six of them had followed us.

When we passed them a second time with a sullen, “nee,” they seemed content to deliberate amongst themselves, and did not ask us for advice again.

Eventually we settled on a more circuitous route through Passendale, and made our way with no further complication to our destination, Ieper. We were going there to look at a WWI museum. We finally arrived promptly at 5pm, to find them locking the doors. I suppose we’ll have to go back to Ieper again. It’s a good thing there’s a lot to do there this weekend . . .

This is what the ceiling above my bed looks like at the R&Breakfast in Roeselare.

I suppose that the better way is to fight the thing. To drink coffee and stay active throughout the daylight hours, and waking for the day at 3 a.m. to remain still, count the breaths, and trust that sleep will come. I struggle to do that, because as much as I like coffee, I love napping. And in the midst of a jetlag nap it is as though I’m napping like my life depends on it. That’s how good it is.

“I am not an overtly religious person,” Lex explained to us as he led a meandering tour through the catacombs and verandas of his guest house, “but historically, the great castles each had a chapel.” And what a castle it is, belied by its normal avenue.

The journey to Roeselare has taken me from Missoula by road to Spokane, from where I embarked on a three legged flight. Each portion of the trip, first to Denver, then to Frankfurt, and culminating in Brussels, took place in quick succession so that I never had much time to sit stewing in an airport. All the better. Aside from my economy class ticket being kin to steerage, the trip so far has been without incident and generally as pleasant as air travel can be expected to be.

The final portion of this initial voyage has deposited Tom and me at the R&Breakfast guest house (his photos are much finer than mine). The place is unassuming from the street. Its glass door barely stands out in the facade of shops and swinging garage ports.

We arrived to locked doors and were quickly pounced upon by the gregarious and immediately familiar Lex, proprietor of the B&B and a friend of Tom’s from trips before. “You should have texted,” he scolded, “I should be here to show you in.” We had arrived unannounced at an inopportune time, finding Lex running errands and us standing on the curb for a few minutes.

The Red Room.

Lex whisked us inside and began the tour. A melange of old and new, the place was built in the 1920s and its old world charm is somehow complemented by frosted glass doors, a remodeled kitchen, and austere, modern bedrooms. The common areas maintain a century old aesthetic with only updated accents, and he showed us the separate mens’ and womens’ lounges. “This room is for the ladies,” he explained, before adding, “or for men too. That’s ok too.”

Boss Tom in Robertson Hall.

The two had met years before when Tom was covering the robust local cyclocross culture, their friendship burgeoned and Tom has been certain to return each year. Lex dedicated a room for Tom’s European office, but “I had to convert it,” he apologized, “it is the mens’ lounge now.”

On the same floor he pushed open a cracked door. “This is my secret sanctuary.” The room gapes open with a tall vaulted ceiling and is mostly unfinished. Wires for light fixtures hang naked from rough hewn rafters and bare plaster still covers three of the walls. The only working finish is a yellow ceiling light which bears down on a 3’x5′ canvas, held up by a sturdy wooden easel. The sketch and beginnings of a watercolor landscape lilts across the cloth. “This is where I paint,” he declared softly before closing the door.

Just one of the balconies overlooking the narrow winding medieval alleys.

The kitchen and rooms each came with a balcony, fitted with a table and chairs or sometimes with bare turf. Beneath them he led us across a walled garden to an outbuilding with a stained glass window of three old men from Bethlehem. “Some people think that it is strange to have a chapel,” he said finally, “but I am the king of my castle here, so I built a chapel.”

And so I met Lex, and began to get situated for the next two weeks riding bikes in and around Belgium. We ate at a (perhaps?) Egyptian restaurant and I did not bring my Dutch (or Arabic) phrase book, so the ordering process consisted mostly of me pointing, grinning like an idiot, and saying “thank you” in heavily accented English. It is a well known fact that the best way to blend in when abroad is to simply speak your native tongue and assume the accent of the country you are visiting. I ordered something with a lot of syllables that sounded very adventurous. I received plain grilled chicken breast and a pile of raw shredded carrots. Next time I will remember the phrase book.

It dawned on Tom and me last week that while we are over here working on some work projects, we likely have a great deal more time (two weeks) than we are likely to need for the project (perhaps a few days). And so to keep ourselves and our subscribers amused, we came up with the idea of a Belgian scavenger hunt. We’ve got a few ideas, but because it would probably be lame to pick out all of the items on your own scavenger hunt, we’re asking you all to join in. In exchange we’ll do our best to get it done and document it either here or on Tom’s website. Here’s what we’ve got:

1) Get a hair cut.
2) Eat at a Mexican restaurant.
3) Use Tom’s press credentials to get into a sporting event for free.
4) ???

Chime in, if you’re willing, and we’ll see what we can do.