kevin doesn’t know it yet. we’ll have to sail over, because i don’t want mollie or winnie to have to go on an airplane. they won’t be thrilled with sailing, but it won’t be so bad.  they’ll get over it.

so anyway, this is what happened – after i posted my epic series of scotland videos on youtube, some other youtube person wanted to be friends on youtube. i started looking at his videos; he’s this guy who is riding, by himself, all over the US, on his bike, pulling a little cart behind him with a tent and all his stuff. he shoots the video by just holding the camera at arm’s length; the amazing thing is that he seems to do this quite a bit while he’s biking, plus he’s narrating.  he wrote to me that he’s editing the videos on his computer as he goes.  what an undertaking.

i will add a link to his site pretty soon, but FIRST – he had a link to some biking website – here’s the link for that right now: PEOPLE FOR BIKES

it’s all about getting people involved in biking, promoting more bike paths, getting people off their big butts and on bikes instead of sitting around on the couch eating chocolates (oh wait, that’s me), and there are links to a bunch of other bike sites.  i clicked on a couple of them, and they were all those hardcore bike people with all the fancy bike stuff and very serious about the biking.

BUT THEN…i found this site called A View from the Cycle Path, and i clicked on this biking video.

it’s kind of dry; i haven’t yet found any biking stuff that is in any way attempting any levity in their biking stuff, but OH MY GOD THIS VIDEO!  for one thing, there are GOBS AND GOBS of cyclists, just riding to work, to school, to shops, SO MANY OF THEM!  i kept holding my breath, expecting to see a big CRASH of all the bikes because there were JUST SO MANY OF THEM, all riding along together.  but NO CRASHES.  just lots and lots of people, riding around.

plus, NOBODY IS WEARING A HELMET!  not one bike helmet anywhere to be seen.  i’m so paranoid that i HAVE to wear my helmet.  even though we are usually on bike paths WHERE THERE AREN’T EVEN  HARDLY ANY OTHER CYCLIST ANYWAY, i feel that i’m going to crash and split my head open if i’m not wearing my helmet.

the thing is, though, maybe the people in the netherlands are much less accident-prone than me.  because seriously, i could easily crash my bike into something even though i haven’t done it yet.  i can fall down running on perfectly smooth pavement, and i’m constantly bruising my body from crashing into doorways and walls and all manner of things.

also in the video there are PEOPLE HOLDING UMBRELLAS ON THEIR BIKES IN THE RAIN.  this is utterly fascinating to me.  definitely something i would never attempt – my god, if i was that coordinated, i could have done that on those rainy days in scotland!  never even occurred to me, plus i guess it would have been really really difficult going up hills in the rain because of the need for gripping onto both handlebars and swearing a lot.

here is the video.  IT IS FASCINATING AND I’M SURE YOU WILL WANT TO GO TO THE NETHERLANDS WITH US AFTER WATCHING IT.

OH MY GOD WE’RE MOVING TO THE NETHERLANDS. WHO’S WITH ME?

hopefully kevin will be on board with this.

the thing is, yeah yeah yeah we can have websites and get people to sign up to commit to getting more people here involved in cycling, and writing to your congressman to get more funding blah blah blah, but let’s face it, this is america, PEOPLE LOVE CARS HERE, people DO NOT WANT TO RIDE THEIR BIKES, and it’s not gonna happen, not in my lifetime.

BUT THEY’RE DOING IT IN THE NETHERLANDS.

i need to figure out more about the netherlands.  like, for example, where exactly they are.  plus what language they speak, what they do for a living, what we could possibly do there, besides, of course, RIDING OUR BIKES EVERYWHERE.

first, we will have to buy mollie some kind of thing we can pull her in in back of our bikes.  kevin tried this one time a long time ago before he knew me, and it didn’t work out too well and i can’t see mollie exactly relishing this kind of thing, but we can work on it.

so much to do now, so much to do, planning our move to the netherlands…

ok then,

mrs. sunday night netherlish hughes.