Biking through the Tulip Land and Beach Meditation

As I wrote earlier this month, I've been training hard to bike up the Stelvio Pass in the north of Italy in early September with a bunch of colleagues.

This week has been pretty busy, so I didn't have much chance to bike. So today I decided to go for a long training ride. I started out around 5:30 PM, right after Maria Sharapova lost her Wimbledon final. I biked past the old chapel of Wilsveen to the mountain bike parcour of SnowWorld in Zoetermeer, and from there past Stompwijk to Zoeterwoude and Vlietland, then along the Vliet to the Lammenschanse Brug in Leiden and then to Warmond, Rijnsburg and Noordwijkerhout. It's a beautiful route through many old towns in the north of South Holland, the heart of Dutch tulip industry. But I get a lot of headwind.

It feels good to bike with the sun and wind and fast flowing low white clouds. I am at about 40 km from home. I cross into the dunes and start cycling with the wind, southwards along the coastline. I stop briefly in Noordwijk. According to the weather service, it is wind force 4 on Beaufort scale, but the sea looks like it's wind force 5. A beautiful view of Zandvoort in the north and Scheveningen in the south! I continue along the coast, flying with the wind in my back. I stop at the beach of the Wassenaarse Slag. There are not so many people on the beach. I sit down in the sand, the sun is glistening on the wave tops. I fee like meditating. I put on a guided mindfulness meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn and try to follow my breath and mind for some 10 minutes. What a bliss!





Watch this short video of the dunes at Meijendel:

From Biking through the Tulip Land and Beach Meditation

I bike on to Meijendel and than through Wassenaar with its beautiful stately houses, along the royal estate De Horsten, over de Knipbrug bridge and then along the Vliet canal to Leidschendam. The last 2 km to home, and I am tired and cannot bike fast. But it feels good!

It's 78.5 km in a little less than 3.5 hours. The average speed is not so impressive, but with so much wind I don't really care. This is my longest ride this year. I dedicate it to my dear wife Luda, whose birthday is tomorrow and who's now on holiday in Ukraine.

Then a quick look at our Delta-N Tour de France pool cloud application at http://azuretour.cloudapp.net/, and, o wonder, after the first stage, which I didn't even watch, I am on top of the pool!

My friend and colleague Konstantin, who's also been biking, turns up at the door and we share a meal of smoked mackerel, very small Parisian potatoes (krieltjes) with dill and steamed broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini and green beans. As desert we eat a whole bunch of cherries. We talk about food and fish and sour cherries and about our childhood in the now non-existent USSR. We decide to watch an old, good Soviet film about school Доживём до понедельника, but after 20 minutes or so I start falling asleep, so it's time for him to go home and for me to go to bed. What a great day!

Update:
Monday evening (July 4) another training ride in the dunes: 36km in 1h27min. The beach at Meijendel is completely empty, not a single soul! The sun is going down. What a peaceful and serene feeling!





Update 2:
Tuesday evening biked to the beach in Scheveningen with Konstantin. Ended up chilling-out at one of the beach bars on the Zwarte Pad. The ice cream was delicious, but too little :)

Update 3:
Wednesday eveing, again went to Scheveningen, this time with my good friend Jasper Seger. First we went bathing in the sea. There was lots of wind and waves, and pretty cold water, but we had so much fun fighting the waves that we didn't want to get out of the water. Then we relaxed and watched the sunset at the same bar as yesterday! It's good to be able to talk to a good friend for a couple of hours!