Francois_Dumas Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 It is starting to be somewhat of a custom: my/our Fall Ride to the Veluwe, Holland's oldest (only?) remaining area that can be traced back to the last ice age. A large part of it is National Park, and other major areas are owned by the 'Queen' and by the DOD (Department of Defense) that uses the area for shooting and riving ranges. Weather has been great these past days, but I didn't have time to go out.... and we didn't know if Nina's shoulder (with her broken collar bone) would hold out. In fact SHE pushed ME for us to go riding ! How's that for a 'pillion-babe' !!?? As it turned out she had not too much pain... she just asked me not to fall <cough>. So after I had cleaned the bike of a few dozen spiders and their webs and got ourselves dressed, we mounted up under a clear blue sky and headed for the dike. The plan was to quickly ride through our province, cross the dike, cross the polder behind it and get ourselves into the woods! We ALWAYS have to ride at least an hour to get out of the boring empty flatlands! First, a few pictures of the route we took..... no, I wasn't drunk... just trying to find the nicest roads :-P WE ALMOST MADE THAT PLANNING ! But, being an aviation freak, I just HAD to stop when we saw THIS just as we entered the dike road: OKAY, for you non-aviation freaks, or aviation non-freaks, you may SKIP TO THE SECOND HALF of the story now..... Normally it is a parking area (and the OLD dike road before that) with THIS VIEW as its main attraction..... that's the old town of Enkhuizen Two very different kind of 'rotors' in one picture..... not often we see so many 'Robbinsons' together, so I had some fun with my camera. Nina counting the seats..... The tail of the Eurocopter EC 120..... They had a whole bunch of Robbinson 44's and a line of Eurocopters.... to the right the futuristic control center of the main ship locks (Nina always says I make ridiculous pictures.... can't help it, I like technology in most forms ). The panel in this chopper is even simpler than your run-of-the-mill Cessna !! Another shot of the EC'sd. When asked a pilot why they were there, he told us it was for a 75 year jubilee of a Dutch company. They were treating their staff to a boat ride and a helicopter tour back to the company in the east of the country. Good boss !! 8-) One guy was late to the party............. This line-up of choppers reminded me of the line of Hueys I saw as a kid on the evening news every night...... Nina inspecting the troops..... This BMW rider reminded us that we in fact had other plans and should be on our way too ! I like these 'classic' BMW-with-windmills' pictures from Holland..... oh wait..... not so classic anymore these days..... :-) There was almost no wind (for a change) so the mills were stopped. Apparently their computers could not figure out where to turn to ..... At the other end of the dike 'our road' went 'up'... !!! That was good.. we could filter to the front of a row of some 35 cars and be done with them *grin*. (No, they don't shoot at you when you do that in Europe..... although, on Sicily, who knows..... ) We just 'slabbed' it through the polder, so no pictures. Right after the (former fisher town) Harderwijk the 'Veluwe area' starts and the fall colors are upon us..... FOREST! FINALLY ! Still a lot of green though...... ALSO nice. Who's complaining ?? This area is forest, sand dunes, heather fields interspersed with small, old villages and many country roads.. some of them still sand actually. Bicycle tour heaven, too..... One of the larger interconnecting roads..... bicycle path on the left, large heather fields (not visible) on the right. I had slung the camera around my neck and occasionally grabbed my clutch, than the camera, point-and-shoot fashion, and hope for the best. Not all bad..... The roof of a large restaurant, local style with straw covering the tiles..... The area is full with larger and small restaurants and with weather such as this the places are filled with resting bicycle riders and motorcyclists Just some farm equipment and a nice birch tree... One of the small towns we passed through........ More "action photos"................... Somewhere in the town of Nunspeet..... And a typical country road... bike paths on either side and the new-fangled DOUBLE stripes in the middle.... I'll have a story about that too,one of these days.... need to make some photos to illustrate. The medieval town of Elburg. We could not stop, it was too crowded !! I've attached a link to a photo site of somebody else, for more pictures. This is one of the very few old town where the church is NOT in the center of town but off in a corner. The reason for that is that the town got flooded for centuries until they decided to 'move' it to higher ground. The final decision was made after a hurricane in 1362 and another storm in 1367. They REBUILT the town in FOUR YEARS... mind you, this is in 1392 !!!! Sort of a New Orleans in miniature. But they continued to use the old church, which was now outside of the city walls. So when everybody had moved, they then used a vacant lot near the city walls to build a new church after all..... Dutch are pragmatic people and always have been it seems ;-) More pictures can be found here: http://www.picturesofholland.nl/Elburg/frameset.htm More 'movement'....... And finally a totally un-artistic photo, but I wanted to have little Nina on it too..... our last stop before heading back over the dike. Nina was getting cold by then..... temps had been around 60 F in the sun and with no wind, but in the evening they drop quickly below the 50's now ... Greetz from Holland ! Francois & Nina
Highway41 Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 Great pics. Liked the copters but thats a Holland I didn't know existed. Looks like the Carolinas, except for the double white stripe. ;-) Bill
Francois_Dumas Posted October 14, 2007 Author Posted October 14, 2007 'Carolinas'... is that in Florida ?
Whip Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 Very nice my friend!!! Glad Nina's ridin, she's gonna like it on the back of the FJR.
Bill_Walker Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 Beautiful pictures as always, Francois! I liked the copter pictures, and especially like the last "motion" picture through the trees. But this: is an excellent illustration of why I'm not too interested in riding in a helicopter! There are way too many moving parts keeping you in the air.
jaytee Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 'Carolinas'... is that in Florida ? Just north of Florida! Not sure how far you guys are going to travel in november, but there is a lot of amazing country to the north of Florida. JT
Francois_Dumas Posted October 14, 2007 Author Posted October 14, 2007 Hi Bill, thanks.... tell Steve Hebert that !!!
Francois_Dumas Posted October 14, 2007 Author Posted October 14, 2007 'Carolinas'... is that in Florida ? Just north of Florida! Not sure how far you guys are going to travel in november, but there is a lot of amazing country to the north of Florida. JT Oh thanks. Actually, all the way up to Seattle and Vancouver, but skipping most of the scenery in between unfortunately. Next time !
Francois_Dumas Posted October 15, 2007 Author Posted October 15, 2007 I wasn't sure it was a Bell, actually, thought it was an Agusta maybe... haven't looked it up in the register yet
madmanbob Posted October 17, 2007 Posted October 17, 2007 "an excellent illustration of why I'm not too interested in riding in a helicopter! There are way too many moving parts keeping you in the air." I have to agree with that statement, keep it simple and there is less chance if some thing going wrong.
Francois_Dumas Posted October 18, 2007 Author Posted October 18, 2007 You were right Tom, it's a (rare here !) Bell 407 ! Not many registered here, only Jet Rangers usually.
K2R1150RS Posted October 18, 2007 Posted October 18, 2007 I know I'm nitpicking here, but that's a 207, not a 407. Only two rotor blades. Here's what I did last month: Hoist Training. I'm 3rd from the left in the front row (green nomex) in pic 189 and the guy on the right in pic 88. No good shots of me on the hoist
Francois_Dumas Posted October 18, 2007 Author Posted October 18, 2007 You may nitpick all you want, I'm no Bell expert Great pictures ! Oh, and anything ending on '07 in Europe is a Peugeot !
Paul Mihalka Posted October 18, 2007 Posted October 18, 2007 Oh, and anything ending on '07 in Europe is a Peugeot ! Anything ending in '0-whatever is a Peugeot! I had a 203, my brother had a 403 and my dad a 404. They were good cars in their times. My 203 even ended up with a supercharger...
Bill_Walker Posted October 18, 2007 Posted October 18, 2007 Oh, and anything ending on '07 in Europe is a Peugeot ! Anything ending in '0-whatever is a Peugeot! I had a 203, my brother had a 403 and my dad a 404. They were good cars in their times. My 203 even ended up with a supercharger... OK, this is really a hijack, but I can't help it. Re Peugeot's "0-whatever", the Porsche 911 was actually Porsche design number 901, but Peugeot had a lock on all the '0-whatever model names, so Porsche had to market it as the 911. We now return you to your previously scheduled discussion of Francois' photos of forests and helicopters in Holland.
Francois_Dumas Posted October 18, 2007 Author Posted October 18, 2007 LOL !! Never mind, that's what I like about these forums. One learns new things all the time
roadscholar Posted October 18, 2007 Posted October 18, 2007 Oh, and anything ending on '07 in Europe is a Peugeot ! Anything ending in '0-whatever is a Peugeot! I had a 203, my brother had a 403 and my dad a 404. They were good cars in their times. My 203 even ended up with a supercharger... OK, this is really a hijack, but I can't help it. Re Peugeot's "0-whatever", the Porsche 911 was actually Porsche design number 901, but Peugeot had a lock on all the '0-whatever model names, so Porsche had to market it as the 911. Correct, although the 904, 906, 907, and 908 were made after the 901 (911 prototype), but were race cars built in limited numbers and Peugeot didn't seem to mind. Bill, I couldn't help it either.
Francois_Dumas Posted October 19, 2007 Author Posted October 19, 2007 Before we get back to the forests, and sticking with the 'zeroes' I used to race a BMW 2002tii with a nephew who was a mechanic. Anyone else raced those in their youth or thereafter !? I like it that the 't' stood for 'touring' and I have had many 'tourings' after it, it is even written on my RT cases today !
roadscholar Posted October 19, 2007 Posted October 19, 2007 Francois, I raced against a few of them with a 2L. 911, they were great cars, and annoyingly fast.
Francois_Dumas Posted October 19, 2007 Author Posted October 19, 2007 Don't you love rear-wheel power-slides !!?? I see we have more to talk about than 'just bikes' when we're over there
roadscholar Posted October 19, 2007 Posted October 19, 2007 Indeed, that was the fun of racing underpowered cars, they wouldn't penalize you so badly for being immature. Back to Holland for a minute, your photo of the road and trees is exactly how I remember Belgium looking decades ago, beautiful forests, thanks.
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