What's With This Place?

Guess this isn't really a complaint...More of a an observation I'm making while I'm standing there, scratching my head, going "Oh really? You are serious about this?"...

Left the apartment at 6:30 this AM, it had just started to drizzle. OK, fine.
One minute into the ride: Hail. Alright, I can handle it. About three minutes of serious hail. It basically felt as if it was coming at me horizontally. Hmm.
Hail stopped and went back to drizzle...

Half-way into the ride: Sunshine and a pretty glorious sunrise. Think yellow, pink and red; with light-blue on top. Neat.

7:10, as I'm approaching the school: Hail again.
Ha!

Oh, and around 8:10, when everybody else came in: Pouring rain.

Right now (10:30): Sunshine.

Insanity!

On The Road Again

So I'm thinking I'll probably be more successful if I start looking for my MoJo on the road. Well, I haven't found it on the couch or at the bottom of a pint of Ben&Jerry's so far, so hey...

Went for a 30K-or-so bike ride in the drizzle. Ashamed to say that I have been on a run in that general direction (south), but have never made it this far (Even though I've been living is this apartment for about a year now...). Whoops.

Well, here are some pictures from the bike path towards Monster (Cool name for a town, huh?):











The beach in the area here is generally awesome.

I know I bitch and moan about the weather way too much (I've actually been wondering whether that's an age thing. I don't remember ever even thinking about the weather when I was younger. Now it seems to be a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation and a constant source of complaints...).
The Netherlands are (even by the most lenient of standards) NOT a country with good weather. To sum up: Lots of wind, rain and...oh yes, more wind.

Wait, let me back this up with some facts and not just anecdotal evidence:

"The climate is temperate, with gentle winters, cool summers, and rainfall in every season. Southerly and westerly winds predominate, and the sea moderates the climate through onshore winds and the effect of the Gulf Stream.

The position of The Netherlands—between the area of high-pressure air masses centred on the Azores and the low-pressure region centred on Iceland—makes the country an area of collision between warm and polar air masses, thus creating unsettled weather. Winds meet with little resistance over the flat country, though the hills in the south diminish by more than half the 13-mile-per-hour wind velocity that prevails along the coast. On average, frost occurs 60 days per year. July temperatures average about 63 °F (17 °C), and those of January average 35 °F (2 °C). The rainfall averages 31 inches (790 millimetres), with only about 25 clear days per year. The average rainfall is highest in summer (August) and autumn and lowest in springtime. The country is known—not least through the magnificent landscapes of Dutch painters—for its heavy clouds, and on an average day three-fifths of the sky is clouded."

Ha, The Encyclopedia Britannica knows Dutch weather. Hehe.

What I meant to say is: The weather isn't grand, but I love how Dutch people are out regardless. They just suck it up and go for a walk, bike ride, or run. Weather is not a deterrent. Good thing, too, otherwise the Dutch would permanently be stuck indoors...Pff.

The wind can be therapeutic sometimes, esp. along the beach. Nothing like battling against the wind (on the bike or on foot) and cursing. Harhar.

I wonder if this guy was cursing the elements. Sure had a lot of wind blowing against him:
This is what the dunes close to the ocean look like:
Oh, and this sad-looking thing will be a beach bar or restaurant soon enough. They take those down in the winter and re-build them in the spring.


And the grand finale for today: My filthy bike, a wet neighborhood street in Den Haag, and my dirty leg/foot. Good times.