The bike is back in its box. It was easy actually. I had dinner and wanted to sit and write for the last time in Europe. My decision not to ride the Rhine was certainly an interesting and eventful one. The weather completely turned and the eastern part of of Belgium, the Ardennes, was tough. The last two weeks have been very different than the rest of the trip. I fought the hills and the rain and cold instead of long sunny days by the rivers. When I left Brugge I was determined, even in the face of deep grey clouds, that I would make Amsterdam by bike. It began to rain when I left Brugge and intensified by the time I made the border. By the time that I arrived at the ferry my feet were numb, I was totally wet, but somehow still in good spirits. But on the ferry I had enough time to cool down and the I stepped off of the feery and into a full-on gale. Lots of people were darting for cover and I ran to a map kiosk to see how far I was from the nearest train station. Thankfully, I was about 50 feet from it. I ducked into it, and felt the realization that there was no way I could get to Amsterdam by bike. I took the train. I was disappointed and it was at the very least an anti-climax. But I was also happy to be done with long days riding in the rain. And like the rest of the trip- nothing, not even the completion occurred as I had thought it would. But Amsterdam has been great and I am glad to coming home tomorrow. I have been, since about week three, compiling lists in my head of what I will miss and what I will not. I almost stayed in my room tonight and ordered Domino's pizza because I am tired of going out alone to eat. I won't miss that. I also won't miss having to stand on the table with a flare in one hand, a bullhorn in the other, while stopping on the glassware like some kind of Jewish ceremony gone horribly wrong in order to get my bill at the end of the meal. While I can say that the food in Europe appears to be generally better than in the US, the service is in the US is superior. Except for when get somebody who thinks they're auditioning for Star Search like Jane and I did that one time on my birthday. I won't miss this very limited wardrobe of three shirts. I won't miss packing my bags. I won't miss being stared at. I won't miss hearing the great European joke when I reveal what it is that I do. "I study US history," I say and they say, they always say, with no exaggeration, everyone that I told, says some variation of "Well at least there's not much to know" or "Well that must be pretty easy with such a short history." Yea yea. I won't miss that, at all. I'm glad to see that the obsession with bad US pop music from the 80s doesn't seem to exist much outside of Germany. I won't miss settling down to a nice meal or morning coffee in a pleasant and ancient market square as the morning light crests over the cobblestone church and then hearing Huey Lewis or the J. Giles Band or Supertramp for my lisdtening enjoyment. And it's not even that they think that thatmusic is good. It is the very fact that like many people in the US- nthey don't think. They have fallen comfortably into top 40 crap radio with commercials and painfully unclever djs and the same tired songs that people just want to ignore. It's one of the great indicators of what is wrong with our modern civilization in my opinion. It encourages us not to think. Because no one would ever think when tucking into coffee and a morning pastry in an anciant city- "man I could really use Abra Cadabra right now." But I've been here long enough to have gotten used to a few things for sure and there are too many things make a comprehensive "I'll miss these things" list. Here are some highlights though. I'll miss money that changes size and color with denomination- it's fun. I'll miss the over-all more civilized attitude towards alcohol consumption. I'll miss the way people here dress and all of the bicycles. I would like to know what the proportion of roads to bike paths in Holland is. I bet it's close to 1:1. Every road I've seen, major highways, minor ones, city and country roads have an accompanying bike path. They say that there are 16 million people in Amsterdam and 11 million bicycles. It's the way cities should be planned. I'll miss being in wicked good shape. I have no illusions about keeping up this level of exercise. Though I do believe that I might be realizing how important exercise really is to my overall physical and mental health. I'll miss the bread, cheap but good wine in the grocery stores, the bread, the beer, and the uh bread. The bread is really good. I'll miss the ease with which I can strike up conversations with women in cafes and in museums or wherever really. I think in Seattle most women think that casually talking with a man includes the understanding of having Christmas always with her parents while Thanksgiving will be with mine but only if the kids are... I'll miss the multilinguial people, eating dinner at 10 o clock, and the bread. Ok that's enough. Furthermore, no not the bread, I already miss Germany. I picked wisely. Germany really is great and I would go back again and again. While other places have more old stuff because they were not so seriously bombed in the war, Germany makes things so pleasant on travelers. It's nearly always possible to find a good, cheap place to stay- even in the small country towns. I realized this immediately when I crossed into Luxembourg and Belgium was worse. Places to stay, eat, buy groceries, get a beer and many other things are easy to come by in Germany but not so in other places. And it's beautiful and the people, especially if you try to speak German are wonderful. I have very little negative to say about traveling in Germany and nothing that I can remember right now. But would I do a trip like this again? I dunno. I guess I would, there are many advantages to traveling by bike. Flexibility in movement and destination, being in great shape, getting lots of respect even if it's respect that comes with stares. There are pros and cons of course. Well I need to get to bed. It's an early start and then 14 or so hours of traveling. But I want to say thanks to everybody who wrote me and who looked at my pages. If you all had fun with it then please know that it was an important part of the trip for me. To know that people were waiting and eager to hear what was happening helped me stay connected to home mentally and that kept the loneliness at bay. So thanks everybody. It was a great trip. One of a lifetime I'd say. It flew by of course. But maybe one last thought before I go. I went to see the VanGogh museum today and thoughts swam around in my head long after I left there. What struck me about Van Gogh was what I found to be the nature of his mastery and it seemed to me analogous to this life. Van Gogh was, from the time he decided to become a painter, always trying to be a better painter. He strove and he practised and developed neurosis about it. He learned from others and cultivated friendships with other painters. His corpus was to him a lineage of failure that has become to us mastery. That is for a number of reasons but what I find interesting is that the defining charateristic of his life was the trying. He started with what he knew but then he progressed as he tried to become better. He worked on people, first their heads and then bodies until The Potato Eaters. He studied the pointilists and impressionists and undoubtedly also the cubists. He was trying to be a good painter as judged by the taste of the time and by his own mind. But as I looked at the timeline of his life, revealed through his paintings, I saw that his excellence came directly from his trying to be something that he believed he was not. A great irony that he painted masterpieces near the end of his life in despair at not being a better painter. But ironically he was unique and the beauty of his paintings are that no matter what style he painted in- not even when he was copying other artists' works he admired- he could not avoid his own voice in paint. It's not just about going by a different drummer. It's about always trying and not believeing that we have arrived at any place. But sadly Van Gogh had it wrong, and along with the persistent pain of physical ailments, he ended up with a gun in his own hand in his own chest. Although he didn't see that his trying was beautiful, because it was measured by standards that said it was not, it was the trying that has made him immortal. He did not say "I am an impressionist and now I paint water in the springtime." He always said, "I'm not there yet" and then he created masterpieces. It's in the trying. And of course in his love and immitation of the Japanese. Good night everyone. Thanks again. You all will be in the acknowledgements if I can gather all of these thoughts and the ten thousand others that did not make it here into a book. Nathan