They have them here too.

I seem to be regularly summing up the goings on of the weekends on the following Monday. A bit of a slippery slope.
I'll get to the explanation of the title in a minute.
Friday was a bit of a blur for some reason, except that I distinctly remember setting off on the bike around 10:00 a.m.and thinking the rain had stopped.

Nope.

Didn't get really soaked or anything, but the tops of my legs were definitely damp. Wore the nifty rain jacket type of thing that Rob and Kat got me for my birthday. Thanks kids!
It's an amazing thing to be riding in the rain and actually be comfortable. The only notable exception being that I do need a bigger bike. Just too cramped, and that's all I'll say.

Usually don't go back out on a Friday afternoon, since Delden does get a little nuts on market day, but I wanted to pick up some salmon.
Since we're closest to the Atlantic ocean, it's going to be Atlantic Salmon, which we greatly prefer over the pacific variety.
Did the trick with the garlic on the rasp mixed with olive oil, cooked on foil on the BBQ. Can't say enough.


Took Gabe to her hair appointment on Saturday morning and was back at the house evaporating some time on the computer when the door bell rang. Of course, it's a little loud, so I usually jump, and wonder if I'm going to have to pony up some cash.
Open the door, and there's a man and a woman (early 30s maybe) and the man starts nattering off in Dutch, and I point out that he'll either need to slow down or try his English, since my Dutch is "niet so goed".....
Well, he proceeds to pull out a copy of the Watchtower (and I don't mean "All along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan, 'cause that would have maybe been something worth talking about) and I immediately said, "Oh....right, we have you people back in Canada, now let me show you just what I do there", and wished them a nice day, and closed the door.
I swear if Seventh Day Adventist show up next, I'm getting a big miserable dog! No handguns allowed here either, so it would be pointless to try and scare anyone off with the sound of a round being put into the chamber.
I didn't think I needed to go into the whole, "now, have I ever come to your house uninvited?" routine, as I've been known to do in the past. I figured we'd just settle for the short version.

I'll leave it at that.

We headed in to Hengelo briefly to look for a couple places to shop, but my plan was to drop Gabe in Enschede and head over to Germany to look for a particular tool store. We meandered around Hengelo for what I thought was way too long, but did get a couple more Christmas presents out of the way.
I was going to Nordhorn which, even though it's in Germany, is not all that far away, and ended up tooling around for quite some time trying to find the place. (oh geez...that was another pun, wasn't it?)
See, stupid GPS couldn't come up with an actual address, so I thought I'd do the trick that I had done in Remsheid, and that was to put in the Post Code, but that was actually out in the countryside somewhere. Did manage to get there (after having to break down and buy a friggin' map for €4,95) only to find that they were closed. Kind of made sense from the sort of industrial setting they were in and it was no big deal really, since I don't mind these little reconnaissance missions.
So I managed to burn up the better part of the afternoon while Gabe shopped. Didn't mind at all since it was a nice day for a drive. I do find though that Enschede can be a little confusing, and although I didn't exactly take the most direct route, I did manage to get to the underground parking garage and come out within 20 meters of where she was standing. Never helps if it's overcast either, since I really do rely on the sun for my sense of direction.

Sunday turned out to be a very nice sunny day, and I think the temperature got up to a whopping 5° C, which was a heckova sight better than last week, so we went a quite a bit farther on the bikes, and were once again on the outskirts of Hengelo.
Discovered this park on the edge of town, and we look forward to going back when the weather is a bit warmer.
There was a sign posted over on the other side that I should have taken a picture of, since it had to do with some sort of water management scheme, and I could have posted it here and maybe one of my Dutch speaking friend's could have clued me in to what this body of water is all about.

Before we set off though, I thought I might add some air to Gabe's back tire, since I now had the old cruiser to compare to. I need to get a tire gauge, but it's just not something I think of.

Not sure what was on the ceiling that was so interesting....


And so this is supposed to be better.

It was such a nice day for the bike riding thing, that we actually went out a second time in the afternoon to dilly dally around Delden. There were actually a couple stores open, but otherwise it pretty much is a ghost town on Sundays.

In some areas there's nary a soul....




This mornings project was to book a car rental at the airport for when we get home.

Just shoot me.

Pretty sure I wasted most of the morning trying to figure out who has the best deal. We might have to do that one night after dinner, since I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger on that just yet.
As it was I did manage on Friday morning to book our rooms in Luxembourg for this Saturday and figure I'll just rest on those laurels for the time being. Besides, if all the cars are mysteriously gone by the time I get around to finding something, then we'll just take an airport limo home and have Enterprise pick me up the next day. I can always bamboozle them into giving me the corporate rate over the phone, which I can't quite do over the Internet.
Hey, maybe if someone back home has a spare set of wheels sitting around over the holidays, we can work something out?
Well, I had better go check and see if the Wonder Machine has finally finished the second load of laundry. Never a good idea to leave it unattended for too long a time.

Leads to disappointment.