The weekend.

...was pretty flippin' nice, as weekends go. The weather is even better today (Monday) but was just about perfect all weekend long.
I'm only commenting on this, since I don't seem to have any problems complaining about never ending rain when we get it, so I figured some equal time was in order.
Saturday morning, while Gabe was at the hair dressers, I decided to head over to the canal, since I had read in the Hofweekblad (the local rag, for those of you who don't read Dutch) that someone living over close to the canal was going to be launching a boat sometime after 10:00 a.m.

I knew exactly where this boat was, since I couldn't help noticing the thing any time we biked along the canal. Seemed an odd place to store a boat. Now it makes more sense that he built the thing...I mean really? How would you not notice?

I have no problems watching that kind of stuff, with the only exception that I probably should have taken one of our camp chairs, since it took the crew well over an hour just to set up the crane. I'm only guessing here, since I didn't have my watch on, but considering the actual hoisting of the boat out of the yard and into the water took all of 10 minutes, and I didn't get home until 12:00?

You figure it out.

It was quite the spectacle, and for those of you who aren't my "friends" on Facebook, I'll put in a couple pics here....
They situated the crane on the bike path, more or less half way between this guy's back yard and the canal.




Of course, having placed the crane directly over the precious bike path meant that there was a pretty good chance you'd have to stop and look anyway, even though there were a few passers by that I noticed who didn't seem too impressed with the notion that someone had blocked their way.

These boys weren't fooling around when it came to having enough crane to do the job either. This was before they had put 50 tons of counter weights on the back. My guess is the boat displaced no more than five to seven tons, so there was no worries about anything getting out of hand.


I'll try and cut to the chase here, and suffice to say that, there it goes...
up over the trees...
..and into the water..
By this point there was such a crowd that it was any wonder I got that last pic at all...


I'm sure the cost of the crane rental was a little mind boggling, especially since they had to bring the thing down from Groningen.

We had originally planned to go to Zaanse Schans on Sunday, just to try and get in yet another touristy thing, but it meant sitting in the car for two hours to get there. When Gabe suggested we not go, it took me all of two seconds to agree.
Oops. Maybe I should have thought about it for say, 10 seconds?
I think she might have suspected that I really didn't want to go? Should have whined a little?

Whatever.

Instead we went over to the driving range on the bikes. Took one club each, since really only one club is needed to work on your swing.
(So no, put the image of us towing our golf clubs behind our bikes out of yer head)

I'll cautiously say that some progress was made. Well, if there are no injuries and no clubs are broken, that would probably be enough to settle on.

I'm certainly no golf teacher, so any progress is met with unbridled enthusiasm.

And that's as far as I'll go with that.