Feel the wind in your hair

             So I have bought my Raleigh bike but that doesn't mean that I should stop talking about them, ha! Instead of talking about a Dutch bike brand let's talk about a Dutch cyclist shall we? Here enters famous cyclist Joop Zoetemelk. He is a bicycle racing legend.
           He has finsished the Tour de France 16 times, which is a record, and he also won the race in 1980. Not to mention the Olympics and 67 other professional races that he has either won or raced in the top 10 in. Joop started off as a regional champion speed skater before turning to cycling. This guy, who has actually become better looking as he ages (if that tells you anything), is an athlete and a robust one at that. In the 1980 Tour de France which he won, it was claimed that he only won because a competitor Bernard Hinault had dropped out of the race. This is what Joop had to say about that "Surely winning the Tour de France is a question of health and robustness. If Hinault doesn't have that health and robustness and I have, that makes me a valid winner". Dutch directness?
             He won the race on a Raleigh, my favorite brand, and raced under the TI-Raleigh Dutch team. The team was known for their discipline. Joop was known for doing his job and doing it well even though sometimes he did not communicate with his team mates.  He was also disqualified during drugs tests 3 different times. Joop is now retired and runs a hotel in Meaux, France. His wife is the daughter of a Tour de France executive and his son Karl is a French mountain biking champion. There is a lot of bicycling on the mind in that family.

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Songs Called Amsterdam

iTunes free song of the week last week was a song called Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons. I've never heard of them but it's a catchy Alternative song. But it made me think. In my own personal music collection. I have a few songs named Amsterdam. Three to be exact. This may give to much away about my music tastes but hey, I'm out of ideas for posts as evident by the lack thereof. I don't read into song lyrics deep enough sometimes, so not sure what some of these are talking about but most are hardly about the city itself. 1) Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons Just got this one like I said. Not sure yet. Here it is below. Make you want to ride a train. 2) Amsterdam by Guster Couldn't find a good video for this one. But here is the song. I guess, it's easy to get lost in Amsterdam... 3) Amsterdam by Coldplay My favorite of this bunch. Turns out it's called Amsterdam because Chris Martin wrote this in Amsterdam. The song says nothing of the canal fille...

Holland is just a step away

When life gives you lemons make green tea lemonade. So, when one lives in the midwest why not make the best of it and explore the sites in this area? You don't need a lot of money or even a passport. That brings us to Holland, Michigan a Dutch settlement in America. Obviously the city is very proud of its Dutch heritage, as shown in the klompen picture at the top. Klompen is the name of the Dutch wooden clog dance. There are many dutch settlements in Michigan but what makes Holland so distinctly Dutch are its two festivals: the tulip time festival in the spring and the winter festival. The tulip festival is held in mid-May and lasts for 8 days. The festival includes tours at the local windmills, tulip farms, local dutch houses, as well as dances, concerts, street scrubing, and a dutch marketplace. One interesting thing about the Dutch costumes that are presented during the festival is that they are from the 8 out of 12 different provinces of the Netherlands. Here is...

Ambulance Garage = Home

So I couldn't sleep tonight so I thought I write my next blog entry about a place where you could sleep. See what I did there? That's called a 'segway'. I think. Recently MSN had an interesting article entitled '10 unique structures transformed into astonishing homes'. Structure 3 was a Parksite Ambulance Garage in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Here's the description from that article. "This 2,800-square-foot living space was converted in 2008 from an ambulance garage. The Doepel Strijkers team transformed what was a flat space into a multilevel[ed] habitation by creating a dugout in the center. [This] dugout also created room for a second level. The bedrooms are suspended over the sunken kitchen area in a polycarbonate 'light box' with integrated LED lights. The kitchen has custom cupboards. [Orange blocks] on the stairs to the living room act as a seating [area] or tables. A new glass wall looks out to the greenery of a park." If you search Doe...

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