Riding to Ghent

After a solid 10 hours of sleep, the Bailey boys got kit'd up and headed into Schellebelle proper to take the ferry across the river Schelde. Once across the river we followed the road paralleling the river to Ghent--keep-in-mind that it's a road only in the academic sense, as it was the width of your typical US bicycle path, but with the addition of two way auto traffic; plus, autos coming from the opposite direction do not slow down! A bit unnerving, but the drivers expect cyclist to be around so they're not threatening--takes a little cooperation, something we're not used to in California.

Waiting for the grumpy ferryman who only says "yah yah":

Once we arrived in Ghent, we didn't venture too far off the path as we were losing daylight and getting lost is always an issue; so we poked around a bit before we flipped it and headed back to Schellebelle. Naturally, since we weren't carrying a pump, I punctured. We came upon a Belgie having a smoke break on his ride; I say "Spreekt u Engels?" He says yes, but his pump didn't work and only let the rest of the air that was left in the tube out into the Flemish countryside. Luckily, we were under a bridge crossing the river into Melle, so Bailey rode over and noticed some bikes in front of a cafe. The cafe's owner's son just so happened to be on the Quickstep development squad and provided us with a floor pump--brush with celebrity of sorts. We returned the pump, had some excellent espresso, chatted, then tempo'd it back to the ferry and the Clinckspoor's.

Some cool old row houses in Ghent:

Tomorrow, Mrs. Clinckspoor is going to motorpace us into Wetteren where we'll get tubes and CO2 cartridges. Until then . . .