For the next bit of the bicycle tour, I start off from the ferry in Calais and rode through Dunkirk in France to Bruges in Flanders, the Flemish speaking part of Belgium. After getting off the ferry I just rode straight to the hotel I had gotten in that town. It was a cheap hotel, and not a good quality bargain. I didn’t see much of Calais and wasn’t really into what I did see, though the lady at the bakery I ate at in the morning on the way out of town was absolutely charming. Heading up the coast to Dunkirk, I got the impression that France was just far, far less cool than the UK, likely on account of this part of France being basically blown to smithereens during the war. It looked, in general, like the continental Europe with which I am very well familiar. Overall, the houses are a bit smaller, the roads a bit cleaner than the USA, with some cool styling here and there, and the occasional impressive ruin or magnificent church or some such thing, but it didn’t quite feel like I had taken a time machine to another world like it did in Sussex and Kent in the UK.
Dunkirk did have a magnificent central area, though, and was really a cool city. I probably should have taken the ferry from Dover to Dunkirk, but just chose Calais to be able to see that town that I had heard about previously. Once I hit Belgium, things got very, very cool. I’m going to call it Flanders rather than Belgium, though, as during the whole trip I never got to see any of the French-speaking portions of the country. I wasn’t fretting anything, as I had been to Brussels for a day with my dad in 1997. I was planning to go to the Belgian French city of Liege on this tour, but last-minute changes prompted me to head straight to Aachen. More on that later.
I’ve been thinking about the fact that I will not be going to new countries on this tour. Generally only ones that I have already been to. But Flanders was a whole new experience, a portion of a country I hadn’t been to. I’ve been thinking about the philosophy of going to new places (like heaven) and being cut off from old ones (separation of heaven and earth), and going through the new place of Flanders taught me a lot of philosophy. But again, more on that later.
Anyway, when I got to Flanders, particularly to the coast, everything looked different, felt different. Streets were narrower, houses were taller, parks were wedged cleverly between buildings, and many other subtle facets of organization made this into a truly new experience. Unfortunately the technodemons had been messing with my GoPro a lot, and I lost a lot of fantastic footage of the Belgian beach boardwalk.
Then I continued on to Bruges, finding the city absolutely amazing. Canals, Gothic and Roccocco buildings everywhere, cobblestones, bridges, boats, vines on the walls, and tasteful cafes, restaurants, and shops galore.
Here is the link to the Strava ride. I highly recommend checking it out. I don’t know when or if I am going to be able to add pictures and videos and maps and everything to these posts like I did on my Texas Tour post. My Gulf of America post is languishing unfinished. These are drafts, and I may end up packaging all this in some different place entirely in the future. Now a lot of the Strava posts aren’t anything to look at, but some of the Strava posts are travel blog posts in their own right. I hit a bullseye once in a while.
After the ride I hit the hostel, which was amazing. It had a young and international crowd, a cool Puerto Rican bartender named Kathy, and a bus load of blonde high school girls on a field trip from the Netherlands. The place was all wood, wicker, and leather, giving it a rustic feel, with a fully stocked bar, which was the first place I hit once I dumped off my pack in the locker under the bed.
One cyclist pro tip to make note of. When travelling, I carry the most powerful form of Axe Body Spray there is: Black Vanilla, in the drink holder of my pack. Not in the toiletry bag inside the pack, but in the drink holder. If I am riding long and hard, it’s possible to work up a stink. Especially if I have been in the woods for a few days. So if I want to sit in a nice restaurant or cafe in a situation where I haven’t showered, or have been in hot humidity, or basically if I am just lacking confidence in my presentability, I’ll head to the restroom, douse myself in deodorant, and enjoy my meal or my beers or whatever. That’s what I did when I got to the hostel. Keep that in mind. It will come in handy later.
Now, at the end of the cruise I was traumatized by Karolina and José, and thought to myself a number of times sitting in that stateroom that I was just going to have to practice Yechud, or what the Christians call “The Billy Graham Rule.” That is the practice of never being alone with a woman who isn’t your wife, sister, or daughter. Now this wouldn’t have helped with José and Karolina. I was never alone with Karolina except for five minutes up on the top deck one time, and there we were surrounded by scores of other passengers. But still, as I explained in the post about the cruise, I hardly talked to a woman overer the last couple of years, and my last impression of the feminine sex other than my mom and daughter and blood relatives was from the hellish #MeToo woke carrion culture of Venice Beach, California. But, I wasn’t going to let that destroy me. So entering the hostel, I was dead set on having a pleasant time with some young and beautiful members of the opposite gender. Now, was this going to mean I was working through my trauma using exposure therapy? That’s when a PTSD vet who is afraid of bombs and loud noises listens to loud noises and endures trauma reactions until they don’t bother him any more. He eventually trains the brain by subjecting it to loud noises that don’t involve death and destruction so he can separate the concept of loud noises from death and destruction. It’s not a fun therapy, but it works. However, you need loud noises THAT DO NOT KILL YOU. So, I would just need a series of experiences with young women that wouldn’t kill me either.
Now the Bible has many tales of miracles, but one of the most powerful of those is Sampson and Delilah. I’ve run into many people who say they have a hard time with the Bible on account of miracles such as say the parting of the Red Sea, with its explicit description of the sea parting like a wall on either side so that you could swipe your hand into the water as you walked between the separated sides. But after I explain things to them like alien technology and a variety of illustrations from science fiction movies, people warm up to the idea that such a far fetched thing could be possible given quantum gravity or some other such thing. But when we get to the subject of Sampson and Delilah, they put their feet down and reject the scriptural revelation altogether because it’s just not possible for a man to be that stupid.
Now, however, I only have to show them tales from my real life to prove that it is indeed possible. I only talk to a woman I don’t know once every few years, and it just never ends well. Here is the one from the hostel in Bruges.
Isn’t she adorable? I think she is absolutely beautiful in a nerdy cute way. Just magical, if you ask me. Her name was Freya. Look closely at the picture. Look at her arm. You see that tattoo under her sleeve? That is a wing of a dragon. This is me taking a picture of me taking a picture.
Here we are later after we have both gotten tipsy and I have decided to leak money by buying this lovely young girl some pizza. And what’s that on her elbow, pray tell? You guessed it: a dragon tattoo.
Now here is the thing. I just wanted good conversation, good times, good vibes, anything to help with the exposure therapy. I just need some time with some cool chicks that doesn’t involve my death. Or more specifically, does not involve my being investigated by authorities for saying hello to some chick. Or more generally, just not having a miserable experience with a girl.
Well, let me tell you what happened. It didn’t take Freya long to proposition me for sex. It was incredibly open. And it was definitely from her to me. It is from the 21st century. Yes, I did open with my usual tales of riding around on the world on a bicycle and being a retired Army officer and all that. Also, though, and I remember this from my old days as a normal human before all this weird hell took over my life, but I was just genuinely exuberantly interested in Freya and having a good time with her eating, drinking, and talking. I was interested in her. She is kind of nerdy. But she is super cool. She told me about where she came from, Wellington, New Zealand, and how she is a lover of and expert about her city, constantly going to all kinds of events and everything. Finally, I was covered in sweat pheromones made sweet by Black Vanilla Axe body spray. What chick could NOT proposition me for sex? Of course I am being a bit silly here. But in these hostels, young women who would otherwise be worried about their reputation can, apparently, tell themselves, “hey…I am on the other side of the world by myself. I can do anything I want, and nobody will ever know…and it’s the 21st century, so I really don’t care anymore if anybody DOES know…”
Anyway, I can’t remember her exact line, but it was something just short of “let’s get laid.” Really unmissable obvious. Now I don’t have much of a filter and I have less patience with subtext. So I told her right there, “I am sexually conservative. I do not judge. I have many adventures from my past. I am happy to be your uncle, and if you get yourself into all kinds of trouble tonight, I will joyfully bail you out of jail or pick you up from some dude’s house tomorrow, but I just don’t go in for this kind of thing anymore.”
Now either she read me rather well or just just picked up on the age thing. I think she assumed I was speaking out of sexual insecurity. And she could have been right. I’m not as young as I used to be. My last sexual relationship was with Mayra in Guadalajara maybe three years ago, and it wasn’t a great relationship sexually. And sure, I do cycle, but I am just not that young anymore. Anyway, she commented about how it’s just fun to get a blowjob. In other words, I didn’t have to please her or be good at anything. I thought to myself that I had just finished a nightly three mile bicycle ride and covered myself in deodorant. If she had gotten down on her knees and pulled my pants down it would have been like getting hit with nerve agent. She commented about how she didn’t need an orgasm to have a good time. Things like that. There were a variety of factors causing me to give pause, and sexual insecurity was maybe one of them, but definitely not the only one. She made the comment that it was important to be able to talk about sex. Now at that point I should have just asked her, “How many PhDs in psychology and anthropology do you have, young lady? Only three? You’re going to need to double that before you’re ready to talk with me about sex.” That’s how warped and damaged I am. But, I was drunk, and when people get drunk they are suggestible, and I am no exception. So I started asking her about her sexual preferences, and she answered me. Now from this blog I don’t think I have had the chance to convey how loud of a person I am. I have a deep voice, and my time in the artillery has damaged my ears. I don’t hear well. I have tinnitus. So there we were, I was bellowing out all sorts of questions about her sex life, and she was answering. Everyone in the place heard every word, I’m sure.
I talked about how all the guys in the place were like a menu she could enjoy and take her pick from anyone she wanted. I pointed to an attractive Asian guy. I just love the way Asians look, the men as well as the women. As soon as I pointed, he came over, like some kind of a puppet. She said she didn’t really like Asians. To me. Right in front of the poor kid. I talked with him a second, we were all sloshed, but she pretty much shut that guy down, and he just went away after a minute or two.
I asked her if she liked getting railed hard, to w2hich she responded ‘yes,’ and up comes a gigantic Mexican. The guy was like a offensive lineman. Enormous and built. The situation was getting to be surreal, like a dream. They exchanged a few words and he went away. I was intoxicated. The situation was just too weird for me. Chicks did not treat me this way. Guys did not come up to be evaluated just because I point at them. This was causing me to doubt my sense of reality, and I abruptly said I needed to leave. I paid the tab, and staggered to my bed…without remembering that I paid the tab.
I woke super early. Worried that I walked off without paying the tab, I went to the bar in the morning and told them I hadn’t paid my tab, and they said it wasn’t there. I assumed I stuck poor Freya with the tab. The employee told me that, just by chance, Freya was in the bunk above mine. I was debating heading out or staying another day. I decided to stay another day and wait for Freya to wake up.
She didn’t. I heard some movement in the bunk, peered behind the curtain, there she was, asleep, her spectacular blonde hair cascading off the pillow at me like a river of bliss. I sat underneath her desperate for her to wake up. I whispered her name. She didn’t move. Now this is post #MeToo. Unwanted touching results in absolute ruin. But out of desperation, I tapped her shoulder. I was proud of my courage in this age of the New Matriarchy. No movement. I sat underneath her again. I heard movement again. I peered behind the curtain again, and it was then I saw her move her hand. She was faking being asleep.
So I went off to do laundry. When I came back, there she was getting her stuff out of her locker. She was not lucky enough to avoid me. I told her that I wasn’t too good with text conversation, but that I had always wanted to do a South America/Antarctica/Australia bicycle tour, and that I’d love her WhatsApp. Maybe I could visit her. Or, I don’t know, maybe we could end up being distance friends. She didn’t give me her number. She said she just liked to talk to her family and do her writing. This was not the same girl from the night before. I asked her what she liked to write. She said poetry and non-fiction. Lo and behold, I write poetry and non-fiction and I told her as much. She was not lucky to avoid me, and we have things in common. I had just been through the UK and not talked to many people except for calling back home to family. We were like mirror images of each other. She said she had to leave to do writing. I told her she inspired me to finally start mine as well. I was terribly behind with my travel blogging, and Zack Snyder may just never get his Rebel Moon blog post I promised him if I don’t turn this trend around. So she left with her laptop. Shortly thereafter I left with my iPad.
She sat at one of the two places in the hostel with a convenient wall charging outlet. I sat at the other. I couldn’t help but steal a photo.
The poor thing just couldn’t avoid me. I started on my Gulf of America travel blogging posts. The one that still isn’t finished. My first writing effort in a while. I could only write so much before I had to get up. So I went back to my bunk and played with my Garmin and planned my route through Belgium. While I was there, she came in and got stuff out of her locker. I completely ignored her. Her locker was under my bunk, and she was messing around right in front of my face, but I said nothing. The is post #MeToo. A girl says she isn’t interested, that is the end of it. Bailey does not give chase. Bailey does not make repairs. Bailey does not woo. Bailey does not want to get investigated for sexual harassment. There was one point where she looked right at me, but I didn’t not look back. I had no idea what was up. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what she wanted from me.
She left, but then she came back. She forgot something in her locker. She left again and came back again because she had forgotten something again. This also was a mirror image of me. My friends and family, if any remain, will tell you that I famously head to the car without my keys, return for them, then return for my wallet, then return for my jacket, I am famous among those who know and love me, whatever may have happened to them I do not know, for making several trips out of the house before actually leaving.
For her part, was she coming back to get my attention and signal she wanted something from me? For all I knew the surreal dream of everything was continuing, and she wanted to get away from me, but she was a mirror image of me who also left multiple times before actually leaving a place.
When it came dinner time, I left, and there she was on the street! I told her I was headed to a Tibetan restaurant around the corner, and I invited her. She told me she didn’t have the money. I offered to buy. She just said no thanks and walked away. And that was the last I saw of her.
Now folks, if she had given me her WhatsApp, I would have asked her about blogging about her. But, she didn’t. If she ever looks for me and tells me to take this down, I certainly will. But, she did not give me any ability to contact her, so I am not particularly worried about anything. This is the story as it happened.
So, was this successful exposure therapy? I will point out that I did not get investigated by any authorities. I did not, however, press myself on anyone. Only one short tap on the shoulder. I was gently polite at all times. I will assume that she was not bumping into me everywhere because she wanted my attention. I will just assume that this is some kind of bizarre message from God where I ran into someone just like myself, only young and female, and with whom I had everything in common but with whom I was just absolutely out of sync. I assume she wanted to avoid me the next day because she was embarrassed about her sexual aggression in the face of my prudishness. But I’ll never really know what to make of things. What this experience wasn’t, however, was ultimately pleasant. It was weird from top to bottom.
So I’m not sure if it was successful exposure therapy or not.
I got up early the next morning and headed to Antwerp.
Very interesting.