The Great Flood

Yesterday, after three days of wandering in Amsterdam, Daryl and I made our way to the docks area adjacent to Amsterdam’s Central Train Station and found our barge, the “Feniks,” to begin our “Bike & Barge” adventure. A former small cargo ship (39 meters, or roughly 125 feet, in length), the Feniks has been retrofitted with 10 miniature two-person cabins – smaller than a cruise ship room, larger than a train sleeping berth – each with its own bathroom/shower unit. Staffed by Captain Winfred, his wife Els – a gourmet cook – and their nephew-first mate, Uri, the Feniks also has a comfortable below-decks galley area where we gather for breakfast and dinner.

Our trip leaders are Suzie and Roger Gnable from Baltimore, who have led many Bike & Barge trips throughout the Netherlands, Belgium and France. We’ve been with them on two stateside bike trips, and we knew we could count on them for a well-organized, information-packed trip that would include plenty of interesting side trips and interaction with the locals.

The Feniks, already loaded with our custom-fitted touring bikes, transported us out of busy Amsterdam via the North Canal and, heading west, dropped us off at a bike-way near the small town of Spaarndam (famous for the story of “Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates” – memorialized in a statue, of course).

Such is the compactness of the Netherlands that we were able to ride a trail through the North Sea dunes, visit a fully operational windmill built in the late 1700s, and tour the ruins of a medieval castle during our afternoon bike ride before arriving at the town of Haarlem, our overnight stop. There the Feniks awaited us in a downtown canal – along with an excellent dinner of homemade tomato soup, salad, pasta and salmon baked in dill cream sauce.

A not so trivial question: What is the connection between the Netherlands and New Orleans – and Cedar Rapids?

Answer: In 1953, a tremendous storm broke through the bulwark of dikes protecting the Netherlands – literally, “the low lands” – from the North Sea, and the country was ravaged by the greatest flood in its recorded history. The deluge killed some 1,800 people and devastated fisheries, farms and towns. Afterwards, the Dutch government undertook the creation of an immense flood protection system that engineers say has a 1-in-10,000- years chance of being breached. It took 30 years to build.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, U.S. officials visited the Netherlands to learn about its flood protection measures, and officials from the Netherlands provided information at Congressional hearings in the U.S. When it comes to flood devastation and protection, the Netherlands is Ground Zero.

Today we are biking in the 10,000-year flood zone, which includes hundreds of miles of dikes, levees, canals and bridges. In the Netherlands, you can get just about anywhere by bike path or waterway, making it possible for us to reconnect with our floating bike hotel every evening in a location near each town’s historic city center.

(EDITORS NOTE: Metro Sports Report correspondent Sher Jasperse and her husband, Daryl, are taking a bike trip through the Netherlands. These are her reports.)