Day 36: Rest day in Veghel - To Belgium with Kevin - CycleBlaze

September 14, 2022

Day 36: Rest day in Veghel

It rained all night, but quite lightly on our tent in the garden and I slept well. When Kevin woke at 6:30 again I volunteered to take him inside so Dea could get some extra sleep. I could also get some extra points in the game, because from the sounds that came from him he had very obviously done a big poo. I was already mentally working out what my new score was going to be as I opened up the nappy and found... nothing!

Zoran had already left for work but I got the chance to see Janneke briefly before she went, and we said goodbye to each other for a second time. “Stay as long as you want,” she said. “If you’re still here when I come home from work it’s fine too.”

“Oh no, we’ll definitely be gone by then,” I said.

Heart 3 Comment 0

But it just kept raining. The forecast had been predicting that it would stop in the afternoon; now they said it wouldn’t stop until evening. We only planned a 20 kilometre day, but that would still mean taking down our wet tent, cycling 10 kilometres in the rain, putting up the wet tent in the rain to sit in it for two hours, taking it down again, cycling another 10 kilometres in the rain, then putting it up again in the rain. It felt like quite a lot to do with a baby, especially when we really didn’t need to.

Maybe we’ll just stay here then.
Heart 8 Comment 1

We had no great time pressure to get to Turnhout before our train to England on the 20th so it was a sensible decision to sit tight and wait for a drier day tomorrow. So we wrote to Janneke and she confirmed it would be really fine for us to stay. Then we just took things easy and enjoyed the rest day. At one point Dea went out to get some supplies from a nearby Jumbo supermarket, but accidentally ended up in Jumbo headquarters, where she was quite pleased to see Jonas Vinegaard, on a poster above the door. She went in anyway, and the receptionist managed eventually to point her in the right direction of the actual supermarket.

Jonas Vinegaard races for the Jumbo Visma team and won this years Tour de France with them. Until today I hadn’t made the connection that his victory was financed by the supermarket I’ve been doing a lot of shopping in.
Heart 4 Comment 0

Later, I was holding Kevin by the butt when I felt something moving in his nappy. “99%!” I said confidently, because that really felt like a poop. I took him over to change him but had a quick sniff of the butt to make sure. It smelt like roses. “Okay, maybe not! I don’t think he did. I will go 25%” I opened up the nappy and of course he had pooped.

“I don’t really like this game.”

Zoran came home and got some practice at holding a baby. Of course when they are newborn they don’t move their legs quite so fast.
Heart 8 Comment 0

It was actually really so nice to have another evening with Janneke and Zoran. They are great company, we get on well, and one night maybe wasn’t enough, so it worked out really well that the weather forced us to stay another night. They didn’t even mind when I forgot I had added chocolate peanuts to our bag of mixed nuts and sprinkled them on the evening salad. We also got to take a photo together, something we had forgotten to do the first night: 

Heart 7 Comment 0

And then Kevin, who had been so patient sitting at the table all evening, clearly did a big poo. It was Dea’s turn to guess though, as I had been so enthusiastic about the game that she hadn’t really been involved for a while. “60%” she said, sensibly playing it safe, and she soon had some more points on the board.

Current leaderboard for the poopy nappy predicting championship: 1.Dea 125 points. 2.Chris -135 points. 

Rate this entry's writing Heart 10
Comment on this entry Comment 1
Malcolm GilliesGreat that you met up with Janneke!

Her trip to Australia seems like a lifetime ago now.
Reply to this comment
1 year ago