Day 9

Day 9, originally uploaded by raoul_dewinne.

Last night, while we had a wonderful dinner, rain was pouring from heaven - not that we cared much at that very moment but we said to ourselves that if tomorrow morning it also would rain like that we'd simply return home - I cannot stand it any longer to see my dearest honey suffering in such a weather... Belgians are born on a bike but Taiwanese never heard of such a thing, add to it that Belgians are born in the rain as well :-)



For some reason the weather gods had mercy on us or they were aware of our plan B. When we opened our window shades in the morning we were blinded by the sunlight - what a relief, no more plan B :-))



For more than 25 km we happily pedaled along the freeway on a service road which was not accessible to cars. Many truckers were blowing their horns loudly and waving to us. Great feeling to bike like that.



In a remote village - by the way, all villages are remote here - we stopped at the very first (open!) pub to have our daily dose of caffeine. To our surprise we were also asked to sign the official pilgrim guest book - or how they keep track here of weird foreign creatures.



You must have noticed the flags behind our tandem, not that we are chauvinists or nationalists - not at all, we feel like being world citizens - but those waving flags are a very obvious eye catcher for passing traffic. My honey feels a lot safer like that sitting in the back - she even has a rear view mirror, she doesn't want to miss any unidentified driving or flying objects :-) Actually she is my talking rear view camera - or should I say 'talkative'? But that's OK, at least it keeps her busy on the passenger seat :-)



Talking about the flags, that no one recognized the Taiwanese flag I can understand, but that no one - I mean absolutely no one - recognizes the Belgian flag (THE BELGIAN FLAG) that comes really as a surprise to me...!? Everyone confuses the Belgian flag with the German one - except Uli, our German guy (good for him). OK, Belgium had to import its first king from Germany, still... But as I mentioned earlier on I am a world citizen so who cares about those flags :-)



As a final note, on this sunny day we broke our average speed record: we were able to propel our 200+ kg mass at a staggering average of almost 24 km/hr.