Boerenrock!

Yes, it's the moto-cross and music festival that can't decide what it is. Half the posters said Boerenpop and the other half said Boerenrock. There was no Pop in the house. What the heck am I on about?

Boerenrock is an annual moto-cross/music festival, the Drenthe/Groningen version of which is held the last weekend of August, when Dutch summer promises a charming mix of rain and sunshine: warm mud. I went because van Dik Hout was going to be there, and I love them a lot. And because my friends laughed, which made me determined to go. :)

Held near the border between Drenthe and Groningen, Boerenrock was unique. The festival pass was just 65E including camping and all-access. All access meant we got to walk around in the drivers' area. Well, we had to, really, since we had to pass through the drivers' area to get from the camping to the festival area. Anyway....

Camping: My friends lent me their tent and sleeping bag and bedroll. Was perfectly dry and snugly warm,  so yayy on that score. The neighbors accidentally cracked the daylights out of one of my tent poles while putting up their awning, so boo to them, but it didn't affect tent operations. Most of the campers were late-teen/early-20's, hard-rock fans, with a couple of old farmers [boeren = farmers] thrown in. Leaving the tent to use the restroom in the early morning hours was a bit of a risk, as there were always groups of youngsters sitting around shouting, "Gooiemmmmmorgen, buurvrouw/buurman" [Good Mmmmmorning, neighbor(woman/man)] at anyone leaving a tent or camper at any time between 3am and 9am, when they all went to bed.

The old farmer next door was complaining the first afternoon that farmers plus music should equal a party but it wasn't a party when they wouldn't (according to the posted rules) let you bring in booze or food. This did not prevent any number of people from walking around with fifths of whatever, nor the ever-present smell of BBQ, so I'm not sure what he was on about, exactly.

Farmers: Popeye legs. That will be my lasting impression of farmers. (Along with some interesting highlights listed below of course.) On Saturday it was raining off and on but warm, so many of the guys put on shorts. It was only when the crowd gathered for music in the evening that I noticed that every single guy had Popeye legs: amazingly exaggerated calf muscles. Well-developed calf muscles are one of the key features that separate human anatomy from apes'. The anatomists at UC Berkeley will tell you that Cal Bear people are more human than Stanford Cardinal people because there are more hills in Berkeley and therefore better-developed calf muscles. Holland is not a hilly place, but Dutch farmers are extremely human. Must be all the walking in clogs, which brings me to....

Clogs: They wear them. Really really. I only saw guys in clogs. Apparently they were wearing their fancy dress clogs, though, because they were all wearing them with their fancy dress black socks. [Insert shudder.] Socks aside, clogs have been around forever because they work. By all reports, it is easier to walk in the mud in clogs than in any other type of shoe. So there you go. Those guys who did not wear clogs wore mid-calf pull-on boots. Even with shorts.

Highlights:

• Two 20-something guys in jeans with pink thong panties over their jeans, simulating sex with their guy friends, who all bent over for it with a laugh. 
• The "Ik ben homo" song, sung to the tune of "We are sailing." The verses were: Ik ben homo [I'm gay], Jij bent homo [You're gay], Wij zijn homo [We're gay]. Everyone sang along.
• Mosh pit for Stil in Mij. You'd have to hear the song, but Stil in Mij is a slow, romantic song about having no words for the emotions you're having about your love interest. One of the great songs from van Dik Hout. Crowds often sing along. This crowd moshed. Go figure.
• Beer. So. Much. Beer. The music was played inside a circus-sized tent conveniently served by eight bars inside the tent. (And two more outside.) 
• Clean toilets. In spite of the beer, the toilets remained amazing clean. It helped that there were many of them [32 women's and 32 men's in the main area serving a crowd of a couple thousand; 5 women's and 5 men's in the camping area (plus showers) serving 400 campers] and that they were serviced every 5 minutes or so. Thumbs up to the festival organizers on that score.
• Cups. How do you serve 50k or so beers and not have a single plastic cup on the ground? You pay 2E per 20 cups, and the little kids run around picking them up. The parents are happy because the kids are occupied; the kids are happy because they get money to buy sweets and soda and play games; the place is happy because the ground remains continuously cup-free. Brilliant.
• Trekker trek. [Tractor pull] Now this is hick as all get out, but it turns out to be fun to watch! There was every kind of tractor from high-tech, Star Trek-looking things to 25-year-old-plus tractors with car engines. And there was a ton of mud. Oh, and beer. Yep, fun to watch.
• Gronings. NL has a number of dialects. Because cities and villages are so old, they develop individual accents and even distinct languages for each town and region, and the Eastern part of the country is influenced by German, while the Western part of the country is influenced by English plus every other language the very-international West comes into contact with. I can read Gronings just fine, just as I can read Drents, but I hadn't actually heard anyone speak this dialect. It sounded like a cross between Dutch, German, and mush, to my untrained ear. Nary a consonant to be distinctly located, so near as I could tell. Just wow.
• Terrible kibbeling. Holland has some of the best fish-and-chips-type fish in the world, sometimes. And some of the worst. Viskramen (fish stands) are ubiquitous. The quality is a gamble. I got all excited at this one because the young man was cutting the fish and battering it himself. Sadly, it was not completely cooked and the breading wasn't all that crunchy. They do get a +1 for their spices, but as my friend said, "What do farmers know about fish?"
• Amazing sausages. Now what farmers do know about is sausage. And they shone. The sausage of the day was a light-tasting, white sausage, grilled over charcoal and wood, with a thin skin that crisped right up around the sausage. To die for.

Tons more. Fireworks. Hard rock. Local bands recording videos. Raining pijpstelen (pipe-stems, the Dutch version of cats'n'dogs). A guy in a dress with a hag-mask on a tiny bike winning his division in motocross. The 7-year old on a teeny little ATV owning the mud track like he built it. Girls love my big rooster t-shirt.

And with all that I've broken the highest rule: What happens at Boerenrock stays at Boerenrock.

4Daagse'ing it

Yep, that's me and my trusty bike, somewhere around kilometer 53. That was early on Thursday. By Friday noon, 100km had rolled under my wheels and I got a gold medal! My medal was not real gold, I'm sorry to say. But I did complete the Zuidlaren Fiets4Daagse. The Zuidlaren FietsTocht Club hosts this event. They're very nice, and a good number of them appear to have been adults during WWII.

Tuesday (Day 1): It was pouring rain Tuesday morning, but it stopped just before 10am and off I pedaled to the start point, which is just a couple km from where I'm staying right now. Because the start point was in a cantina, I (wrongly) assumed there would be a way to use my bank card to pay the entrance fee. Yeah, no. So I rode over to the village (a couple of km further) and back. Returning, I was trying to get something out of my pocket as I entered the building and stumbled over the threshold, which was at least a meter tall. OK not a meter, but it was tall! Anyway, spectacular stumble-thud-smack onto my knees, which ached until the following morning. Off to a great start.

Once the 25km group split off from the 40km and 60km groups, I realized I was on the route used only by the 80-plus'ers and the family with the boy with Downs Syndrome. Nice. I suck. But, but... I was working this week and only had a couple of hours a day to spend riding! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I hadn't taken water or anything with me, and got a little dizzy about 2/3 through, but I stopped for a bit and was able to finish. On the bright side, I survived, and the rain held off until I was done.

Wednesday (Day 2): After a good night's sleep, the knees felt much better and off I went bright and early-ish. I prepared a little better for Day 2: I took a soda with sugar (which I never, ever drink) and a big bottle of water. Small sips of that soda turned out to do a world of good, and I felt great all day. I also followed my carefully laid plan of NOT falling on my face. There was a heck of a wind all day, and the ground was soaked from the rains the night before, but it was dry. There were some lovely villages (Glimmen and Annen), and I even stopped for a while to eat an apple. And the moment I got home, the skies opened and the lightning scorched the earth. Or something. It rained a lot.

This was also the day we rode through Schipborg, and I'm riding along, minding my own, and a woman riding towards me grumpily says, "Het is afgelopen de zon." Now, I can generally understand Dutch speaking by this point, but it takes a second to percolate into meaning. "The sun's gone." Oh. I was wearing sun glasses. Mind you, it was only just past noon, but it was overcast. Either way, however, I'm going to wear my sunglasses. Think of them as bug-and-wind glasses, if it makes you feel better; I got tired of getting bugs in my eyes and bought sunglasses. Get over it. [Insert mild insult of your choice.]

Thursday (Day 3): The weather was lovely on Thursday, just a mild wind, and by this time I prepared like a pro. A large bottle of water and a small bottle with water plus 1 tablespoon of honey plus 1 teaspoon of sugar. That's a lot less sugar than the soda, but enough to keep my blood sugar up. Worked perfectly. On the other hand, Thursday was the inside-joke day for the event planners. Balloo is a very pretty place where I will avoid going again, at least on bike. You see, Holland is flat. Have I mentioned that Holland is flat? It's almost entirely seabed and reclaimed marshland, with protective dunes and dikes all over the place. But, for the most part, flat. In Drenthe, a lot of it is above sea level, but still flat, except for the Hondsrug (Dog's Back). This is a sandy ridge that stretches 70km in length and rises 20m above sea level. Twenty meters! That's like... OK, for California, that's flat. For NL, that's nose-bleed elevation. And the marvelous event planners took us over every single hill within riding range, I swear. I was cussing (quietly, because I was surrounded by... very mature people on electric bikes and I didn't want to offend them). But I made it.

Friday (Day 4): Friday was an absolute treat. The route was flat, the sky was lightly overcast, the wind was a gentle whisper, and in addition to a bunch of lovely, tiny villages, we went to Molen de Wachter. This is a windmill/museum, where they still bake bread according to the old local recipe with raisins and serve it in thick wedges with hand-made butter. To die for. Also nearly died from the big pile of decomposing cow and/or pig poop we rode within 1m of. Good golly Miss Molly what a stink! The ground is mostly sand here and needs a lot of fertilization. So the farmers from here kindly haul away the pig poop from the farmers down south. Everyone's happy. Except us as we rode past and nearly fell off our bikes. But it was all-in-all an easy ride on Friday, and we all got gold medals!

100km over four days. Happy I did it. Next time: 160km.

History of the 4Daagse


The 4Daagse began in 1909 as a primarily military event that was part of a whole fitness craze in the Netherlands in the early 1900s. Four-day events were regular things. I guess they had longer weekends than we do now. The very first 4Daagse was a 150km military march with 306 soldiers and 10 civilians, all men. They didn't complete the entire 150km because Friesland was in a terrible state, weather-wise (Those are the guys who managed to muck up the Elfsteden Tocht this year too!) and Rotterdam was having an inconvenient outbreak of cholera. But the Queen (Wilhelmina) was pleased and decorated the soldiers with the Four Days Cross. The 4Daagse had been born.

In 1925, the event moved to Nijmegan, where it has taken place ever since. The first woman participated in 1919, and in 1928 (the year the Amsterdam hosted the Olympics) delegations from other countries joined in. "The forty British participants of the Road Walking Association were divided into four groups according to social class, all of which won a group prize."  It was a different world. Or not so different, but more open about it? Anyway.... The marches were disrupted by WWII, but have otherwise carried on merrily since 1925. (Source)

Today, 4Daagse events are held all over the Netherlands, in walking, biking, and swimming. There's a charity aspect to it now; banks and insurance companies sponsor walkers and money is raised from entrance fees. But mostly, the 4Daagse events honor the value that Holland continues to place on physical fitness. Go Holland. (How 'bout them field-hockey women?)