Travelogue 833 – December 6
I Was Navy

I’m circling the exhibit in fascination. This piece is the pride of the museum, and we’ve encountered it soon after entry. It’s a model of a ship. The model is nearly six hundred years old. The ship that is modelled is apparently a ‘coca’, a Catalan trading ship. It has the look of one of those round-bottomed carracks or galleons that were beginning, at that time, to carry the Portuguese and Spanish to points all over the world. The purpose for the model isn’t clear, but it was likely to have been built and donated to a church by a sailor whose prayers were answered, and whose life was spared during a storm in the Mediterranean.

A friend is visiting from the States. We have taken him to tour the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam. There’s a lot to see, and there is an extensive area for kids upstairs. It takes some effort to tear myself way from this model. That’s me and boats. It’s a romance. Growing up in a family with strong ties to the Air Force, I told myself I was Navy. I was Coast Guard. Actually, I was neither. The closest I came was some sailing in my Frisco days on my cousin’s boat. It’s hard work, like most romances made real. But the romance survives. Reading about the ship, I’m relishing the language of the nautical world: the forecastle and the mizzen, stern rudders, and lateen sails; oakum, resin, and pitch. It’s a language resonant and inspiring, describing another world.

Having taken in the old maps and the extensive exhibit about narco-trafficking, we take the girls upstairs, so we can chase them around from one entertainment to the next, from the boat on rails that moves when you crank the wheel to the fire fighter’s boat where toddlers can shoot water at targets painted like small blazes. We’re dodging other kids and steering ours from collisions. It’s all rather exhausting. Our next stop will be the café.

One door leads out of the café and onto the promenade beside the old harbour. It’s a chilly day, but not too cold for ten minutes of play. The girls have plenty of energy after the treats at the café, and I chase them from one stop to another, from the bench to the vintage crane to the door to the old light house. They want to run away from each other and from me. They want to climb on things and jump down.

They discover the steps up to the square adjoining the museum. Here stands one of my favourite public statues in town. It’s called ‘De Verwoeste Stad’, which means the Destroyed City, and it was erected in 1953 in remembrance of the ordeal the city suffered in World War II. It’s a Cubist figure of a man with hands in the air, as though in appeal or despair. The sculptor left a hole in the figure’s middle to signify the destruction to the heart of the city during the 1940 blitz. The sculpture was also called, ‘Stad Zonder Hart’, or city without its heart. We take a few laps around its base.

They want to run out onto the docks, the floating wooden walkways. I stop them, and I hold their hands as we watch several men work on their small boat. The girls are entranced. Maybe they inherited my romance with life on the water.

I haven’t indulged in too many sweets at the cafe. My teeth hurt. My friend from the States doesn’t know his visit is sandwiched between two root canal treatments. A few days after he has left, I’m back in the chair. It’s kind of like a little canoe on the waters, that chair. The boat rocks gently. It turns slowly in the mild current. I lay on my back, hands hanging from the sides and into the water I’m staring into the sun. No, it’s the glaring light hung from the ceiling. The dentist is pushing his composite into the well of my hollowed-out tooth. His assistant is standing by to clean out my mouth with little vacuum. Oh, the life of a sailor!

Travelogue 832 – December 5
Earning Medals

I like boats. Sleeping on a boat the night before my race in Nijmegen was a treat. Even the creaking of the old vessel in the deep of night I found comforting. There’s something about being on water that is calming and inspiring. My wife may disagree.

Above us soared the Waal Bridge, roaring with night-time traffic, trucks headed toward Germany. Seventy-four years ago, they were Army trucks carrying North American troops across the high span in the direction of Germany. The soldiers had fought desperately for this bridge.

I stand with the bridge in the background. I hold one hand on the boat’s wheel. In my other hand is the camera. It’s a chilly, winter morning, falsely bright with a white haze refracting the weak sunlight. There is frost on the deck. We step carefully, especially along that narrow gangway along the side of the boat. Our children are in our arms, and we creep forward with extravagant caution. We don’t want to find ourselves in the freezing water below.

Safely onshore, I gaze across the historic river again while I wait for our ride. There is s sand beach on the other side. I find it surprising to see an urban riverside in the Netherlands so little developed. On the town centre side, of course, it’s developed, but on the other side are those neglected sandy banks. I’ve gotten very used to the manmade quality of all Dutch landscape. I can’t help staring at that evidence of untouched nature. I’m quite sure that that little beach has moved over the centuries, has probably seen a variety of human structures come and go, some Roman, some German, some Spanish. Who knows? It’s hardly primeval landscape, but it’s intriguingly unsculpted. I can’t stop staring.

Our ride arrives. A friend of Luis’s who lives here in Nijmegen. We will prepare for the 15K at his house. The race is the mission for our weekend trip, the challenge of its steep hills and the joy of the course’s stunning autumnal colours. The price is the pain of ten miles on the body.

There’s another price: I’ve delayed two root canals until my running season is over. In two days, I’ll be laid out on my back in the dentist’s chair while the dentist happily drills away at my upper jaw. My mouth will be sealed off with a rubber sheet, locking my jaw open for the duration of the operation. The anaesthetic might deaden the nerves in the tooth, but it won’t prevent the ache in the jaw. It’s not a hinge designed to be pried open for such a long time.

For now, I can focus on the race. I have the luxury of focussing on one voluntary ordeal at a time. This one will be about pushing my body to complete a circuit on unknown roads as fast as I can on my own two feet, all for the privilege of saying I’ve done so. I’ll wear my medallion the rest of the day, badge of honour for creating pain where none was necessary.