9/10/02, Amsterdam – I’m back in Holland again, and unfortunately will be leaving for England, then back home in a few days. Vacations are just too short, life is unfair.

I’ve been looking at boats again. I still don’t have any answers to the question of insurance, but I know who to get in touch with. When I came over here I was looking for the cheapest thing I could get and was planning to sell it at the end of the summer when I was finished touring the canals and rivers. I’m now thinking of buying a boat to use for four or five months of the year and storing it here in Europe while it’s not in use. I’ve been surprised at how affordable boats are on which a person could live somewhat comfortably for several months at a time. It looks like a fairly nice boat in the 8-10 meter range will cost between $10,000 and $20,000. It costs a little less than $100 per month to store when not in use.

I will be giving a lot of thought to buying one within the next year or so.

9/7/02, Barcelona – I just got back from a long walk around the harbor. I’m glad I went. I met some Dutch people who had just sailed here from Holland. They came through France, over rivers and canals, not the long way around. This is similar to what I wanted to do originally, before I ran into the snag with the insurance policy. I wasn’t planning to come as far south as the Mediterranean, though.

They also had a larger and more expensive boat than I had been thinking of, about 10 or 11 meters and 20,000 Euros, while I was planning on a 7 meter, 3,000 Euro boat. I had a nice, long talk with them, and most of my fears and insecurities about European boating are really nothing to worry about. I am now more convinced than ever that my idea to live over here in Europe on a boat for part of the year is really as good as it appears to be. A person can come here and live a fairly comfortable and certainly more interesting life for about the same, and possibly even less, money than he could live like a mushroom in the States. A couple of partners could buy a floating summer palace and stay here in Europe for less than they foolishly squander on frivolous things like their wives’ silly extravagances.

Talk to ya later,

Herr Kaptan Willem van der Battle

9/6/02, Barcelona—I arrived here in Barcelona Wednesday afternoon and will fly back to Holland on Sunday. The flight from here to Amsterdam is less than half the train or bus fare, and I don’t have any hassles with ticket sellers and obnoxious conductors about putting the Holy Skinkmobile on board.

I’m on my way to take the city bus tour and see some of the things I missed on my last trip here. Last time I spent a few days running around the various bicycle shops getting broken spokes replaced and looking for a luggage rack for the front of the bike, and didn’t really get as much sightseeing in as I should have.

I was fortunate enough to get a room at the world famous Casa de Huespedes de Terrassa, which is one of Barcelona’s most exclusive hotels. Not just anybody stays at places like this, and it’s only 300 meters from La Rambla, which is Europe’s most famous street. This place has even more old world charm than La Pension California in La Paz, and there is always a very interesting cast of characters loitering in the lobby. I get all this atmosphere and my own private bathroom for only 16 Euros a day.

On my return trip I want to do some more research into either getting a boat or a motorcycle for my next European vacation. I might even consider a car as a last resort. I’ve concluded that I am definitely too lazy to do this on a bicycle again.

8/29/02, Zaragoza, Spain—I’ve been on the north coast for the last week or so. I can see why they call this the Costa Verde. This is the only part of Spain I’ve seen that has a really green countryside. It looks more like Ireland than Spain—the only thing missing is the leprechauns.

I arrived here in Zaragoza last night after a lot of hassles with the bus and train connections. I’ll probably stay here for a couple of days and then head on to Barcelona before flying back to Holland. There are a few things I didn’t see in Barcelona on my last European bicycle ride that I want to see this time.

Traveling on trains and busses with a bicycle here in Spain is getting as bad as travel in France. On my last trip over here I only took trains and busses a few times when I had broken spokes, and I don’t recall having this many problems with obnoxious ticket sellers and conductors. You would think that a Catholic country like Spain would show more respect to a holy, sacred and sainted pilgrim who has sacrificed and suffered so much for Christianity, wouldn’t you? We should all pray for a plague of locusts to descend upon Spain and France and for all ticket sellers and conductors to get leprosy.

Talk to ya later,

Saint William

8/18/02, Toledo—I’m in Toledo now, and will probably head for Salamanca the day after tomorrow. This is another place that I really like (except for the hot weather).

I just finished with the tram tour of the city and the Alcazar museum. Toledo is another one of those places with a lot of the Middle Ages still intact, cobblestone streets about four feet wide where only pedestrian traffic is allowed. This morning they even re-enacted a part of the Spanish Inquisition in the Plaza Mayor and condemned four of those godless heathen protestant troublemakers. The actors really did a good job. It was a real disappointment when they didn’t burn the villains at the stake and I realized this was only a show for the tourists.

There are also a lot of really neat souvenir shops here, and Spanish Inquisition swords are at real bargain prices. I just might overcome my psychological barrier and spend some money. Those of you who have been so fortunate as to have seen my house realize that such a fine example of pre-Colombian tequila guzzling Mexican architecture really needs a couple of Spanish Inquisition-era swords to grace its hallowed walls.

I can bring a few swords back home taped to my bicycle frame easily enough. For the trip from here thru Madrid and Salamanca back to Santiago (where my bicycle is), I plan to buy a black hat, cape and black mask. Dressed like that and brandishing a couple of big swords, and maybe a battle ax too, the pickpockets are certain to leave me alone. Now that I think about it, dressed like that I might also get special consideration at the long line at the check-in counter at the airport.

I am already beginning to entertain fantasies about my next trip to Europe. There is still so much to see here! Next time, if I can’t find a way to do the European tour on a boat, I will buy a motorcycle, or as a last resort a car. I have concluded that I am just too damn lazy to do any more long distance bicycle rides over here.

My next European vacation probably won’t be until the year after next. It has been too long since I have been back to the Orient, where there are a lot of really different things to see. Maybe by next year things will have stabilized enough so that I can ride a motorcycle from India to Northern Europe. This was my plan before Sept 11.

Talk to ya later,

St. William the Moderate

8/14/02, Madrid—My first day here in Madrid has not been boring. I arrived here late last night, and the first thing I did this morning was go to the American Express office to get the rest of my travelers checks replaced.

I was on my way back to the hotel with a pocket full of new travelers checks, when I got pickpocketed. This time, I grabbed the two gypsy women and held onto them until someone called the police, who arrived promptly as soon as their siesta was over. It seems like I was holding on to those two (who were somewhat less than enthusiastic about hanging around the scene of the crime) and shouting for someone to call the police for hours, but in reality I think it was probably only about 10 minutes or so before the cops finally got there.

The bastards don’t ALWAYS get away with it.

Getting robbed twice would really have seriously fucked up my vacation!

At least now I have in my collection of souvenirs a copy of the police report describing how I heroically and courageously risked life and limb bringing two of Spain’s most notorious little old lady serial pickpockets to justice. I’m kind of proud of this, and plan to have it framed.

As soon as I leave the Internet cafe I think I’ll look for a Spanish military surplus store and buy a set of camouflage fatigues and the biggest combat knife I can find. Maybe if I looked like Rambo, instead of a dumb foreign tourist, shit like this wouldn’t happen so often.

I think I’ll stay here for a few more days to see some of the sights besides the police station, then go to Granada or Seville for awhile.

Talk to ya later,

St. William the Vigilante

August 11, 2002, Santiago de Compostela, Spain—I am beginning to feel almost rested now. It seems that for about the last week of my ride I was actually too tired and dehydrated to realize how tired I was. I slept for most of my first three days here, and my brain is just now beginning to awaken from the fugue. I am definitely not the most physically fit pilgrim ever to get on a bicycle!

I just found out something else interesting about this pilgrimage—this is also a holy land for the new age pagans. I don’t know what the story is with the pagans here, but this does explain why along the way I have been seeing all sorts of satanic and witchcraft looking charms and trinkets in the souvenir shops mixed in with the catholic stuff.

The good news of this is that my soul is now saved no matter who wins Armageddon.

Just think of it. If I play my cards right, I might even be able to achieve a respectable business profit by selling arms to both sides at Armageddon, and of course be morally justified while doing it. Not only that, but maybe I will be able to take my money with me, too.

Now that I am almost awake again, I am starting to think of where to go next. I’ll probably stay here in Spain for awhile, as this is one of the cheapest countries in Europe and I can almost speak the language. I am going to try to leave the Holy Skinkmobile here while I see some more of Spain on either a bus or train with nice soft wide seats, then return here to pick up the bike. Then I’ll get the holy born again saint’s discount flight to Barcelona, where I can catch a cheap, easy jet flight to either Amsterdam or London.

I would like to try to get some more information on buying a boat in Holland for a future trip before I leave Europe. Another thing is that if I take the ferry from Holland to England, I will only have to go a few km out of my way to pass through Canterbury. This way I could get two holy pilgrimages for the price of one.

Talk to ya later

St. William

August 7, 2002, Santiago de Compostela, Spain—

Hello Sinners:

I finally arrived here in Santiago last night.

My last day of riding the Holy Skinkmobile didn’t go quite like I had planned. I had thought that, with the finish of my holy pilgrimage so close, I would have been blessed with a divine passion to do His will. With a second wind, I would have mounted a herculean effort and the ride would have gone something like that old Burt Reynolds movie “The Cannonball Run,” with La Guardia Civil chasing after me trying to give me numerous speeding tickets and arrest me for other outrageous traffic violations, but never being able to catch up with the lightening fast Holy Skinkmobile.

Instead, it took my entire second wind and then some just to get out of bed, which didn’t leave me much energy for excessive speed violations. In fact, it took six hours and five double shots of espresso just to get 40 km here.

Becoming a saint sounded so easy when I first heard about it in that cafe of the ultra left radical artistic crowd back in Paris. All I really had to do was get on the bicycle and ride over a couple of minor hills. But I looked at the odometer this morning, and found I have peddled 1,614.50 km. For you non-metric philistines, that is just over 1000 miles, and it is incredible: at least 99 % of that seemed to be uphill.

On my last bicycle ride over here I went over twice that distance, and I don’t recall being this tired. But then I wasn’t trying to get to any place in particular, I just wanted to get as far as Africa so I could say I had done it. I only rode on days that I felt like riding.

At least this trip I have something more than a few photos to show for my efforts. I now have in my possession an official document, written in Latin by the higher hierarchy of the Roman Clergy of Spain and recognized by both St. Peter and the Pope, attesting to my spiritual purity, piety and status that mere mortals don’t usually achieve.

Last night was the first time I have ever been able to sleep for 14 hours in a tent. I was really tired, and still am. I’m at a campground now at the edge of town with some of the other pilgrims that passed me along the way. I wasn’t the fastest pilgrim, just the holiest.

I think I will stay at the campground for awhile and devote my time to some more academic and less physical demanding interests, at least until I can walk over 100 meters without having to rest.

Talk to ya later,

St. William of the sore butt de Compostela

8/3/02, Sarria, Spain — I just arrived here in Sarria. I still have a little over 100 km to go on my holy quest for sainthood. I’ve been making slower progress than anticipated, partly due to some of the uphill slopes being a lot longer than I expected, but also because I am now carrying a couple of big rocks on my already overloaded luggage rack. I want to be prepared in case some guy in a bathrobe says to me, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

I hope to arrive in Santiago in two or possibly three more days. I expect that the Pope will be there to wave a checkered flag as I race the Holy Skinkmobile across the finish line. After this, I want to make myself a kilt out of the checkered flag. For those of you who might not know why I want a checkered kilt, I suggest you read some of Carl Hiaasen’s books, as they will spiritually enlighten you. They really should be included as an appendix to the Book of Revelations.

Some of my fellow pilgrims have told me that there is a 90 km extension to this pilgrimage that I didn’t know about. After Santiago, a lot of the pilgrims go a little further west to the beach, where they have a ceremony in which everyone burns their clothes. This sounds to me like an invitation to another one of those wild European orgies that I really don’t want to miss out on. Besides, this is the second long European bicycle ride on which I have worn those ugly bright yellow shorts. They are about to the point where they constitute an environmental hazard.

Talk to ya later

St. William the Moderate

8/1/02, Ponferrada, Spain — I arrived here in Ponferrada this morning and am seeing the sights and resting for the rest of the day. They have the most spectacular castle that I’ve seen so far in Spain here, but of course right now it’s closed for siesta time.

Yesterday I climbed to the top of the mountain, then spent the night at the monastery there. This was only about 40 km of forward progress, but the mountain was 1500 meters high so it was a lot of work. There is an old iron cross on top of a pile of rocks on the mountain that I didn’t know about until some other pilgrims told me about it. All you have to do is visit this place and you are officially sinless. Of course, I have never committed any sins in my lifetime, or for that matter ever even had any impure thoughts. But now that I have visited the iron cross, which looks like it was built for Kaiser Wilhelm and flown to Spain by the Red Baron, I will get an official document from the top-level hierarchy of the Roman clergy for Spain stating that I am without any doubt officially and irrevocably without sin. Before this, people just took my word for it that I am totally without sin and have never ever had any impure thoughts. Now I will have documentary proof!

I now have only 207 km left on my holy crusade and I think this will take four or five days. There are still some hills to climb, but I think that yesterday’s was the hardest.

This morning I finally got some cold weather for a welcome change. I only coasted 20 km downhill to town after being awakened at an ungodly hour by the mad monk, but I almost froze my sacred holy butt off on the way down from the top of the mountain.

The newspaper also says that it is raining to the west of here, which will be a nice change from all the heat we’ve been having. Near León, the pilgrims were dropping off like flies.

Siesta time is over now and I just took a break from letter writing to see the castle. That is a very impressive pile of rocks! Anyone who has ever even carried a couple of heavy stones just from one side of his back yard to the other would be totally in awe.

If only the South could have motivated their slaves as well as the people that built that castle, the damn yankees never would have won the Civil War. If this had happened, then there probably never would have been WW1, WW2, the Korean War, Viet Nam or Sept.11, there would be peace and prosperity throughout the world, the Dow Jones average would be over 100,000 and the Dodgers would have won the series for the last 20 years.

But enough for the history lesson. It’s almost dinner time, and I want to get some sleep and an early start tomorrow as it looks like it’s going to be hot again.

Talk to ya later

St. William the Sinless

Castillo de los Templarios. Ponferrada, León, España.
Fotografia por Alejandro Bolado (bolado@yahoo.com)