The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

We met up with friends for a hike today and saw the wild deer that live there and the large black carp in a canal. But we also came across the village for gnomes. Apparently, when someone in the surrounding are dies, the family walk to this one spot and put a gnome there in their honor. But apparently the gnomes do move around, or maybe they get moved by someone.

At the end of the hike, where we met up and started, was a pub for a nice cold beer. Inside the pub were quite a few gnomes too.

We met up with friends in the Ikea parking lot, because there is a train stop there and it’s near the trails we walked. Most of the trails are for bikes too and sometimes we were on small country roads.

Lunch was on the waterfront of Spaarnekade:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y8U8dVstqqdnmgEDA

It goes on the roof!

Four of us took a short weekend break in Dusseldorf, which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Amsterdam. A few things we saw were a crooked church steeple, Canadian geese walking down the sidewalk, things to encourage bee hives, not many old/interesting buildings since the city was almost flattened in WWII, and a unique green roof on a new building.

There are quite a few ways to move stuff across Amsterdam with a bicycle and these are a few examples I’ve seen in the last few weeks.

Clearly, some are meant to put kids in them, some for random cargo, but my favorite is the one carrying 2 other bicycles. I had never seen it before, but on either side of the front wheel is a bike rack.

One is just a guy’s tricycle that he carries his fishing gear in. And another is a photo of an older photo showing a milkman’s delivery bike.

There are a few “normal” gas stations in and around Amsterdam, but a few neighborhoods have these. Usually outside of a car repair or rental shop, situated where bicycles would normally be parked, is a gas pump.

Piper can’t pay attention to anything for very long, except maybe when she has a ball. She never noticed the big orange cat behind her. Even after walking by it and sitting in front of it.

This is in Oosterpaark in Amsterdam; a mixed use soccer/football field with 4 basketball hoops. I’ve never seen hoops on fake grass before. I wonder how it feels to dribble a ball on it?