Winter 1996-1997 Westveense poldertocht Woerden

30-12-96
Marina Woerden
35 km
3 hour
cold, much wind force 5, snow
very bad ice surface, frozen snow
with Kerstin

"First a little cigarette for me, before I start."
Kerstin sits down on the boarding next to the Iceclub cabin, puffing eight centimeters of nicotine into the Woerden marina's atmosphere. The clouds melt away slowly in the fresh winter air.

"Let's start right now, time will pass by quickly," I insist, "if you want to skate a short tour before dark, we shouldn't wait any longer."

"I just have to put on another cap, it's so cold," My ice companion researches her backpack another time.

The wind turns up its full strength and the sun disappears behind clouds of snow. Kerstin sits down again, but this time she puts on her skates. My old, unemployed Viking Mids.

"Oh, these skates pinch my feet, and I'm standing so lów!"

"Just carry on now, when you get used to them they'll feel like slippers."

"But I never stood on skates like these before, my ankles are bending."

"Your skates aren't the cause, but your technique," I reproduce faithfully the instructions I got during my weekly Uithof lessons (skate rink).

Kerstin stands up and makes her first uncertain Viking-steps on the bumpy ice. Frozen snow and frost. Within ten meters she stumbles on an ice edge. Her German buttocks meet the solid Dutch ice.

"Come on," I say, "just continue now, or you don't dare to go on any more."

She gets on, totally not discouraged. "I should have brought my own skates with me. They are much higher." She means her figure skates, bought long ago, when the DDR still existed. At the moment however, that's not an option. Kerstin has to do it on the Vikings now. With East-German discipline she goes on. She'll have to fulfill The Plan.

"Here in the swept trail it's much easier," I suggest, trying in vain to protect her from falling.

"Crash-bang!" The law of gravitation, challenged by the thin blades, proves stronger than Kerstin. About fifty meters further on, the scene repeats itself, and she disappears again into the frozen rush. We've finished a bit more than a hundred meters now. At this pace it will take at least three hours to reach the Verlaat ship lock. And then we'll have to return again too!

Kerstin is a German skating fanatic and she visited us to try a Dutch skating tour. Figure skating was her only previous experience back home, in the former German Democratic Republic. On a small lake near Lobetal ("love valley"), the institution for disabled persons, where she works. It lies northeast of Berlin, the former "Hauptstadt der DDR." (capital) Last year, she accidentally fell in love with Holland's most wonderful winter sport. She did almost ten kilometers then. On the Rotte creek. She had no trouble skating long distances on her DDR figure skates, as it turned out. So this year there had to be a Dutch natural-ice tour. An official one. For a medal. That's really not an unknown phenomenon in her "ehemalige Bauern- und Arbeiterrepublik." (former farmer and workers republic) Skating for honorary metal is almost the only thing her compatriot Gunda Niemann (the German nr. one speedskater) does. On Dutch speedskates! With farsighted vision I hadn't traded in my old Vikings at Haitsma's store, when I bought my new Raps skates. The Vikings fit Kerstin almost exactly!

Twenty Westveense poldertocht kilometers seems like an achievable goal, I tell myself optimistically. Wasn't the Vlaardingse Vaart ice excellent last saturday? I know better after threehundred meters of torture, along the Grecht creek in the direction of the Woerdens Verlaat shiplock. A weekend of frost and snow has been disastrous to the ice surface.

After two bends, with a bitter headwind in our faces, we leave the Woerden built-up area behind us. Skating seems to go a lot better now for the German girl. Her progress is so slow that I wonder if we'll reach the Verlaat before dark. It's is still about 9700 meters away. It will be difficult to get a decoration at the end of the tour. To increase misery, her heels are getting redder and redder with blood and blisters. She can't reach the wounded places with the healing Compeed, because of her tights.

"I won't go much farther myself", I verbalize our misery. But Kerstins willpower far exceeds her pain treshold.

"I'll just try another short distance", perseveres the hardened former socialist.

She's about to discover that the capitalist West has its own rules. Especially in skating. A medal is a market product nowadays, and you'll have to achieve it by yourself. My defiantly empty stamp-card has to be filled. Right now.

It takes a moment, but Kerstin slowly realizes how hopeless her mission is.
"Just go on, Johan, and I'll return to the car in a moment."
We say goodbye for the moment. Full of guilt about the broken Völkerfreundschaft I start to skate in the directions of the signs reading: "Westveense Poldertocht, 35 km". I'm still not really on speaking terms with the ice, the quality decreases with every kilometer. Following the bends in the polder ditches I pass by the first control point. That's inside the steamy, Unox-redolent shed of the ice club. (Unox is a winter soup brand, sponsoring many skate activities in Holland) Through my fogged glazes I see the letter "K" appear, in potatoe stamp quality, on my maidenly white stamp card.

My conscience plagues me, thinking of the abandoned and struggling Kerstin. Would she have made it back to the car yet? But I must focus all my attention on the steadily deteriorating ice surface. I am struggling to keep myself upright. That doesn't help me skate any faster, but at least it keeps me from thinking. I have to go straight into the headwind, skating the frozen ditches to the next checkpoint. It's over the top of the dike, on the ice of the Mijdrecht river. Three controllers are sitting in a small sized Adria caravan. It spents the last days of its once sunny holiday career as a stamp- and snackbar on Dutch crack-ice. A "Koek en zopie" ("cookie and drink") in Dutch. Beware of a sudden thaw now....

An Amersfoort couple is taking "koek" and especially "zopie" at the camping device. We go on together for a while. Less than a week ago a barge broke the ice into pieces here. Water transport isn't always the right way, as a Dutch boatman's slogan says. We pick our way skatewalking through the disaster area.

After the roughest part, near the "Ons Genoegen" control café ("Our Pleasure"; what's in a name?) in Woerdens Verlaat, my companions make a pitstop, leaving me to go on alone again.

The finish is nearing as I re-enter the Grecht creek, with my departure point at the end. My conscience returns also. So I survey the embankments looking for traces of the unfortunate Kerstin, or what could be left of her after all these hours of torture in the freezing cold. Aside from many unknown tour skaters and some cold-footed herons, there's nothing to be seen. At the horizon the Woerden houses and the marina come into view again. Still no exhausted, frozen woman on the ice. Even no ambulance tracks. That gives me hope, that she found her cigarettes, and the cosy warmth of the car, in time.

Ashamed and guilt-ridden, I accept a blood-stained medal, as I return to the KNSB-cabin. Walking back to the Chrysler I feel the worst. Surprise! There's a still quite active, contently smoking, East German waiting for me in the car. Not showing any signs of freezing. She's only returned half an hour ago, and doesn't even look tired after three self-destructive hours of skating.

But that's not all. Kerstin proudly shows me a véééry well-deserved medal inscribed, "Westveense Poldertocht, 20 km". It turns black to my eyes. I was prepared for just about anything, but not this!

She finished the whole tour just in time. In spite of blistered feet in red bloodied Vikings. You can call that: "character". A first-class sports performance!