Eleven cities skating marathon. The Netherlands.

Or rather, in the province of Friesland. This skating marathon is held not very often. Conditions have to be that there be at least 15 cm of ice to skate on, or in you money, about 6 inches. As it turns out, right now we have a rather cold spell here at the moment. Two nights in a row the thermometer reached at least 20 below zero Celsius.
If this marathon will get the go-ahead you'll see this on CNN, cause for one day the whole of the Netherlands will go mad in one day. Two million spectators are expected!
This link will show you the ice thickness along the route. Zoom in on the north western part of that map and you'll see the red line of the route. Total distance is over 200km. I'll tell you more later. More news will follow.

Here's a wikipedia page about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht

That is nice Whitehouse, I hadnt heard of this event. This reminds me of Brueghel paintings. The Netherlands are amazing. I love the fact that there is so much respect for the rural versus the urban lifestyle. This comes from centuries of proximity and the necessity to take care of all environments.

What a fun and unpredictable event. It makes me want to grab my skates and fly over. Oh wait, I don't have any and my skating sucks.

I remember seeing something about this a while back .... the Vancouver Olympic Games maybe where there is a race through several cities .... is that the same event ? Anyways my wife worked [[they closed the Farmington Hills office last week ) for a division of Aegon which has its world HQ in the Netherlands and she'd always get company newsletters from there , and among the things Aegon sponsored besides motorsports , a pro golfer or two , were skaters ... and lots of them .. its a national sport !

Sadly the ice is not thick enough to hold 10000+ skaters and the 2 million people... The event will not be held in the short term. And after Sunday temperatures are up from zero. Sad, really.

But here is a live feed from the canals of Amsterdam, to get some feel with the ice!
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/1...raaf.nl__.html

Here's a picture from last week taken near The Hague. How quintessential.
http://totallycoolpix.com/wp-content...week06_022.jpg

Also, I made this panorama from the Afsluitdijk monument. Rarely seen my me, a completely frozen over IJsselmeer. And since you need at least two screens to view the pic, I'll only post the link.

Check this one out. In 1880 and 81, a Montreal railroad company built a temporary railroad on the St Lawrence river until the locomotive sank. This link was to be used in the two coldest mnths of winter only to move passengers between Hochelaga, a growing industrial suburb of Montreal
and the south shore town of Longueuil. Apparently, the engine weighed 69,000 pounds. The link was 3kms long.

http://spacingmontreal.ca/2011/01/05...ed-ice-bridge/

http://tolkien2008.wordpress.com/201...aga-longueuil/