[English below]
Op de fiets noemde ik deze ronde vroeger "de hel van het Noorden", het ligt immers te noorden van Woerden en ik had altijd het gevoel tegenwind te  hebben op het stuk van Zegveld naar Woerdense Verlaat. Deze keer op skeelers had ik dat stuk een stevige wind mee en liep de snelheid lekker op.  Net uit Woerden richting Zegveld en de eerste KM uit Zegveld naar Woerdense Verlaat is het wegdek wat minder, maar verder goed.

When I did this route by bike years ago I always had headwinds on the part from Zegveld to Woerdense Verlaat. This time on skeelers I was surprised by a nice supporting wind and could reach nice speeds. Leaving Woerden towards Zegveld en just outside Zegveld the road is a bit bumpy but for the rest  the road is good.

[English below]
Lekker snel rondje waar je op de heenweg veel lange rechte stukken hebt en op de terugweg van Oudewater via Linschotensebos naar Woerden langs het water slingerd. Oudewater ligt in het midden van de route en in het centrum is het altijd gezellig op de terrasjes met mooi weer. Deze route is ook een populair fietsrondje dus met mooi weer heb je steeds een prooi voor je om naartoe te racen ;-)

Fast rountip with long straigt parts in the first half and nice curves alongside a small river in the second part. Oudewater is halfway the route and has some nice opportunities to relax and have a drink on one of the terasses on sunny days. It is also a popular cycling route on sunny days,
so if you want to challenge yourself there always a cycler to chase ahead of you ;-)

[English below]

Mooie ronde qua afstand en lekker door de polder heen. Niet veel kruizingen, dus je kan lekker snelheid maken en van de wind genieten of er tegenin vechten. Er zit 1 slecht stuk in de route, 1 km na Kockengen wordt het wegdek bar slecht en dat blijft een km of 4 zo. Je hebt dan echt het gevoel alsof je op een trilplaat rijdt en dat gaat na een km of 2 wel wat vervelen ;-)

Nice roundtrip though the country side. Not many crossing, so lot's of opportunities to make some speed and either enjoy or fight the wind. There's one really bad section in the route, about 1 km out of Kockengen the road gets really bad and that lasts for ~4 km. It feels like riding on a powerplate and I can assure you that gets pretty boring after a while.

After the "big" Apple event beginning of March where the iPhone SDK was announced I decided that I waited long enough. I had been patient for 9 months since the launch in the US and still there was no view any official launch in The Netherlands. No other option left then to get one directly from the US. With the current $-Euro exchange rate the price would be nice also (compared to prices in for example the UK, Germany and France).

Reading the title you may think: what happened in Take I? Well, it "disappeared" at DHL in The Netherlands because a gang of DHL employees was steeling iPhones. Not quite what you'd expect from a shipper like DHL. Rumors are that the gang managed to steel over a 100 iPhones that were shipped to NL. Some arrests have been done, but my iPhone did not turn up... probably already sold on eBay or something similar.

What to do?
Apple only ships to US addresses from the online Apple store, so what's the trick to get one when you're not living in the US? Obvious solution, get yourself a US address, have Apple ship the iPhone to that address and from there ship it to any place on earth. There are multiple companies in the US were you can 'rent' an address. I did it at myus.com and that worked out smoothly. For example, when the first iPhone got stolen they claimed the insurance money at DHL and within a week I had the money on my account. Thumbs up for myus.com.  When 'renting' an address in the US, make sure it is a regular address and not a PO Box because Apple will not ship to PO Boxes.

Now that you have the address, order the iPhone on the Apple Store and have it shipped to your 'rented' address. You can use a non-US credit card for that. Apple will sent you a confirmation mail with a link to an order page. The moment the iPhone is on it's way to your US address, you can track it using the FedEx tracking website.

After it has arrived at your rented address, you request myus.com to ship the package to your home address. At myus.com you can specify shipment instructions like:

• The shipper you'd want to use (I used FedEx the second time)
• The amount for which the shipment should be insured. Given the experience I had with my first attempt I would definitely insure it for the full amount. It does pay of if things go bad. A slight disadvantage can be that 'customs' in your country is going to charge you more import taxes, but hey, that's better than loosing the shipment. (till now I have to received an invoice for import taxes but that may come later)
  

After that it took only 3 days before I had it in my hands. Ready to make the first call? Not yet, Apple still locks the iPhones down to their official operators so you have to use a tool like Ziphone to unlock it. This is a very simple and convenient process, simply press the button, wait ~ 4 minutes and done. While it is doing the unlocking it will reboot the iPhone a couple of times and you'll see all kinds of interesting message scroll over the iPhone screen. When done you can slide in your SIM and make your first call. Dead simple. Start having fun and install additional apps using the installed (installed by Ziphone), my current favorites are Twinkle (Twitter client) and Navizon (determines GPS coordinates using GSM and Wifi cells).

While the iPhone was traveling from China (they're manufactured there) to the US and to NL I recorded times and dates on a Google Map. Interesting to see the distance it traveled. The blue pinpoints and lines are the trip from China to the US, the green ones are the US to NL trip. If you look closely there is an optimization possible, on the flight from the China to the US and from the US to NL it passes through Memphis, renting an address in the Memphis area might save you an additional day...