Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The road less traveled part 4

Day 3 on tour Bullay to Lewein. Another picture perfect day on the Moselle river. The river was so twisty on this day that our mileage of 48.3 was fully three times the mileage as the crow flies.

What a sight first thing in the morning in the center of the village!


Just after setting out we crossed over a bridge to climb up to monastery above the river and the vineyards. I don't know how they work these vines it's so steep.


We came across this thing called a fusbath, or foot bath, at the towm we stayed the night in. It was filled knee deep with ice cold water that you walked around in like my dad is doing here. You were supposed to lift your foot all the way out of the water each time you stepped. My brother, who for some reason knows about these things, siad that the locals believe they have theraputic value. Included as a bonus was a smaller waist high tank for your arms. I have to admit that after a long day of riding it felt really good.


This is the view from my hotel room.




Another fine day capped off with our favorite ritual.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The road less traveled part 3

Day two we rode from Lof to Bullay. The name of this series of posts is "The Road less traveled" because we mostly went from village to village along small cycle paths and dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. The really cool part is that all of this is actually signposted for bikes so it's hard to get lost even though it's very rural. Day two saw 80 and sunny so the beer tasted extra good at night. My personal name for this tour is Beer & Brats 2. I did Beer & Brats 1 in May of 2004 touring the Rhine River valley in Germany.

This is what we woke up to at 6 am the next day. We heard this loud oom-pah music and looked out the window to see this big group of oldsters doing morning exercises. It was a tour group from the Netherlands that had stayed at the same hotel as us and I think had gone to bed after we did!


Before too long, we were riding through dirt trails in the forest. They were more like MTB trails than anyting but it was totally cool to be riding them on loaded touring bikes. Notice the sign pointing to the next village. And this is on an MTB path!


This is the castle called Burg Eltz. I half expected to see damsels and knights in shining armor when we got to the gate. Call me morbid, but I wondered how many people died building this place......

Late in the day cycling long a railroad access path. Very pleasant riding.


Every day ended with this same ritual so I'll end each blog post with that day's pic of it. Dinner was pretty typical: bratwurst with salad, roasted potatos and sauer kraut. I never did get tired of that meal.

The road less traveled part 2

The first day of the trip was spent for the most part on the trains. Four seperate ones to get where we were going, but pretty efficient anyway. We had great weather, 75 and sunny.

One of the four stations we were in.


The first days were spent riding through the vineyards of the Moselle river valley. They plant the vines up the eastern and southern banks of the river.


End of day one in the village of Lof. My dad is 78 years old and holding his own.

Monday, May 29, 2006

The road less traveled

Ok, so it's been a long, long time since I posted to this shi!!y blog and if you're reading this it means you probably don't have enough to do in life.

As most, if not all, of you know, I just returned from 16 days in Europe on a cycling vacation with my brother and my dad. My bro lives in Amsterdam with his wife and kids so it gives us a good starting and ending point for cycle tours.


Smiling and well rested at O'hare prior to the 8 hours in a flying sardine tin. In order to make a nickel (or not) the airlines flying the trans atlantic routes pack as many as humanly possible into the planes. We flew on 747's each way with 3/5/3 seating and about six inches of leg room. Oh well, it's affordable to go that way. Last I checked, passage on the QE2 was somewhere around $4000 so the $850 for KLM ain't bad.



I decided that in order to not lose what miniscule amount of fitness I had, I would take the Bianchi San Jose single speed cross bike. That way, any hill would have me humping the 55 pounds of bike and bags with no option of shifting. That turned out to be some serious workouts as a result, with more than a few hills of anywhere from a 1/4 mile to several miles in length. You learn how to muscle the bike with your upper body pretty good.



In case there are any doubts as to what cycle touring is really all about, let me lay them to rest. It's about doing one thing so that you can do two others with relative abandon: ride miles to eat and drink beer. I'm sure you're all shocked at the admission, but it's true. It doesn't even matter what kind of beer it is (as if you have any choice- more on that later).



We started out the tour with a train trip to Koblenz Germany leaving from Amsterdam's Centraal Station. You'll never see more bikes in one place in your life. It borders on silly. The pic above doesn't even do it justice. There are probably 10 times that many bikes parked in and around the Station.



This pic is of us leaving my brother's on the first day, heading for the station. Look in the background at the street. There are way more bikes than cars parked. Notice the lack of helmets on my bro and me; with rare exception, I have never felt the need to wear one while cycling in Amsterdam. Drivers naturally give bikes extra room and the traffic laws favor bikes over cars to a large degree.

More tomorrow.....