The home of Kepler and Einstein

Another rest day, this time in a swish hotel in Ulm. We need it as the protein to carbs ratio in the menu has declined, so all the rest we can get is good. And because the Germans seem to run on bread, it´s hard to find a good sausage when you need it.

For those of you interested in wildlife sightings I have seen: a red squirrel with not much life left in it, a hedgehog in similar condition, a field of storks, a nest of storks complete with baby on a chimney, many hawks, kestrels, herons, ducks, white swans and geese, a pair of small deer-like creatures, some feral cats as well as cows with bells, goats and the odd sheep, all with tails.

We've had a couple of accidents: Marilyn from Canada broke an ankle yesterday so she and her husband are flying home tomorrow; and Neil, our four-score and more year-old American, tumbled the day before and required x-rays and a day´s rest, but he´s fine and in good form, as usual.

We've been on the Donau now for two days and the topography is constantly changing. Yesterday it was fields of barley, corn, spinach and canola, which interestingly, the Germans, like their French neighbours, do not keep behind fences. The first day it was towering limestone cliffs, some fields and lots of up and downs as we crossed the river, re-crossed it and climbed up and down its banks. The constant is lots of trees, lots of water and a plethora of villages, all with their Bäckerie and Kaffee vendors. It rained again overnight, much Donner and Blitzen, and a few spots en route.

I ride in a small group most days: John Ross from Edmonton, Stewart from Poole, sometimes Bernice and Mike from Edmonton as well, Dan from Boston, Phillip from Ottawa, and maybe for a little while with others. I am definitely wining the red jersey with the white spots for being the last up the mountain, and our group seems always to be last in to the coffee shops, to lunch, to camp, to everything pretty much. But hey, it´s not a race, is it, and we´re seeing everything in just that much more detail than the speedsters.

More technicals:
June 9: Freiburg to Phoren, bloody big hill, 80 kms, 6 hours, sunshine and blue skies
June 10: Phoren to Sigmaringen, 95 kms, 5 and a half hours and about 500 metres of sneaky climbing
June 11: Sigmaringen to Ulm, 110 kms, 6 and a bit hours, flattish and even a tail-wind for awhile

Other highlights:
Every rest day I don the surgical gloves and get out the Chux wipes, borrow degreaser from Stewart and clean the back cassette, the front cassette, the chain, re-grease it all and wash down the bike frame. It is the rest day highlight, after the laundry, that is, which last night proved more entertainment than I could manage, but I´ll tell you about it another time.

Die Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt...

...und ruhig fließt der Rhein, the wide fast river we crossed today which marked the border between France and Germany. We left Munster this morning, a very Germanic town in Alsace, where the cobbles rattle your brain matter and the rain just keeps coming, like it has pretty much all the time we have been in France. It is fine today and I even saw the sun´s crepuscular rays pierce the clouds, ever so fleetingly, but it does prove that the sun is still there above us somewhere.

Remember when you woke on a Saturday morning and it was grey and raining and after you did the messages and so on, you settled in for a day in front of the fire with the papers, the footy on 774, the osso bucco simmering away and the teapot close by? Well, that is the type of weather we have had - mist, sleet, thunderstorms, misty rain, wet rain, heavy rain, continuous rain. As you can imagine, this is something very new for a lass from Melbourne. Sure I have ridden in the rain, for half and hour or so, but never ever for eight hours, and then some, and following that ordeal set up a tent in a dripping campground and huddled under a picnic gazebo to eat dinner. The food is good, though. Not a pumpkin sandwich in sight.

The perfection of the paint-by-numbers French countryside with its rolling hills and narrow-streeted villages, where the stone houses nest in valleys and spill geraniums and roses onto the street, has given way to the three-storey pitched-roof farmhouses with stacks of precision-laid firewood and regulated vegetable patches where men in overalls clip trees and pull weeds.

Crossing the Rhein

Today we got lost. How fortuitous. A small village with one place to eat. We were treated to creamy white asparagus soup, a 50cl tall glass of non-alcoholic beer that is worth giving up the real stuff for, and potatoes, any way we wanted them. Frau even brought an extra bowl of the soup over and invited us to eat more.

The kindness of strangers is infectious. Yesterday prior to the ascent of the Col de la Schluct (in about 10 degrees, rain, mist and fog) a woman who lives on the route came out of her house with hot coffee and chocolate and insisted on having her photo taken with us because she was very proud to know that we were doing a bike ride from Paris to Istanbul.

It´s a rest in a classy hotel in Freiburg tomorrow - more laundry, more bike maintenance and brake pad checking, more tent setting up, this time in the basement garage to dry it out. On Monday we are off on another day´s climbing to Donaueschingen where the Danube begins. Then it´s onto the Donau Radweg until Budapest.

For the technically minded, here are some stats ( please note that they are all approximate as my computer has not worked once, unlike me):
June 1: Paris to a farmyard near Provins, 105 km, fine, sunny, 5 hrs TITS (time in the saddle)
June 2: farmyard to Troyes, 90km, wet, 7 hrs
June 3: Troyes to Chaumont, 110 km, partly fine, 5 hrs
June 4: rest in Chaumont, wet
June 5: Chaumont to Xertigny, 136 km, seriously wet, 8.5
June 6: Xertigny to Munster, 88 km, wet, 5.5 hrs
June 7: Munster to Freiburg, 70 km, grey, mainly fine, 3.5 hrs

We're in clover now

Riding along the Champs Elysees and around the Arc de Triomphe was a buzz. Then it was out on the N19, hottish, flattish and longish to a farmyard camping ground. Next day, probably fab sights but couldn't see a thing through the mist and the rain. Day three fab scenery that I could see, including those hills that seemed to never end, and we're not even climbing yet. Grenouille merde!

In Chaumont, so called because it's a town called Chau on top of the equivalent of the north face of the Himalayas, the Mont bit, to which we must ascend to wash our stinky biking gear, eat, look around and enjoy our day of rest. Just getting up is like five trips up the La Trobe St hill. Hope it's improving my leg tone: something has to soon.

The highlights are the company and the scenery. Lots of "Oh yahs" otherwise known as Canadians for all those who have enjoyed Fargo, who know a thing or two about bikes and biking along with all manner of other stuff. I was with two of them plus a Brit and an American when we pulled into a town, sopping wet, and ordered chocolate chaudes to warm us up. Monsieur, a fellow patron, shouted us our drinks as a bon voyage gesture. I love the French. They are so polite to cyclists on the road, yes even FBTs (****ing big trucks) and smile and laugh good humouredly at my pathetic Francaise.

Riding all day in the rain on day two was instructive - it taught me how to hurtle downhill in a downpour, vision afforded only by a fluoro clad cyclist hurtling down before me. It also taught me that tying the tent fly securely is important and that newspaper can dry shoes. I say 'can' advisedly. I slept soundly through the donkey's repeated braying, the five hour thunderstorm and the rooster's crowing on the first night and pretty much repeated the performance on day two. But the FBTs roaring past last night seemed to keep me awake. Pity really as donkeys make better noises.

For the parents reading this I have a new phrase for you: "as clean as Singapore" which you can use in relation to requests about how you want rooms to be left, for example.

As Bill, a kindly American said on day one, we're in clover now. Only 3700 kms to go!

We're ready to roll

How did it get to be May 31 already? I bet if I was a kid and it was my birthday it would still be six months away. But I'm not. Pity I acted like one when all those marvellous opportunities for riding presented themselves since I first had this 'good' idea to join a European bike tour. So, there's no longer any hiding to be had, the truth will out in about ten hours.

I thought this was a clean-living tour so I was a tad surprised when I overheard the hotel staff explaining to a couple of chaps in our goup who had only just met that yes, they would have to share the double bed as there were no more rooms with single beds. I don't think they thought the staff were serious as they took the key and went unprotesting to their room, but they were down soon enough and sat waiting for another allocation. I finally got my key (I mean who's ever hung around all day in a hotel lobby anywhere, let alone Paris, for an hour and a half waiting for a room?) so I grabbed the bags, the spare tyres - the bike's that is - and pounded up to the eight floor and slotted the key in, pushed open the door and there saw what seemed like a very naked male bottom, atttached to legs and torso of course, lying across the only bed in the room. The bottom's owner didn't seem all that happy to have me as a roommate, and I wasn't so keen myself as there didn't seem to be an awful lot of room left on the bed. However, the hotel staff were very understanding and didn't charge me for the extra and indeed found me another room in barely forty minutes. I didn't like to say anything to them, but it does have two single beds in it so I'm thinking that there is a hotel fairy who just changes the bedding arrangements in rooms willy nilly as part of a delightful but little heard of Parisian tradition.

I'm hoping the fairy will materialise in my tent tomorrow night complete with bed, doona and pillow but I suspect the only thing to materialsie will be me, and I will snuggle into the Swedish Princess and will not stir again until hearing the melodic morning songs of French sheeeeeeps.

Fund Raising

It is fantastic that so many people have sponsored the National Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia. I want to thank: Louise Millar-Hoffman, Rick Barry, Catherine Hedley and friends, Dale Hobsbawn, Tricia Fidler, Susan Moro, Bruce and Heather Boucher, Diana Young, Marilyn and Ray Kollmorgan, Maureen Welch and friends, Pauline White, Maree White, Clare Mugavin, Greg Young, Peter Stone, Elzette Bester, Barb Ashworth, Anna-Marie and David Xuereb, Kevin O'Neill, Loretta Sheehy, Sherry Sullivan, Margaret (Midge) Bell, Joanne Camilleri, Maggie Gundert, colleagues at RMIT, Pamela and Allen Bowles, Paula Lienert, Jan H, Greg McMillan, Peter Loder, Kaye Lovett, Skilltech Consulting.

Three weeks in my world

It's down to 21 sleeps. That's all. Then onto the plane, a sleepover in Singapore and a few days in Paris before I take to road with my as yet un-met friends. I bought a bed mat today. I wanted the lux crimson one with rolls on the sides and a raised pillow but settled instead for the plain, easy to re-roll, drab black and grey non-flannelette covered one. Not much panache but it will fit into the duffle bag. Along with the other gear that seems to be growing in bulk and increasing in diversity all the time, like the chain linker, the spokes for both sides and spoke nipples, the brake pads, the derailleur hanger, the booties...I mean how am I possibly going to look elegant and sophisticated as well as carry all this gear! Oh well, maybe I have to settle for 'interesting' as opposed to 'chic'.

The fundraising is going pretty well. I think there's close to $2,000 in the kitty and more promised. At last week's afternoon tea, guests were generous, just as they were a few weeks ago at a soiree at Docklands.

Feeling frisky

One of the highlights of riding around Victoria is the infinite opportunities afforded to the inveterate dog spotter. Up at Murrabit on the Murray River just east of Swan Hill, where the population probably struggles to reach 150, there's no shortage of Jack Russells. Not city dogs on leads with brushed fresh coats, but amiable little country chaps who trot along behind their owners, sniffing the dusty grass and on the lookout for a tasty morsel. When 4,500 of us arrived in town on that first night of the Great Vic Bike Ride in November 2005, the first night of my first bike tour, there was no shortage of morsel donors due to the array of barbeques set up by the locals to tempt our tastebuds and I like to think the dogs were as happy as were we to enjoy the town's hospitality.

So it's a bit bewildering to consider that soon I will be riding through countryside where the sight of a dog is more likely to fill me with fear rather than pleasure. I have a vision of riding along in bumpy chaotic Romania pursued by a pack of dogs yapping at my heels, one of which manages to sink his sharp little teeth into my ankle. Or worse, a Romanian bear wrestles me in my tent and scores a hit. I've seen 'Old Yella' so I know what's going to happen. Think I'd best seek that rabies vaccination post haste!

In the meantime I thought I'd share the start and end of the '06 GVBR - Lucy, Dale, Pedro, Pauline, Gonzalo, Catherine, Anna and me. I enjoyed lots of great dog sightings en route.

That Toad Work

As Philip Larkin asked in his poem 'Toads', "Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life?" Right now, a big fat toad of work is squatting on my shoulders. And if there's one thing I know, work toads can be a bugger to shift. Just ask anyone these days and they'll tell you how busy they are, how they need a break, and how they can't believe it's the end of February already.

And why has the toad come to squat? Money. That's the simple answer. It always is. Oh I know that sociologists and psychologists and doctors and even career counsellors, of whom I am one, are all too ready to tell us that work is good for us. It keeps us healthy - that is if we don't work in a country with poor workplace regulations or in industry where death and disease are all too prevalent; it keeps us sane - well, that's debatable as I'm sure you'll agree if you've ever watched 'Yes Minister' or 'The Office'; it keeps us optimistic - I guess it does, as there are worse things in the world than working, like riding a bike, for example...

Or not riding it, as is the case right now. You see I've got so many things to do, like training and shopping and going to the gym and swimming and experiments and none of them are getting done on account of the toad. I'm placing full blame on the toad. That's fair isn't it? Should I look elsewhere, I hear you ask. Perhaps at the end of Larkin's poem? "For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too;" Surely not!

Holidays are Over

It's January 17 already, and in John Lennon's words, what have I done since Christmas?

What's a Melbourne summer without tennis? One of the things I've done is gone to, and watched on the idiot box, LOTS of tennis. Don't you just love the commentary? I know some might prefer Jim Courier for his wit and knowledge, or the consummately technical Roger Rasheed, but my favourite so far is John Alexander. His comment that Li'l Leyton's opponent's mum liked tennis, but as she couldn't call her son Tennis, she chose Dennis instead, is amazing, don't you agree? It leads one into all type of profound philosophical speculation, such as what Rex's and Honey's mums liked, for instance. Thank you, John. Keep up the good work.

I've written a bit more of the novel and thought about how it has to change, again; made jam to cheat the birds from the pleasure of eating all our fantastic stone fruits straight from the trees; sent out the first round of fund raising request letters; thought about what I can do to add my voice to the anti-bay-dredging majority; and done a bit of light training. I suspect my training will always be just 'light'...swimming, riding a bit, doing some stretching and the weekly personal torture routine at the gym. And lived through the university offers period with Junior. Now, that takes fortitude. Riding 4,000 kms seems like it will be a breeze in comparison, right now. Ask me in mid-June if I'm still sticking to this opinion.

I'm now trying to work out how to get back from Istanbul to London after Desy joins me. We're planning on a month to wander on home via London and goodness knows where else. Maybe a train with stopovers along the way through Europe? Maybe fly to Spain and book an apartment for a couple of weeks? Maybe just spend a couple of weeks in Turkey? I guess we'll work it out.

And then there's the tent challenge. I need a tent. I hate being in small tents, so it's off to see what the world of tents is all about in the modern era. It's got to be light, compact and really easy to put up. And cheap, as I'm pretty unlikely to use it on a regular basis. I've got the bed roll. Probably need a new sleeping bag, although I am very fond of the Swedish Princess that has accompanied me faithfully on three Great Vic Bike Rides, now. I've got the new super duper shower set and micro fibre towel, thanks to the tradition of giving gifts at Christmas.

I've also got to decide on my bike seat. The cruel expensive one I rode on the last Great Vic with the help of Nurofen to quell the absolute pain, although ergonomically sound, is not going to be for me. Then there's bike shoes with cleats. Time to grow up in this department. I've decided to take the Vivente rather than lash out on a new machine. I figure that by the time I get to Istanbul, the bike's not going to owe me anything so I can sell it, post it or give it away with impunity, and wander through Europe unencumbered.

Ah, so many decisions and so much planning. Delicious, indeed!

Almost Christmas

A few less sleeps to go and a few more kms under my belt on account of the enjoyable Great Victorian Bike Ride, November 25 - December 2, which went through some of the most glorious countryside Victoria has to offer. And I must say that the scones this year were plentiful and of excellent quality. Well done, ladies en route!

But back to the Orient Express, as the 2008 European ride is called. I'm hoping there is a fine tradition of home-made scones to be had as the only reason I ride really, is to eat. Well, that and the scenery, the company and the challenge. And for 2008, I have another incentive. The National Breast Cancer Foundation has accepted my offer to raise funds for them so that's exciting. All my friends, acquaintances and associated accomplices will help me I'm sure. Perhaps if I'd been quick enough, I could have organised donations in lieu of Christmas gifts.

If you want to check out the other riders on this adventure then go to http://www.tourdafrique.com/orientexpress/profiles.php