/travel/cycling/Luebeck is only an accident away!
This blog entry was lost by my ISP and they did not recover it. A fairly complete copy existed on blog aggregators, but it may have lost formatting or links.
(Lest you're short on time and concerned by the title, there were no injuries, and we got there fine.) So I'm in Lýÿbeck. Yesterday, Steve and I were cycling through the evening on some very beautiful German roads. They were essentially single lane roads, but there were very few cars. We were cruising along quite quickly when I passed a roadsign that I thought indicated that we were headed for a town that we had already been through. Since the road was quite wide, I slammed on my brakes. I heard Steve yell "Woah!" from behind me, as he had chosen that moment to read the sign and didn't notice my rapid deceleration. I was also sort of turned to see what he was yelling about. So he hit my tire. Bit of a bump, but no injuries. Except...the bike. My back tire was unrideable. It wasn't bent much, but too much, especially with the extra weight of the gear. Neither Steve nor I knew how to true a tire, but he knew a bit and we worked it out, and after half an hour of fiddling, it seemed rideable. I rode on, but it bent more. If we took off the back brakes, the bike would still go, so I ran with it for about 5km. Towards the end of this, we flagged down one man to ask for a cell phone ("haben Sie ein handi?"), but he didn't. Then we hit a house with some people in the backyard, and asked to use their phone to call Johanna, our erstwhile destination for the evening. I called her, told her we weren't going to make it. Then he asked what was wrong, and once it was explained ("alle ist klýÿr" (?)) and sort of took over and loosened my break so it wasn't rubbing anymore. We piled all the weight on Steve's bike (..which was bad since Steve's ankles have been bothering him a bit...) and I rode with my weight as forward as it could be. Once we got to the next real town (Ahrenbýÿk), we tried and failed to find an open bikeshop -- unlikely at 20:45 in a small town -- and then decided to ride onwards to Lýÿbeck. In the end, we got here safe and sound. Spent a nice day around Lýÿbeck today, seeing their Holstentour (sp?) which is the old and very massive and impressive town gate, and going up a church tower. Tonight we're making a big lasagna meal with Johanna and her two roommates and Andrea (another girl I know from Finland) and her boyfriend. In other news, crossing the Danish-German border was no problem...there was essentially nothing there. Euros are great; I'm very glad to be done with the various Kroners and back to a currency that I know fairly intuitively. The weather and wind have been much better in Germany. One of our campgrounds was right by a military base, and we were woken up at 08:00 to a helicopter taking off. Lots of pizza, falafels, and veggie burgers. Lots of checking the maps and signs for me, and following his gut for Steve -- sometimes with conflicting results. We're getting along well, though, and the accident was a good test of how we dealt with more-than-arguing-about-directions stress. I have 800km under my belt since Peter dropped me off in Sweden, of which about 330km are since Copenhagen. Soon we're probably heading to Mýÿnster with a probable pause in Hamburg (which all the Germans say that we simply must see) and then probably up to Groningen and then along the coast for a while. I heard the news about the election results on a German radio station; obviously I didn't understand it all, but it I got the basics. Personally, I think the results could have been a lot worse. Anyway, having a blast, learning lots more German, getting some excellent, beautiful cycling done...but now it's time to make some lasagne. Happy Canada Day! (And you thought I forgot! Pah!)
