After the Alps and a year with some spectacular scenery, it's hard to be thrilled with every day's views. The heat wave and sunshine have passed so the temperatures and precipitation are more normal for Europe - cooler and wetter. At least I didn't have to go down the wet streets of Lausanne like the roller bladers, skaters and street lugers who could hit 90kph and the hay bale barricades. Odyssey followed part of the X-Game route so I was forced to walk up the hill on the sidewalk and watch the fools rolling down and falling down.
TK&A wisely decided to change the itinerary and give us a layover day in tiny Zurzach then bus us through the Black Forest. I took the train from Zurzach to Zurich to see someone I hadn't seen since she moved to Switzerland almost ten years ago, Cheryl Marek. Compared to most of the riders on the Burke-Gilman Trail and too many Odyssey riders who are just bicycle riders, I'm a cyclist. Cheryl is a Cyclist! It was great to be able to spend time visiting with her and seeing her city. She showed me the Chagall stained glass windows in a church, parks and narrow streets, and the panoramic view from a church tower. She taught me the Swiss three cheek kiss greeting and important things about Swiss chocolate. I hadn't been having good luck trying to pick good chocolates on my own ... which never stopped me from eating way too much Vitamin C. Cheryl bought me a couple of really good chocolate bars, but the best chocolate was the hard dark pieces she picked out from a bin where the color of the foil wrapping was the only clue to what treasure was inside. It was heavenly.
I was glad to have been able to trade pedaling through the legendary Black Forest for the afternoon with Cheryl. The Black Forest route Odyssey would have ridden was as unscenic as clear cutting and thick haze could make it. I was very happy to have had TK&A save me from 8700ft of climbing with no views for a reward.
The Rhine wine country made for much better riding. While the road along the river was flat, the vineyards climbed the often steep hills in different patterns on both sides of the river. The hills were covered with lines of grapes and occasionally there was a mechanical hill climber to get workers up the slopes. These had single rails with ridges on the bottom which the gears of the small motor would engage for the necessary traction to pull the single rider and cart up through the Riesling.
The rivers (Rhine and Mosel) are working rivers with long narrow barges chugging up and down through the lock system. There were narrow river villages with red roofs and the ubiquitous church steeple with a clock on four sides and a bell tolling the quarter hours to remind me how slowly I was riding. I've ridden 5,000 miles in three months and my body is tired.
I was reawakened when the route crossed the river and started climbing in Luxembourg. This overlooked duchy has woods the Black Forest SHOULD look like. Dense with trees and a tight canopy blocking the light so it was hard, at first, to see the sandstone walls rising like a fortress in the trees. Then the road would break out into high open rolling farming terrain before plunging back into the cool and moss. My final VERY steep climb into the city of Luxembourg was rewarded with a fine hotel and snail mail.
I spent the layover day organizing what I have to send home before flying 21-1/2 hours to Australia, updating my meager journal, writing this update, trying to dry my wet hand-washed clothes with the built-in hair dryer in the hotel bathroom, and resting my body as much as possible by not sightseeing the city.
I've got four more days of pedaling to make it two stages in a row where I've ridden all the itinerary miles. I don't have a goal of doing all the miles in the Far East. Like South Africa, what I see there will be a bonus to the best year of my life.
Happy Trails,
Bruce