Leg 1: Augsburg to Donauworth, 48km (suggested route)
70 km, 8 hours. Just for comparison, a below average Johnson male can run 20km in 3.5 hours on his feet. With no wheels. So, some tips to avoid this problem....
1. Avoid the rain at all costs. If you must bike in the rain, get a real raincoat. The plastic poncho that you bought will act like a sail in the wind, and slow you down. Plus, it may get stuck in the wheels...
2. Do wait for the tourist office to open at 10:00. Even better, buy the English map online. Remember that you are riding a bike, not driving a car, so regular maps aren´t much help. Good maps could prevent a lot of backtracking, and shave a good four hours off your time.
3. When you see a sign that you think says city centre in German, do take the time to get the phrase book out of the bottom of your backpack. It could save you a tour of the industrial zones of the city you are hoping to enjoy.
4. Make sure you get a decent bike. Just because it felt good for eight seconds in the parking lot doesn´t mean it will be comfortable for 8+ hours. Raise the seat. Raise it again. Wish you had a real bike when all the real senior citizen bikers laugh at you. Make sure you at least sit on a bike once before attempting an extensive bike trip. Take lots of advil.
Erik´s advice:
1. Beer and sausage make all lower body pain dissapear.
2. When in doubt see number one.
3. Even though it´s raining, you should still wear sunscreen.
4. There´s a reason why pedal brakes stopped being a good idea when you were eight. Check to make sure your wife doesn´t buy a bike that has pedal brakes (in my defense, it has hand brakes too) because you´ll end up riding it (isn´t he great????) because it weighs twice as much as a normal bike.
So, here´s the story.
Being the keeners that we are, we figured that we didn´t need to hang around and get the bike map from the tourist office. We had printed off the maps of the route from mapquest, and we had the German road map. No problem, right? Wrong. When we got to the end of the bike route at the outskirts of Augsburg, things started to get really bad. Not only was it pouring rain, but our choices were 90 degree turn from where we wanted to go, industrial park, or autobahn. Seeing as we weren´t driving cars, the autobahn was quickly eliminated. Luckily the industrial park led to another industrial park that led to a gas station that had a pretty poor map of the area, in German only. By sheer luck, we somehow managed to make our way from small town to small town, with only a few moments of expecting death. We did eventually make it to Donauworth, after eight hours of non-stop biking in the rain. It was pretty bad. Our first stop, once we actually managed to get into the town, was the tourist office, for the bike map we so badly needed. They only had it in German, but we didn´t care.
So we hereby issue the "Johnson First Anniversary Challenge", to every child born in the family, and anyone else who thinks they might be crazy enough to accept.
Beat the following.
In the month of your first wedding anniversary
-no map
-less than $200 worth of bikes, that have to be bought the day before
-no German
-two weeks worth of clothes
-Augsburg to Donauworth
-less than eight hours.
If you can beat that time, or survive your second year of marriage after attempting to beat that time, we´ll buy you two beers and all you can eat ribs at the Buena Vista Hotel and Bistro.
See you there.
(by the way, we took the train to the next town to give our bums a break, and the next day of biking was much better. It helps having a map. And sun.)
Leave comments, hope you´re all well.
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