Hate Regrets More Than Apologies...

"There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk!"-Sir Ranulph Fiennes


I'm currently enjoying a day off the bike, in the German town of Lubeck. Now I'm not a big fan of cities, too big, loads of traffic, hard to find your way around, tonnes of fatbergs (fat and/or old people on bikes blocking up the bike lanes), not good, but Lubeck is something special. Check out the entrance.

 I've been in Germay for two and a half days and to be fair I've got mixed feelings. There is very little English spoken in rural Germany, but then I suppose there is very little German spoken in rural England :S, the people are generally friendly but not as forthcoming as the Dutch. One thing that I can't get over is the food. All the stuff I've had from supermarkets has been vile, I'm sure there is good food in Germany, just not where I've been.

 A shout out to Collin Bollen, the friendliest guy in Holland, thanks for the chat mate and good luck with your studies (training to be a nurse).

Wednesday I cycled from Haren in the Netherlands to Detern, just East of a place called Leer in west Germany. Didn't do many miles considering I was on the bike for about ten hours, spent most of the afternoon trying to find the right street out of Leer. These past few days have been a baptism of fire in terms of language, my German is appaling so I've had to learn some basic phrases pretty quick although I imagine it will be worse when i get to the blatic states.

 Aslo met this ledgend. A Dutch guy camping around the north coast, apparently he couldn't find a backpack big enough, so he robbed a shopping trolly and welded some massive wheels to it, add a Netherlands flag and a homemade version of 'the scream' and you've got possibly the coolest load carrying system in the world.

Anyway got to Detern quite late, probably around 7pm. Found a campsite, absolutly deserted (off season) eventually found the warden and got a pitch for the bargain price of five euros.

Thats where I met this guy.

 Now listen up Bayliss because I've no doubt you will find this story hilarious.
This guys name is Clarance, he is mentally retarded. Clarance decided to be my friend at the campsite. I had no problem with this at first, you know, take a picture of him on the bike, let him help me put the tent up and put up with his constant yakking in a language that I couldn't understand.

After about half an hour of getting all my kit sorted I knelt down to peg out the tent. Clarance was standing behind me and out of the corner of my eye I saw his hand going towards my waist, where my cash and card are in my money belt. 'Little shit' I thought 'He's spazzing me!' (pretending to be retarded to get close enough to someone to rob them basically), so I turn around ready to smack him. Clarance wasn't going for my money belt, he was trying to feel my arse, and his other hand was wedged firmly down the front of his trousers.

I have never run so fast in all my life, honestly. I look back on it now and it was hilarious but I was genuinly scared. I went to the warden and he got kicked off the site, apparently he makes a habit of coming to the site and asking people for sexual favours. Brilliant.

 Clarance's hunting ground.

I left that campsite quite early, the warden gave me a couple of boiled eggs, an apple and an orange as a bizzare kind of compensation. Felt quite good on the bike, put in twelve hours and made it to a place called Hechthausen, west of Hamburg. Another bargain five euro campsite due to the time of year, absolutly dead. The weather has been really good over here the past few days, with a little rain on Thursday night and Friday afternoon, but nothing too bad.

 The ferry to Gluckstadt, about a 30 minuite crossing. I thought there would be more crossing points and maybe a bridge over the Elbe but apparently not, the closest crossing point by land being Hamburg, a lengthly detour.
Yesterday I had a slow day, cycled fron Hechthausen to Lubeck. One of those days where you know you havn't got to do mega miles but you just can't get going, had to have a little word with myself at around 3pm to make sure I got to Lubeck before dark. The doctor perscribed a two hour dose of Sublime and Jack Johnson to be taken immediatly, and the miles just melted away. I rolled into Lubeck at around 6pm yesterday.

 Nice try Holland....
So I've spent today mooching around Lubeck. My rear wheel started making some wierd noises about 100 miles back, diagnosis bearing failure. So I said to myself that I'd get the hub rebuilt in Lubeck. Took it to a massive bike shop on the outskirts of town and showed it to the resident monkey on the repair counter. "It needs the bearings replacing and re-greasing" i said, to which the reply was "No, no, no, this hub is not serviciable"

Now the problem with trying to bullsit me personally about what needs to be done to my bike is that I know quite a lot about bikes, and I worked in engineering for four years. After trying to sell me a new wheel off of one of the many made in china bike-shaped objects in the showroom I politly declined and left to find somewhere with staff who actually knew what they were talking about.

A short walk and I found what I was looking for, small shop , quality bikes in the window. "Yes we can service the hub, but it will take a few days for the bearings to arrive and we have lots of work on, so probably another day to fit them". Bollocks. The cost of this would be about 50 euros and 4-5 days lost so I asked to have a look at their selection of wheels. After a quick root around I found what I was looking for, a nice double butted rim, 36 spoke, shimano deore hub wheel. 60 euros, god I'm lucky.

There are absolutly tonnes of bike shops out here which is a real plus, everybody rides a bike and there are some right wierd set ups, so I'm gonna start taking pictures of some of the strangest ones, and put them up on here. Here is the first, vorsprung durch technik, this thing probably weighs the same as a small child, looks comfy though:

 There also seems to be a trend over here for putting tri-bars ( the ones that stick out on the front like horns, usually used on lightweight racing bikes) on town bikes, this gives the handlebar more surface area so you can drape your bloated european carcass over the bars, like you're eating a TV dinner, and put the absolute minimum amount of effort into pedaling, very continental.

Another three days pedaling and I should be in Poland, I'm really looking forward to Poland as I suspect its a bit of a hidden gem, don't know why but I've got a good feeling about it.

Also been thinking about what I'm going to do when I get back, at the moment I'm leaning towards studying for a HNC/HND in mechanical engineering purely to open up more options to me, as much as having another year mucking around on the bike and doing casual work appeals to me, it's not financially viable.
I've never really been motivated much by money, the flash car, nice house and trophy wife, it dosn't appeal to me. What does motivate me is not having to work full time, i.e if your only gonna make 15k a year, may aswell make it in the first 6 months and spend the rest of the year doing fun stuff. Ahhhh the dream...

Anyway if Im going to get back to school this year I'm going to have to limit this trip to maybe 3 months and try and get back by the end of June, this should give me time to square away college applications, loans etc. etc. and not miss the boat. After that I can chill out for a month or two.

Then again, what were you saying about cycling to Sicily, Fred...