MAJs gay bikes [she’s in her fitness era]

Day ?????? 3??? 4??

Today was the first day of actual riding and it didn’t start too well. Pulling up at the coffee shop, empty patio, maybe 30 chairs out, 5 degrees and a forecast to sleet we’re asked to move the bikes. Fair cop like but I think after a few days of German social bureaucracy I think we were starting to miss the lawless wastes of Britain.

The coffee was good, had quite a novel Indian bean that bela enjoyed for it just “being different from the usual manhattan fodder”. It was good, we executed but didn’t excite me, it did however waste 30 minutes talking about how we’d rather have a novel experience than a good one. Psychiatrists check in.

Rolling through the bike lanes we quickly ended up in the first gravel of the trip and I think the first proper gravel my bike had ever been on. Smooth forest roads were interjected with little diy cut throughs and drops that tijjy wanted to tackle on his 29r. Riaz wasn’t so convinced and kept asking why we were avoiding the ample cycling infrastructure for mud, let alone risking a broken hip. We compromised and said he didn’t have to ride it but he did have to take photos.

Rolling on there were other features, a small zoo featuring lynxes and baby boars. I’m not a huge zoo fan but it’s hard to not think they were cute and seeing any animal up close is a special experience. Not to mention within the animal park there was also a pump track? Odd concept but I’d like to see it more. Having 29, 26 and 16” wheels to try was a real bike radar moment and I have to say my final conclusion is I made the right compromise on my 26 and anyone riding 29 is a sheep.

The point of this ride was to get out to this lake. Tijjy said it has a perfectly smooth ring of tarmac around it which revitalised Bela and I had to hold onto the wheel powered by this Dutch soreen bar tijmen he given me as looked at deaths door.

the lake had a certain, Jason bourne, about it. The bleak Northern Europe grey, empty public spaces which seem liminal and hostile out of season. As if it was a place you’d come to realise you’d been activated in country and work out how you’d slip out of the domestic cover you’d lived under the last 18 months.

Once we escaped the early 2000s film nostalgia we headed round, avoiding the roller skaters and dog walkers. Again surprised by the sheer amount of public animal enclosures Germany had. This time it was deer and we spent a few minutes holding the attention of one of the most majestic bucks I had seen this close

It was at that time I had entered husk mode, I wanted food, I wanted heating and I wanted off this bike. The only motivation I had was a 9k dart back into town with the promise of a very large veggie burger king and some soviet era housing blocks

Let me tell you, I was a lot faster going back in than coming out with that on my mind.

Last full day tomorrow, but there shall be no riding