As we broke camp on Saturday, the 3rd of July, the air around Mammoth Camp in Yellowstone National Park was cool, though the cloudless sky promised severe sunburn to those who forgot their sunscreen. We rode to the commercial center around the Visitor Center. There, we saw the homeless guy we met last night hitchhiking home to Santa Barbara. Continue reading
Welcome back to the present. This week, I suspend my ride through Europe to publish my school essay “What I did during the summer.” Remember those assignments? This will be the third and final installment of Breaking Out 2021, my life on a bicycle as we emerged from lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. We may return to River Run 2017 next year, but you can always follow it by selecting the category “River Run 2017” from the list to the right of this post. Enjoy! Continue reading
Saturday the 22nd of July, I saddled up and rode to the main train station in Boulogne-sur-Mer. I had not planned to run alongside the Somme, but the tracks followed the swollen river all the way to Amiens. I needed to get off at Saint Roch to change for Rouen, but, mesmerized by the scenery, I almost missed my stop. Continue reading
On Wednesday the 19th of July, I lay in my tent at 05:00, ready to go back to sleep, when I heard thunder. The storm front predicted for 13:00 must be early, I thought. With little more than four hours of sleep, I decided to break camp to avoid packing a wet tent. While I struggled to wake up and get moving, the storm rumbled over the fields well to the south. It never did rain on me. Continue reading
(I never saw the 1979 movie, but the title stuck with me.) On Wednesday, the 12th of July, Marianne and her husband Hans had invited me to dinner. I spent the morning waiting for the rain to stop. After lunch in my room, I rode to the Mauritshuis palace, officially the “Royal Picture Gallery”. I planned to visit it, the Escher Museum and take pictures of the Binnenhof (Parliament) and maybe another museum. The plans fell apart quickly. Continue reading
Under an overcast sky on the 4th of July, I rode to the Hauptbanhof in Köln (Cologne) and caught a Regional Express to Düsseldorf. Before checking in, I rode to the river, where I wanted to see the modern architecture on the waterfront. Continue reading
Thursday morning the 29th, my host Nasr went to his German class. I did my laundry, then walked east along the Mosel River to the Deutsches Eck (“German Corner”), the point of land formed by the confluence of the Mosel and the Rhine. There, I caught a cable car to the imposing Festung Ehrenbreitstein that overlooks the east bank of the Rhine River. Continue reading
On Saturday, the 24th of June, I left Kaiserslautern. The Regional Express went all the way to Koblenz, but I got off in Trier, the medieval fortress town at the confluence of the Saar and the Mosel.
From my studies of Modern European History in high school and college, I had expected the Saar valley to be industrialized for its entire length. Wrong: in this fertile, winegrowing region, the Saar weaves through a floodplain covered in crops, vineyards and woods. Continue reading
On Friday, 16 June, Caitlin brought me back from the Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center (ARMC) to recover and to wait for my follow-up visit on Wednesday. The week off the bicycle gave me a chance to appreciate this part of Germany in more depth. Continue reading
On Friday the 9th of June, I enjoyed breakfast in the lounge of the Brook Lane Hostel with Arianna, a pleasant, intelligent, German-American touring cyclist. She is a special education teacher, riding down the Danube during the two-week Bavarian spring break. She rides every break she gets, and was able to dispense a wealth of useful information to me about riding, living and working in Germany. Continue reading
The Freewheeling Freelancer 