The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

When the Fat Family in a Fiat (as my mom called our early family vacations) got together, things were not always successful, Western Europe is supposed to be easy, but travel always has it's difficulties.  There was Navarro, a small town in France, where we spent 4 hours driving around trying to leave but every sequence of roads we took brought us back to the center.   I was little and quite appropriately asked "are we going to die out here?".  Or there was the time we were trying to climb Mount Vesuvius and the road slowly kept getting smaller and smaller, but no one wanted to acknowledge that we might be on the wrong road so we sat in silence until the road turned to a mud path and the branches were scratching the side of the car.  Then there was the time we went to Cinque Terre, 5 small Italian towns only connected by train and hiking paths, very beautiful and scenic.  We decided to take the path when we arrived in late afternoon since it said it was only 30 minutes.  It took 2 hours hiking along a cliff, in some places the path had been narrowed because part of it had fallen in the sea below, we were passing all these Italian families who had also made the mistake, the grandmothers in their fur jackets and fancy Italian shoes splashing along the muddy path (did I mention it had rained recently). We arrived in the next town and Keith and I took some "extreme swigs" as we called it of water because of course we hadn't planned on a two hour hike. We would also spend hours looking for affordable hotels, cruising through several towns sometimes well into the night.  But all this was my parents fault of course, I have a much better sense of direction and after riding a bike through Asia, this should be no problem, right? About an hour after leaving Prague, we discovered that the bike path would be most of the time just that, a dirt track.  If we were lucky it might be a big cobblestone cart path (ever ridden a fully loaded road bike over huge uneven cobblestones?). But it wasn't too bad, when the road was nice it was very flat and quick. We continued to ride along it for a couple of days to Germany, it was beautiful, riding along the Elbe river between the mountains, amazing hill top castles, really great riding.  The weather was pretty good, the leaves are changing on the trees so it is cold, but there wasn't too much rain. The day we entered Germany, the weather was great, we even had a tailwind and the road was nice, we did the first 20km quickly and easily the area was getting remote and it looked on the map like the towns along the river were only connected by the train and bike paths, strange.... As I struggled to push my bike up the muddy rocky path along the cliff , I glanced back down the path I had come, isn't this thing supposed to be downhill? I stumbled to the rest area at the highpoint in the path and looked down, there was the path I was obviously supposed to take, it was along the rivers edge and looked like a total mud pit. "Oh looks like I chose the good way!" As I carried my bike down a flight of muddy stairs and bashed my leg into the pedal for the 400th time in an hour I reconsidered which might have been the best choice. At least down there I wouldn't be passed by all these bewildered hikers watching a man carry a fully loaded bicycle down a fully staired hiking trail.  I texted Levi and asked if he had made the same mistake, he responded "I just tore my waterproof pants with my pedal while carrying my bike down a flight of stairs, unless the other path features stairs as well I think I took the same one?" To be fair to Germany, the same thing happened to me in Czech, I tore my rain pants carrying my bike up a set of stairs onto and oil pipeline bridge that the Czech Republic uses for a bicycle crossing. For the rest of the trail all I could think about was Cinque Terre and being caught for a second time on a touristy hiking path screaming and yelling inappropriately with a huge fully loaded bicycle (My friend Nate and I went bike-hiking by accident in Yellowstone too).  We made good time again after the bike hike and once again we began to think it was a fluke incident and the bike trail was overall good.  We got lost outside of a small town about 2 hours later, slowly the road got narrower and narrower until it just stopped in the middle of a muddy field. Backtracking in a car isn't the end of the world in a car, but on a bike it is pretty frustrating, we lost hope for the bike path.   We made it to Dresden and decided to get back on the road from there on(coincidentally the big mountains happened to have just ended, lucky us).  We made better time, but things were different, since Poland we had started to see bike paths fairly regularly, in the towns, sometimes even out on roads. We often stayed with the road because it is much quicker and is always pavement as opposed to uneven bricks.  But in Germany the bike paths were everywhere, and there were rules, we've been corralled, the cars now honk if you aren't on the bike path, you have your own lights that you have to obey, there are cyclists everywhere, big, small, slow, fast.  We began to feel cramped, you seem always be stuck behind someone or facing imminent tragedy as a large family all ages and all on bikes comes barreling in slow motion towards you, you have to ride on the grass to avoid maming a toddler swerving on a tricycle.  So sometimes we stuck with the road.  Then we got pulled over.  We had found that what often happened with the roads we were following was that they would have bike paths almost all the time and then when they intersected with another big road  or city, the bike paths would disappear and reappear about 2km down the road after the intersection. We knew that this was probably a hint to find another way through the town, but we weren't about to go get lost when it is only two km on a nice shouldered road.  Usually nothing happened, a couple of honks and we were off again, this time however a cop passed me and put his lights on, he pulled over to the side of the road and I guess we were "pulled over." He took our passports instead of drivers licences.  After waiting a ridiculously long time (it was just like being in a car)  he handed us back our passports and said what I believe were his only English words "highway! No Bike!".  I was lucky enough to be pulled over again without Levi a little while down the road.  This time they ignored my lack of German and lectured me for about 5 minutes, then escorted me with lights flashing, into the town, they were about to leave when one of the guys saw my toy machine gun that I have on my backpack it is just a little fake gun that makes a ratta-tat-tat noise when you pull the big red nob on it.  The German police officer decided that this was too much and gave me another long speech about something to do with the gun, then made me hide it (great now I can get charged for a concealed fake weapon too!).  They left and I spent 20 minutes trying to get back to the road. I would have been pretty angry and frustrated,  but luckily we were on our way to meet my friend from Hamburg, Arne that evening, so I was feeling pretty jolly.  Arne met us about 100km from the city in a hostel and we all rode in the next day.  It was great to have someone ride with us and let them in on the whole experience. Arne even got a good day with 3 flat tires to set us back.     We spent 4 days in Hamburg, Arne brought us to see the loading docks, Hamburg is an inlet of the North Sea,  Levi and I both look at each other and say "North Sea!!!! What the hell are we doing up here!?!? We have GOT to get south." So we headed towards Holland, a small step south.  We had mastered the system of navigating only bike accessible roads thanks to a day of riding with Arne.  We rode like we hadn't a care in the world, we had the names and addresses of two hostels for the next two days, and besides that nothing planned except to be in the south of France in December.  The terrain was now getting kind of thick with really cool normally dark forests, but now they were orange with turning leaves.  The bike path often goes off from the road into the middle of the forest, so you get the full effect.  We reached the first hostel, they are in reality kind of like summer camps that also allow guests, they are filled with little German kids on school trips.  It was fully booked, no room for us.  More and more this is the norm, no matter how remote the area, the European hotels are either full or really expensive, even on a Tuesday.  Luckily the town nearby had a hotel for a good price.  The next day we were not so lucky, we tried to find a reasonable hotel for hours, we wound up sailing through the dark (now that we have the bike path darkness is less of a threat) and the rain until about 7:30 that night (it gets dark about 5).  I just kept seeing flash backs to the trips with my folks in the car, in the rain going from hotel to hotel, somehow that seemed a lot less unpleasant while watching the rain drip from my visor.  The place we found wasn't even cheap, it was just acceptable in a downpour.  Since then this has become our new battle, trying to find a reasonable hotel each day without having to ride far out of the way or at night. We now try and get book hostels a day in advance and try and make the distance each day.  Of course that is all just water under the bridge, a day later we made it to Holland, where for some reason all my worries just seem to melt away, must be something in the coffee...where is that waitress. ellski