| Activity | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Name | Description | Service Provider | Cost | Kms | To Date | Total | Notes | Actions |
| Cycle | EV 15 / Rhine Route to Speyer | $0.00 | 50.00 | 50.00 | Day 25: 50km: Total 1076km | ||||
| Accommodation | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Name | Service Provider | Confirmation | Location | Cost | Notes | Actions |
| Hotel | Hotel Domhof | Booking.com (from the Platz) | Speyer | $75.00 | |||
Trip Log
| Notes | Actions |
|---|---|
|
We woke up early this morning and decided that we would break camp before people started coming by, and potentially discovering us in our campsite. Brent had devised a plan to avoid being completely eaten by mosquitoes - we would haul all of our stuff up the dike and load it there (after loading as much into the paniers within the tent as we could). Again I donned my "haz mat" suit to do this, and it worked pretty well. I said it had been the perfect random camping spot except for one thing... Brent said except for a hundred thousand little things. Brent was right.
We found our way down to the ferry, and lo... there were people camped at a small picnic area before the ferry, and more people random camped right at the ferry. D'oh! They probably had mosquitoes, but guaranteed not as many as us. That's when we discovered that the ferry doesn't start until 10AM on Sundays. It wasn't even 7:30AM yet. So, we had our "inferior breakfast" at the ferry (we had no proper groceries... it's been too hot to buy and carry real food... so breakfast was a power bar, some potato chips and a bit of chocolate) and contemplated what to do next. We decided since the west side of the Rhine is actually Germany here, there was no good reason to cross back, and we would cycle north on the west side of the river instead of crossing back. We'd aim for Speyer, which was about 40km up. We set out by going back through Leimersheim, where we discovered, to our dismay, a lovely little campground on the outskirts of town where we hadn't been yesterday. D'OH!! |
|
|
Due to our early start today, we made it to Speyer quite early. It's a nice city, with a very nice platz. We found the Tourist Info office and inquired about a Waschsalon (Laundromat) and a book store, and bought a map that shows areas north of Speyer (one of the maps we've been using ended at Speyer). Speyer doesn't have a Waschsalon... Germany has a surprising dearth of Laundromats - France had quite a lot of Laveries. I discovered that Mannheim has a Waschsalon, so we decided to make tomorrow a "short day" (we had planned on a rest day anyway) and we'd do a wash there.
Then we set out to find a place to stay. The first hotel we inquired at was full, but recommended their partner down the street. We had trouble finding the partner down the street, but we finally managed, and they had a million people lined up for something. I suggested to Brent that we return to the Info Center and use their internet to use Booking.com to book into something instead of randomly wandering around town. We returned to the Info Center, but they had closed at 2:00. Drat! I decided to try using their internet from outside their window anyway, and lo - it worked! I managed to book us a room, in the partner hotel as suggested. It's an amazing room that should be going for at least $100CAD/night, but we got it for well under that, and I'm assuming it's because it was a last-minute booking. YAY! Yay for Info Center internet, and yay for Booking.com! I booked us a place in Mannheim for tomorrow as well... I think the time has come for us to force ourselves to book ahead... busy season is here. |
|
| We are encountering nice German after nice German after nice German. I think the crankiness around Kehl was just an anomaly. Alle ist gut now. | |
| Gear talk: I am still wearing the "boob safe" every day. It is my bra with a couple of secret pockets in it. On one side I have Brent's credit card and my bank card (for our daily business, he uses his bank card and I use my credit card). On the other side I have my orthodontic appliance, which is essential gear for my life. I would die without it and I can't get a reasonable replacement. So I guard it well. | |
| Since we got to Europe, we have been outside a LOT. In towns and cities a LOT, and in Places and Platzes a LOT. We have yet to encounter a busker. What's up with that? | |
| We got a new cycle map today at the Speyer Tourist Info office. It shows a cycle route called the Welterbe-Radweg, which looked to go in the direction of Frankfurt, which the info desk lady confirmed. I thought, Eureka! Instead of having to go to Wiesbaden along the Rhine and then cut east, we could just take this other cycle route. Then, we looked into it further and it is a tour route of convents. I guess we'll give that a miss. | |
| I made a happy discovery today. All along I've been planning on taking EV 15 north to Wiesbaden, then figuring out a way to get from Wiesbaden east to Frankfurt. Today I looked at cycling from Mainz instead of Wiesbaden and discovered that there's another major cycle route, the Main river cycle route, which connects Mainz to Frankfurt! I don't have to figure anything out or worry about navigating scary scary traffic! We can lop a day off of our itinerary by leaving EV 15 at Mainz, and use a popular cycle route to get to Frankfurt! Yay! | |
|
Medical issues updates - Bubon Bob and Garry the Ganglion:
Bubon Bob (see my Happy Hollows blog to find out who Bubon Bob is) has responded incredibly well to being treated with moleskin. A couple years ago I'd tried moleskin as a remedy and it seemed to work, but I wasn't entirely sure. The cycling season ended soon after I started doing it, and then I stopped working on-site all the time, so I never did go back to commuting to work. Anyway, I had brought some patches of moleskin along thinking that they might help if the saddle sore returned, and it did a week or so ago. Putting moleskin on it started to work immediately. Brent and I aren't sure what Bubon Bob actually is. Brent thought some kind of aneurism. I thought maybe an angry hair follicle. It's just a tender bump. No change in skin color or anything. But moleskin is keeping it at bay. I have started to think that it's a "pinch injury". I think that when I'm riding, some of my motions tend to cause my skin to get pinched, which is causing Bubon Bob. Putting moleskin on it prevents the skin from being pinched - the moleskin takes the brunt of the abuse instead. Regardless of why it's working, I'm thrilled that it is working. When Brent and I did the Jasper to Banff trip a few years ago, Bubon Bob forced me to stop riding early, and I was afraid the same thing was going to happen with this trip, but I've found a way to manage him and keep on riding! Yay! Around the same time that Bubon Bob appeared, my old injury on my right foot started acting up as well. There was a lot of pain and swelling. After a couple of days, though, it had swelled up to it's "normal" ganglion size and stopped hurting. It is not getting better. It is not getting worse. The swelling is not going up or down. It does not hurt. It is just a bump on my foot, and hey... I've had that on and off, now, since I was 21. It doesn't seem that Garry the Ganglion is going to be an ongoing issue anymore than Bubon Bob will. Yay! |
Photos
-
Haz Mat!
Wearing my haz mat suit to pack up after random camping. On the left side of the photo, you can see down into the forest where we camped. On the right side of the photo is where the cycling/walking path is. -
Inferior breakfast
Brent eats his melted power bar and potato chips by the ferry -
Maximilion Strasse
A street off the main Platz in Speyer -
Enormous ice cream!
Brent had Schwarzwald (Black Forest) and I had After Eight (After Eight).