Into Eastern Europe

25 KPH tailwind, so quick ride and dead flat from Vienna to Bratislava.  

finally found a magnet that will work, so I've got power meter data again.  Please no comments on the pitifully small numbers.

Roughly the same distance as home in Boulder to work at University Hospital gets us from the capital of one country to the next, and indubitably from a Western European country to Eastern Europe with a history of Soviet style communism in the not too distant past.

Crossing the border, one gets to see the remnants of the border crossing, but it looks just like some old abandoned unusually shaped gas stations - otherwise, one would not notice a border.  But, then you look around  - especially after climbing the hill to the old castle - and having a good view - and there are lots of large, square, dull apartment buildings - unlike anything we've seen the last few weeks - but perhaps reminiscent of public housing from the eastern US (think Bed-Sty).  The windowboxes of geraniums have disappeared.  The paint is dull, and hasn't been renewed for a while.

The downtown area is a very nice pedestrian mall, lots of shops and outdoor cafes - more prominent English menus and signs, presumably related to a tourist clientele that is nearly all from out of the country.  English is the primary language of tourism - more so than France or Germany - with an especially fluent young woman at the frozen yogurt stand.

But as soon as you leave the tourist center, it degenerates to a rather gray area very quickly.

We're staying in a "Botel" - an old river boat converted to a hotel, floating on the Danube - quite nice to look out the window and see the river and the river traffic.

Slovakia is about 1/5th the area of Colorado, roughly the same population as Colorado.  Bratislava itself is a bit under 400,000 people.  You can imagine how hard it would be to maintain (in the modern world) a language and way of life for Colorado if it was a separate country and language from the rest of the US.  I find it interesting to try to wrap my head around comparable sizes of states in the US and countries in Europe.  

Apparently Bratislava was about 40% Hungarian and 40% German, only 15% of its population Slovakian, up until World War I.  After WW I, Bratislava became part of the new Checkoslovakia  ( all had been part of Austro-Hungary prior to the war), and all the Hungarians got kicked out.  After WW II, all the Germans got kicked out and now Bratislavia is 90% Slovakians.  Quite a shift.  

Tomorrow on to Hungary.

Laundry (and cycle traffic) in Vienna

Coin operated laundry seems to be a relatively rare event in the Euro cities where we looked for it.  Closest that we could find was 7 km away (Google maps didn't help, either).

So a bike trip through the city (with 15 kg on my back) taught me a bit about the bike lanes.  Better than Paris (trying, but everything in Paris is chaotic including the cycling).  Comparable to Freiburg (very good, but a small city, so easier).

Vienna is 2 million people, and pretty dense.  But, there are dedicated bike lanes in so many places - separated from the foot traffic and the motor traffic.  Lots of good markings, both in the lanes and on the poles.  Curbs that are sloped and rounded help remind you where you belong, but allow you to swerve or cheat around slow traffic without having to bunny hop.  Cyclists tend to be very observant of the stop lights - waiting even when there is no traffic around.  And, there are plenty of cyclist-specific stoplights, so you know when you are safe.  Turning traffic is remarkable in watching for and stopping for cyclists - it takes a little time to develop the faith that the very large vehicle bearing down on you is actually going to stop - which they do even when the cyclist is hesitant.

Makes cycle commuting pretty attractive and pleasant.

Oh, the laundromat was pretty high tech - central control panel where you controlled your washer, free detergent (none of this looking for correct change), and accepts bills to $20 euros.

I think I'm the only one who cycled to laundry, the subway was very convenient and a bit easier for carrying a large load.

Halfway: we're in vienna

We usually try to start riding early - especially with the current heat wave.

So, the sunrise over the river is pretty.

 Lots of dams with power generation, and with locks for the boats to get through.  Jean seems to have a fascination with watching those big long things slide in and out of the tight little channels.

Europe is more compact than North America:  houses are smaller, closer together (and that has the secondary effect that everything is closer together, so bike commuting is easier).  Closer together applies to the tent campgrounds.

 Lots of the bridges have spiral bikeways to get from the river level bike paths to the bikeways on the bridges.

Always seems to be at least one castle, or at least a humungous church, in view either on a hilltop or along the river.

 My image of Viennna is lots of large, ornate, old buildings - and there are plenty of those in the central area.  But, it's also a large, modern city with lots of skyscrapers and a space needle.

Rather neat reflections of the old buildings in the glass facade of a new building.

Wrong way on a bike path is apparently thought to be dangerous.

(BTW, as we use texting shortcuts, my favorite here is:  "8tung".

For you non-German speakers:  8=acht.  And achtung = attention, watch out.

..................

Did some riding alone the last few days:  gives some opportunities to meet locals that don't come up while riding with the group.

Met the "Academic Rowing Club" from Kiel in Germany:  bunch of retired professors who every summer spend a couple weeks rowing down a big river.  Some of them were doctors and lawyers, so after the obligatory switch from German to English so that we could actually understand each other, somehow degenerated into telling "lawyer jokes" - all except one (What do you have when a lawyer is buried in sand up to his neck?  Not enough sand.) were common to both sides of the Atlantic.

Met a guy and his 13 year old son who had driven from Cracow in Poland to Vienna (6 hour drive through 3 countries - try that in North America), took a boat to Passau, then were bicycling 3 days back to Vienna.  The boy's first 100 km day.  The man had spent 15 years working in Chicago, so had American English and the boy had been born in US - dual citizenship.

Yesterday, connected with a local bike rider going pretty fast.  Rather unusually, my German was better than his English - I think we agreed to take turns pulling, to go as fast as we could without vomiting or dying of heat stroke, and agreed that it was lots of fun.  But, with the conversation being in German, at high speed, with my heart rate meter off scale, I'm not really sure what we said to each other - but, we laughed a lot when it was all done.  I really was surprised at, when forced, how much German came back to me and how much we could talk.

Vienna appears to believe that there are only 2 musicians in the world:  Mozart and Strauss (Joe, not Rick).  They do make a deal of it and there is an amazing amount of kitsch available for sale.  Of course, we can't resist so will go to a concert tomorrow night at the opera house - the same hall as the New Years' eve concert with many of the same pieces.  Undoubtedly played by the 17th string players.

Another country

On to Austria.  Still speaking German, with a bit different accent and different phrases:  if a one-way street was OK for bicycles going the wrong way, in Germany it was a picture of a bicycle "frei."  Here, it seems to be bicycle "agenommen" - at least I think that's what it means.  (Or, maybe it means:  Bicycles going the wrong way will be shot."  Not sure.)

Camping in Europe is a bit different than the US.  Tonight's campsite has some roomier spots with a foot or two between tents, but generally 6 inches seems adequate.  No two groups speak the same language.

Started out the morning with beautiful, cool, foggy weather, but bake to searing heat by about noon.

Trying out my German continues to be entertaining:  ordered a chocolate ice cream sundae today, turns out that what I got was a crepe with ice cream and chocolate sauce - adventures in ordering and eating.

There are quite a few little ferries for taking bicycles (and sometimes 1 or 2 cars) across the river - if the ferry is on the other side there is a sheet of steel and a hammer for you to bang on to notify the boatman  to come and get you.  

We see quite a few flower farms that are honor system, cut your own:  big sign, a couple of knife's stuck in a slot at the bottom, and a can with a slot to put your payment in - in front of a field of flowers, gladiolas or irises or something like that.

Laptop in use, no pictures tonight.

The Danube gets bigger

Passau is a city of 50,000 where the Big D is joined by the Inn  river coming in from the South, the Swiss alps.  And by the Ilz a smaller river from the North - the combined effect doubles the volume of the Danube.  It's the last city before Austria, has the biggest organ in the world (I think they cheat, it's actually 5 organs but they can all be played from one console).  As in every city (and town) we've been to, the church is the biggest thing around,

This church is remarkable for the baroque interior - more sculpture, painting, and assorted curlicues jammed in to the space than any than we've seen.  It's just so, so, well, so baroque.

6 weeks ago the town was flooded - the downtown area had water well up into the second stories.  Rather remarkable how much has been cleaned up since then (including fresh gravel on the unpaved parts PDF the bike paths).  Although, some locals that we talked with - still trying out my 40 year old German - told us that the non- tourist areas are still pretty messy.  Lots of work still being done repairing levees.  Mud extends up 15 feet into the trees above our tent this evening.

The morning was spent riding In a broad flat valley, a few kilometers wide, but then it narrowed so that the hills came right down to the rivers edge.  Real pretty.

Finally a bit cooler today and a thunderstorm followed by light rain this evening.

This morning, riding out of town, there was a temporary pedestrian bridge while the permanent one was repaired.  Bike riders required to dismount, and a couple very nice - but very firm - police officers giving traffic tickets to those who didn't dismount.

On to Austria tomorrow.

A little Biergarten dancing

Just wandering around town and we stumbled on this party (allegedly a church outing - must have been the Church of Lotsa Beer).  There were even smaller kids dancing, but not as much fun.  And on some pieces a teenager playing the synthesizer along with the lady playing the accordion.

Some more pictures

 Pave and old buildings

 Colorful church steeples

 Back road with not a steeple in sight.  Unusual.  This is what a lot of the Danube bikeway is like.  Some sections are gravel roads - but those are quite smooth (though I'm glad to have 700x28 tires).  And, in towns, it's urban bikeways.

Towns are generally on quiet streets - usually with a church or castle in the backgrounds.  Typical houses with tiled roofs, small windows, whitewashed or painted stucco walls, and flower boxes.

Day Off, Good WiFI - Pictures

 Well, it wouldn't be the Danube (or any water in Europe) without swans.

 Can't ride too far, even through the fields, without a big church or a castle on the skyline.

 Ulm has an outdoor library, with beanbag chairs and hammocks for reading, along the river.

 Not all of the historical and cute places are big - this is a small river coming down through Ulm with a house as island init.  Wonder how much flood insurance costs?

 This is rather what the Danube is supposed to look like.  It actually does.

REGENSBURG

The last 2 days we went up one side river, crossed a ridge and down the Altmuhl River - had to go around the narrowest part of the Danube where cliffs go right down into the water, so no roads near the river.  Options are to ride away from the river as we did, or to take a boat down the river - that might have been interesting, but.....

The Altmuhl  goes through limestone Karst formations, and is part of a canal system that links the Danube to the Rhine - allowing barges to travel from the Black Sea to the North Sea and the Atlantic.  

The Altmuhl and the Danube are pretty lazy rivers here, and in some sections the powerboats, jet skis, and weekend assorted craziness appeared to resemble Florida and/or Lake McConaughy.  Close in to Regensberg, the banks of the river were lined with sunbathers, swimmers, etc. - rather like a 20 km long party beach.

We get a kick out of the ads for "Biergarten mit Kinderspiel Platz" - Beer Garden with kids playground. The ones we've seen appear to be built for getting wasted while your kids play on a McDonald's style play set right in the midst of the picnic tables.  

Stopped and watched some 8-9 year old boys soccer games today - no girls in soccer kit to be seen.

Saw surprising numbers of little kids - looked to be 6-7 - riding bikes with their parents, apparently touring, with panniers on their bikes.  Steady streams of cycle tourists going in both directions all day.

Regensburg is a world heritage site with particularly extensive and well preserved archeology going back 2000 years or so, with "newer" buildings only 1000 years old still being used.  As usual, a very large gothic cathedral, but lots of nice neat smaller churches and old residential and government buildings and the entire central city is automobile free except for taxis and deliveries.

Several clothing stores that sell only the local Bavarian specialty costums.  Cute.

More later.

A little detective work

Remarkably, no bike store that I could find in Ulm had a road bike derailleur.  And, the Shimano SLX that was the only 10 speed I could find has a different cable pull.  So, it takes 2 clicks of the shifter to move one gear - so, I have effectively 6 gears in the back (I can get all 10 gears if I pull the cable by hand, but that seems pretty impractical going up a big hill).  I'll try again for  a road derailleur in Regensberg, and again in Vienna - if I still can't find one, when we get back into the mountains in Romania, I'll just take up some extra slack in the cable and move my 6 available gears to the inside of the cogset.  

I still had the mental challenge of figuring out what happened.  The available data:

I had just come down a hill in the big chainring, shifted onto the small ring but instead the chain dropped inside the small ring onto the bottom bracket (not that uncommon an occurrence - just ask Andy Schleck).  I was able to just flick the lever back to the outside, and the chain went back up onto the big ring.  No problems.

As soon as I started to put pressure on the pedal again, I pedaled less than one full turn and there was an awful grating noise from the rear derailleur and the hanger and derailleur was toast.

After I converted the whole mess to a single speed and rode the rest of the way home, my power meter no longer gave any output readings of cadence or power output, although the Garmin still told me a power meter was connected and I could do a manual calibration.

That suggested to me that the power meter itself was still good, but that the magnet was missing so that the cadence reading was always zero - thus the power (force times cadence) was always zero even though the calibration was good.  Today, I looked, and indeed the magnet was missing, though the mount was still there.

So, here's what I think happened:  when I dropped the chain, it knocked the magnet loose.  The magnet then attached itself to the chain (I've done this before - these rare earth magnets can jump a couple inches and attache to the chain so that they are hard to get off).  When I pedaled, the magnet got sucked into the derailleur, jammed the derailleur, pulled the whole thing into the spokes, and turned the whole thing to toast.

Elementary,  my Dear Watson.

Today's ride was flat, not much of great interest (the usual pretty rural towns with pretty churches with interesting steeples) - which gave me plenty of time to work out the derailleur problem in my head.  Went out after the ride and did some intervals - but no power data.  Best I can tell is that I didn't quite vomit, so not quite as hard as they should be.

The Danube has now become quite a large river - more like what a major river should be - though not yet anything like Missouri/Mississippi size - but much bigger than something like the North Platte.  No shipping on it yet - that starts at Regensberg - 3 days from now.

Time for a nap.  No pictures today.

Later, folks.

More pictures

 Only 5 minutes until you can drink yourself silly, then get back on your bike.  That should work well.

 This is the Danube River just downstream from where the entire river disappears into a hole.  Only in the winter and spring is there enough flow to overwhelm the cave and spill over to keep flow going in the main channel.  The river comes back to life 12 km downstream.

 This is an "Art Noveau" church - from about 1900.  Very different stylistic features from anything else that we saw.

 Coming down from a hilltop walled city with a small church on a ridge.

Guess what, another church - pretty ornate.  Not sure when this one was built.  Probably not 1970.

Finally some real WiFi - here's some pictures

 Changing styles of church steeples as we head east in Germany

 Down into the valley of Munster.

 Strange paintings on altar - allegedly this is how bad it hurts when you get poisoned by the mold growing in the grain - before your hands and feet fall off.

 The whole church where your hands and feet fall off.

Just a house.

Who needs gears?

Down one hill, up the next, shifted from big to little ring - actually shifted from big ring to bottom bracket, screwed around a little to get the chain back up onto the big ring, put some power on and promptly shifted my rear derailleur into the spokes.  Fortunately, I've got a spare derailleur hangar along.  Unfortunately the hangar was in my bag in a truck - who knows where.  Along comes Lloyd - my hero - with a full-on geeked out bike, including a chain breaker and a master link.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten to wipe down my chain after lubing it last night, so the whole thing was a greasy mess, but when done, I had a very nice single speed bike - well, except for not having a chain tensioner and sort of being half a link off on correct tension, so a bit of slopping about.  Fortunately it wasn't a very hilly ride, but 70 or 80 km on a single speed wasn't my idea of a ride for the day.  The good news included guessing correctly on what gear to put the single speed on.  The bad news included the derailleur itself being banged up a bit, and the LBS having only a mountain bike derailleur to replace it - we'll see which works better tomorrow.

Fortunately, the accident happened after the short 24% grade hill.  Interesting and thankfully short challenge.

We're in Ulm - home to a church with the tallest steeple in the world - 530 ft.  Pretty neat.  (If there weren't churches to talk about, this trip would be a bit less interesting.  I'm curious as to what building all these ginormous buildings in the 11th through 14th centuries did to the local economies.  Did it suck out of productive economic activity, or did it serve to expand the economy much like the New Deal projects did during the Great Depression, and the infrastructure projects  of recent years that had no apparent direct economic use - bike paths, art, etc.)  Anyway, it's very large, very massive, and very interesting.

The bike paths here do seem to have an important economic purpose - in the cities they make bicycling quite a bit safer and attractive so that quite a bit of intracity travel, shopping, commuting seems to take place by bike (including lighting on bike paths, presumably to deal with the long dark winter nights for commuters).  And, there are large numbers of tourists traveling on the bikeway - some camping, some doing the B&B's, and some in hotels.  There are many hundreds of these tourists on the bike way - and ads for bike shops, cafe's, hotels that are supported by and support the bicycling tourist trade.

Walking home from dinner tonight, we watched a concert by an accordion orchestra - 23 accordions, a drummer, and a string bass.  Most accordions I've ever seen in one place.  Different.

Rest day tomorrow .

Day One Down the Danube

Day one on the Donau Radweg (bike path)- I kinda knew what it was like, but it was more like what it was than I thought it would be.  Huh?  I'm not sure what I just said.  Lots of it seems to be farm roads that are either really well graded gravel, or more commonly are old farm roads (or completely new trails) that are well manicured hardtop asphalt.  Through the fields, along the river, through forest, over an occasional hill, but generally unrelentingly slightly downhill (and in the afternoon, into the upriver winds).  When we hit a town, the route wanders through town, but rarely do we face significant traffic.  Plenty of ads for coffee, beer, bakeries along the trail - serving the cyclists seems to be a significant business.  Even saw a church for the "Radwegfahrers" (something like that) - bicycle tourists, I think.

We rode into some larger towns and found nice pedestrian malls, fountains for kids to play in, a driving school for kids (6-7 year olds in pedal cars on marked roadways with stop signs, stoplights, police officers - all seemed to be great good fun).  Found an "art noveau" church with ornate early 1900's (I think) art, statuary, marble columns, brilliant color mixtures.  Another church was very busy baroque/rococo, something ornate.

An old castle on top of a cliff that is now the most exotic Youth Hostel that I've ever seen.

Limestone cliffs, caves, and sinkholes - karst topography similar to, but less spectacular than, southern China.  The most  really cool feature is that the Danube River completely disappears into a series of sinkholes and the riverbed is completely dry (for about half the year, as it is now) for about 12 km, and then reappears.  Magic.

I continue to try my 40 year old German, generally to laughter followed quickly by demonstrations that all Germans speak far better English than I speak German.  A simple German question is usually replied to in English.  So sad.

Downhill from here - we're on the Danube

Today involved a 900 meter climb over a ridge from the Rhine River drainage into the Danube drainage.  After traveling upstream along a small river, the plan was to turn right, climb onto a ridge, and eventually drop down to Donaueschingen - the official beginning of the Danube.  Unfortunately, one group got lost - including Jean and turned left and onto a different ridge.  Now I know why I installed "Family Tracker" on our cell phones.  As it turned out, the route in error was a less steep climb and then contoured around the head of the valley and onto the correct ridge - added about 15 km, but turned a climb with lots of 13 and 14% grades into a longer and much more gradual climb - a great advantage for many of our riders.  I got in a little extra climbing by going looking for Jean - down my side of the valley, back up the other side, and around the top of the valley back to where I started - an extra 50 km and 1000 meters of climbing - but the alternative route went through a number of little towns with pretty churches and good ice cream.

We've got bikes ranging from a couple road bikes, a few cross bikes with road tieres (including mine), some really "geeked out" touring bikes - seem to be popular with the engineering set (I'd never before seen a steerer tube top cap that was a coffee cup holder), and a number of hard tail mountain bikes.
I think only one other tracking on Strava, some really extensive blogging.

Lots of large hawks with forked tails soaring around today - pretty low over the ridges and swooping down to pick up small somethings.  The towns the last few days have had plenty of storks, and some of those were poking around the fields today.

We rode through the Black Forest today, miles of evergreen forest - very dense canopy and shaded floor, but plenty of room between the trees for looking around.

Finally down to the Danube at its source (though there is some construction going on, and a large sign stating that "the source of the Danube is being moved" - how do you do that?).  I guess it'll be pretty flat until we leave the Danube (Donau in German) in Romania.

I haven't used my high school and college German in about 45 years - I seem to get lots of laughs from the locals when I try, and if it gets too bad, they rescue me by speaking fluent English.  One of the guys crashed and got stitched up today in the local ER by a Doctor who had gone to high school in South Dakota.
Again, no wifi, so my photos are stuck in limbo on my laptop.  Maybe tomorrow I can figure out how to bluetooth them to my iPad.  My camera to iPad cable is at home - might be worth $25 bucks to buy one if I can find one here.

117 km riding, 1940 metrs climbing.

Aaaagh. The Internet.

Freiburg is a wonderful city, and great bike trails and bike lanes on roads (or roads labeled as primarily for bicyclists - I think - Fahrradenweg), and intersections labeled with suggested bicycle routes to towns and cities.

But, although we're in a fancy hotel, and paying a lot for internet, can't sign in easily and when I do sign in had to wait for about 15 minutes to load Strava home page, but then couldn't stay connected long enough to load my ride file.  So, this is over a very expensive cellular data link - and therefore very, very short.  And, haven't had a chance to load any of the stuff I've written in the past 4 days - poor internet connections at campgrounds.

no photos - they're on the laptop and I can't load them onto ipad.

So, not much from here.  Will try again later.

Internet was definitely better in China, but the German food is better in Germany.

Watching Mount Ventoux in German - can't understand much except when I heard "Peter Sagan" and "wheelie" in the same sentence.  (Froome just rode away from Contador - "unglaublich"!)

Riding from France into Germany, funny little things that get noticed:  very organized Germans all ride single file on the  bike paths - French formed armadas that wobbled all over the place.

In France, hard to find your way on the bike paths - in Germany, so well labeled and laid out, hard to get lost.  Architecture in France was ornate, beautiful, dramatic - in Germany, pretty, neat, well-tended.  Interesting change of cultures in a short way.

More later if I ever get decent internet.

Into the hills

After a few days of riding through relatively flat to barely rolling, with big fields of grain, beets, and vineyards and towns with big gothic cathedrals, the terrain has changed.  More forests interspersed with smaller fields - mostly growing hay, some alfalfa for the cattle.  Lots of cattle (Carolais - look like Palomino horses, or maybe somebody had a terrible accident with a bottle of bleach).  Small farms, very small villages.

Into the Vosges Mountains - rather gradual climbs, but in steep sided valleys.  The Vosges are formed as the western side of the Rhine plain.   The Rhine (for the geology bluffs) Valley here is a graben - a flat plain about 50 km (30 miles) wide with geologic faults on either side - pretty steep walls to the valley.  But, the slope down away from the valley is pretty gradual, and that's what we're climbing.  Tomorrow we'll finish the climb to the top, then drop down into the flat Rhine valley and 2 days from now ride across the flat valley.

Riding today was through small farms and higher up the valley through beautiful, dark, shaded mixed conifer and deciduous forests - reminiscent of areas of New England, or of Oregon coastal range - but with smaller trees.

We'll ride into Munster - a French town, not the better known German town which is far to the north. Munster cheese is named for the French town, not (as I had long thought) for the German city.

The Vosges Mountains are in the area of Alsace-Lorraine.  It is an area where towns that spoke German were intermingled with French-speaking towns.  In 1870, the Germans won a war and took over Alsace-Lorraine and kicked out as many French as the could.  In 1918, the French took it back - guess what they did.  In WWII, Hitler used Alsace-Lorraine as an example of the evil of the French - and used that as a way to whip up a little militaristic fervor  (seems to have succeeded).  Germany never annexed the area, though the controlled it during most of WWII, and now it's back to French - though we're seeing more and more German sounding towns, and German names on streets (and one of our fellow riders poinnted out, at our campground German style unisex bathrooms and shower rooms  - doors on the showers, much to the girls' delight).

Yesterday was supposed to be the longest day of the tour - 130 km.  I managed to get lost with a group in the morning and added an extra 25 km, then get lost with Jean in the afternoon and added another  10 km or so - managed to get in a nice century ride.

Sorry, unable to load any new pictures today.

The dark, doping underbelly of music

Ate lunch with some musicians and (being cyclists) had to talk about doping.  Learned about the dark underside of the music world - beta blockers to prevent stage fright among musicians.  Learned that it was most prevalent among wind players - if they make a mistake it stands out far more than among string players who can hide in amongst all those other violinists.

But, turns out that the most common performance "enhancer" is not beta blockers (propranolol), but good old alcohol - despite all the problems of potential for taking a bit too much and making a royal ass of yourself.

Police on rollerblades at the Louvre!  Sweet.  I wonder if they play roller blade hockey among the statuary, after the crowds go home in the evening.

A stroll around the Luxembourg Gardens was great for flowers, outdoor sculpture, and people watching (and surreptitious photography):

Out of Paris

2 days ago we "convoyed" out of Paris - quite a challenge taking 25 people and keeping them together through the twists and turns and traffic lights of Paris (and the broken glass - 2 flats just getting out of town).  Then on through some very uninteresting suburbs and on to a campsite at Chenoise.  A small enough town that the only thing that Wikipedia has to say about it is that it's "inhabitants are called Chenoisiens."

OK - 'nuff said.

Rode yesterday through the town Provins - it has an old medieval (as opposed to a young medieval??) walled city, moats, drawbridges and towers.  And, people still living in the old houses - including a woman sitting in her open window smoking.  How very French.

The big church in town was started in the 1100's but by 1400 only had the front half finished, so they just bricked over the big arches, put in a door and called it good.  I wonder if the contractor had any late completion penalties to pay.

In the category of looking for stuff we don't see at home:  there are signs - especially in the cities that basically lay out "hand-holding" zones for little kids - a blue sign with an adult and child walking along without hands held denotes areas where there aren't traffic or other objective dangers.  The same sign with a red diagonal line through it denotes the areas where holding your kid's hand is a good idea.

Riding yesterday was through pretty flat terrain - I guess you could call it rolling, but the rollers were nothing like we think of - just barely perceptible rises and fall in the terrain.  Though, I accumulated 500 or so meters of climbing during the day, it would be hard to tell where the vertical gain came from.

Fields of wheat, barley, corn, sunflowers (flowers not out yet), sugar beets, and hemp (no Maui Zowie that I could see - all grown for textile fiber.  Such a waste).

Today was a rest day, so I did what I usually do on a day off and went for a ride and found CHAMPAGNE.  We're in the Champagne-Ardennes region, but hadn't found any vineyards yesterday.  On today's ride, I found a ridge of low hills (500 foot climb up to the high point, and on all the southerly facing slopes were vineyards - including on remarkably steep slopes with machines that looked like big bugs going up and down over the vines on slopes that were steep enough that they'd be good blue slopes at a Colorado ski resort.  I was really surprised that the machinery could be used on something that steep - especially since the machines have to be quite high to fit over the vines, and yet pretty short wheelbases to make the sharp turns at the end of the rows.  The machines look like something out of a bad science fiction movie.

The local cathedral here in Troyes (pronounced TWAH - not sure how you get there) is dedicated to some saint who got tortured by the world's largest nipple clips.

I presume that by the end of this tour you'll be tired of seeing pictures of us riding through narrow winding streets with old buildings, often tilting precariously, and large old chateaus and churches in various states of disrepair.  Here's today's batch:

We see lots of old buildings (one in Troyes from the 900's) with "Normandy style" or "half-timbered" style construction.  I found a wall that was partly deteriorated so that you can see what's inside the wall.

If you just made a square out of wood, it would be easily deformed from 90 degree angles - but, if you add a diagonal timber, it's harder to knock it out of alignment (last time I helped build Habitat for Humanity houses, we did the same thing but used a steel angle iron as the diagonal - slotted into grooves cut into the 2x4's of the main framing).  Then, between the parallel upright timbers are short crosspieces that are cut a bit longer than the space into which they fit - so that they can be wedged into place - presumably with no nails to hold them in position.  Then, fill all the spaces with mud and you have a Normandy style home that you would pay extra for the decorations in an American Suburb.

Housing prices:  Looks like a fairly run-of-the-mill small house - 100 square meters = 900 square feet for about 700,000 Euros - roughly $800,000 at current rates.  Wow.

More later on Gothic construction techniques.

Emergency Medicine Rouen

Got to visit the ER at Rouen with Nicholas - a few random observations.

340 patients per day average (recently had 489 in 24 hours!  Yow!).  Plus another 40,000 per year at pediatrics next door, and 15,000 per year at the OB/GYN hospital a block away (If seen at OB/GYN and turns out not to be gyn - after the pelvic done - they're transferred by ambulance over to the main ER.)  And a separate ophthalmology ER - not sure how many they see.  (I recall from Nepal, that Nico was surprised that we had some ophthalmology skills - like using a direct ophthalmoscope - that weren't part of general medicine in France).  3000 inpatient beds.  In summary:  BIG!

Oh, I forgot - there's also a 22 bed observation unit staffed by 2 ER MD's.  Keep in OBS up to 48 hours.

The main ER has 5 attendings and 9 residents during the day, and 3 attendings and 5 residents at night - 10 hour shifts. If you do the math, the throughput is pretty high.  The attendings tend to see the sickest patients with a resident, and to turn the crank on the least complex to keep things moving.  The residents see those in between with no online attending oversight.  YOYO.

The main ER is 69 beds plus a number of triage beds, and sometimes hallway beds (which are counted as inpatient beds for billing purposes - you move to a hallway bed to be "admitted".  Proves that the US doesn't have a monopoly on stupid accounting procedures in medicine.)

Like University Hospital, on the electronic tracking board a red "stop" sign appears when a patient has been in the ER long enough that a disposition should be considered.  But in Rouen it's at 6 hours, rather than at 2 hours.  That must mean something, but I'm not sure what.

A quick scan down the board shows a preponderance of 2-3-4 hour length of stay.

A casual glance around shows differences in the physical space:  most beds don't have monitors, no beds have TV's to keep the patients amazed and amused, the whole space looks old and not very bright and cheery by US standards.  There's not much privacy for patients - get to say "Bonjour" to everyone as you walk by.  Far less in the way of creature comforts (though they do have pillows).  Less technology - paper charts instead of electronic, x-rays on film rather than digital, and only one old ultrasound machine.

Those working at University will appreciate:  small rooms, cramped spaces generate a lot of sound damping.  It's quiet!  You can hear people talk in a normal voice without listening in on other conversations, and being assaulted by bells, and sirens from all over the giant hangar!  Nice.

All the staff wear white - nurses, Docs, everyone that I saw.  None of the hierarchy of colored scrubs.  (Sadly, no nursing caps.)

The CT scanner does about 55 studies per day - 2/3 for the ER - the rest for ICU.  That seems to be about 10% of patients get scanned, a bit less than half of the percentage that we scan.

The ED does a patient satisfaction survey every 3 years (!) and reports 91% favorable rating (take that Press-Ganey).

The most interesting difference:  the communication centers.  The European version of 911 is 112.  Calls come in to a center where they get triaged to police, fire, medical.  Medical is then picked up by a technician and in some cases turned over to a Doctor who staffs the call center - 2 in the day, one at night.  The doctor can give advice, send a transport only basic rig, or send a rapid response car including a doctor and nurse along with the transport ambulance (the doctor and nurse also staff inter-hospital critical care transfers).  The doc/nurse combo then stabilizes and hops in the transport rig for the trip to hospital.  There is also a PCP communication center !!!!! whose doctor can give advice, ask for EMS help, or arrange a same day clinic appointment at the nearest available clinic.  That seems just too reasonable to work in the US.  Well, maybe Kaiser.

There's a backup disaster comm center - staffed full time during the million visitors for the "tall ships" gathering a couple weeks ago.

I've noticed that in Paris, for a large city, there are relatively few ambulance sirens - I'm guessing that if an MD triages the call, then most ambulance transports are not lights and sirens to the scene which should cut down sirens by 90% or more compared to the US system of all EMS calls get a lights/sirens response and then most get a routine trip to the hospital since most EMS calls aren't time critical emergencies.  Way cool, and nice for the auditory environment.

I only spent an hour or so at the ER, and saw so much of interest, I need to go back sometime and spend a few days just following cases through to see how the system functions.

It seemed in a very brief run through to be much more oriented to functionality, and less to high tech, less to hardware, and less to creature comforts.  Wonder how much is choice, social expectations, and how much is flat out budgetary constraint.

Gotta come back some day.  Nicholas:  thanks for the tour!  I'm kinda hoping to have a nice bike crash while I'm here - to test the system personally.  (Not!)

Help! We lost the "R"!

We were called and asked to help solve a mystery:  Where did the "R" in go in Rouen.  They lost it many years ago and have been forced to call the city "Hoo-Awn" - ever since.  We looked, and looked, and still - no sign of the "R".  The unfortunate people of France will still be forced to pronounce the name of the place:  "Hoo-Awn."  I'm so sorry.   (The problem is widespread, as Patrick  Roy (Wah), new coach of the Colorado Avs, will tell you.)

Nicholas Peschanski is a friend with whom we worked in Nepal a few years ago - now an ER Doc in Rouen.  We stayed with him and his wife, Isabelle, overnight and with his 2 kids Lila (6 years) and Thylen (3).  The kids were sooooooo much fun and we had a blast with them, even though we didn't share a language, we played and giggled, and walked around the old town, and perhaps the highlight of the day when they both gave us a kiss goodnight.  It was just amazing too me, how much we could communicate, and how well we could get along without sharing any actual words - although Lila did teach me to count in French.  We learned that Lila, when hearing that English-speaking visitors were coming, had made Isabelle promise to translate everything that we said.  I think Isabelle came pretty close to keeping the promise.

A sidelight, when counting on your fingers here, you start with your thumb being "one", and continuing from there so that "four" is a thumb plus 3 fingers.  If you try to hold up just your index finger, foks get confused.  Such a simple little concept that is different in 2 languages and cultures.

Back to Rouen - it's a good sized city, a million plus people that is the head of deep water navigation on the Seine, and the biggest grain shipping port in Europe.  It was reportedly 45% destroyed in World War II - though most of the destruction was on the left bank where the industry was and much of the old city was spared, though some of the old stone buildings still have scars in the walls, from bullets.

We walked through the beautiful narrow streets with old Normady architectural style - wooden beams running horizontally, vertically, and diagonally with the spaces between beams filled with plaster.  None of the walls are actually vertical - the city is built on swampy gound, and the buildings settle into the ground and with buildings being 500-600 years old, they are quite crooked.

The oldest clock in Europe was recently restored - looks to be about 10 feet square, and has lots of real gold on it.

A recent visit of the "tall ships" - the old sailing ships, brought more than a million visitors to the city.

If you've ever had any sterotypes of French folks carrying around baguettes and eating them, they're true!  As we walked, Isabelle ran into a bakery, bought a big long baguette.  The kids nibbled on the ends, while we tore off pieces of the delicious, still warm bread, and nibbled our way down the streets.  Looking at displays of photographic art mounted along the walkways.  (By the way, even more stereotypical, while walking in Paris, there really were guys standing on the bridges and playing  the accordion - songs that made you want to cry, and that could have been from a Goddard movie from the 60's.)

A few sights I'm not used to:  violin repair shops.

Paris! Is like, well, Paris.

It's really strange.  Paris is like all the caricatures that I've ever seen.  There are guys on the bridges playing accordion music that makes me want to cry and sound like it's out a 1950's movie - ? Goddard, "A Man and a Woman", stuff like that.  There are cafes everywhere - especially on the left bank - I keep expecting to see Communists or existentialists or philosophers.  Wine is cheaper than water - at dinner tonight a small bottle of Evian was 3.70, but a glass of Reisling was 3.60.  Most of the other white wines by the glass were 4.20, but a glass of coke was 4.30 - no wonder there are so many painters here (though, now that I think about it I haven't seen any painters yet - I guess that's pretty un-Parisien).

Our hotel is on a canal and in the evening there are numerous little groups (10-15) sitting and partying around large numbers of wine bottles.  The more active ones are playing bocce or something like it, but on hard packed, bumpy dirt - seems to make it so the intoxication is less noticeable since the roll of the balls is totally unpredictable anyway.

Evening is an inclusive term - we're far enough north that it's still pretty light out at 11:15  (48 deg north latitude compared to 42 in Boston and 40 in Boulder).


Trip over was frighteningly uneventful - check-in took about 38 seconds, the flight was straightforward (though I didn't sleep well), the bags and bikes all arrived in Paris with us - and undamaged as best I can tell (though I haven't built Jean's bike yet).  The gods may be saving the worst for later.


The most interesting sight on the way over was a little girl - 4 or 5 years old - who was blind, and running around in the airport, with her seeing eye cane with a plastic ball on the end so that it slid along more easily, running, fast, unconcerned about consequences, with Mom looking on and occasionally trying to get some sort of control - but, appearing to realize that she was beaten and there was no hope.  The kid seemed to take great pleasure in running on the moving walkways and trying to guess, with the help of the cane, when she was going to hit the end of the moving belt and trying to keep her balance as she blasted onto the not moving floor.  Never saw her fall doing it, but the gyrations were interesting, and the look of alarm on Mom's face was even more interesting.

There's a lot of people here (12 million at a per mile density about 5 times as high as NYC - 54,000 per square mile), plus 40 million tourists per year.  Jean and I have been playing a game:  spot someone on the street and try to guess what language will come out of his or her mouth.  I'm lucky if I guess right 40% of the time.  Although, often some of the real classic Parisien types actually do speak French and appear to be locals.  (It was rather bizarre to have one of the classic French accordion players looking the part except for the NYC baseball cap.)

The Eiffel Tower really is pretty cool, in a strange sort of way.  There's a restaurant there where dinner starts at 220 Euros (about $250 USD).  Jean and I didn't check out the menu - went looking for somewhere with more character.  The lines were so long that we didn't think of going up into the tower.

Went for a short ride today.  Bike path along a canal.  Canals are really, really flat.  I haven't done anything that flat ever before (well,bowling) only altitude change was a couple pedestrian bridges back and forth over the canal.  Pretty urban ride - walkers, baby strollers, skateboards, slow - never been on a bike before - wobbling riders, commuters with hi vis vests lights bells horns, and faster riders weaving in and out among each other.  Multi colored, multi racial, multi lingual - quite a few languages that I didn't recognize (Canadian?  and maybe others).  Did I mention, flat!

No pictures yet, I could write for days and we haven't started yet.

Later.