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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment