The information is also a bit spotty at first, because I wasn't recording the details for the first few days.

We're back! We even made it out of the Frankfurt airport without too much hijinx. Admittedly, we did make a false start and come to a dead end in less than 1/10 mile, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing. When we got here, we stopped at this pizzaria for lunch, but then a woman named Connie recommended a pizzaria "nur funf minuten" (only five minutes) from here. So we went there. It was closed, of course. Dianna, the proprietor there suggested another pizzaria for us also "nur funf minuten" away. So we went there. It was not open. It was a bit of a hole anyway, so we decided to head back to the original place (here). I had a lovely spaghetti napoli. Ah.

N 49 26.704 E 8 53.854

A good day's riding. We didn't start 'til after 8:30 am. We woke up around 4:00 am and could have had Früstuck (breakfast) at 7:00, but Bill had told the woman we wanted breakfast at 8:00 for some nutty reason.

There are lots of cute little towns along the Neckar.

We made it to Frankenbach by 3:00 - just in time. Bill was fretting that we would be late again (last year we arrived ten minutes later than he said we would). We had some nice riding along the Neckar today - there are some lovely bike paths along the river.

We got here yesterday at around 7:30 pm after a long day of riding, completely drenched by the rain. Esslingen is about 300 KM from Franfurt airport, where we arrived on Monday morning. We're at the internet cafe (it's called "Cafe.com" but its url is www.cafecom.de) in Esslingen. (Esslingen is relatively wired - it has two internet cafes, while many bigger towns have none.) It's about 2:00 pm now, but we came to this cybercafe this morning at 10:30 and I worked on CycleThere.com and checked my email while Bill did similar things. It is more difficult to work on these things here, since I can only use vi over telnet (ftp is disabled) and I have to work on a funky German kezboard.
[footnote Sept. 12: I discovered the root of much of my troubles, I used the machine Bill had been using and left him to use the one I had. Before long, he was complaining about the keyboard! It has all kinds of strange behaviors, like the caps lock coming on of its own accord. Heh, heh. When I was sadled with that machine, I wondered why Bill seemed to be cruising along so well when I was having so much trouble... Now Bill has moved upstairs where there are some more machines.]
I'm updating the pictures page today. I probably won't be able to get a lot of fancy stuff on the CycleThere page 'til I get home.

I had a bit of a bike wreck today when Bill cleverly tricked me into riding in a direction that would allow him to catch me off balance. He pulled off his plan flawlessly: I said, "shall we go this way or that way?" to which he he quickly replied "this way", but then headed that way. As I was already heading this way, he was able and cut me off, catching my front tire with his back and sending me spinning to the pavement. I was somewhat displeased with the result, initially, but had to congratulate him on the overall execution of the plan, afterward.

Another brilliant aspect of his plan was the built-in alibi. He claimed that this way was that and vice versa.

From now on, I say "shall we go to the right here, or to the left?" Of course, I'm sure he is already preparing a new plan in which he says "I thought you meant to the right coming from that direction." I guess the safest thing to do is to stay in front and not ask any questions.

I wanted to make progress on the road today, so when Bill said he only wanted to look around on the outside of the castle and then hit the road, I quickly concurred.

However, thereafter, for some inexplicable reason, Bill bought tickets for the hour-long guided tour.

Once the tour had started, figuring I'd be getting bored (my German was still pretty rusty and I'd not be understanding 99% of the German history lesson that was being given), I decided to go back outside to my bike where I could read my book or write in my journal.

Much to my chagrin -- nay, shock, the tour guide locked the door before the tour began. I was trapped. (Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage).

I was antsy because I "had that progress bee in my bonnet" -- I wanted get some miles on the odometer. Fortunately, the tour was interesting and it was nice to be inside, away from the gnawing cold winds, shuffling around with 30-odd school children in fuzzy slippers looking at ancient artifacts and listening to gibberish.

Eventually, the tour wound around to its end, we were allowed to take off our fuzzy slippers and we were set free (Free, free, set them free). Unfortunately, the cold winds had very patiently waited for us and were still there to eagerly reclaim us.

Later in the day, we stopped in Geislingen for groceries. We stood and consumed a lunch of cold yogurt and granola in front of the store while the icy winds ate at our knuckles. No wimpy warm cafe lunch for us! Not because we are so tough, of course, but because we were unable to locate a cafe.

My pedal crank had been clicking and grinding for several days and I wanted to deal with it before we got to the Alps. I had been keeping my eye out for a bike shop and therefore had noticed a bike shop across the street.

It was called "P. Shlecht." In English, that is "P. Lousy" or something along those lines. At least it wasn't "P. D. Schlecht," then I'd have been even more concerned.

Despite the name of the shop, I decided to take my chances there. The hope of making any meaningful milage today was already shot, anyhow.

Bill rode around on a unicycle while I got bike repaired. The "P. Schlecht" people were very nice and thorough, but the project ate up much more time than I imagined it would. When the sun met the horizon, we had not covered much more ground.

C'est la vie -- Oops, I mean Das ist das leben, or some such idiom.

Perhaps we didn't count many miles, but we did get a decent workout. Today's ride was very hilly, windy and cold, with a smattering of rain. Often we had very strong headwinds and side-winds, which makes for hard work (if you've always travelled by auto, you have no idea how much effect wind can have on such a trip). The chilly winds were often strong enough to cause our bikes to swerve wildly (or was that the Hefeweizten? Nah.).

There was one point where we had a nice strong wind at our backs, which helped us along at a good clip. I think we both continued along, enjoying our good fortune, ignoring the nagging feeling that it was too good to be true. The rain was cold and the wind was strong; it was so much more satisfying to ride away form its clutches than into them. Naturally, we were travelling in the wrong direction. Eventually we had to to stop, turn around and face reality. And the wind.

Toward the end of the day, we came to a T in the road. Geislingen to the left, Rosenfeld to the right A strong, cold right-to-left wind blowing. Ominous storm clouds crouching on the right, ready to spring upon us.

We bravely chose Geislingen. (Rosenfeld was more along our route toward Mulhouse).

We set out for our chosen destination.

Later we ended up backtracking to Rosenfeld, naturally.

We couldn't find a place to stay in or around Freiburg because of some "Handwerk" conference, so we continued on until we found a gasthof with an available room in Gunterstal.

We found this place where we can use the internet in Freiburg, so we thought we'd do some email- checking and page-updating before moving on to Mulhouse, France.

At dinner, Bill was scolded for commiting a most heinous faux pas:
Casually snatching a piece of baguette from the plate, he contentedly began to chew thereon. Valérie (our French host) was aghast. She informed him that he was breaching etiquette; you must use the bread to move around some food on your plate before you eat it. I remarked what an uncouth Barbarian Bill was, as I suavely demonstrated my mastery of etiquette by dabbing at my quiche with my piece of bread.

Here in France, as we are mostly visiting, we are not riding much. On Monday, the riding will commence and we will then be riding into the Alps. From what we have heard, we may be seeing some snow! And I forgot my snow chains!
After the Alps we will have to check our progress and decide what route to take at that point. We want to see Innsbruck, Murnau, Munich and Prague before returning to Frankfurt to catch the plane, but it may be a stretch...

On the way back, Bill did what he could to get into the good graces of the French police by helping them push-start their car.

We decided to stop back in Freiburg (rather than get in the minimum 100 KM - perhaps we were just being lazy? In any case we got a late start and were not making fast progress, so it wasn't looking like a record-breaking day), since it was somewhat along our path toward Innsbruck and we knew we could access the internet here.

Valérie was very kind to put us up (and put up with us) for four nights out of five in Alsace. We stayed with Francis and his wife Anita for one night.

We finally got some nice weather today. It was the first day in a long while that we were able to manage the whole day without rain gear. Bill got not one, but two flat tires today. The second was because he had a twist in the tube from when he replaced it the first time.

We also did a great deal of climbing today, about 1000 meters worth, I think. The weather was cold, rainy and foggy, but it was still a nice invigorating ascent into the mountains. We stayed at Gasthof Wasmer, which was a very nice and friendly end to our strenuous day.

We took a ferry across the Bodensee from Kontanz to Meersburg, where we stayed for the night.

The Swiss phones have touch tone. In Germany, where the public phones are all pulse, you always have to wait and wait for the operator to come on, so you can tell them your calling card number and the number you want to call. I guess they still haven't decided to upgrade the system to 70's technology, yet.

Overall, we made great progress for the day, considering the amount of climbing we had. This is the point in the trip where all the previous training has had a good effect and we can scale vertical slopes for hours on end without breaking a sweat. Well, almost.

The Pizzaria Italia here had the best Tortellini in Brodo I've yet had. We also got a complimentary Amaretto after dinner, which was quite tasty.

There were a few twists in this year's return plane trip. We arrived at the Frankfurt airport the day before our 10 am flight because we wanted to make sure we had time to pack up our bikes before the flight. Arriving at the airport, we found the American Airlines desk, where there no less than four women working (it appeared that one was being trained). The first woman we talked to was reluctant to be helpful, but we finally persuaded her to see if they had any bicycle boxes available for us to purchase. However, as she got up to go check, her path was blocked by another, who adamantly insisted that there were no boxes available and that we should have pre-reserved boxes (I guess that means we should have reserved them before reserving them. I don't when we were supposed to have done this. It was never mentioned to us by the airline or travel agent before this point. Of course, they prefer to tell you these kind of things when it is too late to be of any use.). We grew weary of the excessively discouraging attitude and lack of helpfulness of these people, so Bill went to the end of the counter where there was another AA employee and asked him about bike boxes. Less than five minutes later we had the boxes. Sheesh! I think that guy was a younger employee and had not yet mastered the art of "be useless rude and discouraging until the customer goes away so you don't have to actually perform any work." Fortunately! It is not like we have a lot of other options. We have bikes. We have a 10 am flight the next day. These are the facts. Were they hoping we would just take our bikes as carry-on luggage?

There's more. We could have left our boxes there and packed in the morning, but now we were paranoid that if we didn't take them now we might not get them in the morning (even though the guy had stapled a note with "sold" on it to the boxes). We decided to pack the bikes and put them in "kept luggage" overnight. We got the boxes and borrowed tape and scissors from the AA counter. (I want to stress that it was abundantly clear that we would now pack up our bikes for the next day's flight).

Being the practical chaps we are, we had an economical lunch of musli & yogurt, a banana and a brotchen (a small bread-roll) while we sat on the not-yet-unfolded bike boxes admid an array of panniers, tape, bikes other odds and ends. This seemed to provide an enormous amount of entertainment for the passing travellers in the airport: pretty much without exception, everyone who passed stared at us and continued to stare over their shoulder after passing. Bill hypothesized that they were all simply jealous seeing us eat our delicious 4-Deutsch Mark lunch, as they had spent 20 or more Deutsch Marks for a heartburn-inducing ball of greasy airport grub.

One fellow even stopped to blabber at me in high-speed Spanish for about two minutes. I couldn't even remember how to say "no habla Espanol," so all I could do was grunt and look perplexed. (Which, some would argue, is about all I can ever do.) Even if I could speak Spanish fluently, I probably wouldn't have known what gate he should go to to catch his flight. This is one of the problems you face when look exactly like Antonio Bandaras. I would imagine.

We arrived the next morning, retrieved our packed and taped boxes from the kept luggage and brought them with us to check in. Now we were told that we had to reopen our boxes so that all the contents could be individually x-rayed. Of course, they could not have told us about this the previous evening when we were packing. This was all getting a little nerve-wracking, as time before take-off was waning. Had we known that the entire bike box could not be x-rayed (as has always been done before), we would have arrived earlier in the morning and we would have left our boxes open. Fortunately, we were able to jump through these hoops and still make onto the plane. So it was an exciting and challenging trip home. Since neither Bill nor I are too high-strung, we managed to get make it home without getting bent out of shape (which is more than we can say about the bikes, sometimes!).