A weird kind of disappointment

So after riding a tiny bit of the German Wine Road yesterday, I was looking forward to riding more of it today. Except that I was riding west, and the wine country runs essentially north south. So while I thought I‘d be riding through something like Napa, I actually rode another five minutes in wine country before heading into the hills. Which, sadly, I didn‘t enjoy as much as I should have, considering I wanted to be riding through vineyards. Still though, it was pretty nice:

Quite nice. I would definitely not say that I didn‘t enjoy it, only that I didn‘t enjoy it as much as I should have, or ordinarily would have.

So you may recall my ride from yesterday, at 150km, and be wondering how the legs were. Surprisingly, they were pretty good. Slight fatigue, definitely less peak power available, but as far as the endurance muscles were concerned, it was “all systems mostly go“.

Definitely not a disappointment

My girlfriend comes from Saarbrücken, which was my destination for the day. I had planned to come through here to force her to introduce me to her parents. Kidding. It‘s on the way to Luxembourg, which now because of COVID, I have to skip. She‘s not coming because it‘s lightyears away from Berlin, so in the end, there‘s no real point for me to come here. Which is also true of everywhere else I‘ve been thus far :) It‘s a new place, and that‘s good enough for me.

Tangent over. My girlfriend, being local, had told me that the landscape up to about my halfway point would be really nice (true), but that the second half would be ugly (not true).

So while I was expecting beautiful wine country but got beautiful hill forests in the first half, I was expecting ugly, semi-agricultural semi-industrial blandness but got more forests and meadows in the second half. I thought I was getting vanilla ice cream in the first half, but got chocolate instead. I thought I was getting a shit sandwich in the second half, but it turned out to be chocolate instead. Win!

The ride