My tour is over. I‘m not sure when exactly it happened, but I managed to absolutely trash my rear rim:

(in case it isn’t obvious at first glance, look at where the spokes join the rims…not good)

I have a guess how it happened. Some of the cycle paths are on raised curbs, and thus at intersections and such have the traditional curb cutouts which are typically level with the road to allow bikes or wheelchairs to seamlessly access the paths. Only, some of them are not level with the road, instead sticking up an inch or two. And these nasty little curbs have caught me by surprise on fast descents on two occasions, each time leading me to smash my rear wheel (can pick up the front wheel but can‘t bunny hop with the luggage). I never heard a crack and never pinch-flatted, so I didn‘t think to check the rims. After my wheel went increasingly wobbly yesterday, my first action post ride was to get it back into alignment. Which is when I saw the damage. Fuck.

Faced with a choice

With a wasted wheel, I could either try to get a new one locally and finish the tour, or just sacrifice the remaining 200km and head back to Berlin. Option 1 would be tricky, because the nearest bike shop was 25km away. Option 2 would feel so unsatisfying, like giving up.

So I resolved to do two things: First, to get drunk to celebrate my misfortune. Cheers. Two beers and I was gone haha. Second, to explore the possibilities of getting a replacement wheel. In that vein, I did some research and found a couple of shops that sold MTBs or gravel bikes (only hope for finding my wheel size). Given that yesterday was Sunday, nothing was open, and unfortunately one of the shops wasn’t open today (Monday) either. The most promising shop opened up at 9am Monday, so I gave them a call at 8.55. No answer. Then at 9.20. No answer. Then 9.35. Again no answer.

I had checked the train schedule to get back to Berlin, and the only window in the next 3 hours was closing. So that was it. Decided. I wasn’t going to keep trying for a hail mary when the reward was going to be a few hundred kilometers of known (and not necessarily the most beautiful) territory. The end of the road. No triumphant return into Berlin past the Victory Column and through the Brandenburg Gate (we’ll pretend that Hitler didn’t have the same idea). Instead, a train of shame, sitting next to my broken bike in front of the toilet, symbolic of how my grand climax had been pissed on by the universe. Kidding. It sucks, but losing two days doesn’t diminish the other 25 which were incredible. And it kinda fits. With all the shit that happened along the way, from corona to having pretty much all removable parts from my bike stolen to corona again and corona again, it would almost be TOO neat to have a triumphal return to Berlin. So I’ll roll with it.

That said, I think, because I’m a glutton for punishment, that I will take a train back with my road bike and ride the whole thing in one day. Just to say that I did it.

The ride

I find it hard to care or write about the ride because of the overshadowing element of the premature and incredibly unsatisfactory end to the tour, but it was actually quite nice, largely because of my lunch stop in the medieval town of Hildesheim:

Okay. That’s it. My girlfriend is prodding me with her feet to get a move on so we can go eat. I’ll write up some reflections when I finally digest the whole thing and the shitty flavor of my mechanical defeat doesn’t linger quite as strongly in my mouth. Probably gonna take a day or two ;)