A sparkling end

The ride

Last year, after nearly a month on the bike, my rear wheel blew up, and I couldn‘t get it replaced. This meant my tour ended very anti-climactically, pushing my bike home from the train station. Thankfully, this year I got the triumphant ending I wanted:

(My friends are the best. This tour wasn‘t my first, and wasn‘t the longest, but still the cheering and bubbly almost brought me to tears. This was the ending I wanted.)

I could basically end the post here because it was the highlight of the day, but I won‘t.

The rest

The forecast for the day was rain. But, having looked at the rain radar, I thought maybe I could find a window in which I could weave my way through the rain clouds and stay dry. And for the most part, it worked. Which is awesome, because I really don‘t like riding in the rain.

My ride started with a 15km climb into the clouds. The first few km took me through the old haunting grounds of the famous philosopher-turned-Nazi Martin Heidegger, who was a key member of the phenomenology movement and had a large influence on the existentialist movement from Sartre and the like. Now, I really like philosophy, and I like a lot of the core ideas of existentialism (my favorite probably being Camus’ take on absurdity as demonstrated by his tale of Sisyphus: life is random and in the end pointless, but rather than despair, the best solution is to happily go on with your life despite the “absurdity” of it), but trying to understand Heidegger gives me a headache. If you can summarize it nicely, let me know! (I recently read a book on the existentialists which mentioned Heidegger and his love for Todtnauberg, which partially informed my route planning.)

Anyway, the climb through Schwarzwald was pretty nice, but sadly heavily trafficked, so I couldn‘t quite enjoy it to the fullest. That, and my legs were pretty toast, no spice left in the peppers so to say.

(into the clouds)

(still not a bad view)

The descent was also lovely, lazily winding its way down into Freiburg.

(no brakes needed)

(Freiburg old town. Perfect place for a cafe stop)

Final countdown

After Freiburg, it was across the border into France as I ticked off the final 50km of my tour. I texted my buddies that I was getting close, and saw messages like “go go go!” pop up on my screen. Exciting. The stretch from Freiburg was pancake flat, so when a couple of guys on road bikes went past me, I did a 15-second sprint to get in their draft, then rode their draft like an unwanted parasite for about 10 minutes. Until the road went uphill for 150 meters and gravity re-exerted her primacy.

The last 30km or so were on winding roads through an agricultural landscape. Not ugly, but nothing to write home about. The cool thing was, though, that the foothills on the horizon kept getting bigger, and the bigger the got, the more beautiful they appeared. Until at last I was in the Alsace, surrounded by rolling hills covered in vineyards, and on my way to a lovely welcome by my friends. And with that, it was done!

(beautiful. and delicious)

(my friends, minus the one that gave me the champagne bath, though obviously not take exactly at my arrival)

(the end)