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Tick We wanted to take the ferry from Gedseng, to Rostock, in former East Germany. We decided to cycle together, as the wind was still nasty and we could take turns drafting. We shunted off onto a little side road. The sea was on one side and forest on the other. It was the nicest cycling we came across in Denmark. At a small tourist town, Naes, we bought a leg of chocolate, cinnamon and apple Danish pastry from the local bakery. They innovatively dealt with the yellow jacket plague: when the bees landed on the products they took the Shop Vac and sucked them up. Great idea. We should get a battery operated Dust Buster to carry on the bikes. Arran tried to buy a pastry leg also, but it cost eleven kroners and he only had nine-and-a-half kroners left. "Can I buy one for nine-and-a-half kroners?" he asked. "It's all I have in the world." "It costs eleven kroners," she told him. I slipped him one-and-a-half kroners, lighting up his face. "That's the trouble with money," Arran lamented. "Whatever happened to good old bartering? Of course, it's damn inconvenient to have to haul sheep around on a bike," he conceded. There were too many people at the beach, so we went farther along to a less busy spot. The less busy spot turned out to be a nudist beach. Two old nudists went by with their dog. The dog was the only one with anything on: he had a bandanna for a collar. Later, I saw a fat woman with no clothes. Why do persons, who should keep their clothes on, have such a compulsion to take them off? We went for a swim with jellyfish around and on us. I learned why they were named jellyfish. Sure enough, when I picked one up it was just like holding a handful of Jello. Still fully clothed, I submersed myself in the water playing with the pulsing mounds of jelly. My ball cap bobbed above the surface I flashed the others on the beach a wide grin causing Arran to shake his head and laugh, "He's one strange duck!" We swam, ate and relaxed and then continued to the ferry, arriving as they began loading vehicles. Arran had hidden four-hundred Deutsche marks, shoved deep inside his handlebars, because, as he explained, "Another guy told me about it and I thought it sounded cool." It took some arduous digging to retrieve. Tickets were sold inside the terminal. Arran and I made a mad dash to the ticket counter, as the fluorescent vested ferry workers loaded the last of the cars. We hastened onto the ferry with seconds to spare. Then, they didn't even check our tickets. On board Sharon found a teeny tick stuck in her arm. Try as we might we could not extricate it. First we tried Vaseline, which completely embalmed the little guy so it couldn't even move its flimsy legs. Then a hot needle didn't do anything. Finally, a cigarette charred Sharon's flesh before the tick. It still wasn't out. We took the needle and dug it out, leaving a hole in the process. |
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