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September 6 Wednesday sunny Bicycle touring Germany In the morning, lamenting my decision not to bicycle to Prague, we decide we will go and that DM100 each is not too much to ask after all. We cycle back to the border. The German guards wave us through. At the Czech border I pull my bicycle off to the side and stop. A bad move. Sharon is behind me. The young guard just waves her through and waves me through too. Cool! Unfortunately, as I pedal off he spots my Canadian flag flapping in the breeze and calls out "Halt!" I stop. He asks, "Canadian? Passport. Visa?" Sharon is still pedaling about a hundred metres ahead. He points in her direction and asks, "Canadian?" I shrug. He takes my passport and tells me to go and get her. She finally looks back and sees me talking to the crossing guard. She turns her bicycle around and comes back. We have no visa. We explain that we want to get one. Too bad, though. No visas are issued at the border. Trying to explain what happened yesterday afternoon on how we were told we could pay DM100 and get a visa only produces hostile looks. With a wave of his hand back in the direction of Germany the guard stalks off. Crap! We are once again banished from Czech territory. To top off our unpleasant experience a wasp flies past and stings Sharon's forehead. Bizarre. I would think that the Czech Republic would like foreign tourists to come to their country and spend their tourist dollars. What is the difference if you're from Canada or Europe or anywhere else for that matter? Dejectedly, we turn our touring bicycles around and return to Germany. At the border, once again the guards wave us through. Man, if only I had rolled up my Canadian flag we would have sailed right through into the Czech Republic. (However, I have no idea what the consequences at the next border crossing to leave the country would have been.) We are bicycling in a German Park. There are many roads that go through the park and are less than a kilometre from another road on the Czech side. I have crazy notions to cross through the forest into Czech, but Sharon wisely says it's probably not a good idea. We decide to head for Ralph's - a touring cyclist we met in Norway. He lives close to the Czech border not far from where we are cycling. Sharon is sad. She really wanted to go to Prague. We had talked about it so much with Arran and Rebecca. We were all going to hang out in Prague together. It had been our goal for the past month and now it was gone because I was too cheap to pay DM200 for visas. There is another crossing into the Czech Republic a few miles from where we are cycling. We decide that we can try to cross there. I roll up the Canadian flag on my bike's flagpole while castigating myself for not having done it before, as I had thought of doing that this morning but then didn't. Sharon says if we don't get across there we'll forget about it, as it's too hard getting all worked up and traumatized by the border guards. She is still sad as I pump up her low rear tire. Looking at her frowny face I tell her, "Only you can decide to be happy. If you want to be happy, nothing can stop you!" Oh, wise bicycle touring philosophy when things are not going your way. I get on my touring bicycle, shove off and pedal no more than ten feet when I hear a loud boom like a shotgun. I look behind. Sharon's face has an awful strangled appearance. I think her tire has exploded. I turn around. As I approach, I continue the only you can be happy theme and lightheartedly ask, "Did your tire go kaboom?" The strangled expression on Sharon's face does not change. I look at her rear tire. The rim has totally ripped apart from the side, leaving a jagged strip of metal hanging halfway around the entire rim. Waaa! Only you can decide to be happy. Boom. Another myth blown to bits. We push the bikes to a little grassy area away from the noisy jackhammer of construction across the street. As Sharon removes her wheel she says she heard a loud crack the other morning on the jolting cobble ride and had thought at the time that it had come from her bike, but when she looked ahead Rebecca's pannier had popped off, so she dismissed it, thinking it must have been that, but still thinking, "Gee, that sure sounded like it came from my bike." Luckily it didn't happen when we were going downhill yesterday at 40 mph. The tube is burst in a six-inch portion of ragged remains. No hope of even considering saving that one. Sharon removed the tire. "And just yesterday I was thinking how wonderful my bicycle wheels have been. Fifteen years old with thousands of loaded touring miles and never even one broken spoke, while Arran and Rebecca's new mountain bikes sound like they're falling apart with loose and broken spokes." I would say those cobbles did that rim in. It split apart at the rim joint and where the brakes rub making the rim thinner and thinner. Nothing lasts forever. Even superiorly made bicycle touring rims. I take Sharon's wheel and walk back to Bad Schandau (this place is living up to its name) to see if there is a bike shop. There is. But it doesn't have a 700mm rim with a thread-on cluster. We just want to put Sharon's cluster (bought two months ago on our bicycle tour in Ireland) on a new rim. What could be simpler? The bike shop phones and orders one. It'll be here tomorrow at 9 AM they tell me. The bicycle shop worker wants me to leave the old bike rim, but, through sign language charades of hoisting a fully loaded touring bicycle on my back, I take the rim back with me. It'll be easier for Sharon to push her bike rather than having to carry everything. I return to where Sharon is waiting, then I go off and find a camp spot in the forest about a kilometre away. Sharon puts her rim back on and she pushes her loaded touring bike, clanking along on the bare rim, over a bridge and into the forest. Maybe it's a good thing that we didn't get admitted to the Czech Republic for bicycle touring after all. |
