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October 21 Saturday sunny Bicycle touring Germany Peter and Andrea got their bikes out of the garage and rode with us to Lindau, Germany. Downhill for twenty-six kilometres! We took some little side roads and bike paths. Lindau is built on an island. Beautiful homes line the lakeshore. Peter and Andrea toured us around for a quick look at the sights. In a market area we came across a chalk artist drawing a beautiful mural. Man, it's impressive how talented these people are. After a photo in front of Lake Constance, the Bodensee, Peter and Andrea left for their cycle trip home as Andrea had to work later that afternoon and Peter had a job interview as a bicycle tour leader. He wasn't too sure how badly he wanted the job though. He was already thinking of possible future client comments: "I don't want to ride today. It's too windy. It's too hot. It's too cold. It's raining. It's uphill. I'm bored. I'm hungry. I'm tired." Sounds good to me. Sign me up! Lindau was the point we originally planned Sherry would catch a train home. But apparently she was having too much fun bicycle touring ... she's thinking of cycling to Venice with us. We told her we won't have host families anymore as we only have the book for Germany. We'll be crammed into our little two-person Kelty cycling tent for about two weeks. And there's not going to be showers very often ... certainly not every night. It's going to be a lot colder at nights too sleeping under the stars as opposed to inside someone's snug and cozy home. Being late October, it's already pretty chilly cycling during the day in the shade. And there's going to be a lot more uphill cycling. Not fun with an already overloaded touring bike and a sore knee. "Doesn't your knee hurt?" I enquired. Not that we didn't want her to come with us; we wanted her to realize that the next bit of cycle touring wasn't going to be as cushy as it had been. As a matter of fact it could get downright miserable. She talked to Murray on the phone for about an hour. Must have been having a real heart to heart. Either that or she was trying to exhaust her phone card. When she returned she said exuberantly, "Well, I'll be going with you guys... if that's all right with you. Murray says if I come back that will just mean two of us will be bored instead of one. He says he's finished reading a 400-page book and has now taken up drinking as a hobby." We looked in the host family book and found a listing for Lochau, just over the border in Austria. Sherry phoned. She had a little trouble calling Austria and got a couple of wrong numbers first. Finally she got through and they said sure come on over. Erwin is a teacher of English so we had a good chat on many subjects and took the opportunity to ask lots of questions about Austria. His wife, Traudy, is a psychiatric worker in a house where people live as inpatients. Their son Ronnie is 10 years old and likes playing basketball and watching hockey. I didn't know there were so many Canadians playing hockey on the Austrian teams until I talked with him. He rattled off names of players I'd never heard of before. We had our own room upstairs in the house that Erwin had designed. Traudy gave us towels for showers along with the apology, "Sorry, the towels are not ironed." I grinned. I wasn't too worried since I hadn't seen an iron in about a year and even if I did I wouldn't have used it to iron towels. I wasn't sure if she was pulling my leg or not, but finally decided she wasn't ... I guess we're still pretty close to Germany. Later, while speaking with Erwin in the living room, Traudy busied herself ironing underwear. Gee, guess she wasn't kidding about ironing towels. |
