Wednesday, October 7

From	To	Distance (km)	Average Speed (km/hr)	Max Speed (km/hr)	Odometer (km)	Riding Time (hr:min:sec)	Push-Ups
Seligenstadt, Germany	Frankfurt, Germany	45.01	17.5	40.1	1636	2:33:54	200

Riding to Zeppelinheim

Matt's alarm clock didn't go off this morning at 6:30 AM, as he had promised, but I awakened at 6:30 AM anyway. As I was tired, I rolled over and slept until 7:00 before rousting Matt and blaming his alarm clock incompetence for our lateness.

I had requested an early breakfast the night before, and the friendly hotel man had told us he'd have it ready at 7:00. Matt and I showed up downstairs for breakfast at 7:15, and I felt bad about being late. The friendly hotel man served us a great breakfast despite our tardiness. We got a typical German breakfast, just a high quality version, compose of bread, cold cuts, cheese, jam, orange juice, and tea.

Before Matt and I embarked, we studied the map, planned our route, and attempted to memorize the names of the towns we needed to pass through: Rodgau, Dietzenbach, Goetzenhain, Dreieichenhain, and Zeppelinheim. To help our memories, we visualized silly pictures that represented the towns names. Rodgau (Rod-Guy) was a guy holding a rod. Dietzenbach (Dancing-Brook) was the Rod Guy dancing in a brook. Goetzenhain (Gott-Hane) was God (Gott in German) dancing in a brook wearing tighty-whitey Hane's underwear. Dreieichenhain (Dragon-Hane) was a dragon wearing tighty-whitey Hane's. Zeppelinheim (Zeppelin-Heim) was a Zeppelin, carrying a dragon, moored to a house (Heim is home in German). Memorizing the names of the towns enabled us to keep riding without needing to stop as often to look at the map.

The weather was cold again, but no rain. We made good progress all morning. Although we were following roads the whole way, the roads almost always had bike paths. At one point, the path abruptly stopped at the edge of some railroad tracks. Rather than backtracking and taking the road, which had an overpass over the tracks, we just picked up our bikes, carried them over the tracks, and continued on the path on the other side.

Shortly before we came into Zeppelinheim, Matt suddenly realized he wasn't wearing his sunglasses. He remembered taking them off and placing them on his rear rack when we last stopped a few kilometers back. He glanced back at his rear rack, but the glasses were gone. Given our religious conviction against backtracking and our tacit agreement to not make the other guy wait, he offered to just forget his sunglasses and press onward. I convinced him I didn't mind waiting, and so Matt rode back the way we had come while I wrote in my little blue notebook. Matt found his glasses laying on the path near where we had stopped, and soon we were on our way again.

Cycle This Way

As we arrived in Zeppelinheim, the last town whose name we had memorized, we stopped at a corner and took out the map. After studying the map, I attempted to suggest to Matt that we turn right. We wanted to look for a hotel in Zeppelinheim, which by my interpretation of the map, would be to the right.

"I think we want to keep going this way," I said, gesturing in front of us, "if we want to go to the airport, but this way," I said, pointing to the right, "if we want to go to Zeppelinheim."

Matt seemed to agree, so I stuffed the map back into my handlebar bag and we started off. But as I turned right, I noticed Matt was heading strait ahead.

"Hey, Matt!" I yelled. "We're supposed to turn right."

"I thought you said we should keep going this way," Matt replied.

I said "this way," my arm extended, finger pointing ahead of me, in the direction that would take us to Zeppelinheim.

Matt muttered a few expletives as he turned around. It was perhaps the tenth time we'd had the same kind of miscommunication involving the phrase, "this way." Matt insists that "this way" means keep going the way we have been going, and "that way" means we should change directions. I tend to use "this way" with a pointing gesture to mean whatever direction I happen to be pointing.

A bit farther down the path, I stopped at a little Schellimbiss and asked if there were any hotels in Zeppelinheim. A few old men sitting in the Schnellimbiss suggested we go to Walldorf, where they said there were 40 hotels. I asked what the cheapest hotel was, and they recommended a hotel named Ecktaennchen, which they said would be near an Esso station. Matt and I rode into Walldorf and found the Esso station, where we visited the bathroom. We also found the Ecktaennchen hotel, but it was deserted. We decided to just ride to the Frankfurt airport, put our bikes into left luggage, take the train to downtown Frankfurt, and stay at a hotel there.

Packing the Bike Boxes

At the airport, we found the American Airlines counter, where we inquired about bike boxes. Behind the counter, fours ladies wearing blue uniforms debated this question amongst each other, and reached the conclusion that Matt and I were out of luck. They told us that they didn't have any boxes for us, but that it was our fault. They said we were supposed to have reserved bike boxes ahead of time. Of course, this was the first time that Matt and I had ever heard about calling ahead to reserve bike boxes. When we asked them how we could get our bikes home given that we hadn't reserved ahead, they just repeated that since we didn't reserve ahead of time we were out of luck. Given that Matt and I had no intention of leaving our bicycles at the Frankfurt airport and flying home without them, we remained at the counter trying to get the ladies to help provide some solution. Before long, they sent us down to a fellow at the end of the counter.

The fellow at the end of the counter, in contrast to the four ladies and blue, was both organized and friendly. After "Calling downstairs," he told us that he indeed had four bike boxes. I immediately bought two of them, so we'd be sure to get a pair.

Once the bike boxes arrived, I left Matt in charge of all our stuff -- bikes, panniers, and boxes. Matt started searching through his bags for his misplaced plane ticket. I made a beeline to the airport's grocery store. I was quite hungry, and wanted to buy groceries for our lunch. I bought two Vollkornbroetchen, a banana yogurt (for me), a cherry yogurt (for Matt), chocolate Meusli, two bananas, and some Lebkuchen and Mozartkugeln for Siew and our trip to Malaysia. I returned to find Matt still wrestling with his luggage, having just located his plane ticket.

I took my shoes off and plopped down on the boxes, which were still laying flat on the ground. (We had not yet unfolded and expanded them into box shape.) I flipped the top box over because it had footprints on it. Matt saw me flipping the box, and told me that people had just walked on them, even though there was plenty of room to go around them.

Our bikes, panniers, and flat boxes were off to the side, but plainly visible to a high traffic thruway. So as I ate my lunch sitting on those boxes, I got a lot of stares. Most people smiled at me and I smiled back. One lady as she passed said in a British accent, "That's a nice picnic you've got going there." A teenage girl, who looked vaguely Middle Eastern, asked in German whether she could take my picture. She told me she wanted to show her schoolmates how to have an inexpensive lunch to the airport. I posed smiling, sitting cross-legged, holding yogurt and spoon, and she snapped a picture. Some people who passed, however, were rude starers. These people didn't smile back when I made eye contact with them and smiled, they just stared. I either ignored them or widened my eyes, cocked my head slightly, and glared back at them.

As I enjoyed my meal and the stares, Matt was away in a bathroom somewhere, changing from his bike clothes to his walking clothes. Just as I was finishing up, Matt returned, looking stylish in a purple T-shirt, long black pants, and brown walking shoes, with an ample amount of white sock showing between top of shoes and hem of pants. Matt then took his place on the boxes and began to eat his lunch, as I organized myself for my own toilette. Matt had collected some garbage into a bag, for me to empty when I went to change my clothes, and asked me if I would empty one of his water bottles. But I forgot them when I walked up to the bathroom, and neglected even to inform Matt of my departure. Matt chewed me out when I returned, and I apologized for my transgression. Later, after Matt had loaded his bike bags into his bike box, he took off to the bathroom with the trash and his water bottle. I sheepishly asked him if he'd mind emptying my water bottle.

On more than one occasion while packing, someone approached and started a conversation with me. At one point I was approached by a man who spoke German with a thick, Italian accent.

"Where can I buy a one month pass for the S-Bahn?" asked the Italian man.

Misunderstanding is question, I slapped Matt's extensively taped bike box, which I happened to be standing near, and exclaimed, a "It's a bike!"

"No," the Italian man said, "I want to buy a one month pass for the S-Bahn. Where can I buy it?"

"Oh, you want to know where you can buy a one month pass for the S-Bahn?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

I told the man that although I now understood his question, I didn't know the answer. I suggested he try asking at the airport information booth, which was about 10 meters in front of him.

A few minutes later, as I was packing my own bike box, a haggard man approached.

"Where is the bike going?" the haggard man asked.

"California," I said.

"How much does the flight to California cost?" the man asked.

"$900," I said.

"Well how much does the bike cost?" continued the man.

"Around $800," I answered.

"Well," he said, "Why don't you just throw the bike away and buy a new one when you get home?"

I thought I must have misunderstood his German, so I asked him to repeat.

"Why don't you just throw the bike away and buy a new one when you get home?" he repeated.

I decided the guy must be crazy, so I said, "Excuse me." I turned my shoulder on the haggard man, went back to packing, and tried to ignore him. But the haggard man persisted in demanding an answer to his question, and before long it dawned on me that he thought I was paying $900 to ship the bike alone.

"No, I didn't pay $900 to ship that," I said, pointing to my bike box. "I paid $900 to ship I!" I said, pointing to myself and using the incorrect preposition, which I quickly corrected to "me!" This answer seemed to satisfy the haggard man, and eventually he drifted off.

Matt finished packing his bike box before me. (I got started later, because I had done the grocery shopping.) Perhaps because he had some extra time, or perhaps because of a quirk in his personality, Matt put an enormous amount of strapping tape and blue American Airlines packing tape all over his bike box to shut it tight. By contrast, I used only six short pieces of strapping tape and ran a piece of American Airlines packing tape along each edge.

Once Matt and I had both completed packing and taping our bike boxes, we loaded them onto an airport baggage cart and headed for left luggage, where we planned to store them overnight. With the bike boxes placed side by side on the cart, it was impossible not to notice the stark contrast between Matt's extravagant taping style and my own sparse style. Strips of strapping tape and blue American Airlines packing tape ran on all the edges and in various diagonals all round Matt's bike box. By comparison, the tape job on my box looked kind of wimpy. I became be concerned that my tape seal might fail, allowing the bike and luggage to spill out of the box in transit.

"Do you think I undertaped my bike box?" I asked Matt on the way to left luggage.

"I don't know," Matt replied, helpfully, "We'll find out when we get to California."

The Buchmesse and German Yuppies

We deposited our bike boxes that left luggage and found the train (S-Bahn) to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. Once in Frankfurt, we learned that there was a "Buchmesse" (Book Convention), and that as a result all the hotels were full. After several trips back and forth between a tourist information office and a line of phone booths, we booked a room at the Hotel Ambassador for 300 DM, a room that is normally 150 DM.

We had been given a nice map by the lady of the tourist information booth on which she had circled our hotel, circled an Internet Cafe, and drawn a line suggesting a route from the hotel to the Internet Cafe. After settling in at the hotel and completing our final 200 push ups for the trip, Matt and I headed downstairs. Somewhere in the stairwell I realized I had forgotten my umbrella. I asked Matt for the key, which at this hotel was a plastic beige card with holes in it. Matt flipped the card up towards me from a half flight below. The key card sailed spinning through the rails in my direction and I caught it. Impressed by this feat, I was commenting to Matt about how coordinated was our throw and catch when I heard a loud crash. Shortly after fipping the key, Matt lost control of the books he was carrying, and they tumbled noisily down a flight of stairs, with Matt in close pursuit.

We walked with the umbrellas about 10 blocks to the Internet Cafe, which was named CyberRyder. Once we located the Internet Cafe, and verified it would remain open for several more hours, we walked back to an upscale pizzeria we had seen on the way.

At the pizzaria Matt and I had to wait a few minutes for a table to become available. The restaurant was small and rather packed with stylishly dressed, well groomed people. To me they seem like German yuppies: successful professionals in and around their 30's, having dinner and conversation with friends or coworkers after a productive day of advancing their careers in some nearby office building. I felt self conscious about my own outfit, which heavily favored practicality over style, and which regardless was rather worn out looking at this stage of the trip. I tried to keep a low profile as I moved through the restaurant.

The table to which the waiter let us was quite small and very near the tables on either side of it, both of which were populated by well-dressed diners in the midst of their meals. Slowly and deliberately, I squeezed between the tables to get back to my seat. To make sure I did not knock a wine glass over by accidentally tapping it with my butt as I squeeze between the tables, I looked over my shoulder at my neighbor's table as I went. Oddly, I felt something mildly warm touch my hand. When I sat down I realized that I had inadvertently extinguished our table candle by brushing it with the back of my hand. I felt fortunate, though, because I had the candle an inch taller, I probably would have set my entire coat sleeve on fire. I figured that frantically waving a flaming arm around before dousing it with water from someone's nearby water glass would probably not be the best way to keep a low profile in a restaurant full of such trendy clientele.

The food at the pizzaria was good and afterwards we went down the street to the Internet Cafe, where I worked one-and-a-half hours to put up my last page of data, and do e-mail. Somewhere, probably in the restaurant, I lost track of the crumpled wet map that had guided us to the cafe. So Matt and and I had to find our way through dark, rainy Frankfurt streets by memory. With only one false turn, we found our way back to the hotel. Once in bed, I felt uncomfortable because the bed was so soft. So despite spending 300DM on the room, I tossed the blanket on the floor and slept there.