Day 9

August 9

The hotel was a 3 star. I couldn’t figure out how it was different than a 2 star until breakfast, which was really nice. Also, sleeping in a bed was quite great. The hotel was part of the ‘bed and bike’ network in germany, which is a very nice system. The hotel had protected bike parking and caters to bicyclists. They packed us a lunch!


After breakfast, we biked to the center to look around and get photos in better light. There was a market so we stocked up a bit on edibles. They had the most beautiful blackberries that i’ve ever seen. Tasty, too.

We were far from the viking route, so we started up the hunte route, which follows the hunte river. It’s sponsored by the government, so it has much better signage. Also, a lot of places along it cater to bike tourists. And it has some of the most beautiful countryside that i’ve seen in germany.

However, the wind was against us and strong. Despite her new clips, kendra was having some troubles wither her heel. She was basically pedalling with one leg. Then, to make maters worse, she hit a pothole right before lunch and bent a rim.

The major downside of our route today was a lack of toilets. After lunch, i ended up sprinting for a bit and then finally turned off the route to go to a truck stop. I felt obligated to purchase something, so i got some ice cream. I came out eating it and found nicole standing at an intersection. She explained that she knew kendra had seen our route until that point. We wondered if her bent  rim had caused a flat, so nicole rode back to find her. She was missing.

Just as i started to compose an sms, i receoved one from her. She was at the tourist office. I reasoned that she must have gone ahead there to find information about repairing her rim, and smsed back to say i was heading over. Nicole paused to make use of the truck stop and emerged with a bunch of fries.

It tok me a while to find the tourist info, and when i got there, kendra was looking displeased. She handed me back my route map and announced that she was going home. I expressed concern for her tendon, but she explained hat she was angry that i had sprinted to the truck stop and that nicole had waited so long to find her. She had reasoned that we would backtrack and we would therefore encounter her. I had assumed she would catch up and we would go forward through our detour.

She was extremely upset. She could have been hit by a car or something and we had ditched her.  I don’t know how long she waited, but we did come back to look for her. I can understand why she felt so frustrated though, with her ankle problems and broken bike and, alas, things were still a bit tense after our crit theory argument. I tried to talk less about feminism and theory issues and stick more to life experiences, but there’s a weird vibe when you’re specifically NOT talking about things that are important to you. So i can understand why she felt so unhappy.  I hope her joints feel better after a few days rest.

This confrontation, which, alas lead to my tiny bbq getting trashed, took up a lot of energy, so nicole and i only went on a few k to camp. And kendra, hopefully, got home ok.  I kind of want to call and check, but she was so angry, i don’t want to make her more unhappy.


In other news, my bank in ca was trying to reach me because somebody had a fake id and was impersonating me, trying to withdraw money! They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but i’m not sure about this case. I really want to know if they tried to look like me or wore a disguise and generally what it would be like to pretent to be me, but i doubt they put so much thought into it. I’ll have to wait to ask george cluney when he plays me in the movie verson of this blog.