Things i haven’t mentioned & day 14

When we took the ferry across the elbe a few days ago, the toll collector took a look at us, the bikes, xena and just spoke dutch to us. I laughed all the way across the river.

Yesterday, we encountered a family also on a bike trip. They were: two adults, four kids and two dogs. One of the dogs much bigger than xena, the other much smaller. And i thought WE were crazy.

Today is our easy day. We went to a viking museum. I bought a viking shield and hung it from the side of the dog trailer. I want to hang an axe from the other side, but nicole says this would be overdoing it. Maybe a carved dragon thing for my handlebars.

We also went to the huge cathedral in schlesswig. I don’t know if i spelled that right. I might fix it later or not. We had more plans for today but got side tracked by spacing out. I think i read that the gold miners who didn’t keep the sabbath died from exhaustion. This is my viking sabath. Appropriately enough, we are camping in odin’s campground. Keep His day holy. There’s also an odin biergarten. I love germans. I hope they have honey beer.

My pledge to never eat cheese isn’t going so well. Not for lacking of wanting. The spirit and flesh are strong, but the food selection is week. It’s eat cheese or don’t eat. Meh.

Happy to be camping again. Happy to be slacking. My morale is high in general. Nicole’s too, i think. I don’t know about xena. She is always inscrutable. Today, she got to run along side some and play with another dog and eat a bunch of stale bread left for birds and then vomit that same bread. Eww. I don’t know how dogs feel about barfing. I hate it, but it doesn’t seem to bother xena as much.

As for my spacing, well, i think it’s sometimes the case that white anglophones get more upset about hearing about racism than by racism itself. They’re sorta fine with it as long as they don’t have to hear about it. I was thinking about some old flamewars and it seems to explain them. I dunno. Maybe this is way obvious, but, you know, i don’t HAVE to think about racism if i don’t feel like it, which can make me slow on the uptake. Also, that’s privilege. Not having to worry about things.

I get really random thoughts while biking, when i have enough spare braincells to think and especially when i can think but not talk. The rythm of the spinning wheels repeats over and over again with my slightly uneven pedalling. It says “stop typing on that thing and eat so we can go get beer already.”  Oh, no, that’s nicole.