Our route today takes us through Dachau, but we don't plan on visiting the famous memorials -- we've both been there and can pass it by this time.
Here's the route:
There's definitely an upward trend as we head away from Munich toward the alps.
So much for “Go
Iceland.” We sat at the local Greek bar in Freising and made it through the
first half. The score was 3 – 0
France at that point and Iceland was pretty outclassed. Too bad, as it would be fun to watch
Iceland v. Germany in the finals.
Most of the German fans who watched the game seemed to feel the same
way. We are not sure whether that
is because they figured that Iceland would have been an easier game, or that
they just don’t like French footballers.
I think the latter but what do I know?
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| France Goal |
Riding the bike
fully loaded takes a few days to get used to. All in, bike and panniers probably weigh around 50 kg. Add me and Lorie and we’re big metal. The bike reacts very differently from
when it is unloaded and it takes a lot more power to get up climbs. We go through this transition every
year when we start out on our journey and we always seem to forget how hard it
is. We’ll get used to it fairly
fast, hopefully before we start up the high alpine in the Alps.
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| Das Bike, fully loaded |
Today we rode
from Freising to Ammersee, which is a lake southwest of Munich. It is a very pretty area and we are
camping in a small campingplatz that has mostly caravans, but a few tent campers. The weather is great. We rode about 90 km with a lot of
rollers, about 500 m of up. We got
lost a few times as we came out of Dachau, but all in all we made good time and
ended up where we thought we would.
Just outside of Dachau we noticed a moto shadowing us. He seemed to be saying something to us,
but neither of us could figure it out.
Just then we saw a bike shop on the side of the road. I wanted to use a floor pump to get
some pressure in our tires (my hand pump sucks!), so I stopped.
The moto
stopped, too. I ignored it and
went inside to ask if I could borrow their pump, which of course I could. When I came out with the pump Lorie was
yucking it up with the moto guy, who was fascinated with our fully loaded
tandem. He said that he and his
wife have a tandem (he’s the stoker, she the pilot) and he had been looking for
panniers and racks that would work.
We had a nice chat, exchanging information about how we load all of our
stuff onto the bike, and he gave us some advice for the road to Ammersee –
mostly saying to watch out for the German drivers. Truth be told, we’ve experienced nothing but absolute
courtesy from drivers. We go by
the rule that tonnage prevails, always, but drivers here are very very good
with cyclists. Not so much in the
states, I am afraid.
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| Coffee in Dachau |
As we were
setting up camp we discovered that one of our sleeping pads had a leak. Se found the leak in the sink at the
camp, then set to patching it with a tire patch kit. Amazing what a patch kit can do, though the test will be if
it holds tonight. The homeland squared
away, we headed to the lake to go for a swim. But it was too cold for me. Lorie, too. So
we went to the little lakeside bar.
Seemed like the only sensible thing to do to kill the afternoon. We rode
up the hill to a market in town and bought some stuff for dinner, and tomorrow’s
breakfast.
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| Fixing a flat |
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| Home sweet home |
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| Ammersee |
Tomorrow we ride
to Landsberg am Lech where we join up with the Via Claudia Augusta (VCA), our
main route south. We will have to
be a bit creative to get to the right route, since our campingplatz is south of
where we want to be, but that shouldn’t be too hard. From there we head south on the VCA into the Alps.
The internet is
super slow at this camp ground so I’m not sure if this will get posted. If you’re reading it, I guess that I
did…
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