September 25th was a long day.\u00a0 We biked over mountains, along streams, down huge hills, broke the trailer, fixed the trailer, broke Pete’s spoke, fixed Pete’s spoke.\u00a0 And that was all before lunch.\u00a0\u00a0We had spent six days on the road since Regensburg zithout\u00a0a shower\u00a0or shelter from the blowing wind, the often driving rain, or the cool to cold temperatures to which Germany seemed determined to subject us.\u00a0 We eagerly anticipated the end of the day, for we were supposed to arrive at the home of Tommy and Juliet, my friends from college, and thus escape the weather.\u00a0 By 3:00pm, however,\u00a0we had only gone 20km.\u00a0 We had another 60 to go, but often we barely do that with a full day.\u00a0 We resigned ourselves to staying another night in the open air, and putting off the paradise of Tommy’s to the next day.<\/p>\n
However, we kept plugging away.\u00a0 We biked down a river valley, and the kilometers ticked away faster than expected.\u00a0 Darkness fell.\u00a0 We turned on our lights and clung to the protected bike lane, hoping against hope we would muster the fortitude for the final few kilometers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tommy and Juliet.\u00a0 Yaaayy!<\/p>\n
Finally it was clear we had made it.\u00a0 I called ahead to let Tommy know we were coming, after all.\u00a0 He apparently set out immediately in his car in an attempt to do what Juliet later described sardonically as “find you”.\u00a0 But he actually managed to find us, and good thing too as we had passed his house and were headed back out of Heidelberg.<\/p>\n
\u00a0He reeled us in to his and Juliet’s apartment.\u00a0 We found cupboards full of American food (Jiffy, CEREAL!, maple syrup) and a table set to the T.\u00a0 Even though it was nearly 9:30 and we had told them we weren’t coming, they had waited.\u00a0 We gobbled up the meat they offered us with extra zeal.\u00a0 At bed time, we found that we each had a bed made for us with matching sets of towels and\u00a0wash-clothes\u00a0on top of which rested a packet of gummy worms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next morning, we slept in as they rushed off to work.\u00a0 We awoke late and consumed embarrassingly large quantities of CEREAL! and milk and toast toasted in a real toaster.\u00a0 Every day, Juliet and Tommy insisted on cooking for us, though we occasionally managed to help with this or that.\u00a0 Juliet and I engaged in a sort of bake-off.\u00a0 Her crusts were better than mine, but I tried to pursue victory through prolificness.\u00a0 In this I was aided by long days with nothing to do, whereas she had to work all day, and prepare dinner.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We enjoyed our time with Tommy and Juliet immensely, and not only because of the food, the warmth, the hot showers or even CEREAL!\u00a0 We traded stories around the dinner table and played games like telephopictionary late into the night.\u00a0 It was bitter sweet indeed when we left several days later and biked into the rain.\u00a0 Tommy and Juliet provided warm company and what was undoubtedly the most organized barrage of hospitality I’ve perhaps ever enjoyed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
September 25th was a long day.\u00a0 We biked over mountains, along streams, down huge hills, broke the trailer, fixed the trailer, broke Pete’s spoke, fixed Pete’s spoke.\u00a0 And that was all before lunch.\u00a0\u00a0We had spent six days on the road since Regensburg zithout\u00a0a shower\u00a0or shelter from the blowing wind, the often driving rain, or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-here-you-will-find-the-posts-that-jim-wrote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}