"A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between countries, so the officials can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly." ~Lemony Snicket
I must say that today was an amazing day for biking. I
felt as if I had abundance of energy. Quite interesting what one longer
stopover can do.. After enjoying my two caps of great coffee by Judith and the
farewell, I strode into a nearby Lidl shop to buy some food and as usually to
the McDonald's to check my e-mails. I am so pissed off that my internet roaming
does not work; hopefully I will find the way to fix it.
The Donauradweg from Ulm was probably the most
beautiful part of my whole journey so far. I rarely rode in the traffic, there
were different terrain, both hills and flats, and everything as if mixed with
care by an architect or so because once you were fed up with the fields, the
hills came, when you lay panting without breath after riding uphill, there were
some flat fields, forest and so on. The trail was beautiful, very beautiful.
Once again, I rode quite a lot because all the
meanders on the way made my map calculations totally inaccurate. It was
supposed to be around 115 km but it was actually about 140.
In the evening I came into a beautiful town called Sigmaringen.
I did a little sightseeing, watched the festive days a little and took some
nice pictures. It was getting dark and quite honestly, I did not feel like riding
further, but I knew that I could not stay in the city, either. I had to push
myself to move in order to get at least to the outskirt of the town, where I
slept in a park.
After being so long alone only with my bike, I have
decided to give it a name, similarly, as sailors give names to their ships.
From this point, I will refer to my bike as Lucy just because I love this name
in English. I think I have already become
well-versed with riding my bike. It has became such a habit, that it is as
natural for me as walking. Riding Lucy 7 hours a day is a grueling task, but I
bear It gladly. Normally, I keep the constant pace of about 20 km/h on a flat
terrain and rarely exceed 40 km/h on a downhill. Of course, everything depends
on the road, but I tend to be cautiod because of my shitty luggage. Sometimes,
though, I msut admit that I get carried away and ride her like crazy on nasty
terraiain to enjoy it more wildly. But of course, I respect all traffic rules
diligently and never cross on red.
I must admit that I was a little bit afraid of
sleeping "wherever my wheels bring me" due to the infamous hog
incident from the previous night out. Moreover, the place where I was heading
was just woods, woods and woods in another nature park with only few tiny
villages scattered around the place. I could expect almost with certainty some
wildlife there. As if it were not enough, I looked up in google "self
defense against hogs" against my better judgment and was horrified that
there is really a fat chance that a human could defend against a furious hog
unless you have a tree around where you could climb. Having totally scared
myself, I did not want to take any extra chances. Therefore, I decided to stay
safe and "fortified" my dwelling. Here you can see my little
stronghold.
I can imagine how you are smirking over my precautious
measures, but do not worry, hogs were not the only reason why I wanted to
stay here. I just found it super-cool to stay overnight in such an observation
tower and see the picturesque morning sunrise over the beautiful landspace from
a little higher perspective. Here are some pictures to prove that it was worth
of it even though I made my stopover 20 km earlier as I had planned. And of
course, I would not lose any sleep over hogs, either, because there was no way
they could get over there. Hogs might have not, but the police did. I thought I
would have some troubles, but in the end, everything was just fine. They checked
my ID, incredulously listened to my plans and in the end went away so I could
sleep in my marvelous tower.
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