ID:41910
 
10:40 AM, Monday, 21 April 2008

So far so good! Resting a bit after a big salad and a tall glass of Applejuice in the tourist trap Plön - I'll leave it as an challenge for you to figure out where that is. :)

The internal SRAM 3-speed drive is running without trouble but the trike's external gearing is starting to suffer. I had opted not to change out the eldery 8-speed cassette, and in retrospect it was a bad move. First gear is almost stripped out from jumping over the worn cogs while trying to climb some of the steeper hills. I've had to get out and push twice because the gear would start jumping badly. Second and third gears are starting to jump a little bit too. Hopefully they will last until Oldenburg so that I can have the folks at Die Speiche cycle shop can take a look at it. I'd hate to finish the trip with only 15 of my 24 gears! Especially when I expect the same hilly conditions around Duisberg on day 4.

Knees are a little wobbly due to climbing the endless hills in the area, but atleast I get to enjoy heart-stopping surprise curves on the cycle paths while hitting downhill speeds of 50-60 km/h.

My Danish phone provider (Lebara) appears to have no German counterpart, so I'm cutoff from cell-phone contact. Or maybe I'm just too far off the beaten path to get a good signal. Luckily internet access is cheap and fairly frequent.

Last night was a adventure; got off the Denmark-to-Germany ferry around midnight, and decided to keep going for a while. Around 1:20am I felt tired enough to stop, but was basically in the middle of no-where about 30 km south of Puttgarden, wandering around by cycle light until I found a deserted parking lot. I parked in a lit corner and unrolled my sleeping mat and sleeping bag inside the trike. Bad idea! The trike is not a camper-van by any stretch of the imagination. Really uncomfortable for sleeping, plus my toes nearly froze due to a chilly wind vlowing through the nose air-intake. Will have to think of something different tonight.

100 km to go before my next stop at the ferry in Glückstadt. If I make it within the next 5 hours, I'll be able to cross the Elbe river tonight and go on a little ways before stopping again.

If I get far enough today, I'll have an easy 5-6 hour sprint to Tuesday's stop-over in my previous hometown of Oldenburg. And I'll be able to shower and have a decent bed to sleep in.

Enough babbling - I'm off again!

(no pictures this time- the internet cafe in Plön has the computer under lock-n-key)
Neat. I wish I had a fancy cycle like you do.. I've been thinking of maybe importing a good one from Denmark.
Demark has only one kind: the Leitra velomobile (http://leitra.dk), of which mine is partially based on.

Better off looking at the various dealers in your country that sell/import recumbent bikes and trikes. There are quite a lot of choices, both in regular trikes, and in full velomobiles (trikes with bodies).