I try to take something I came across, I felt or something I can associate with one of those. This ride could also be named: Power Ride, Killing Knees, Heat Wave, Dead Bird's Wings, Rough Ride, and so on.
I had a very serious phone call on Wednesday that made me think about my future a lot. The decision I'll make will change my way of living to a huge degree. It caught me kinda off-guard and threw me off for about 3 hours. It was a good call I have to say, drawing my long term plans to my close future, I'd say.
I decided to put this decision aside for at least one week giving me room to focus on this ride a little bit more.
When I started leaving Bremen it seemed so easy to leave that I was half-heartly motivated to go to Meppen today. I really wanted to cycle all the way to Meppen, which was about 140km away, but it was more like a wishful thinking.
Short time after, still having issues with my compass but finally using my maps, I left Bremen without issues and stopped at a public bycicle pump next to a water mill. I continued this nifty path but it took me on a road that was rough on me as well as rough on my bike.
I decided to change on a straight route: less forests, turns and gravel roads. It already made doing a detour of 10km and my bike started to behave a little strange from then on. One of my rear wheels made a strange sound, but I couldn't detect the issue. I tried to distract myself and thought about all the dead animals I crossed paths with when I cycled south Germany, France and Spain on my first trip to Porto. Today, I noticed my first dead banana on the way. Shortly after that a second one and I was amused that we might have dead bananas instead of dead animals (thihi). Then a dead bird on the road. Ba-dumm!
Several dead birds after that and I threw away my theory and kept just the title.
I continued my ride and road signs warned me about damaged tracks. My butt still hurts a little, but my hands were more of an issue. I was already quite tired. After 70km I took my ear phones out and started to listed to the last LP by DFA1979. This gave me two goose bumps in a row and I started a power ride for almost 15 minutes.
My knee started to hurt after 20 minutes, it seems like a muscle problem to me and I still have to figure out the reason(s) behind that pain.
Lesson learned, start your Power Ride only 5-15km close to your destination.
After 30km very slow riding it became worse and worse and I had to walk my bike for a few kilometers before I could continue riding. After 10km or so I decided to look for a camping site. I stopped at a gas station, helped a polish guy to charge his phone and finally found a site that was only 8 more kilometers away. At that point I already rode around 10 hours.After one more hour I reached the site. Quite happy about this fact I immediately put up my tent and went to sleep after some necessary chores. I was so tired I even put Fenistil on my knee instead of Voltaren...
After I started around 8am Friday morning I arrived at Meppen, I found out that the tire of my trailer's real wheel is broken. My knee still hurts, but I hope I'll get a new tire here and find a sweet camping site to have another break for a day.
It's all about how to deal with your hardships...
Yours Kindly
