Part 1: 21 June - 2 July

Getting the Bike

This year I flew into Brussels, as it was cheaper, and I traveled much lighter. I have only a few business appointments and I made sure I did not need to carry a suit, etc. And since I was not hiking this year, because of the unhealed broken leg, all that gear could be left at home. I was however carrying a somewhat heavy electromagnetic coil that was supposed to heal the leg.

The train trip was somewhat strenuous though. Next year, I fly to Amsterdam even if it is more expensive. The young lady in the Brussels airport train station refused to give me connecting information. She said I could look it up when I got to Brussels Nord. Of course, Enschede is not listed on the train schedules there as it is so far away.

So I went to Brussels Central to get a complete schedule. It should be noted that there are no facilities for the disabled in Belgium, and few in the Netherlands. There is seldom an elevator/lift and often the escalators only go down, if there is one. This meant carrying my luggage up and down steps on my hurt leg, which meant going very slowly. Fortunately the weather was nice, so the effort was mitigated. But don't travel in these countries if you are not completely fit.

The Belgium train computer system would not give a route to Enschede, but I suggested the clerk try the Deutsche Bahn web site.

The one connection was at a very modern Dutch airport, with rolling ramps, luggage carriers, and good fast food restaurants. I thought I had arrived. Of course, all was not really well. The Dutch railroad is having labor problems. My train was canceled. It too four more train changes to get to Enschede, about 10:30 at night.

I took a taxi to Rik's house and we went out for a beer in his MZ hack. I was pillion, as the sidecar was filled with sandbags for weight. What a fun and useful little bike. Rik knows just how wide the rig is and could squeeze through all of the barriers preventing cars from entering, with inches to spare.

The next day, Rik showed me the bike. I believe I have been negligent in mentioning what a great guy Rik is. He is beyond any normal conception of helpfulness and graciousness. He had done a bunch of modifications on the bike just because he thought it ought to have them. These included oil pressure and temperature gauges up around the console, an accessory socket, a high capacity charging socket, new fuse wiring and sockets that take standard European fuses, a battery acid catcher, as well as installing progressive fork springs. This is in addition to just garaging the bike, hosting me in his house, and loaning me various tour-quality straps and bags. And he is just a really nice guy who is fun to talk to because he knows so much about mechanics and electrics.

In fact, he showed me some electrical modifications he has made to his ST and is in progress of making to his R100 GS that are very interesting. I will have to get the specs on these. One is just a replacement of the diode board with a modern rectifier and voltage regulator that is less likely to fail with heat and age. The other is a very sophisticated electronic ignition that totally bypasses the timing chain and makes the bikes run better, especially at idle.

Sunday, we changed the fork seals. After my Berlin traffic accident last year, the front end has not been the same and the seals weep a bit. I had never done this myself and it was fun to do with Rik who has every tool one could possibly need, for anything one could do with human strength. While we working, the neighbors across the alley came over and talked and even brought us coffee. We installed the old windshield. Rik got out his saw and sander, and we made it much nicer than the straight saw cut I did last time.

Then we went for a ride. Rik showed me some great country roads. They were all flat of course, but some were curvy and we even did a very short stretch of dirt. The countryside was lovely and it was a nice relaxing shakeout of the bike. I noticed the brake pads seemed glazed and that it had more horsepower than my ST at home. The front wheel could be made light in 2nd gear. That night we had a fabulous Indonesian dinner

First Day on the Road

The next day, I set off for Kaiserslautern. This time I was very lightly loaded. The canvas bag on the back, which Rik strapped on with his Globetrotter Ausrüstung straps, held only my daughter's helmet and jacket, and a few gifts. Everything I needed, including my laptop, was in the backpack stuck in the right saddlebag. The left had my heated jacket, extra gloves, and various chemicals and devices for the bike. It was beautiful weather - slightly cool and warming.

The previous day, Rik had showed me a way to get out of town, and past construction detours, to get to Haaksbergen and then into Germany near Bocholt. But this morning, he showed me an easier alternate route. Enschede is really right on the border, so I was in Germany in a few minutes. I took a small country road out of town and caught the only slightly bigger 474 and eventually got on the A31. I had decided to take the Autobahnen through the Ruhrgebiet all the way to Bonn, as that was the fastest way through all of the industry. Rik plotted out the road changes: A31 -> A-2 -> A3 is the main trick, though there are some other details. Rik took strips of duct tape, wrote all of the road directions on them, and stuck them to the windshield as a kind of roll map. That worked really well, except the strips leave adhesive on the plastic.

Excerpt from last year's report about riding through the this area, the Eifel:
This was when I first started seeing the warning signs for motorcyclists, which now appear on mountain roads all over Europe, in all languages, though the slogans vary somewhat. These are very amusing and show a total lack of understanding about motorcycling, and probably are only meant to reassure the car drivers that we are indeed crazy.Almost all of the signs show a large cartoon figure of a motorcyclist on a crotch rocket. The stupidest ones simply say "who risks, loses", "motorcyclist, it is not worth the risk", and "racing is out". The best ones are German. One shows four vultures and says "Racer, we wait." My favorite shows an elaborate winged figure over a motorcyclist with the slogan, "Racer, give your guardian angel a chance!".
End of Exceprt

So I had a map of Bonn, fortunately and I stopped and got cash and had a small lunch near the bank. And then on to the more fun riding. This was the same route as last time. One difference is that the motorcycle warning signs are much less entertaining and even more clueless this year. Now they all say "Racing is Out", show a sign of a motorcyclist falling off his bike, and then say "Danger of Falling". These signs are posted on the best curves.

Another difference is that the weather was great. It was a little warm in Bonn but was very nice by the time I reached the countryside.

The best difference in the trip this year was what I found by accident. Following the very lovely 257 to Adenau (and this year I found the real exit from the A61 that bypasses Ahnweiler), I noticed on the map that there seemed to be a special (gold-colored) ring road just up ahead, that seemed to be a very nicely curved road making a circle in the mountains. Maybe I would be late getting to Kaiserslautern, but it was only about 4pm and I had to take the detour. I was so glad I did.

I get to the road and there is a big installation, a big BMW sign, a lighted sign with something about Formula 1 races having just been held, and lots of fast-looking motorcycles and cars. The ring road turns out to be the world-famous Nuerburgring racetrack and the Formula 1 races had just been televised from there the previous day.

It gets better. As I drive up, there is an announcement that they are sorry for the delay and people may now go on the track. I check it out with the man at the ticket booth. It turns out that on most days in the afternoon, the track is opened to the public. On weekends, even tourbuses go on the track. It was supposed to have been opened at noon today, but it took longer than expected to clean up after the Formula 1 race.

Now, as you can imagine, I got a few strange looks when I rode up on my old BMW with the luggage strapped to the back. Everyone else had a vehicle ready for a serious run on the track. One group of a woman and two men on their bikes took particular notice of me. I asked the woman if she was going out on her bike, and she said no, it was too dangerous with all the fast movers today. But her boyfriend and his friend were going to go.

Well, it was only 25 DM for a ticket for a lap, I was here, and it had just opened. I know I am supposed to watch for saying "oh, what the hell" in my head, but I couldn't resist.

The track is 20.8 km long and is very curvy in sections. It compares very favorably with Sears Point. I did take it very easy. I never went more than 90 mph and considerably more slowly than than on the curves, though I was too busy with the bike and watching all the people coming up on me to look at my gauges. I stayed pretty much to the outside all the time to let the other bikes and cars by me. As far as I could tell, I was the slowest one out there, and I was not motivated to try not to be. Besides, I could tell the bike was often near its stability limits. Meanwhile, some of these guys are whooshing by me. Some of them must have been doing close to 200mph. I was finally passed by one car going not too much faster and found that I could hang with him, and even do a little better on the curves. But again, I didn't push it.

Here's something fantastic about the track, apart from the surface being immaculate, incredibly wide, and having lots of runoff room: there are two carrasels. And not only are they cambered, but the inner few yards are actually beveled. If you go into the bevel, you are leaning below the horizontal. God help you if you go wide and pop up over the lip of the bevel. I stayed on the nice safe outside.

When I finished, I hung around to rehydrate myself in the cafe. I immediately met two couples who had come from Dallas to drive on this track. I went downstairs and saw the young woman I had been speaking with earlier. Her two friends had not yet come back. And there was word that the track had closed because of two accidents. And it seemed likely that her boyfriend was one of them. But the word was also that no one was seriously injured. She said, oh well, he could ride pillion with her. I thought it was interesting that the track opened for my arrival and closed when I had run it. Time to move on down to the Mosel.

I had arranged to meet Sigi at her house where I could pick up the hotel keys so I wouldn't have a repeat of last year's too late arrival at the hotel (and subsequent imposition on Harald). We had a good visit and then I went into town. I didn't get to the Mamamia's Pizzaria until 11, but they made me a Poppye pizza with a Hefe and I was happy. The hotel was a half-block away and I went to bed happy.

Hotel Blum
Rudolf-Breitscheid-Str. 7
67655 Kaiserslautern
49 631 3 16 21 0
FAX 631 2 45 42

Stopped in at a bike shop here. I haven't found a Hein Gerrick shop yet, but Rik tells me they have all kinds of useful motorcycle apparatus, not just clothing. The local shop did have lots of stuff and the clothing seemed a bargain. I tried on one synthetic jacket (Polo) that was very nice and claimed to be waterproof and breathable under German standards. The jacket and overalls, which zipped to the jacket, and had armor that could be moved, would cost a total of $300. But it was too warm. It was a warm day and warm in the store. Even with the removable liner removed, my leather jacket was cooler. And there were no external vents. So I will wait and see what's in Berlin.

Last year, I thought I had done Johanniskreuz here, where the sport bikers in the area go. It's like Alice's and the Santa Cruz mountain roads, but flatter. The area is in a large national forest with substantial hills, but, better, with small paved roads following small zizagging brooks.

This year, I discovered the road to ride is 48, between Johanniskreuz and Rinnthal. Really fabulous. Very smooth. Great curves marked with lots of signs that look like the zebra stripes on a raceway. I knew I was in the right place when I saw the huge sign warning motorcyclists of death from speed.

The guys that put up these signs are just so clueless. There are signs that make me go slower. Warnings that there is dirt or oilspills on the road surface, for instance. If they want motorcycles to slow down, those would be the right signs.

Tons of bikes on these roads and no police. The speed limit is only 70kpm, but everyone ignores that. There are the slow cars, just like home, but they never pull over. They may, rarely, move over a little to invite you to share the lane as you pass. One great thing - real SUVs are rare here. I see a few Suzuki compact mini-SUVs but Europe just doesn't make big cars practical.

Lane sharing - it's not legal here but people do it anyway. WARNING: that includes cars. Cars don't mind if you go between them and an oncoming car. That means also that if the oncoming car needs to move left to get around a slow moped or a parked car, and you are just a motorcycle, they will get in your lane and expect you to be observant enough to have already moved over. Also, cars on curves tend to use the whole road.

Afterwards, I cruised down the Weinstrasse and looked at vinyards and castles near twilight. Very very lovely. I've been to most of these castles before. One to which there is a nice drive is Trifels: so named because there are actually three castles on three adjoining hills. One funny sight on the Winestrasse: there was one of the typical places selling plaster figurines of garden elves and whatnot. Right in the middle of all the elves and garden decorations, towering over them all, was a life-sized painted figure of Laura Croft. I ended up back at Sigi's for coffee and then into town for dinner and a Hefeweizen. Monday is my talk and then Tuesday morning I leave for Austria.

Local color: "Kaiserslautern" means "River of the Emperor ", refering to Barborossa who once made his seat her. The river only appears outside of town, along the road I came in on. Then it dissapears underground, pushed there by the modern city. But the fish is still a famous motif of the town. At one point, Sigrid and Harald pretend to hold up one of many currently in Kaiserslautern. The city distributed a bunch of fiberglass ones to businesses and institutions and encouraged them to paint the fish creatively. Then the city holds a contest for citizens to see if they can identify the fish from a picture and say where it is located. The fish are all over town and my favorite is the one on top of the blood bank. BTW, Berlin seems to be doing someithing similar with bears and cows.

Harald made a tape of Gayle Tufts for me. This Absolutely unterwegs singer, with Rainier Bielfeldt, sings and talks in Dinglish, an hilarious mixture of English and German, playing with dialect all the time. It is trememdous. I've been looking for a copy for years and finally Harald just made me a tape. I may buy the book.