Diary written by: Bernt Pölling-Vocke ( bernty@gmx.com )

The day started off just the way I wished it wouldn´t. Sitting at the breakfast-table the people at the table next to us had a very interesting conversation (yes, there are times in life when talk about the weather gets interesting!). "Has anybody seen the weather-report today?" "Yes, in the morning it´s supposed to be rather good and in the afternoon thunderstorms will cross the area!" "I heard it just the other way around...". Well, obviously nobody knew what to expect, a quick view out of the window asserted me that it wasn´t stormy nor nice at the moment. Cloudy would have been a fitting adjective.

A slight discomfort in my legs renewed my hope for the magic fourth day when everything is supposed to be just smooth but for the moment I had other problems as well. It´s pretty tough to decide what was more fun on the first 20 kilometers of the day. Option a) would be the sporadic showers we encountered, option b) would be strong headwinds which dropped the speeds well below the 20 kilometers per hour. Later on the Rhine didn´t flow as straight as before anymore and with each turn the wind came differently at us, at times it felt like cycling against windmills, at others you didn´t even have to step on the pedals in order to gain speed. Suprisingly the weather improved dramatically and some rays of sun finally reached us.

45,5 kilometers into today´s stage something happened that wasn´t on our minds with our good new bikes this year, at least not this early into the adventure. One of Frank´s spokes broke on a rather mediocre bike-way at the Rhine. Well, normally that isn´t really such a big problem but outside any town just near a small village and on a sunday where all stores are closed the scenario changes dramatically. We asked some people where the next bike-store could be and found out that the town of Bingen gave reasons for hope. It was only 11 kilometers away and also in our direction so we just kept on cycling, much to the pleasure of Frank´s rear tire which didn´t really turn very even any more.

After we had cycled a bit through Bingen and also didn´t get any help from some inhabitants who didn´t know crap about there own town (which is hard to imagine in a town of Bingen´s size) we finally found the bike-store. There is always a good chance that the owner lives nearby or even in the same building in small towns, this time we were out of luck as the store was placed into an old gas-station. We managed to find out the private phone-number of the owner when we called the information but nobody was at home. I also doubt that the owner would have come to his store but it was something worth trying.

After Frank started to talk about cheating by taking a train to our final destination for today (Worms) we just climbed on the bikes again, hoping that Frank´s rear tire wouldn´t fall apart with all the weight on it. In the worst case a friend of Frank whom we wanted to meet in the evening in Worms would have picked us up somewhere in the country, at least that´s what we hoped on. While leaving Bingen we also stopped at a gas-station to buy some more drinks for the tour and I had my first braindead moment of the journey when I bought myself a bottle of water, put it down on the ground, took the previous bottle from my bike and BANG, just like that the new bottle was broken into pieces right in front of me. I really didn´t understand how the bottle got destroyed, couldn´t remember kicking against it accidently or anything but a laughing Frank told me that I had not put it on the ground but had it stuck under my arm when I picked up the other bottle. If this scenario is true (I really have no idea and still think that I had put the bottle on the ground) the state of the bottle would make sense (lots of fragments around me) but in the end I just had to buy another bottle.

As faith wanted it we rolled by another bike-store in the next village and the owner happened to live in the 2nd flore just above his shop. Luckily for us he was also at home and willing to open on sunday for a few minutes so Frank got his bike fixed for 5 marks. On the other side the guy didn´t really put a lot of effort into it and told us that one doesn´t have to readjust the other spokes even when the tire isn´t rolling evenly. Well, no arguing on a sunday I guess but we decided to recheck the tire at another store tomorrow, at least the spoke was replaced again. Frank also bought some extra spokes just for the case one would break again.

In order to cut down on the total distance we had also abandoned the Rhine in Bingen in order to cycle a direct line to Worms (the Rhine would make a pretty big turn which would be at least 30 kilometers longer). The road also looked pretty good on the map, few turns that could indicate major hills, long straight parts. As faith wanted it in this case the map gave us a pretty wrong picture and when we asked in the bike-shop about the route we were told that "it will go downhill a couple of times". Well, that sentence allows for some pretty interesting interpretations and we were also told that this area is known as the "Rheinische Bergland" which more or less means that it´s an area near the Rhine that is rather hilly ("Berg" would translate as mountain and "land" is area...). I already felt the 70 kilometers we had on the speedometer by now and those words just got me scared pretty good, especially considering that I already had major problems keeping up with Frank the previous hours on the road.

Suprisingly it was Frank who started to push his bike after approximatly 100 kilometers at the toughest climb of the day with 8%. I didn´t really race up the mountain like Lance Armstrong would but moved to the lowest gear and went up there rather easily with something like 10 kilometers per hour, if this would have been a race I think I would have gained 2-3 minutes on Frank on this part of the stage. Due to the rather tough cycling we also ran out of water along the road and with just small villages and the sunday-factor there wasn´t any hope of finding a place to buy some along our road so we just started ringing some bells in the next village we came through. After ringing about 10 bells finally somebody opened the door and probably expected anybody but two cyclists crying out for nothing but some water.

At 8 pm and about 2 hours after our scheduled arrival in Worms we finally checked into a hotel after a short dispute concerning hotel-rates. We managed to find an acceptable place to stay (price-wise) and ended up in a staff-room just below the ceiling. The room was rather comfortable even though I don´t really like pink sheets on my bed. At least we had a refrigerator, a leaking one though. Hotel room for 98 marks, new spoke for 5 marks, getting asked by a 150 kilo-monster on the staff-floor wether I am a regular visitor or a new staff-member: priceless. I think there must be a connection between beauty and intelligence, none of both was found in that monster. Seriously, if somebody with a bike-helmet, bike-clothes and sunglasses moves into a room you think that he is just showing up for his first day at the new job? Thought so...

Late night-entry:

Frank´s friend Katharina whom he got to know during a vacation in Munich 4-5 years ago has just left  after spending some time with us from 9 to 11 pm. After Frank already lost the first mountain-stage at the first real climb of the tour earlier today he also lost at a turkish restaurant around the corner where I inherited half of his plate after he stated that "the body wants carbohydrates and gets fat". I take everything after almost 260 kilometers in two days, thanks...

Worms itself turned out to be a very boring town during the evening. After 10 pm it´s hard to find any people in the inner-city at least if you don´t count McDonalds and some local bar where the ears get punished with loud country-music and the dumb talk of the local alcoholics. Other cultural highlights worthy to mention are also tough to find. There is a cathedral which is supposed to be well known but I think it´s way smaller than the one in Osnabrueck and especially Cologne so it´s more or less a waste of calories to type about it and all we did in the evening was having a nice talk with Katherina over some ice-cream at some drinks at a greek restaurant where we were the only customers.

I just hope that tomorrows stage will be less of a challenge for the body and the mind. At least stores will be opened again and with some luck it will even be less than 100 kilometers, my legs wouldn´t mind at all. According to Katharina it had rained almost all day in the area, I guess we got lucky with the weather again after the few showers in the early hours. I just hope that it doesn´t get us tomorrow...

Chess statistics:        Bernt vs Frank         0:1