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

Maybe I didn´t want to realize it due to yesterday´s weather report but we had the first typical weather you would expect in August. I also didn´t use my sunblocker, still remembering that this always resulted in showers a few minutes later during last year´s tour and all in all I got myself sunburned pretty good. First you pray for some sunshine for four days in a row and when you finally get what you want you start praying for clouds again...

Anyways, the stage was a smashing success and also the end of the rather funny "Franksche Fehlerquotient" as we rode a bit more than the 80 kilometers we had planned for today. Instead of staying the night at Neuve-Brisach we kept on going until we made it to the suburbs of Mulhausen, 32 kilometers ahead of our plan. We won´t see too much of the city from our hotel near the autobahn here but Muhlhausen is supposed to be rather ugly. I don´t think it´s as bad as Ludwigshafen though due to the fact that car-manufacturing doesn´t stink as much as all the chemical crap we passed by there.

During the journey not a whole lot happened today which isn´t really that bad. The nature was great for parts of the stage and all problems were of minor quality. Another spoke broke on Frank´s bike after 50.6 kilometers and his bike moved up by 2:0 in that department. By now Frank was able to repair the damage himself, I guess you learn really fast when your first spoke goes to heaven on a sunday in the middle of nothing as we had it three days ago.

The only other event funny enough to mention where three old guys who were fishing at a canal we were cycling along in the afternoon. When we rode by them two of them stormed at us and told us that the road along the canal would stop around the corner and that we should better turn around. This might not seem funny or interesting at first but the two guys looked as if they had just escapted from the Muppets Show. Both were the opposite of tall and slim and had a very interesting conversation-style:

Grandpa 1: Back there on the right is a bridge over the Rhein you can take.
Grandpa 2: Bridge over the Rhine!

And so on, no matter what the first one said the 2nd one repeated the main essence from the sentence without the use of verbs or other important things that form a gramatically correct sentence, it´s pretty tough to describe the two but it was definetly hilarious to listen to them. They also weren´t that sure about the route we should take so in the end our map helped a lot more than their advice...

Since we don´t have a lot of reasons to complain about the weather today what about the wind? Medium and strong headwinds throughout the day made for some tough cycling, I really wouldn´t mind the wind to turn now that the weather itself has already turned in a nice direction. One can´t have everything I suppose...

Right now I am still waiting on Frank to come out of the shower again so that we can go to a chinese restaurant just across the street at this exciting part of Muhlhausen where there isn´t anything but a bunch of cheap hotels, the autobahn, the chinese restaurant mentioned before and some warehouses. I will also loose some chess-matches after dinner and get started on "The Great Gatsby", a book I have heard a lot about so far but also a book I don´t know too much about. In most cases way too famous books (especially if you know that they are used in schools on a regular basis) don´t turn out to be that entertaining but I will see.

2nd entry of the day:

10:30 pm; instead of the chinese restaurant we ended up at Quickburger just around the warehouse at the corner. Quickburger is basically the same as McDonalds, I don´t know if it´s a franchise-chain you can only find in France but I know that I have never been to Quickburger before. They were actually rather quick in deed and the food was just what one would expect at a place like that. I also went 1:3 in chess this evening, all in all it´s 1:7 so far. Won one, now I can die in peace...

Chess statistics:        Bernt vs Frank         1:7