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

70 kilometers into today´s open-ended stage we are sitting at a McDonalds in Montbelliar. 18 hours after our visit at Quickburger last nixt it definetly was time for some BSE again and here we are. Today´s 70 kilometers could be considered rather average but not nearly as dumb and boring as some four teenagers right behind us who were smart enough to park their Peugeot-motorcycles right in front of McDonald´s front entrance. When you´re crying for attention there are always ways to get them and they had to move their motorcycles to another parking position when the manager came out and had a nice little talk with them. At least the wind is blowing in the right direction so that we don´t have anything to do with the smoke of their cigarettes, I really wish I would be that cool...

Back to today´s stage: we had a nice mixture of headwinds and neverending hills which combined for a very grueling day on the bike so far. I also cycled all day with a sweatshirt and some long trousers, my skin has had enough sun for the moment and I would probably die of skin cancer in 5 years if I would cycle the way I cycled yesterday again on a sunny day. Next time the sunblocker will be used for sure. At least the weather was on my side a bit and we just had tons of clouds so far. Almost no sunshine, absolutly no rain, fine with me.

Prior to today´s stage I somehow thought that we would just cycle along a canal from Muhlhausen to here but I should have taken a closer look at the maps. It turend out that we always stayed close to the canal but climbed one hill after another on the left or right side of it with very few flat passages between. But taking a closer look at maps isn´t always good, Frank hat calculated 52,5 kilometers until here and we are at 70. I really don´t want to know how far Barcelona really is...

At least the nature was great today. There also weren´t too many places that had been touched by civilization on our route and I counted a handfull of small villages, 2 cementries and one store for tombstones. There was also one supermarket, of course it happened to be closed. All in all it was really an area of the world where you can make more money selling gravestones then selling foodstuffs and other articles people like to buy when they have some more time to live. Frank got also attacked by a wild dog who chased after his bike for quiet a while. I didn´t have my camera ready but I am sure it would have been a great action shot!

Today´s profile of the track was also very good to check the fitness-level of both riders. More often than before during our tour Frank was able to pull away from me and I really had to cycle very hard at times in order to climb up hill after hill while it all still seemed to be rather easy for him. He also considered the cancellation of our Mont Ventoux-stage but I think it was meant as a joke even though he just said that he was just wishing to fall into his bed tonight. Maybe the tour affects him a bit, too...

2nd entry of the day:

Just like in some bad movies the day ended with a happy end. After our prolongued stop at McDonalds until 4:30 many good things happened at the same time: the wind eased of, we entered the nicest part of our journey so far (nature-wise) and the road we travelled on had only very light traffic. To our left and right some impressive hills flanked the valley we were cycling through and most of the time we stayed close to a nice little river. In addition to this all the McBacons and BigMacs also put some juice back into our legs and we raced the 50.5 kilometers to our hotel in less than 2 hours with just 2 short breaks which becomes even more impressive when you consider that I had managed to break the 50 kilometers-in-2-hours-barrier just once before in my life. Back then I also didn´t have any luggage on my bike and no 70 kilometers in my legs so one should really thank McDonalds for this here. I don´t know what kind of chemicals they put into their food but they definetly got the mixture right. And I don´t even care too much about the calories, most have something to do with riding the bike for more than a 100 kilometers almost every day! Prior to our stop at McDonalds our average speed also happened to be slightly below 19 and it seemed pretty realistic that today´s stage would be the slowest of the tour so far, in the end the average had moved up to 21.2 and it´s the fastest stage so far. It just happened...

With a total of 675 kilometers we also moved ahead of last year´s total with ease. Last year it also took us 8 days from Cologne to Paris and today is just the sixth day of this tour so I think we really got it going well at the moment. We also moved ahead of our own ambitious schedule for this tour by 50 kilometers and this number doesn´t even include the fact that we had to cycle about 20% more than Frank had calculated prior to our start. The great last 50 kilometers and the total distance just put me on an absolute emotional high and I can´t wait to get started again in the morning.

3rd entry of the day:

2 hours passed again and this diary is getting close to something one could publish as a novel but as long as interesting things keep on happening I will keep on writing. Originally we only wanted to go to the hotel´s bar, play some chess and drink some diet coke. They didn´t have any diet coke so I didn´t stand a chance in chess at all, it´s all the regular coke´s fault that I went 0:3 tonight and fell to 1:9 overall. Frank thinks it has to do with talent and concentration as well but I doubt it.

Whatever, while we were playing chess I noticed some frenchman staring at our board from the bar and it was only a matter of time until he finally adressed us directly, I just sensed it coming. We had just started our 2nd match and in his third turn Frank had moved the pawn in front of his king 2 fields to the front. Our french friend got up and moved the pawn back one field. Then he tried to explain to us that you are only allowed to move a pawn two fields on the very first move of the whole game, afterwards a pawn can only move ahead one field at a time. This was very new to Frank and me and we started arguing a bit but the combination of our limited french-abilities and the total lack of any foreign-language-knowledge of this chess-experct led to no results. I only understood that this pal was very sure about the rules and insisted on the idea that no pawn can move more than one field after the first move by any figure has been made. Maybe that happens when you spend too much time at a bar in a small village but in the end we just kept on playing with the rules as we knew them, as all chess-computers know them and as the pros use them. Nevertheless it was a funny discussion and maybe things are just a bit different in France than in the rest of the world.

Just a short while later we wanted to leave our hotel for a nice little late-night walk around town but just as we got up from our seats a german hiker came into the bar and started asking for a room and of course money for the room. He told us that he was just a bit short, really needed to take a shower and had been on the road for 5 months, walking all the way from southern Spain to the little village we were at right now. He told us that he was making this trip in order to clear his head, later on he told us that he walked because he didn´t have any money after he got robbed in Spain. He probably would have had another 5-10 variations if we had listened any longer but I just told him that he should try to find a cheaper youth-hostel or something like that, he wasn´t completly broke and by my standards he looked rather well and not like someone who has been on the road without a penny to spend for almost half a year. He also told us that he had already asked in another hotel in town about a room but that the rate was too high as well. In addition to that he told us that he had also drunken some beers at the other hotel´s bar so something just doesn´t make too much sense here. I didn´t try to tell him that spending money on beer isn´t that smart when you don´t have money for a room but the beer-smell convinced me that it wouldn´t have turned out into a great discussion and so we just left him alone. He left the hotel right after us and started walking in the direction we came from on our bikes today. Maybe it rains tonight so that he can have his shower but I still don´t buy the whole story and chances are pretty good that he cleared his head so good that no remains of a brain can be found. I really wouldn´t mind helping someone in need but I think the only need this guy had was a need for a very good doc.

Enough for today, all pawns move up two fields please...

Chess statistics:        Bernt vs Frank         1:9