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

There are situations in life that even all preparations can´t prepare for (considering that I had prepared myself with a tought training-schedule on this trip). When Frank woke me up at 10 am this morning I immedeatly felt like after 2 hours of good inline-hockey, definetly not like one should feel after almost 10 hours of sleep. The first 1.6 kilometers on our bikes to the next supermarket were a torture and the knowledge that we had about 120 kilometers to go to Lyon didn´t really lift my mood as well.

Frank also stated that he felt pretty bad this morning but it was tough to see it by the way he rode his bike, it was even tougher for me due to the fact that he was out of sight after 30 seconds as well.

When we finally hit the road after a nice little breakfast in the parking lot of the supermarket the clock had just struck 12 am and the day definetly felt like the hottest of the tour so far. We had 27 degrees yesterday and even though I don´t know how warm it is today I would guess that we moved above the 30 easily. I also had some headaches after a couple of kilometers and luckily Frank had some painkillers with him. He had already used them yesterday when his knee started to trouble him a bit. What a vacation...

The cycling felt a lot more like work and a lot less like fun today compared to the previous stages. The heat and the fact that we had to pass about 50 hills on the first 50 kilometers also contributed to this. I can´t really remember a flat part of the route up to Bourg en Bresse where we are stopping right now. My average speed had also taken a big hit and I only travelled 17.7 kilometers during the first hour, Frank´s average was above 22 already so that I have to come to the conclusion that his statements concerning his fatigue in the morning were not all that true. He should become a politican...

2 hours into today´s stage I finally got rolling a bit better and the average had hit the 18.8, right now (2 1/2 hours on the bike until Bourg en Bresse) it´s at 19.5 and when the remaining parts of today´s stage are somewhat flat the 20.x shouldn´t be a problem again. At least we still have 30 minutes to rest our legs a bit as Frank´s bike is at the doctors office right now. After the fourth spoke broke today Frank decided to have the rear wheel checked out by someone who knows more about bikes than he does and we can pick the bike up again pretty soon. 4:0 for his bike in the spoke-competition...

2nd entry of the day:

Shortly after 11 pm I am sitting in one of the uncountable cafes of Lyon´s old city where you will probably find more than a hundred restaurants and cafes per square kilometer. I can´t remember any other city with so many restaurants and cafes in it´s old city like here in Lyon. Frank returned to the hotel 40 minutes ago after we walked a bit around town for 90 minutes before he decided that everything outside a 500-meter-perimeter around the hotel is too far. We also ate at some turkish fast food restaurant which might not be up to the available standards in this town but at least was kind of affordable, the ice-cream I am waiting on right now is already more than expensive enough by comparison.

The weather also delivered a great evening with temperatures of at least 25 degrees and absolutly no wind. In addition to that there are almost no tourists around at all and it´s tough to hear any other language then french from any of the other restaurants I walked by before or any other table around me right now. Really nice for a change...

But let´s get back to the cycling for a while and everything that happened before our arrival at our hotel at 8:30 pm after the 2nd day with sunset-cycling in a row. No night-cycling today though. And once again more than enough happened, it will be easy to fill as many lines with that stuff as I already filled about this great city that "is just the same as Cologne if it hadn´t been for the 2nd world war" (this statement doesn´t come from me and I have my serious doubts about it). Whatever...

After the first 50 kilometers I wrote about earlier today were nothing short of a major struggle it didn´t get any better thereafter as well. In the end we cycled more than 120 kilometers again and my average climbed up to 20.8 again as I found my legs during the afternoon. The cycling still remained work today even though it got more and more productive with almost 24 kilometers during the 5th hour for example.

My ice-cream just arrived, at least it looks rather nice but everything else would have been an affront with the price-tag attached to it. I will try to enjoy it as long as possible and put some constructive sentences on the paper between bites, even though it´s probably 11:30 by now all tables are still filled around me and Lyon really seems to be very alive on a saturday evening. Nevertheless I started racing at 24 kilometers per hour later during the day as I wrote just a few lines ago Frank still got faster and faster, I don´t know how he does it...

At least our arrival in Lyon was very enjoyable as we just rolled into town the last couple of kilometers. After cycling uphill almost all day (it felt that way) it was great to finish it with a solid and easy cycling even though the cycling required a lot of attention as the city of Lyon does obviously not have any sort of quality management for it´s roads and it was tougher to get a bike safely into town than it is to manoveur a formula one-car through Monaco. Luckily no spokes died and everything went fine. We also passed "Nevada Bob´s Golf Store" on the way into town. What the hell is Nevada Bob´s Golf Store? I don´t know but would you ever name your business "Nevada Bob´s Golf Store?". Thought so...

At least Frank also showed some signs of mental fatigue today when he came out of a supermarket along the road and told me that he had just washed his hands with soap and forgotten to take of the cycling-gloves prior to that. I just remembered that he had told me last night during our fist night-stage that the worst accidents always happen when fatigue starts to creep in, if that is true I was already a hazard on two legs for everybody around me at our fist stop at a supermarket this morning. I also turned out to be a hazard for the bottom line of all the shops I went to as I caught myself shoplifting for the very first time in my life at the same supermarket where Frank soaped his cycling-gloves. I bought water, some baguette, some vegetables and also the little notebook I am writing on right now only that it somehow moved into the pockets of my shorts when I got myself the vegetables. When I left the shop I thought at first that I had forgotten the notebook back there but then I found it in my shorts again. Oh well, shit happens...

Our hotel-search in Lyon didn´t take very long tonight as we just took the 2nd hotel we found. The first one was full, the 2nd was right in downtown Lyon and not all that full so we just crashed into it. It is definetly the very best hotel we have stayed in this year and also by comparison to all hotels we stayed at last year but it´s also the by far most expensive of the pack. After 270 kilometers in two days I really didn´t care at all when we checked in and it´s nice to see that our bathroom is about the size of our hotel-room at the Formula One hotel in Muhlhausen.

At least we finally had a chance to check our e-mails again when the guy at the front-desk allowed us to use his computer for "5-10 minutes, really quick". 15 Minutes after that Frank had finally managed to write his e-mails on the rather strange french keyboard, 5 minutes later I had killed the computer as windows 95 didn´t really like 8 openend e-mail windows at the same time on AOL-mail. Maybe it would have worked with Microsoft´s hotmail but this time it was AOL that brought the pc down. The poor front-desk guy was rather shocked as he had just worked on some stuff on the computer and from the expression on his face I would guess that he had not saved it. It was a good time to go out to eat something, a really good time to walk out fast...

Well, that´s all for now and I think I will walk back to the hotel with one more turn through some of the tiny streets with all the buzzing restaurants around here before I will try to get enough sleep for a better stage tomorrow. It´s probably too late already for a really refreshing night-rest but this evening in Lyon was worth it for sure.