by Chris Geiser

 

We are here! It is very difficult to believe, that all the planning has panned out and we are actually here at the start of our #GFNYDoubleDouble adventure. Three people, three airports, three different cities, bike cases, luggage, and a rental van, and the only kink, was a slight delay on Jack’s flight from Las Vegas (connection from Seattle), to Frankfurt. The best way to have a trans-Atlantic flight is for it to be uneventful. Upon my arrival in Frankfurt, I flew threw immigration, and upon walking outside, saw my bike case sitting at the oversized luggage waiting for me, like a loyal pet. Luckily Tom’s booster seat was right there with it! It took a careful evening and early morning of packing to get it right. Many things put in places where they couldn’t be forgotten. Garmin, pedals, pedal wrench, tool kit, helmet, shoes, spare cleats — oh wait, I need to change my cleats — spare cleats — fudge, no spare cleats, put it on the list. OK, what else, helmet, gloves shoe covers, jerseys, kits, socks (yeah that’s right — I own a few pairs), floor pump, spare tubes, take cartridges out of flat kit, and let’s see, what else, oh, right, BIKE!

The art and science of bike packing. The trick is to offload weight fro your other bag, into the case, because they are going to charge you for the bike no matter what. On the left, the loyal machina awaits my safe passage through immigration.

All the way to Philly, I am thinking, “did I put my pedals in the bag with the seat post? Did I put the seat post in the bag? Where did I put the bag? Is the Garmin in the bag or is it in my pocket? Will I be recording the damn race on my damn phone — don’t laugh it could happen! Passage through Philadelphia was fast and easy, confirming in my own mind the good choice that it is for flying internationally. It takes just as long to get from Staten Island to Kennedy, and there are more spacious and direct flights from Philly. #winning. Dear EWR (Newark), there is a lesson here for you!

 

Dear Newark — have you seen this?

Arrival in Frankfurt

I am having trouble finding humor, sarcasm, irony, or anything remotely objectionable or troublesome in the next sequence of events. I picked up a van I had reserved, and set out to find Terminal 1. Oh wait, there was that thing about getting lost trying to find the airport — FROM the airport. #Meta. Ask your Google Maps app to find Frankfurt Airport as you are pulling out of the rental garage! #Hijinx. I twisted around the roads surrounding the flughafen for about 15 minutes before realizing that the small sign that said terminal 1 was actually pointing at, yes, you guessed it, terminal 1. So I stopped ignoring it and pulled in. With a minimal amount of texting Aleksandra and all her stuff were in the van and we were on the road to nowhere. With two hours to kill before Jack arrived I tried to find us someplace to sit quietly and have coffee. But there really is no such place within earshot of the airport, so we drove around for a while. Both of us had only gotten a little bit of sleep during the flight, so I could tell this would be a long day. We finally made our way back to the airport, parked in the short term lot (best 10 Euros I ever spent), and got sandwiches at a cafe inside the airport while we waited for Jack. We bought a sandwich for Jack and water for the road so that we could get going as soon as he arrived.

Sidebar

At the risk of offending my fellow Americans, please skip down if you run the risk of being offended by a story describing how stereotypes are created. If you’ve ever wondered why the American image in Europe is what it is, we can start with this little ditty.

On the way into the airport to find food, and friend, we passed a number of signs for a small mall within the airport. There was a sign for a MacDonald’s in there. We continued past those signs and found a lovely bakery (that is probably a chain here, but I am over it), and proceeded to order lunch. As we ordered, I spoke English to Aleksandra about what we were ordering:
Passer by: “Oh do you speak English?”

Me: “Yes, we do”

Passer by: “Oh, thank goodness, do you know where the MacDonald’s is?”

Me (to self): Really, because I am American you think I know where the fucking MacDonald’s is? (but that’s not the point of me telling you this)

Me: “I don’t know, I think I saw a sign, but I don’t remember.”

Aleksandra to me: “Maybe it was in that little mall we saw the sign for”

Me to Passer By: “Oh yeah back there those escalators go down to a little mall, it could be in there, maybe”

Passer By: “Over that way? (emphatically) ARE YOU SURE?”

Me to self: No, I don’t fucking know, so I was trying to be nice, and I now have no fucking idea what to tell you. Oh wait. I have an idea.

Me to Passer By: “No, I am not sure, in fact, I have no idea where it is, and I am sorry that I can’t help you”

Karmatically speaking, I will pay for that. I HAVE TO. But, come on! I just completed a wonderful exchange of money for food with my broken German to a person that spoke no English, and had food and coffee to show for it. Now I am going to have the piss taken out of me by one of my countrymen for not knowing where the god damned MacDonalds in the Frankfurt airport is? Karmatically speaking, I am very lucky, that I didn’t say “oh yeah, it’s in terminal 2, I am sure of it.”

Gruppo Compato — Now Get in the Van!

With Jack in hand now, we re-packed the van and were on our way. We caught up with each other on the ride, and Aleksandra did some power napping as we made our way toward Hamelin. Run of the mill traffic and a little bit of rain hampered our speed a little, but we were progressing and not too far behind any schedule we might have had. We made a quick stop on the highway as it had been well over 2 hours since my last cup, and I was starting to feel the imaginary withdrawal bugs crawling all over me.

Some very nice food for an airport — although we never did figure out where the MacDonalds was. Bottom right the menu at the highway joint was pretty impressive — for a gas station — real plates, and side dishes.

Our arrival in Hameln was right around rush hour, and with the various zigs and zags it took us a bit to get oriented. I dropped Jack and our bikes at our hotel and drove Aleksandra to hers. The super narrow and cobbled streets were awkward with such a big rig, so I pulled us on the sidewalk so we could get her checked in. After check in we lugged her stuff up three flights of stairs, and I headed back to the hotel Jungestild so that we could get our bikes together. With a key operated garage, that was for all the cyclists in the hotel, we had a nice, clean, dry place to get things together and do a mini shakedown in the street outside.The key operated automatic door felt like I was opening a missile silo. Cases were unpacked, and bikes together very quickly. It was time for dinner.

“La Machina” De Rosa SK Pininfarina, Campagnolo Super Record 53/39–11/29, Bora Ultra wheels Continental 4 Season Grand Prix 4000 tires, Powertap P1 Pedals, Selle Italia Saddle, FSA stem and handlebars. Now you know.

Closing Time

After putting things together it was time to forage. We let Aleksandra know we were coming, and started across the medieval square that makes up the beautiful town centre of Hameln. What we didn’t realize was how late it had gotten. Probably because in places like New York City, and Seattle, 21:00 isn’t really late when it comes to food. So we didn’t think about it. But they were rolling things up in Hameln, and after a little walking we were able to find an Italian place that was open until 23:00. Interestingly, my German is soooooo rusty (after little to no practice-impressive right?), that I managed ordering better in Italian than in my attempt to order in German. We were so hungry, it felt like we ordered everything on the menu. I think we came pretty close. All of it was good. But the best part was that a gentleman from across the room realized that we were here for GFNY, and came over to talk to us. We introduced ourselves to him and to his wife, Philippe, and Jackie are here from Costa Rica for the full #GFNYDoubleDouble! Bravo! Ironically (or maybe not), we ran into them again tonight at dinner at a different place.

The Shakedown

With a shakedown ride planned for this morning, an important step would have been waking up at a decent hour. My alarm set to 06:00, I got up, read a few emails and fell right back asleep. I awoke at ten for a work call from some colleagues up in Denmark. With the call finished, I texted Jack and realized that he had also overslept. Meanwhile, across town, Aleksandra was awake, had eaten breakfast, and was dressed and ready. We had a great, late breakfast of pickled herring, small sausages and bread and jam, and walked over to meet Aleksandra. We brought one of our foot pumps so she could finish getting her bike ready. Mission accomplished, we set out for more coffee — I managed to get the order right in German, but realized that I may have been doing more harm to our cause than good. This was the third or so conversation that I started in German, reasonably thinking if, I can say what I mean, and mean what I say, the rest will take care of itself. But then they answered. Quickly. Like I lived here and spoke German every day. Not like I run the Babel app a couple of times a month on the bus.

Der Langsame

That’s me. Der Langsame. “The slow one”. Not on the bike, not on the walk, not in general. But when I realized that my conversations were going nowhere as fast as they could speak, I said “Langsam, bitte, mein Deutsche ist nicht sehr gut!” This always stopped them dead in their tracks, put a light smile on their faces and prompted the reply “would it be better for you in English?” I really hated to admit that it would, but yes, thank you, it really would. I aspire to someday be able to consider myself a multilingual citizen of the world. But that takes time and effort, that I need to put in the same way I put in hours on the trainer. If I want to go faster, I have to train. It’s a universal rule. It applies to, basically anything.

Coffee, a change of clothes, and bikes out of the garage, we were on our way. I navigated us down as many bike lanes as I could to the start line of the GFNY, but we also had to find a bike shop and some CO2. We found a couple of bike shops, one called Fun Corner. It was a huge layout, with a friendly staff that delayed their lunch to help us out. We found the cartridges, and I asked about the cleats — they had them. We paid, and were on our way. We navigated back to the route start, which didn’t yet look like the route start and decided to follow the route markers until we were out of town, and see if we could do a little of the course.

With traffic on the roads, we made sure to make full use of the bike paths and farm roads that seem to be the accepted way of riding here. Lidia Fluhme had emailed me and clued me in that the place to be is on the bike/farm roads and that drivers know it is GFNY time when they start to see road bikes actually traveling in traffic lanes. We got about 20km into the route, making a nice pace, and ran into a really nice little berg, only about 800 meters long, but relatively steep, and on a beautiful road. Most of the roads here in Hameln are spectacular, but this especially so. We summited the first little bit of it, and pulled aside to let a tractor go by before we headed up the steep bit. After another small climb we realized we were starting to get late in the day, (waking up at 10AM will do that to you), and headed back to Hameln.

Well let’s see now, I am trying to find out where the route goes on my phone but seem to be missing the big-ass “route this way dummy” sign dead ahead of me. Strecke = Route

The Despe-Heyen was a 2KM effort with about 800 steeper meters at the end. It was a good reminder of the type of climbing we will face on Sunday.

The Hardest Working Man in Show Business

As we rolled into Hameln and past the expo area, I shouted “let’s go see Maciej — Maciej and his crew keep GFNY races all over the world running smoothly, from getting the expo set up, to marking courses, and doing everything that allows thousands of riders to be pros for a day. We didn’t want to take too much of his time but we were able to meet his crew, including the gent that was driving the broom van in Italy last year and followed my friend Massimo and I to the finish line. Hmm, Massimo, I wonder if he is riding on Sunday?). We could see how the expo was shaping up, and after a few minutes, I heard my name called. It was Kenny Abel the race organizer. “Mister Double-Double, you are here, welcome!”

Kenny and I had a great chat about the race and how Hameln is the perfect place for it. The roads, the people, this will definitely be a special day of racing (especially if the beautiful roads we were on today were any indication). I let him know that we got about 30km into the course, and gave him our feedback on how beautiful we thought it was. To be racing that with not traffic — that will be something.

Maciej, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business

And now onto a late lunch, as we rolled back to the town square. We found an outdoor cafe, with great food, and soaked in the atmosphere and the people watching.

I will condense the rest of the day. Because it’s primarily concerned with eating. But the eating was fabulous. A beautiful, light lunch, spaetzel, pretzels, wurst, and nice coffee. For dinner, one of the best Jager Schnitzels I have had, thank you Lidia for the recommendation. For all the charms of the food, the charms of this city are 10x as amazing. The town centre is so picturesque, you really do feel like you are walking into an Aesop’s fable, or a Grimm fairy tale. The Pied Piper is everywhere. On every wall, a painting, or a picture, or a plaque. There are Pied Piper tour guides, and even “rat bread” a lovely rat shaped piece of bread being sold at the front desk of our hotel. The cobbled (not Roubaix cobbles), streets are beautiful, and clean, and the people are very friendly. We have only scratched the surface, and so the plan for tomorrow is to get to the expo at nine — packet up — and get cracking on a short ride (maybe 90 minutes), and then back for a timely lunch, and some exploration of Hameln. We will be rolling out early on Monday to head to France, meet Tom, and climb the Ventoux (#subtoux — meaning I would like to beat my PR of 2 hours), then off to Lisbon on Thursday for GFNY Portugal. It’s a busy itinerary but we will take tomorrow afternoon and evening for seeing as much of this beautiful place as we can.

Auf Wiedersehen — and please allow me to leave you with some gratuitous photos of food, and food consumption, as well as some even more gratuitous Pied Piper themed photos. I plan to take a lot more tomorrow.