The final week of my European "Spring Campaign"

Italy was fun, real fun, but our time down there didn't account for the entire three-and-a-half weeks that I spent in Europe on this most recent trip. After we had returned from down south there remained one more week before finally heading back to the US.

Returning from our trip on Monday night meant that we'd be in town for the weekly "Fritz Fahrt," a bike ride that starts just a few hundred meters away from Sabine's place at Bikefritz, a tiny, hole-in-the-wall bike shop that is being run by a retired cop and lifelong cycling aficionado. That's Italian and therefore an apt term to describe Fritz, who prefers to refer to himself as the capo and the riders as the ciclisti. No wonder that the team uniform is styled after the Italian flag, in red, white, and green. And it's not an easy thing to become a member of Team Fritz: This one is by invitation only.

I've talked to Fritz (aka, Friedrich Birkner) on numerous occasions, and on the morning of that week's Fritz Fahrt I went over to the shop to tell him about our Italian adventures. I guess that softened him up and he agreed to sell me a Team Fritz jersey, which I promptly wore that evening. It's quite a sight when about 40 riders congregate in the gravel parking lot of the shop for their weekly ride all of them--without exception--wear the jersey! Just like in any other club or team, there are slower and faster riders, and depending on how many ciclisti show up on a given evening, there may be three or four groups, divided by ability and speed. Sabine and I rode with gruppo tre, while Fritz himself preferred to take it easy with gruppo quattro. As you can imagine, the hammerheads are in groups one and two, and they will do around 60 miles when the days are at their longest, with lots of climbing thrown in for good measure. Group three seemed like a good compromise.

Our group was led by Sigi, a local rider who knows the region like his back pocket and who changes the route every week. I believe it was June 21 when we embarked on our excursion, the longest day of the year, and Sigi made the most out of it. We left the shop at 18:30 hrs, and it was just a few minutes before 22:00 hrs and getting rather dark when we ended up at the Garda, an Italian gelateria in Freising that is the de facto club home. Of the 14 riders who started in gruppo tre, eight or nine were women, and one of the guys dropped out after just a few kilometers after realizing that he should have ridden in gruppo quattro. Sigi's leadership style was a bit unorthodox, but fortunately I didn't understand most of the rather heated exchanges with some of the riders since his German is Bavarian enough for me to be left clueless when he talks.

Fritz holding court post-ride at the Garda

Thanks to our riding and climbing in Italy Sabine and I didn't have problems hanging with the group; actually, we were right in the middle of things. It was a beautiful ride that took us through the Holledau (or Hallertau), the world-famous hop-growing region north of Freising. The evening sun cast a beautiful light on landscape and riders, and it was really a fine ride, despite all the bitching and moaning that was elicited by Sigi's accelerations and unconventional antics. Eventually, several bike lights came out and a few feathery jackets were donned, and at long last it was time to forget all discord at the Garda over copious amounts of ice cream, Tegernseer beer, and potato chips that have become a hallmark of the post-ride get-togethers. Yeah man, free dschibbs. We rolled home (just about a mile) close to midnight. Sche war's! 

Dschibbs, Tegernseer Helles, and good company are the culmination of every weekly Fritz Fahrt

With Sabine still off from work, yet also with an eye on the weather forecast, we decided that instead of a two-night overnighter that we had planned with our gravel bikes we'd cut things down to a two-day, one-night trip. One of the reasons for taking my sexy-yet-underused Morati cyclocross bike to Sabine was that we had been envisioning bike touring possibilities for a while, and since Germany (as well as other central European countries) have lots of gravel bike paths, road bikes can go only so far. I've been keeping an old Van Dessel 'cross bike (that a friend had given to me years ago) with Sabine as a beater, and now we both have gravel-worthy bikes--no, there are no disc brakes and the transmissions are still manual 9-speeds, but they do just fine.

Gravel grinding along the Isar river on the way to Landau

More important than the number of gears is the fact that I brought my own Tailfin rack/pannier combination with me, and in a sudden fit of generosity (and also to try out my new German credit card) I had bought an identical set for Sabine to use as she sees fit. Must be nice to have a sugar daddy.... So, on Wednesday morning after the Fritz Fahrt we packed our panniers, loaded them on the bikes, and headed east toward Landau.

We had chosen a route that took us along the river Isar, which eventually flows into the Danube a bit upstream from Passau. Well, we were not going to go that far--Landau is about 60 miles from Freising, and we figured that was going to be plenty for this first-time cruise with loaded (albeit lightly) bags and riding mostly on gravel paths. It was not as if this was really super-adventuresome as Sabine had ridden most of the route at some point or another, but still, it was fun to know that we wouldn't have to turn around midway through the ride but would keep going.

For lunch we stopped in beautiful Landshut, where we had typical Bavarian fare (including the beer). It was a beautiful day to ride, with just the slightest tailwind, often in sight of the river, always away from traffic. In Dingolfing (a sleepy town made rich by a BMW plant) we treated ourselves to ice cream before finally heading to the hotel in Landau where we had booked a room for the night. After a shower and changing into normal clothes we were ready for one of the best pizzas I've ever had--fittingly, the restaurant has received some major awards. Check out the Pizzeria Gattopardo da Renato next time you find yourself in Landau.

As predicted, the weather turned on us overnight, but the rain mostly stayed away. Actually, the somewhat lower temperatures were rather welcome after days in the low 90s. We took a different route back to Freising, through the wide Vilstal where we marvelled at the huge fields of various types of lettuce that all seemed to be in the same state of maturity--who was going to harvest all of this, and where would it all be sold? Sabine suggested that the large supermarket chains must be behind all this.

Rails-to-trails (or Bockerlbahn) and the quaint town of Vilsbiburg

In Vilsbiburg we had another lovely lunch and, since the sun had tenttively appeared, we made the mistake of ordering yet one more beer and enjoying the afternoon for a bit too long. Well, if you're a cyclist you know how it all ended: We had to start picking up the pace, looking at the ever-darkening horizon, and readjusting the route after consulting the rain radar. But there wasn't much adjustment possible: Freising couldn't be moved from the west to the east. Grey clouds became black, and then we heard the first rolling thunder in the distance, soon to be followed by closer and much louder thunderclaps. The first sprinkles started, and we put on the rain jackets--less in hopes of staying dry than not to go hypothermic in what now was barrelling down on us like a freight train. We had hoped to rescue ourselves into Marzling, where Sabine has a good friend, but those last two kilometers might have been twenty. At the last moment we spied a metal, three-sided bus shelter, and before we were totally inundated we scrambled inside.

The ensuing thunder and lightning was deafening. It was bad, really bad. And the rain radar didn't show much relief for some time to come--and honestly, I didn't really want to ride the last five miles home and have to once again completely clean the bikes with the marginal tools that I have at my disposal in Sabine's cellar. So, we decided to call a friend who picked up Sabine who then returned with her car and we drove home. So much for being heroes on that 120-mile overnighter!

And that's pretty much it for my June cycling adventures. Sure, we rode a little more in my remaining days in Freising, but not much for me. Sabine, on the other hand, once again participated on Sunday in the Erdinger Stadttriathlon where she was the cyclist of one of the many teams that the City of Munich fielded. All that riding over the preceding weeks paid off when she turned in her fastest time ever, and she was rightfully proud of her feat. While she was racing, I was packing my stuff, and the next day I flew back to Lubbock. And guess what I've been doing in the week since coming back? Riding a total of 307 miles. What can I say?

Jürgen