Archiv der Kategorie: Meine Räder

I was leaving the house at noon after spending the morning checking the complete flickr photo account of Tom for pictures of fur coats. To my excuse I have to say that there is very little else one can do in Bremen in November when temperatures had dropped down to zero degrees.


Nevertheless I prepared myself for a short winter ride. The words „preparation“ and „short ride“ and their relation to each other change completely over the seasons. In summer the duration of a preparation is about 15 minutes and consists of putting on socks, heartbeat monitor, bib shorts, jersey shoes, gloves and helmet (in that order. I try to avoid looking into a mirror when having only socks and heart beat monitor on) then running back to the house to collect the water bottle, running back again because one has left the camera, then cursing and climbing back up the stairs to look for the map, thus filling the required 15 minutes interval. This is then followed by rides of eight hours plus, as long as the sun is visible in the sky and in Germany during the summer than can be a damn long time. There is much more enjoyable riding time compared to less enjoyable preparation time.


In winter, on the other hand, the preparation time is endless. It starts with the pounding about the right choice of attire. Lately I have been reading something about how PE members laughed about overdressed, sweaty winter riders they encountered on their trips and that left me now as a nervous, neurotic wreck shortly before every ride. Am I overdressed? Will somebody laugh at me?  Shall I sell my yellow Assos Fugu Jacket? As if there were not enough issues already, I have always cold feet. So I started to use two layers of shoe covers. One neopren type just over the Shimano MTB shoes and another wind stopper like material on top. The neopren type shoe cover was cheap and I bought it at Rose, the favorite shop of Ludwig and myself. I shouldn’t really complain about them and it is certainly not in my interest to vituperate about Rose. But today I needed close to 40 minutes of preparation time and a large chunk out of that time was consumed by trying to close the zipper on the backside of the shoecovers. As this can only be done when the shoe covers are on, my neighbors saw me winding on the road in all kind of poses, commonly known from 12 year old Romanian girls engaging in rhythm sport gymnastics.
After I have finally managed to zip up both shoe covers I was seriously considering to keep them on until the next ride. Sleep with them, shower with them, walk around in holy academia …. everything is better than to put them on one more time.


And after endless 40 minutes of preparation, how long did I ride? 3 and a half hours. This relationship is sadly distorted. Coming home, I needed time to shower, redress, eat, drink some coffee, again valuable time spend. 5 hours bike related activities, not much riding thereof.

I choose a longer standard route today, along the river Wuemme (the Tamagawa equivalent) as usual but then further on to Lessum. There weren’t much bicycles on the road but quite a few people have opted to take a walk. I hit a cobblestone section of the road that was lying in the shadow of some trees and immediately the ride got wobbly and I almost fell down on the slippery surface. From then onwards I rode very carefully, checking the surface for spots of black ice and keeping speeds down. Now all the leaves are gone and it is more fun to ride on the bike paths as they are cleared of all obstacles. I rode on to Ritterhude, one of the few places that provides something like „hills“ and I climbed about 50 meter elevation difference as a preparation of the Transalp. The further on to Osterholz-Scharmbek where I took the obigatory SOS landscape photo, and further on the Worpswede on the standard loop. My average speed was down to 25 km/hr and I am not exactly sure why. Sure, there was some headwind but overall it was just difficult despite keeping the heartrate in the 145 – 155 bracket. 


The road from Worpswede to Quelkorn was just boring as usual, I really don’t know why I am riding there. Fischerhude to Borgfeld in contrast is quite nice but I was quickly running out of steam. I had no food with me and when I tried to drink from the water bottle I noticed that the nozzle was frozen solid.  My Ciclo device showned now minus degrees and my feets and my hands were iceblocks. Just four days ago I visited in a university excursion I huge German fish monger called „Deutsche See“ and we were shown arround the cold storage facilities, minus 24 degrees…. that was really cold. But today on the bike didn’t felt much better. My thoughts were running around…..a tune popped up in my head, first „Walk Hard“ by Dewey Cox and I could imagine this conversation from the trailer going on between my body and my mind:

Then I was again on the river Wuemme and after crossing the railroad line and after making a turn a Riensberg graveyard I was back at the house. 82 km only, time outside the house almost equal riding time. Too cold to make a break. By the way, to opt for the lighter Assos air jacket 851 with some uniqlo heatec trikot below was perfect. I need another pair of shoe covers, some overgloves and an hour more time for preparation though.

One of the many reasons I bought the apartment in Bremen we are now living in was, is that in the garden Ajisai flowers were blooming when I took a look around the first time. This was at the end of June and I thought, great, just like in Japan Ajisai are blooming with the start of the rainy season. As it was raining hard in Bremen at the end of June. Today I went out into the garden and noticed that the Ajisai were still blooming. Not by coincidence it was also raining again. 

Great, I thought, this is the perfect weather to test my rain gear. It was still pretty warm, 10 to 13 degrees C, but just to be sure I opted for some „goofy“ (Thanks Dominic) underwear from Uniqlo and full rain protection: shoe covers, rain trousers, rain jersey, watertight gloves and, most important, Cervelo racing cap. Despite of my general looks I wanted to be recognized on the road as a true connoisseur of bad weather cycling. And of course I chose the Gazelle over the Cervelo for this type of weather, It is slower but I am now used to that. 


There was almost nobody outside once I had reached Bremen city limits and so nobody could mutter something along the lines of „true connoisseur“, I was only seen by some car drivers and some framers heading out to get the cows back in the stables. But I made good speed and within no time I reached the bridge over the river Wuemme where I leaned my bike against David Hasselhoff, pardon me, my mind was wandering, against the fence to shoot the compulsory trip photo. 


As I said, there was almost nobody outside and it seems that this condition will continue for quite some time. One of the restaurants had a notice board outside, informing the few human beings passing by, that the winter break will last until May 2011. That means 6 months, if I am not mistaken. Where am I? I mean, I was not exactly cruising up the road to Arima Toge in which case I would have understood that a restaurant along the road would 

have a winter break from September to July and closes down the rest of the time due to inaccessibility because of landslides.


Then I fast ride back and right to the office which is so conveniently located between my home and the major cycling grounds. Of course, Sunday, nobody there as well, weekend break since Friday noon which is almost compulsory in Germany. Out of the office on the bike, oh, a flat rear tire, despite Continental GP4000 (black, this time) but this are the dangers riding in the wet. I slipped and slided the 3 to 4 km home riding the bike with the flat rear tire and kept thinking of Paul Simon. „You know the nearer your destination…„

The rain gear was perfect. I still head dry and warm feet when I arrived home later after some leisurely hours at the office before I had to engage in some serious children education. It’s not that I ride as much as I did in Japan but i am on the bike almost every day. With the rainwear I feel confident that this will stay so until say May 2011.

Feeling an urgent need to remove Barfy McBarfington from the top page of this blog and to put in some more cycling kilometers before the winter starts for earnest, I decided to make a longer trip on the weekend … and to blog about it.

I checked out the weather and it was raining hard. Great, I thought, finally I could test my full rain equipment with the Gazelle and ride an hour or so until I am wet. However, after having a leisurely consumed breakfast, rain clouds had moved on and the sun was shining again. Forcing me to conduct a longer ride.

I didn’t trusted the weather though, and that’s why I choose the dirt guard equipped Gazelle over the Cervelo. Temperatures had dropped to 5 degrees C average so I chose the Assos air jacket 851with color-matched cap. So many things one has to think of before finally start riding…..

The roads were still wet from the rain and the Gazelle is a wonderful bike. Thanks to the well dimensioned mud guards one doesn’t need to worry about dirt and spray. And the bike is old so it doesn’t matter if it gets dirty. Cleaning is so easy, no worries about scratches and so… just wonderful. The drawback is, that the Gazelle is actually not

a very fast bike. Well it is fast enough to take me back and forth to work, which is about 4 km from my house regardless of the weather, but it’s about 30 years old, heavy, it has 2 by 6 gears and the shifters sit on the downtube. For lazy riders like me, who never learned to move their hands away from the handle, it is essentially a single speed bike and that’s how I use it.
It needs time and effort to accelerate. Once it is running one can keep the speed with approximately the same effort as riding with the Cervelo, but it takes much more effort to reach, say 30 km/hr. And frequent braking and accelerating can be quite power-consuming. All in all I was about 10 – 15% slower than on the Cervelo. But it is winter and riding on a more power-consuming bike can be a very good training – one doesn’t need to drag tires begin the bike always.

I decided to ride up to Zeven, which is a town I passed in May when I did the Bremen bike marathon – and got lost. Zeven is just in the middle of the SOS landscape area surrounding Lower Saxony.

So far so good. I made a very short break at a gas stand in Tarmstedt to buy some croissant and when I was home the attendant called me to tell me that I have left my Blackberry there. So I had to make another trip to Tarmstedt, this time by car to retrieve the phone one day later. Need to know something about Tarmstedt – feel free to ask.

Generally there were a lot of wet leaves on the roads and on the cycling lanes. A lot of the roads have trees planted on both sides and there is not much effort done to clean teh surface. I had to go slower than I wanted to go as I was afraid of a crash. 

After Zeven I made the usual Turn to Worpswede and climbed the gruesome „Weyerberg“ hill; the legend says that this is a sand dune that got lost in the vastness of the SOS landscape. On the slopes down I reached even 55 km/hr, an unheard speed in 2D Bremen. Within no time I was back on the main cycle highway along the river Wümme between Dammsiel and Kuhsiel, when I noted that another cyclist tried to draft behind me. I let him do that, until we came to a T-section where I faked a left turn, he went right and then I was in his back. This road was leading to the second climbing challenge of the day: The bridge over federal highway 27. So I let him go in front and as he knew that I was behind him he worked hard and then accelerated when the slope began. I would have loved to write that I then boldly overtook him on the Gazelle (and I still wonder what prevented me to write just that), but as a matter of fact, I didn’t stand a chance to accelerate with the Gazelle and with 100 km plus distance in my legs so I watched him move away. „Wait for the Transalp, sucker!“ I shouted behind him, but he was too far anyway to hear me, so I negatively impressed some old ladies taking a walk only.

122 km after I have started I was back at home. Not such an impressive distance, but I could ride all of this in 4:30 hrs, including all breaks. It was much harder than on the Cervelo. It was also only the second time after taking bad boy out for a spin in Chichibu last year, that I made a 100 km plus trip on another bike than the Cervelo.

Yes, the Gazelle will be the bike that I will ride between now and April next year.

By the way, opposed to Barfy McBarfington, who is a nobody, David Hasselhoff is a national German hero and one of the main responsibles for German unification in 1990 (the other responsible being his car). Therefore the inclusion of David Hasselhoff pictures in posts on this blog is expressively encouraged.

After spending a busy week on a job fair in Gelsenkirchen, pearl of the Rhine/Ruhr area where I tried to entice students to start their academic career at your institution, I came home to find my kids in urgent need of assistance for home works, tests and the like. I was able to escape finally on Sunday afternoon after the rain has stopped for a short autumn ride.

During the night before the clocks have been turned back one hour: winter time has officially started in Germany and the weather was wet, grey and generally miserable. Autumn is special in Germany and perhaps even more special in the North of Germany. Although the annual precipitation of 750l/m2 is half than in Tokyo, the number of drizzling, light rain days must be much more. This is in particular apparent during the autumn and winter seasons which are dry and favourable for rides in Japan whereas one would prefer to stay at home in Bremen.

Spring is a season of pleasant anticipation of the things the year will bring. One thinks of the rides and races ahead in the year and considers to fall in love again or to get a divorce just in case. In autumn we are glad that we are still married and instead conversations focus on the more relevant topics in life. And death. In Gelsenkirchen I had a very interesting dinner conversation about the alternatives to commit suicide under special consideration of not providing too much hassle to the beloved and the environment in general. This, I believe, describes the feeling of autumn here well.

The surface was wet and there were many leaves on the road but temperatures had risen higher in the last few days to around 10 degrees C. I could not sport my new orange Assos airjacket but at least I could wear my new Cervelo cap. Now that the Cervelo test team has raced its last race I found it appropriate to buy some discounted team stuff and wear it outside. But I have left the Cervelo in the stable and opted for the Gazelle which is much more suited to wet conditions. In addition, as I didn’t had too much time on hand for the ride, I thought it might have a better training effect to get on the „slower“ bike. One doesn’t need to drag tires behind the bike necessarily.

The air was foggy and I explored some more farm roads in the area of Borgfeld, Lilienthal and Fischerhude.

After a while my body warmed up, long finger gloves and shoe covers hold it warm and it was very pleasant to ride. The Gazelle offers only 2 x 6 gears but I hardly noticed a difference to the Cervelo in the flats. On the contrary, over the rather rough farm roads the combination of steel frame and wider saddle was much more comfortable than the very stiff Cervelo setup. I hardly used more than one gear anyway.
When I came back into the area of the university I noticed for the first time the newly built minaret. No I was joking, this is the beacon of my orientation and can be seen from almost everywhere in the flat landscape.

I came home in much better mood. That mood was immediately spoiled when I (Spain) lost 9:1 against my son (England) in world cup soccer on the Sony PS2 playstation.