I´m in Dusseldorf at the moment. It´s windy, cold, and sometimes rainy. Other than that it´s cool. My camera battery died, so I can´t upload pictures today. The next chance I´ll get to upload more will be from Amesterdam. We should arrive in Amesterdam in 2-3 days. We´re only about 120 miles away. We ran into some hassles after we left Köln. I got a flat and needed to replace the tube after slamming into a major pothole due to my being distracted by a fruit stand. After replacing the tube, I pumped the tire up as much as I could with the hand pump I have, which is supposed to pump to 120 psi. Assuming that the pressure was around 100 psi, we rode some more only to get a flat about an hour later. I didn´t have a patch kit so I just put in my last tube and pumped the shit out of the tire. That got us to Dusseldorf, where I was able to use the pump at a bike shop. Anyways, Liz and I are sharing the internet at the library so I´ve gotta cut this short.

I´ve got a lot more pictures, but the internet here is really slow so I´ll upload them later. From Mainz, we biked to Rudesheim am Rhein. The trip was through some really hilly areas with a lot of wineries along the way. There was also a holiday festival thing going on, so as we were biking in the morning before noon we saw old drunk german men with beer spilled all down their front shirts walking around. It´s really funny how they do holidays here. There was a bank holiday on Thursday so everything was closed and everyone got drunk. But, on Friday, everything was still closed because everyone was hung over or recovering from the holiday. Anyways, we made it into Rudesheim where we had some excellent food and excellent beer. The next day, we biked to Hocheim which is just south of Koblenz. We stealth camped in a park that night so we wouldn´t have to pay for a campground. It was pretty easy, but having to go get water was an issue. We didn´t explore Koblenz since we are on a tight schedule to get to Amsterdam. The next day we biked about 100km to Köln, which is where we are now. We took a day off and went to an art museum and explored the Dom (cathedral). It was a very beautiful cathedral, and I´ll upload pictures of it later. Today, we´re heading to Dusseldorf. Hopefully I can find a good internet connection and upload more photos.

The photos in this update are in reverse chronological order. Paul dropped me off at the airport around 2PM in Washington, DC. I spent about 27 hours waiting to board a flight, as I was flying standby. Once I got to Frankfurt, Germany, I expected to have trouble meeting up with Liz since we had planned to meet at the campground (campingplatz) the day before. Luckily, we were both running a day late because she had missed her train from Copenhagen to Frankfurt.

The campground we stayed at was nice. It had these ducks walking all around it. There is also some tree here that has these floating seed things. When the wind blows they start flying around everywhere. It looks like snow and is very pretty, especially at sunset. We camped in Frankfurt for a couple of days because Liz had to buy a bike, and we had various other things to do like buying a camping stove. Unfortunately, we didn´t get to see too much of Frankfurt because we were so busy while we were there and once we had finished everthing we needed to we felt like we had spent too many days there already. It´s a pretty cool town though. It´s fairly affluent, but everyone has vegetable gardens and they seem to ride their bikes everywhere. There are bike trails throughout the town and people are very friendly to bikers. Often, you even see very old people out riding their bikes.

From Frankfurt, we took the Main river heading West. The path along the river didn´t stay right along the river the whole way as parts of the river were rather industrial and unpleasant to bike through. I have a lot of pictures posted below of the bike ride. It was only about 36 miles from Frankfurt to Mainz (which is where the Main river intersects the Rhine) so we made it there in the first day. We probably could have gone farther, but we got a late start and we went at a pretty leisurely pace, stopping to take pictures and asking for directions. I think it is important to point out that we have no map of this area. We´ve basically been just asking for directions and following signs. There are these long bike highways everywhere and they are well marked. There are lots of people riding on them and you can tell that a lot of people use them as transportation between towns rather than for exercise.

We got into Mainz yesterday and we watched the sunset from the bridge over the Rhine and drank beer. I have some pictures below. Today we are going to explore the city. Speaking of which, I´d better end this post.






Some awesome graffitti under the bridge that crosses the Rhine.




















The bridge crossing the Rhine (from which we took most of the water photos)














Liz on the bridge.











oooooh, pretty.


















down the Rhine.













more graffitti under the bridge.











































drinking beer on the Rhine.



























An awesome apartment complex on the Rhine.











dinner.














Tired after riding.













Same.













After we stopped for lunch, we hit the road again.














Neu campingplatz!





























How the ficken are we gonna fit all this shizer in our bags?








































A cool looking grain that we saw everwhere.















Biking through a vineyard.












Cooking dinner.


















Getting ready to ride.








A cool kids bike chained up at the U-bahn.









Liz´s new bike (fahrrad).














Stopping for a wine break along the river.


















Would you like some expensive coffee?














Eating breakfast in the campingplatz.

I'm on a train!

"Never thought I'd be on a train
a great big metallic thang" /vocoder

I took the Amtrak train from Raleigh to DC today. I only got there an hour late, which is pretty good for Amtrak. Of course, if I had driven I probably would have been even later. It was very hectic before I left. I moved everything out of the apartment yesterday and finally realized that my wallet was gone for good (stolen or lost). As a result, I had to cancel all of my cards and figure out a way to get new ones sent to me in Europe without an address. I also get to fly tomorrow with only my passport as identification, so we'll see how that goes.

Here I am waiting for the train on the threshold of my journey.

This is me and my cousin Paul who I'm staying with in DC. My shirt is inside out because I recently discovered that a dirty shirt turned inside out becomes a clean shirt.

Here's Keith dropping me off at the train station. Keith is the most helpful person in the universe. He not only helped me move everything out of my apartment, but he also drove me all around after I dropped my car off at my sister's house, kept some of my stuff in his house, and used his credit card for the rental truck deposit. Thanks man!

Pre-departure Insanity

I'm freaking out because I have so much shit to do, and somehow I lost my wallet at the worst possible time. It must be in my house, but everything is in a state of half-packedness so there's no telling where it is. I leave tomorrow by train to DC. Who would have thought that leaving behind all your belongings and responsibilities to live in Europe in a tent for several months would be so complicated?

Good bye, Raleigh. I'll see you in the fall.

Stay cool.