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Mike AylingNot many wear masks any more but I think it is still a good idea.
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10 months ago

Mark BinghamTo Mike AylingYes, and ESPECIALLY on an airplane
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10 months ago

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We have finally achieved lift off and are in Munich at the start of our trip.  It was a rough trip over to Munich from Bend.  We changed planes in Denver which had serious thunderstorms and heavy rain. We could see by watching the departure board that a number of local flights were being cancelled so we were relieved when our flight to Munich boarded on time. Famous last words:  we sat on the runway for 3 1/2 hours while the crew and passengers waited/hoped for a break in the thunderstorms so we could take off. The weather app showed that the storms would persist all night, so Jill started to ponder all the consequences of not being able to take off that evening. When the storm finally mitigated enough, the crew had to add additional fuel in anticipation of having to skirt the worst of the storm.  We finally took off after midnight and were three hours late arriving in Munich. We felt really bad for the folks with connections. We could feel the tension as everyone tried to disembark quickly.

We have gotten pretty good at navigating Munich's transportation system and the S-bahn (part of Munich’s subway system) took us directly to our stop on Rosenheimer Platz leaving us a relatively easy 10 minute walk to our hotel, the Novotel Munich City.  Since we store our bikes in Munich, along with panniers and most of our gear, we only had carryons to deal with.

We had a bit of drama with our room the first night;  Dave hopped into the tub after running the water only to realize that much of the bathroom was flooding with bath water! At first we thought it was a leaking water pipe and I was getting dressed to go downstairs and talk to the front desk when he finally realized that the flooding was being caused by the shower nozzle not being  properly oriented. It was a simple fix! The only consequence was that we used a bunch of our bathroom towels mopping up the mess. 

The following morning we had a mission. We were planning to take a train to Berlin the following Monday.  Traveling by train with our heavy e-bikes has proven to a consistently challenging effort for us. Therefore, we decided to go down to the train station to observe the same train (ICE 602) depart from Munich to evaluate train-loading challenges. Unfortunately the train's departure was at 6:54 and we had to get up around 5:30 am to walk the three km to the station. We were jet lagged, slept fitfully and were awake anyway. The walk through the old town in the early morning was quiet and pleasant.  The good news: at least Friday’s ICE  602 train was a sleek modern affair with a low-ish loading step and no need to lift the bikes up to attach them to a hangar. Hopefully we will have the same arrangement on Monday when we leave for Berlin.  

Afterwards we took the  S-bahn to our storage unit where we had the first near disaster of the trip. Hmm, there is always something.

It was exciting to unlock the storage unit and pull our bikes out.  Dave in particular loves his KTM bike (better than his Trek e-bike back in Oregon) so we had a fun 45 minutes going through our gear and figuring out what we needed for the trip.  I had been hauling around a bunch of random bike keys that we didn’t know what locks they might fit, so I pressed Dave to check them out to see if they might be spares for our bike battery lock, bike locks, storage padlock etc.  I insisted Dave help me figure this mystery out which proved to be my role in this minor debacle. His role in our failure was that he picked up a small mysterious key (obviously NOT the key to his bike battery) popped it into the bike battery lock, gave it a hard twist, and promptly broke the key off leaving the tip buried in his lock! We kind of looked at each other disbelievingly…..wishing we could just turn the clock back about 30 seconds…. He noodled around a bit looking at the lock but that puppy was lodged in deep!  So, we pondered our options and our mood went from delight (we were finally on our trip - yippee) to dread.  We decided we had two options, either find a locksmith or go back to our bike store where we purchased our bikes and see if they could help us. We quickly researched locksmiths (thank you Google maps) with a real sense of urgency.  It was Friday afternoon and those of you who travel in Europe know that they usually don’t work weekends and are prone to close early. We knew if this couldn’t be fixed on Friday, we likely would be going to Berlin on Monday with a broken key stuck in David’s battery lock. There happened to be a locksmith around the corner and he came outside and spent ten minutes or so looking at the damage.  He was nice but couldn’t see how he could dislodge the key.  We left and rode the five km to our bike store - Zwierad Center Stadler. It was an awful 20 minutes for us. I was contemplating all the consequences if we couldn’t get this fixed. For those of you not familiar with ebikes, we recharge the battery every evening. You can do it two ways. If there is a charging station you can charge the battery without removing it from the bike; you just plug it in, leaving the battery in place. (And indeed, in Europe a lot of hotels/inns have charging stations for ebikes).  But if there is NOT a charging station, you have to unlock and remove the battery with the key and haul it to your room to charge at a regular electrical outlet. If we couldn’t get the broken key dug out we would be stuck on a 10 week trip without the option of charging at a regular outlet.  In addition, we often chose to remove our batteries if we have to leave our bikes in a public place, to reduce the chance of theft. And finally — after our difficulties last year with loading our bikes on the train — we had determined that we might need to remove the batteries (which are very heavy) to lighten the bikes as we load them. All this was swirling in my brain as we headed over to Stadler. I do a lot of planning and anticipating what things can go wrong — and this was a scenario I had never contemplated. 

Zwierad Stadler was the place we bought our bikes and all our bike gear and we had our bikes serviced there last fall after our Central Europe trip. We like it a lot and the people have been great to us, BUT, its not some rinky dink bike store with the personal touch, but rather a huge corporate joint, with all the bureaucratic organization that goes along with that, amplified by the fact that it's German. We knew from last year that they don’t do service on the fly and you are supposed to make an appointment online ahead of time. So, we arrived full of dread and fear that we would  be turned away on a Friday afternoon.  This dread was not diminished as Dave  went to the Service Department where there is this big sign saying in German:  “Absolutely no service without an appointment.”  We stood there determinedly while three service dudes worked at ignoring us.  Finally a Herr Staller came over and  Dave fell on his sword with our tale of woe and the broken key. 

My experience traveling — and especially on a bike — is that when you REALLY, REALLY need people to help you out they come through.  And so today was another lesson in how great people can be. Herr Staller had this hilarious sense of humor. When Dave explained how he broke the key tip off  he said, “Congrats!”  He could have turned us away but he didn’t. He went through a variety of different attempts to dislodge the key and kept having to go to the back room to pull out another tool or magnet to try.  Eventually, by using a number of different tools and techniques, he managed to pull the damn thing out.   In the meantime the line for the service desk had grown and all these poor cyclists were waiting patiently (or impatiently — I couldn’t tell) to pick up or drop off their bikes. (Europeans are better than Americans at standing in line without getting their knickers in a twist).  To further endear himself to us, he refused to invoice us for the help AND walked us through the online service appointment site  — which is in German — so that we could  make our appointment for service at the end of our trip in August. Thank you Herr Staller - you allowed us to dodge a really awful bullet at the start of our trip.  

We celebrated by working out that evening in our hotel gym and then had dinner at a Mexican vegetarian place called Blitz. I did a little advance research on dining in Munich and it was recommended in some article on Munich dining. It was fine but not wonderful. Regardless, we were happy at the end of a strenuous day and ultimately productive day.

(Dave here. I'm afraid I haven't quite gotten into the swing of taking photos yet. The debacle with the broken key distracted me from taking shots of our storage unit and accommodations at the Novotel in Munich. As we start riding in earnest I'll do better at documenting our journey. Stay tuned . . .)