The Head Wind from Hell

When I was planning this trip, I was assured that the preferred direction was to ride from Hamburg to Vienna. The reason for this recommendation was because "the prevailing winds all come from the west". We were assured that we would be helped on our way by a friendly tail wind. Even the name of the company that is handling all our logistics is Ruckenwind, meaning tailwind.

We now know that they all lied. For the first few days of our ride there was no wind at all. We would have welcomed a gentle breeze to help cool us down, but we were stuck in some sort of sweltering doldrum. That all changed this morning.

At first, we were excited to feel the wind on our faces, although it would have been better to feel it on our backsides. We also were all well aware that it was going to be the longest day of the ride so far. At somewhere between 75 and 80 km, that shouldn't have been too hard. It turned out to be brutal.

The first few km were not so bad, as we had some shade from the sun and protection from the wind. It was only about the 35 km point that the true nature of our terrible adversary became apparent. It was evil, it was unrelenting, it was soul destroying and battery draining.

I got my first taste of impending disaster when a big blast of hot wind threw my bike to the ground while we were having lunch. That would not normally have been such a disaster, but the rear pannier contained a large glass bottle, containing my water for the day.

When I stood the bike up again, someone commented that my pannier was leaking. The bottle had shattered, leaving all my gear soaking wet and covered in broken glass. I had to spend some time going through all the contents, removing the glass and drying out my gear. It was a portent of much worse times to come.

We soon found ourselves back riding on an elevated levee bank, with the demonic wind right in our faces. It went on and on (and on). At times I found that I could hardly make any headway at all. It was horrible. The worst part was the route map showed that we would be riding into this enemy for the next 35 km.

The only way to have any hope of success was to stop often, and avail ourselves of every drink/ice cream stop along the way. I watched my battery start to drop 30%, 20%, red lights flashing. Somewhere in my body, my own red light was also flashing. Disaster was looming.

If the wind was not bad enough, our slow progress was hampered even further by a couple of roadblocks on the bike path, meaning a couple of energy sapping deviations.

About 8 km from our destination the inevitable happened - my battery failed completely. I battled on with only my own willpower to keep me moving. In my head a little voice kept asking "Why do we do this ? Why do we do this?"

It was at this point that Neill demonstrated kindness by offering to swap his battery (7% remaining) with my depleted battery 0% remaining). Normally I might have declined such an offer, but what the hell, I was too stuffed to be proud. "I'll take it", I said. And I did.

Somehow our little peloton made it to the hotel in Wittenberge, and we were delighted to find that the hotel was the best we had stayed in so far. It even had a lift!!

After a long, glorious shower and a short rest, we were all gathered for dinner outside under the stars. It was a great way to relive the day's challenges and congratulate each other on what we had done. For a group of riders, mostly in their 70s and 80s, I think that they should all be rightly proud. It really had been a challenging day. Just as well we are only riding 18 km tomorrow !Okumaya devam et