#berlintoparis

[riderslikesprayers]

Tim vient d'arriver à Paris. Welcome @timrobot 😜✌🏼️✌🏼👌🏼👌🏼#timrobot #posca #poscalifecustom #streetart #berlintoparis #berlin #paris

[leitha-blog-blog]

At the close of our summer bike tour, we've racked up 1365 kilometers, three flat tires, one jammed toe, a handful of bonking episodes, an uncounted number of breathless hill climbs and a great deal of ice cream.

We also have close to 1000 photos, so I'll post a few at a time here.

This group of ten represents the beginning of the journey, from Berlin to Potsdam through Dessau to Wittenberg, where we camped along the Elbe Cycle Path.

[leitha-blog-blog]

We met a couple from Amsterdam as we breakfasted in our campsite at the eastern foothills of the Harz Mountains.

They were traveling the R1 cycle path in the other direction, aiming for Berlin. We’d just passed the 600km mark in our trip from Berlin, and it was a much longer, harder 600km than any of us had expected.

Heart-pounding inclines. Windswept croplands. Biting horseflies. Our thighs hardened. Our skin browned.

After days of mountain climbs and misdirection, we were inhaling a breakfast of muesli, yogurt, coffee, boiled eggs, sausage, cheese, nuts, plums and bananas. We were unkempt, sunbroiled savages.

By contrast, the Dutch couple looked fresh and lovely. She styled her hair and did her makeup. They ate a light breakfast of melon and grapefruit.

He casually boasted about the boring flatlands they’d passed and the 124km day they’d recently done. (She quietly clarified that they’d only completed 22km the following day and had slept heavily.) He was excited for topographic variety.

We wished them well in the hills ahead and sailed down toward Münster at high speed, laughing as a black rainstorm slicked our skin.

[leitha-blog-blog]

We embarked last Monday, and the piles of experience since then makes it seem like ages ago. One of the most surprising things for me so far has been how easy it has been to get lost and misdirected. In an age of geolocation with smart phones and fairly precise mapping, we're still searching in bushes and scouting up pathways for obscured signage and missing landmarks. I've clearly underestimated the time it takes to get over mountains and across streams (sometimes while waiting for ferrymen to return from lunch), but we've gone 465 kilometers so far, and each day we rise, pack up the gear and embark with the hope of making good time. (Illustration today by Dave!)