Day 13: Forestlands of Germany

July 26, 2024

Mannheim, DE to Kaiserslautern, DE

Disclaimer: Not the Black Forest.

In the morning I grabbed some fresh bread from the owners of the campsite who bake it each morning. The little loaf wouldn’t even last the day it was quite tasty.

I saw on the weather it would be raining tomorrow and potentially sprinkling a bit today. If nothing else I guess I will get to put to the proper test my tent - in Andermatt it was mostly sprinkles, let’s see if I’ve learned the proper technique for guy out and keeping the poles taut.

In any case, that morning I rode up towards Mannheim for the first 5km w the German man.

We chatted about our riding styles.

First he was surprised my daily range is from 65-135km and said he usually just goes for about 50-70 and stops to smell the roses. I’ll try it soon and may need to because of the second topic. He brought up the hillyness I have chosen - instead of heading along the Rhine up to Koblenz then following the Mossel southwest to Trier/ Luxembourg I decided to head directly west from Mannheim. This is for a few reasons

this adventure is not exactly open ended and at some point I have a flight to catch - the flight is not south of here. I should really be going north or west always - Austria, Lichtenstein, and Heidelberg were budgeted-in detours.
Truthfully I was getting bored of riding along riversides. It’s just very flat and nothing much was happening. I don’t need another Alps crossing but some variety is nice.

By heading due West I’d head into some mountain terrain in the Rohe forest. It’s not clear to me when a hill becomes a mountain but it was about 600m elevation for multiple days. At least something new would happen.

So anyways we parted ways at Mannheim, him east to catch a train and myself west towards Bad Dürkheim, a town after which the foresty and climby part of the day would begin.

A last look at the Rhine before heading west

As desired new things happened but it wasn’t the ones I banked on - it rained quite hard even today. I hung out in a few random spots any time the rain was pelting then came back out to ride during drizzles to make some forward progress. Of course in between finding shelters I got pretty soaked.

My tires are not really made for off-road but there’s some dirt paths today

My lunch was just some random nuts and salami and other snacks from my bag of goodies hunkered down in a shelter during one of the rain stops.

Luckily by 1300 the rain had largely stopped for the day. Now it was just time for some climbing. It has been over a week since I did any real climbing. It wasn’t too bad especially after the whole Alps thing - but it would be a few days of it, two in Germany, one in Luxembourg, and another in Belgium. So it’s a marathon not a sprint.

One thing nice in Germany is usually on the big roads there’s a little bike path right next to it. This was mostly true even the whole way from Bad Durkheim to Kaiserslautern. Unfortunately for the climb part it wasn’t true so the comically oversized orange safety vest stayed on pretty much the whole day.

Small biking and walking path along the major road to Kaiserslautern

Amidst the climb I came upon the quiet town of Frankenstein.

There were also some completely random off-road sections that felt totally unnecessary suggestions from Komoot. Imagine if I had gone 150m elevation down this thing to find it wasn’t a real route and had to climb back up - it was real but if you read the previous entries you’ll know it isn’t always. But I’m dumb sometimes for the fun of it so I went with it and got lucky

My morale after the rain in the morning was kind of low and I hadn’t really been eating right lately. Truth be told never thought I’d say it but I’m kind of sick of food. I’ve been eating like 4-5000 calories a day and it’s getting old. I might need more variety. A proper cook system on my next bike trip is a good idea as I’m just cobbling together food or eating out (which was the plan! A taste of Europe)

I decided since tonight will rain I’ll try out my rain skills tomorrow instead, so I got a hotel in Kaiserslautern.

Despite my disinterest I made sure to get a proper meal in and had a kebab wrap and some fries. And a soft pretzel. And a salad. Ok, it was pretty good.

I did a small bit of sightseeing in Kaiserslautern seeing some town squares and fountains.

FBI hiding in plain sight! View from my cafe

Feeling a bit better I headed to the hotel to get some much needed rest and finish up some internet errands that had been pending. Tomorrow is a new day and I have to wake up early to beat the rain! If I roll at 0800 surely I’ll beat the rain to camp.

Thanks for reading.

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 1,005 km (624 miles)

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