For those of you who are seasoned riders, you may want to
stop reading now for I am about to tell a story about my “long distance” ride from Wiesbaden,
Germany to Strasbourg, France, which you may all find a bit “over-dramatic.”
I have been on a motorcycle many times before, although
always as a passenger since I am too afraid to ride one myself. I tried to
drive a scooter once while living in Italy, but that ended in the unfortunate
death of many bicycles. It was a warm spring evening and one of my friends was
going to teach my how to drive. I will admit that I feel terrible for anyone
who has to teach me driving, whether it be learning how to drive a manual car
(sorry dad), a helicopter (sorry to all my instructors who had to listen to me
sing Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again” because it was the only way I could
focus after botching a maneuver), and to whomever attempts to teach me how to
ride a motorcycle.
On this particular evening, I was learning on a backstreet
in Florence.
“Turn the throttle towards you with the right hand,” my
Italian friend told me. “Once it starts to move forward, lift your feet from
the ground and put them on the scooter.”
Easier said than done. To my astonishment, as I gave this little
scooter some gas and it began to move forward, I freaked out and tried to stop
the forward movement by planting my feet on the ground and trying to pull the
bike back to me. By doing this and not releasing the throttle, the bike went
faster and I ended up flat on my face after the bike went out from under me. I
looked up to the sound of screaming and the little motor bike running into
about seven parked bicycles on the side of the street. My friend swore at me in
Italian, which I unfortunately understood at the time, flipped me the bird, and
rode off without me. I lay there on the concrete streets of Florence in utter
shame, and I have not attempted to drive any type of motorbike since.
As far as being a passenger, I have gotten pretty good. The
mother of an ex boyfriend of mine had a Harley, and I used to ride around with
her on “flood runs.” These were days when large groups of Harley riders would
come together and pretty much go on a motorized bar crawl. I don’t really know
how legal this is, but we had a grand old time! I had a shirt that read “Bitch”
and she wore one that read “If you can see this, the bitch fell off.”
So when Chris mentioned taking his bike to Strasbourg, I was
really excited. The longest I had been on a bike for any period of time was
maybe 20-30 min, the length of time between bars in rural Wisconsin. This drive
was going to be a whopping 2.5 hours!
Driving through Wiesbaden was cake and I felt comfortable
enough. Then we hit the autobahn. I will preface by saying that in a car, I LOVE
the autobahn. Aside from a few areas, the speed limit is an advised (and yes, I
said advised) 130kph. For my American friends, that is roughly 80mph. However
the truth is that you can drive up to your comfort level, or your cars governor, whichever
comes first. For me, my governor sets in at about 130MPH, so about 240-250kph.
The autobahn on a motorcycle is an entirely different story.
I don’t think I have ever experienced the pucker effect as
seriously as I did those first few minutes when we hit 85mph. All I kept
thinking was “Oh my goodness!! I am a klutz! What if I fall off?? What if I
just roll over to the side and fall off? Do I let go or take him down with me?” This train of thinking lasted about an hour.
I started to relax, and by relax I mean I started to get
sleepy. I have noticed that a continued vibration, like that on a motorcycle,
is a gentle little lullaby that rocks me to sleep. When I was in flight school, I learned this
lesson the hard way.
Flight school was like college but with worse hours. You can’t
just plan your class schedule around the idea of sleeping in, but instead end
up with either PT or classes first thing in the morning. During primary, the
introductory phase in flight school, we had classes that began around 5am. Not
being a morning person, this had a very negative effect on my ability to stay
awake.
During this phase we were learning how to fly the TH-67, which
is like a jet ranger. We were split up
into teams of three, two flight students known as stick buddies, and an instructor.
In the aircraft, one student would be flying and the other would be in the back
and only responsible for looking out for any flight obstacles, and reading off
before and after landing checks.
The problem with the back seat was the vibration of the aircraft.
I found that it knocked me out! Being so sleepy all the time, it was like a
cradle rocking me to sleep after a long day. It got to the point where I had
trained myself to be able to sleep, but wake up when asked for the before
landing checks. I would read them off, and then pass right back out until asked
for the after landing checks. This went on for a while until one day when I was
extremely tired.
I have no idea how it happened, all I know was that I fell
asleep and the next thing I knew my instructor was shaking me awake. I looked
around and noticed that we had landed, were parked, the aircraft was tied down,
and my stick buddy and instructor had all their gear packed and ready to leave.
It was humiliating.
Back on the motorcycle, it was the fear of death that kept
me awake when my eyes started to droop. Now wide awake and little more
comfortable, I started to really enjoy the ride. What surprised me the most
were the smells. When riding in a car you don’t have the same experience as when you are on a bike. The wind, the feeling of flying, and how you can literally smell everything! I felt like I was completely engulfed in my surroundings. I could smell the bitterness of the vineyards while driving through the Rheingau, the strong and sour smell of the onions as we drove though onion patches, and the sweet smell of flowers that were blooming.
I was pretty proud at how well I was doing until we hit about 1 hour 45 min. At this point my butt started to hurt. It started off slow, with a subtle tingle, before it went into full blown uncomfortable. This could be partly because of my utter lack of a bum, inheriting my father’s flat ass with no cushion to support a long ride. Whatever the cause, my last 45 minutes were wrapped around how I couldn’t wait to get off the bike. When I saw the exit sign for Strasbourg, I felt like dancing for joy.
I have heard many a wonderful thing about Strasbourg and have wanted to visit for years. Chris and I arrived and checked into our hotel before heading out on the town. One of my favorite ways to discover a city is by just walking around and getting lost. This is exactly what we did, however we ended up getting pretty drunk in the process.
Strasbourg
The beautiful Cathedral in Strasbourg
I will give us credit that we at least made it to the church
before our first drop of alcohol, but from there it went downhill. Neither of
us had eaten and we were saving up our appetite for dinner that evening, so the
beer and wine hit us both pretty hard. We stumbled from one bar to the next,
returning twice to one particular Belgian beer bar that was the icing on the
intoxicated cake.
At about 2130, we stumbled into the cheese restaurant (the
name totally eludes me) where we had a reservation. I am not really sure what
we expected from this dinner, but we definitely fell into the idiotic American
category. We had heard that the fondue was great there, so we ordered a pot.
Our waitress, who obviously saw us in a vulnerable state, mentioned that we
would perhaps like to sample two different pots of cheese.
“Of course we would” was my response in my broken attempt at
speaking French, raising my glass of wine to the waitress!
How real people drink wine
I think we both thought that these would be “sample” pots of
fondue. We were sadly mistaken. The chef brought out two HUGE pots of boiling
cheese and a basket of bread. It sounds amazing, and the first few bites were,
but after being “manchestered” to eat both pots after I made the claim that I
could eat it all on my own, I started to go into a cheese coma. What we didn’t
realize when we ordered, was that one pot of cheese was 27 euros and ALL YOU
CAN EAT! 70 euros later and feeling like absolute ass, we stumbled back to our
hotel and passed out. Very romantic.
We woke up the next morning with a cheese hangover and made
the decision to head out of Strasbourg early to beat the rain. We packed up our
stuff and headed back on the road.
One of the coolest things about riding around Europe is that
there are always great places to stop and sightsee along the way. Both Chris
and I love WWII history and just outside of Strasbourg is part of the Maginot
Line, a line of concrete fortifications constructed near the border of Germany by
France as a response to their experience witht he Germance during WWI. Although rendered
pretty useless during the war since the Germans invaded through Belgium, it was
still a very impressive site with many WWII artifacts.
After spending 40 minutes walking around, we jumped back on
the bike in a race against the rain which would have had a very negative effect
of my recent keratin treatment. The more I write, the more I realize how much
of a pansy I can be. Damn.
The ride home was a lot better for me. I knew what to expect
and I was a little more relaxed. I put on a great music mix of Chris Pureka and
Lana del Ray on my iPod, and listened to “Ride” while singing at the top of my
lungs (to Chris’ utter dismay).
I now feel like a very seasoned rider and ready to conquer the
world!! Ok, maybe I will start with a four hour ride first…
