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(10.01.2009): Almost killed while jogging

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on January 12, 2009

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The day before yesterday I went out for a jogging session in the evening, together with my dog Sydney. The countryside looks wonderful these days with a 2 cm snow cover all over the place and a reviving, cold and dry air.
So at 7 pm, it had already been dark for 2 hours outside, I started. I went from my mothers house a bit north, followed the Autobahn 6 to the east and turned north, then, after a few hundred meters, turned west again, jogging towards the village of Treschklingen.
Here I have put a track on my website, which you can view in Google Maps or download to Google Earth.

Click either the image above or here to view the way I took on Google Maps.

So now I was jogging on this long, straight stretch, the snow was clicking under my shoes and the dog was 10 m ahead. I slowly fell in this state of trance where you don’t realize time very much any more, where you’re just enjoying and not thinking (too much).

Suddenly I spotted this yellow light shining onto the snow in front of me, I thought for a second and immediately realized that I was in danger. I turned around while still running forward and these two light circles blinded me. Intuitively I raised my hands and waved with them to make the car - now maybe 20 m from me, slow down. I turned around and hoped that by stopping in the middle of the path and signaling with my hands, I could make it stop and get my dog on the leash, thereby hopefully saving his precious life … as a experienced search and rescue dog with several years of training and some successful searches, he should be worth something at least to society, am I right? And of course there’s this pearsonal binding to this being that’s been around me for many years of my life. I still like it even after being on the road for so long having hundreds of bad experiences with other dogs.

So now I hoped that the car would slow down, that the driver would respect my concern about the dog’s and my own lives, that he would honor human dignity, just a normal thing probably most of the people in this “developed” and “civilized” country will understand.

But I was so wrong. Within no time and without slowing down the car continued driving towards me at an estimated 35 to 45 km/h. I jumped to the right side throwing the leash towards the car right in front of me to make it stop, to make it stop at least for my dog that’s not as aware of its surrounding environment as I am, that is not used to dangerous traffic the way I am used to it.

But the car didn’t slow down for the dog either. Luckily the dog was just sniffing some other dogs tracks somewhere beside the road and the car just dashed by.

Now I was lucky and happy that nobody got hurt. But at the same time I got very very angry about this inhuman behavior of the driver. I hoped he would slow down shouting at me for throwing the leash at his car … but no way. Kind of hit-and-run driving, rules that I was not used to, something I’ve actually never experienced here before and also not on my worldtour. Nowhere.

He must have seen me because of the reflectors on my back and the reflectors on the head torch I had used. He didn’t honk, no light signal and I was running with the back towards him!

What made this driver behave like that? Probably he must have been drunk and knowing that he was illegal in his actions in two ways, namely being drunk and driving on a path reserved for humans and farming vehicles, he reacted in panic. That’s the most likely version of what I could think about.

I’m actually thinking about filing charges now. I know about the type and color of the vehicle, I guess that he’s been a local because he knew this shortcut, I know the time and maybe it would make sense. Sense because of the inacceptable behavior and because of the statistical data about the danger of motorized vehicles to our society, about the suffering and discrimination they cause. But I’m not sure about that yet.

Maybe one of my readers wants to share his/her ideas on that with me, either via e-mail (daniel () sonnefueralle O de) or by commenting …

What if I had been an old man or woman not reacting that fast, not realizing the danger approaching from behind?

(2008-12-31): Christmas, new laptop and last post this year

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Daniel N. Lang

on December 31, 2008

in Germany, couchsurfing and english

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This is just a short post to show everbody that even though my health is not the best these days (still suffering under a lightly swollen big toe), I’m nonetheless having a wonderful and exciting time with my family back in Germany.

All of us have survived the Christmas time without too much damage and we’re optimistic and looking forward to the new year 2009.

I’m happy that I can sit here in a warm room on a comfortable chair with the wood oven heating the room and clicking silently and radiating its warm infra red waves in my direction.

I get good, nutritious, vegetarian food again - too much if I’m honest. I’m enjoying the presence of my kind mother, sister and her boyfriend Andi, I like to play with our dog Sydney and to work on this new T61 lenovo laptop - man what would I have given for this black machine while I’d been dying again and again with the old and totally insufficient iBook 600 MHz in South America.

I’m thinking a lot. About the past, the present and the future. I think about work and studies. I’m also thinking about the work on this website and the lectures I’ve planed for 2009 - how do I put my priorities right?

My friends in Australia will probably celebrate New Year in a few hours already and the whole world will look to the big fireworks at the Sydney harbour bridge. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, probably enjoy a quiet and secure New Year’s evening, something that doesn’t disturb my tranquilitem animi too much

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Day 605 (2008-12-19): Mission accomplished, back home!

Published

Daniel N. Lang

on December 21, 2008

in GPS, Germany, couchsurfing, english and recumbent

. 3 Comments

In Rüsselsheim I had an early breakfast together with my friend and host Jürgen, then he suggested that I should prepare a lunch package and gave me a hand full of bananas for the way. The day before he showed me a wonderful route through the hilly area called Odenwald. The route should be as short as possible, contain a minimum of height meters and little traffic of course.

Then I started at 7:30 am, outside the weather was warmer than the days before, maybe 3 to 5 °C, the streets were wet and drizzel fell from the cloudy sky. The yellow light from the street lights reflected in the wet street and also in the low hanging clouds. This caused a feeling well known to the people in the northern and central parts of Europe ,the feeling of having to leave the cozy security of a climatized home.

On the road to Darmstadt there were cars everywhere. The shoulder of the road was often pretty wide so I felt saver than riding really close to the cars. I often switched to the cycle/walking path when available but realized time after time that this alternative was in at least 50% of the cases a mistake, either slowing me down through massive detours or leading to dead ends. Having to cross the street in break of dawn didn’t increase my security in traffic either.

Reaching the city of Darmstadt I reached this important “kilometer stone” of my journey, symbolical for the successful end of the tour: the number 40 000 appeared on my kilometer counter. Mission accomplished! I could have missed the display of this number easily, there was no “magical feeling” or any other kind of signal from either the environment or my body, just the usual feeling of being packed in enough warm layers to master the last stage in winter Germany. My super VDO MC1.0 kilometer counter also didn’t give any signal at all: no beep, no vibration (as other devices would have done these days), no letter of congratulation or nice sentence from the tiny device mounted beside the 26″ rear wheel. Just a normal moment in a middle sized German city in another way too warm winter. Nobody took notice!

I was happy. Happy when looking back to this so rich part of my life, happy when looking at where I was now and happy when looking into the future. The smile appeared on my face again and the pedestrians passing often got infected when I greeted them kindly and smiled back.

Continuing towards the natural park Odenwald and slowly gaining in altitude on the way towards Reichelsheim I started to recognize the familarity of the landscape and architecture. These now brown, forest covered hills with the tiny villages, small streams leading downwards from every valley, the farms and wood processing plants, the cellar door sales from local farmers advertised near the road and of course the timber framed white-black houses or houses covered with tiny timber plates. This is the area I had explored for years on the mountainbike and in my early childhood together with my grandparents and relatives. This felt even more like home than the European way of life I already felt very familiar with during the last two weeks.

Cycling down from the “Wegscheide” crossing towards Hirschhorn was nice and fast riding and arriving at the bottom I reached the Neckar river. The water that flows down from somewhere in the Black Forest and passes my home only 50 or 60 km upstream. This navigable river led a lot of my cycling tours, it was always there with the lock in my home town Gundelsheim and sometimes even heavy floods. From now on I knew the route by heart, I’ve probably cycled it at least a dozen times and even more often from Eberbach, the town only 11 km from here.

I chose the slower version, following the cycle path, to get to Eberbach and switched over to the B37 road that later changed into the B27 near Mosbach and brought me to Gundelsheim just at dusk time. Nice time for the finisher photo in front of the castle Horneck, after 40 115 km. I took all the time to put the tripod on the cycle path, adjust the camera settings and get the shot. I had the time, I surely was not in a hurry this evening. A lot of cars passed me in their hurry to get from A to B really fast and enrich the lives of their passengers. They are several times as fast as I have been during the last 600 days. What do they gain? What do they lose?

Now I visit this place where I’ve spent so many years of my life, the house where I had grown up in, the street where I had learned cycling and the center of my little world until a few years back. A strange feeling in my breast.

I leave some stuff with my father who had reached home already more than a week ago, the tent and sleeping bag are drying in the cellar now. I shortly check the interior of my youth, my room, the kitchen and living room. A lot of memories are connected to these places, but I don’t feel like I had lost them, I don’t feel like I had missed them.

I start riding again and pedal up that “long” uphill from Neckarmühlbach to Siegelsbach; the high-brightness front LED lights are flickering when I reach the really steep parts with more than 10% gradient. I choose to take the even steeper shortcut towards Siegelsbach … and master it … of course. I am trained and motivated. Cycling through two smaller villages I reach Fürfeld and find the new home of my mother and sister immediately.

20 months no see! I park the bike at a bush beside the house, I ring the bell, I jump behind the bush! My wonderful sister Verena opens the door already expecting me, so I’m not very successful with terrifying her even only a bit! Now she’s falling me in the arms. I’m happy! During the trip there had often been a big distance and times with bad communication when the facilities were just not there. But now I’m back, back in a different NOW, but back with the people I love! I meet Andi, my friend and the longtime boyfriend of my sister, and my mother Martina only 45 minutes later when she comes back from work. And after lifting up the loaded recumbent bicycle many stairs I’m trained and able to pick her up. Even our dog Sydney is happy after shortly “talking turkey” with me

A beautiful day and a condign and nice finish of the adventure.R

Day 597 to 604 (2008-12-11 to 18): Vlissingen to Amsterdam and return to Germany

Published

Daniel N. Lang

on December 19, 2008

in GPS, Germany, Netherlands, couchsurfing, english and recumbent

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At my arrival in Vlissingen it was already maybe 8 o’clock in the evening. I still had to find Wim’s home and the town was much bigger than I had expected!

But luckily two young boys helped me to get into the area and then I could use the detailed Google Maps map I had printed at Edwin’s place in Belgium just a few hours before.

With Wim and his lovely wife Marjan I’ve had a really nice time, talking a lot about many things and he even agreed to go for a ride after work with me the following day in really bad, rainy weather, the one where most people prefer to stay under the warm and protecting roof of their home.

And when I left on the 13th of December for Amsterdam, he had already organized a place to stay for me, the coming night and taken a day off from work to join me for a part of the ride northwards.

He took me to the M5 recumbent bicycle workshop where I got to see the elite of Dutch recumbent builders, where some of the fastest, world record breaking bicycled in the world originated!

(German holiday houses at the Dutch coast with windmills in the background)

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see or go for a ride with his beautiful daughters Rea and Jes which have left for half a year to explore Australia and only send him back reports in Dutch from time to time which the father has to translate into English - what a service!

So I want to thank Wim and his wife Marjan a lot for hosting me and making me feel really warm and comfortable in their wooden house in Vlissingen! You are great and Wim, I definitely have to see your cured Quest one day when you’ll have it back again
By the way: Check out Wim’s really nice and charming posting about my visit.

And the next wonderful thing I saw were the cycling paths in Holland - it’s so much safer and pleasant to ride their compared to any other country I’ve cycled so far. Really amazing and even though I’m riding really slow these days because of all the luggage and ‘unaerodynamic’ addons to my recumbent I could progress much faster than what would have been possible back home in Germany (with exception of the stunning work of Ulrich Lamm over at radweit.de of course).

So I reached the harbour, Europort, in the south-west of Rotterdam by dusk and I still had to cycle quite a way to get to Bram a bit north of Rotterdam - that would have been a lot harder to almost impossible without this level of cycling infrastructure.

And Bram greeted me with open arms, even though I arrived pretty late, totoally exhausted. He told me interesting stories from his cycling life and pointed me towards the computer to update my website before I went to bed - without him the last posting would have been the present one!

The following morning after equipping me with a map and instructions he cycled a while with me towards Amstedam in his shining new red Quest velomobile. He even showed me how he’ll have it painted these days and promised to send me a picture of the result - really funny and creative in my eyes! I’ll keep you updated on that.

Arriving at the borders of Amsterdam in the early afternoon I got picked up by this RBOB (Real Beauty On a Bike), named Sjoukje. I followed her all the way to the center of the city, getting more and more amazed by the unbelieveable masses of cyclists in the streets and this chaos they create that fascinated me a lot and made me smile all the time, sometimes laughing about funny maneuvres in the streets or just about these immense masses of humans on bikes!

I had only little time left, maybe 3 hours in total, and it cost a me quite an effort to take out the camera in these freezing cold temperatures to get at least a touch of the spirit of Amsterdam, a wonderful city for cyclists in my opinion.

A meeting with other velomobile riders from Almere didn’t happen because the riding conditions in the evening and night were just too cold for my feet and I couldn’t continue even if I wanted so much. So I had to pitch the tent close to a golf club and some new condos close to the bridge to Almere and just beside this funny sign where 80% of the condos had already been “verkocht”, which ist the translation of the German word “verkauft” but at the same time could be a German word meaning something like “miscooked”

So now I headed straight towards the German border, sometimes cycling one to three hours into the night and only stopping when the feet had already gotten way too cold.

I had the first rotation of my 20″ front wheel on German ground at a village called “Waldfeucht” north of Aachen near Jülich.

And it really felt strange to be back. The number of cars on the road increased immediately and at the same time the number of cyclist fell to almost zero! I felt lonely on the road. And I didn’t see any beautiful girls on bikes any more which could eventually change my direction and make me forget about the path I wanted to cycle before but only got to smell the congestion clouds of the ugly cars of (maybe some) beautiful girls inside the cars - oh, poor me! I felt miserable, I even thought about making a 180° turn, but this time I simply couldn’t.

And to not mention only the bad things about getting back home, I went to a bakery the very next morning and bought some fresh brezels and 750 g of the tastiest sunflower bread I have had in over a year, the only sunflower bread I have actually had in over a year

Combined with some (cheap) apple juice bought from a big German supermarket chain I had found a good energy supply for the cold temperatures and sometimes even rain.

And two days ago the temperatures were below zero in the evening and suddenly rain set in, creating a unrideable road surface. I was lucky to find a nice even surface behind a farm shed and pitched up the tent.

I had a cold, cold night with almost no sleep and everything felt wet or cold, really uncomfortable. And additionally the night was sooooo long. So I was really happy to know that Jürgen Eick in Rüsselsheim would provide me with a warm and dry bed the following night.

Not only the bed but much more the hours long conversations with Jürgen about all topics cycling, renewable energies, sustainability and even more inspired me to go fast along the Rhine river cycling path. But soon I realized it would be impossible for me to reach Rüsselsheim before midnight and the weather got worse and worse with frightening clouds getting darker the further I cycled south.

So to not break my word I decided to jump on the train. Not an easy decision of course but definitely the right one, as I arrived at about 6 o’clock in the evening, just right for dinner together with Jürgen.

He already held a few books ready for me and with every new topic we discussed he put at least a new ‘must read’ book out from his big book shelf onto the table. I could try his new trekking-bike and he demonstrated his etrex VISTA HCx Garming GPS device. I was really happy to visit him the second time on this tour after cycling together with Jürgen and Carl Georg, inventor and builder of the Leitra velomobile, in April 2007 at the very beginning of the journey. Thank you very much, Jürgen!

9. Tag: Bonn bis kurz vor Roermond.

Published

Daniel N. Lang

on May 8, 2007

in Germany, Netherlands and recumbent

. 0 Comments

Together with Arne I got up at 6am. Having internet was motivation enough So I checked what was up outside in the world and thought about the route I’d take.After this I had a shower and then I started onto todays tour: I wanted to cycle down the Rhine to near Düsseldorf where I’d change direction and go into the west. The cycling path was everything, from idyllic nature to demotivating industrial complexes.Coming into a flater part of Germany more and more cycle lanes and paths appeared on the side of streets. With that it was no problem to come to Mönchengladbach near the Dutch border. There I’ve found an open wireless network and checked wheather my contacts from the morning were successful.

I then went on for another 10 to 12 km through the night and found a seamingly quiet sleepingsport that (on the next morning) turned out to be 20 meters away from the motor(high)way!

Tag 8: Nahe Andernach bis Bonn.

Published

Daniel N. Lang

on May 8, 2007

in Germany and recumbent

. 0 Comments

After a great night under the apple trees I woke up and had a great idea: Why not call Arne, a (recumbent) cyclist I know from the Viking Tour. He lived in Sankt Augustin and has moved to Bonn recently. He invited me to stay at his place for the night and we found a meeting point under the first Rhine bridge at 18:30.The distance was about 60km and so I could make a relaxed day, doing some things on the TODO list.For lunch I prepared a soup in Andernach and enjoyed it with some bread on the Rhine. Before that I had a paket sent back with some books and other stuff I didn’t need. Thereafter I called my mother and sister to prepare them for the arrival of the paket - they’ve made some negative experience with a packet I had sent from Norway about 2 years before Then I chilled on the bike along the Rhine river enjoying the beautiful weather and more and more cyclists as I neared Bonn. 20 or 30km in front of Bonn I met Toni, a recumbent cyclist who was also cycling a StreetMachine GT.

Together we’ve had a long conversation and he told me about an important historic bridge from WWII we passed by.After we had arrived in Bonn we cycled along the left Rhine side near the former Bundestag and many other once important buildings.

We went to VeloCity, a big cycling shop in Bonn and there we split.I met Arne at 18:15 near the bridge where he came to fetch me with his racing bike. On the way back to his home we rode over the Rhine and Arne also over a rat which didn’t care enough when crossing the cycling path.Together with Arne, Ute and her mother we’ve had a nice evening visiting the Rhine promenade for sunset, having an ice and a conversation until 0:30.

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Project VELAIA

Archive for the 'Germany' Category

(10.01.2009): Almost killed while jogging

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(2008-12-31): Christmas, new laptop and last post this year

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Day 605 (2008-12-19): Mission accomplished, back home!

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Day 597 to 604 (2008-12-11 to 18): Vlissingen to Amsterdam and return to Germany

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9. Tag: Bonn bis kurz vor Roermond.

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Tag 8: Nahe Andernach bis Bonn.

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