SMASH, CRASH, and GNASH

There may be nothing more embarrassing than having an accident with a motorcycle when you are riding in a group. All one’s self doubts, insecurities and believed inadequacies surface, hitting you between the eyes.

Our 5 European Countries Tour is likely no different than any other moderately large motorcycle touring group, at the outset 14 members plus 2 guides. A couple was forced to return to the USA because of a very serious family illness. The rest rode on into the depths of fenderbending, handlebar reshaping and worse, a failed drive train.

It began rather innocuously in a 'sloped' parking lot fronting an Italian bar (café). The bikes were all lined up in a nicely parallel parked organization,  a very orderly way of parking a crowd of bikes. But the key word here is ‘sloped.’ Asking someone to take a photograph of me, I wanted to use my bike as a prop and as I leaned against the bike, it began to fall down, away from me, in a dominoes effect of a chain reaction. My bike fell against another and both smashed to the ground. Apologies, given fervently, repeatedly, seemed to fall on deaf ears maybe because we are all responsible for damages for our bikes. I am most certain my apologies included “I am responsible for any assessed damages.” but who knows, perhaps in the embarrassment of the moment, I neglected to add that essential phrase. The bike owner doesn’t speak to me anymore. The bike damage, very minor scratches and some rubber rubbing marks on my windshield.

Then, one of our very best riders, told me he ‘dropped’ his bike on the very first day! No damage was mentioned other than possibly to a male ego and the issues seemed to pass into the world of the ‘unspoken and not repeated.’

Next, the dentist in our group, turned a sharp switchback corner and the oncoming car, far over its own territorial roadway boundaries, connected with the rider’s biker. A mere bump, brush and scrape. The auto driver verbally lashed out at the biker, as if bikers do not have any road rights whatsoever and drove off without doing anything else like exchanging information or assessing damage. Luckily again, bike damage was negligible.

Next morning, new day, new riding resolutions, new determinations to ride with extreme care, and less than twenty minutes into the ride, one of the senior and most skilled riders, turned another switchback and the resulting sharp turn ended in another dropped bike. The rider, for being a mature man, showed amazing self-preservation skills and jumped off the bike as it went down. With many years of riding experience, the rider immediately explained the crash as the fault of the bike, a sticking throttle. Again, our good fortune continued with the bike escaping any significant damage, ditto the rider.

A day later, one of our tour guides, the 24 year old son of the tour company owner, again a skilled rider, a seemingly good athlete. Boom, down he went and likely with some moderate speed, for his bike is damaged to the extent that the handlebars needed welding and reshaping and the ignition button needed repair. Rider injury, none; bike damage, notable. Our tour was delayed by about an hour and a half, a minor inconvenience given but no personal injuries were incurred.

And now, another day later, we may be experiencing the New Orleans voodoo for those of you who read my tour blogs from the southern USA. This time, the rider who dropped his bike on day one, had a major bike mishap. Major in this sense, the bike’s transmission seized up thereby ending the possibility of any more riding completely. Bike damage, major; rider injury, none but group inconvenience this time was significant depending how you look at it. We abandoned two riders to stay with the incapacitated bike which was now to be replaced by the dealer in Lengrries, Germany, bringing a replacement bike out to where the problem occurred, not a great distance, perhaps 75 kms, but given that the terrain is the Dolomiti Alps and thereby, lots of mountainous riding, the time to get to the bike would likely be a number of hours. The rest of the group now continued on with the tour, minus one group member and one guide.

In summary, I think we have escaped with a lot of good luck mixed with some not so good. We have had a number of mishaps, and near misses, but thankfully no one has suffered any kind of personal injury. Thank goodness.

The photo is of one of the passes of the Dolomiti range in Italy...it really is a spectacular region for its incredible scenery.

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Life's highway has ups, downs, and lots of curves.

Traveling the road of life has its rough rides.Every person experiences bumps along this roadway, bumps of sadness, bumps of illness, bumps of depression and eventually bumps of death. But, along that same road, each person also has some smooth riding, some straight-ways, some speed strips. I know I have had all of those in my life. I bet you have had some in yours.
    One group member I am riding with in this European Motorcycle tour, has a very sad story, a major bump in his life's road occurred but a year ago. Married for 44 years, this person lost a spouse to cancer a year ago. The relationship was a match made in heaven: high school peers, friends before they were lovers, married before entering their third decade of life, they lived a life of great friendship, great intimacy and great camaraderie. Now, the living partner aches, badly, so much so that it is difficult to even talk about the marriage, the friendship, the history of being a couple. The road is becoming very bumpy, very difficult to travel. But, just as in this European jaunt, each person should know, there are riding companions out there to accompany you along that road. Just open you eyes, open you heart, people do want to ride with you a little ways, only so they can have company when their own ride becomes a rough one.
    Those of you riding a road with a mate, think about your road ahead. Maybe you should appreciate the ride of today for the road will be empty for one of you all too soon. So much of what happens in our lives is serendipity, fate, destiny and there is little we can do to improve the ride and make it smoother.
      I ride a motorcycle, inherently a high risk activity. I don't go out looking for danger, precarious situations, the tempting of fate. Some people do. Why, I simply don't know. But I wonder. A death wish? Perhaps for some, but if they do, why do they? The smooth rides of life are so good ! Some people would think that being a motorcycle rider, I have a death wish. Don't kid yourself, nothing could be farther from the truth. I ride with heart in hand on many roads, especially these which I have ridden in Europe. Exciting roads, dream roads for a bike person but I ride them as carefully as my skills permit. But when you learn the stories behind each rider, you soon learn that life is a tough road to travel for everyone.

   Yet, life goes on: birth, life, aging, death. There is a pattern and there has to be meaning, but I don't have the answers to share with you readers, not here, not elsewhere. I too would like to know what those answers are, if there are any.
    Sadly, today one couple from our riding group were forced to "pull the plug" on their 5 country motorcycle tour because the father of the woman is very ill. The bad news was received last night and today, arrangements for their speedy return to the USA were initiated. Soon, if their prayers are answered, they will have made it, on time, to be by the man's side in his last moments. How sad.

Penny, Larry, our thoughts and our prayers are with you. And though this is a very private time for you both, please be aware that all of us, though we have known each other for such a brief while, we all ride the same roads of life with you. Be safe and we hope your journey ends as well as you wish.
   For the rest of us, our ride continues.
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Ever thought of your bucket list?

A new topic which has recently come up in society, likely after the Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman movie, the idea of a personal bucket list, a list of things which you want to do before you die. I don't like thinking of my own mortality but with each passing year, it creeps up ever larger in my head. And I never thought I had a bucket list. If I did, it had rather mundane things on it like what I did today. But who is the judge of bucket list items? Today I checked of one of my bucket list items.

   For many years, after seeing these modes of transportation on the Internet and then seeing them in real life down in The Distillery district of Toronto, I wanted to try one. Then, when I got to Munich, I saw that right across the street from my hotel, there was a shop doing such tours, Segway Tour Munich. I went in and talked to the co-owner, Dagobert Benz and booked a tour. They do tours in German mostly, but they also have some in English. I booked the German tour as it was in the 11am slot, a time when the heat of the day would not yet be peaked. Dagobert reiterated that the tour was in German, but I countered that there would likely be one or two people on the tour who could speak English. I was right !

   The "pre-flight" training video makes the mode of travel look super simple. The very first minutes of training are a little awkward as your means of control is simply your body lean, a strange sensation for making something move. Riding a segway is kind of like being on a pogo stick with flat platforms for your feet. Control is far easier than you would think. Lean forward, you move forward, lean more and you go faster. Lean back, you stop. Lean back even more, you go in reverse. To turn, you just push down on the handle bar of the side you want to turn toward. Push down a little, you turn a little, push lots and you circle right around. You can actually make yourself spin ( no pun ) on the spot by holding down one side of the handle bar. It takes about 2 minutes to get the hang of it and then you're off.
   We were a group of 7 led by Dagobert who guided us on the tour. He would stop at locations of interest to explain, in German, the importance or historical relevance of the spot. My occasionally understood word was not enough to really make sense of what he was saying, but with each passing interval, more members of the group displayed their capability of speaking English and would come to my assistance. Jessica, young German whose mother is a Parisian was assigned to help me with translating but she was shy or else I simply intimidated her. She explained that it was hard to remember all he said and also even harder to find the words in English. At the end of the tour, I gave her a Canadian flag pin in appreciation of her very honorable effort at keeping me tour informed.  
     I think adults are self conscious about their foreign language speaking capability fearing they make themselves look foolish when they make mistakes. I am not quite that bad in being reluctant to speak my Italian but will take stabs at it more and more, ignoring that I may make mistakes. But, I must be coming fairly good at masking my lack of capability with the language as native Italians, once they hear me speak a little, respond with alacrity and complicated replies. I think they assume that if I can say things, I must be able to understand them too. How wrong they are. My speaking is already formed in my head...but hearing them, I am busy translating as they are talking and in seconds, I have to tell them, please slow down, I cant turn the mental pages of my mental Italian-English dictionary fast enough to keep up with them. Oops, got side tracked.

    Anyway, the segway tour was a fun way of touring about 10-15 kms of the the city in three hours with stops for a lunch break, coffee, and bathroom relief. We had no accidents, no near misses and we were gawked at by all kinds of people, though I think segways are more commonly seen in big cities nowadays than a few years back. How technology is changing the world and how fast too !
    And now I can check off another item off of my bucket list. A strange thing about my list is this. I see something or read about something and then I note that it is something I would like to try. So it becomes an item on my bucket list. I think one day soon,  I will actually write down a bucket list on my computer and add to it, modify it from time to time. I never realized that I had such a list in my head but I must have because today, when I finished my segway ride, I felt like I had really accomplished something for myself.
   I have another item on my list now, I know. One day, I want to drive a Ferrari, maybe even on a race track, or a Porsche. I keep hinting to my American friend, Pedro, who is a real Porsche cognoscienti, to keep on the look out for a deal for me. Maybe I can buy one someday and own it for a while? A bucket list item, to be certain.
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MORE OBSERVATIONS ON GERMAN SOCIETY and CULTURE

Germany is a unique society that is becoming less and less German. The invasion from the east and middle east has really grown; Asians,Thais, Afghans, Turks, Iranians, Iraquis and people from all parts of Africa. You see it in the construction of mosques and of indigenous restaurants. Forget about Chinese, that is so passe!
    Fashion indicates the societal change too.
The djellaba and the kaftan or afghan 'tent' like covering are very prevalent on the streets. One could say bravo for the egalitarianism of the Germans, but like the Internet is degenerating non-English languages, German egalitarianism is forcing social change on Germans. The nation no longer is socially uniform and homogeneously German. Still, to work, these immigrants must learn rudimentary German and they do !
So the language is not totally lost yet.  But it is unusual  to find a German in their big cities who doesn't speak English or just understands it.
   So German society changes but it already is a different society when one goes to a brau house  for a beer and something to eat.

   North Americans use eating utensils differently than Europeans. Again, I seem to over emphasize German, and European efficiency. But, for whatever reason, they eat differently. The Germans pick up the fork with their left hand, knife in the right and manipulate their meal without ever changing the hand of use for the eating utensil. North Americans, depending on which hand is dominant, pick up the fork with that hand. If they are right handed, they switch the utensils after working on their food. Makes no sense at all.

    But another observation of German society. Enter a pub or bistro in Canada, and you see youth, very few seniors. In Germany, lots of seniors, and not necessarily mixed couples either, nor, all men as the seniors seem to group in Canada. I met two seniors ladies in a brauhaus beer garden. They were 'sluggin'' back the beers and some wines and I asked if I might take their foto. They agreed. When I asked if they came to the beer garden often and stated that they would be a  very unusual sight in a Canadian pub, they replied that German society is truly democratic and old people can mix equally with the young. Besides, they added, "it is more fun to be outside having a beer with people, than to be inside watching TV alone. Oh, how this society lives and thinks differently.

    Finally, as different as they may be, Germans are human and human beings love mental exercise. On the subways, the buses, park benches, everwhere, people are reading, solving crosswords, searching for sudoku solutions. Human's must have some internal mental itch which can only be scratched by doing these intellectual exercises. Same with physical exercise, but Munchens seem to not only desire exercise but have it built into their metropolitan system. They bicycle everywhere throughout their city, and all ages too from young kids to seniors. As you might guess, though the Munchens love their beer, drinking barrels per person each year, there are very few obese people around. I may have been the chunkiest rider in all of Munich. Sad, but I still rode and wore off a little bit of the beers.

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GERMAN EFFICIENCY...to the last drop !

German mechanization is world renowned. Their efficiency, if it isn't already, should be also.

I flew into Munich airport fretting about the transportation from there to the city centre. A taxi ride, though efficient, was costly and not really good value for the dollar. But I had researched that a subway was available from the airport, a subway, not a bus, not a pullman, but a subway. Arriving and deplaning, I found an information desk in minutes and was directed to their Terminal #1, a 1 minute walk across a little pedestrian mall. There, I found another information desk, the receptionist, in excellent English directed me to the subway ticket purchase desk and the subway entrance. 9.6 E paid for a ticket, 1 minute later, I am on the subway platform. I could take either train as the airport is the last stop for all trains along this line. Minutes later, voila, a subway train. Doors don't automatically open on German subways. There is a button on both sides of the entrance/exit doors and you open a door if you need that one opened. Otherwise, the doors remain shut and less power is used by the train. Logical and efficient !
    Aboard and away we go through the German countryside, farm land, grassy fields, neat, tidy and organized. The announcement systems declares the next stop in German and  in English. Plus, train stops are indicated on a central ceiling LED text display in each car. Logical and very practical.
   Half an hour later, I have arrived at my downtown stop, Isartor. Exiting by escalator with luggage, I grab a cab and and am taken to my hotel in 2 minutes. Had I known it was that closeby, I could have walked.
But that airport run....Toronto...you're terrible !
    Next, beer service in the central market beer garten. The heart of Munich has the Viktualeinmarkt which is a food market known as "Munich's stomach" is an eating area with everything except maybe pizza. It's Germany, for heaven's sake. Now in the middle of this outdoor food galleria, there is a beer garden where they have benches and tables galore for quaffing and lunching, seating is free, catch as catch can. But the beer service is the epitome of efficiency. You get into a railed off row, never a line in it, no matter how busy, and you follow the railed path to the bar where there are two large opened windows with filled steins of beer for purchase, full and half litre sizes. You pick up a stein, walk on to the till, pay and out you go. A beer in less than a minute. German efficiency to an incredible level!

   A final note on German logic and efficiency. I bicycled around Munich for three days and thought traffic was terribly busy at most hours, biking like that was a super idea. Biking lanes painted off from car lanes and pedestrian pathways made for easy navigation around the city. And bicycling is the right way to go as you can sit and rest when you want, coast and cover distances easily, and exercise with pleasure at other times to help wear off some of that German beer. But another piece of German logic. We have tri coloured lights for traffic control with the amber signal used to warn that a red signal is imminent. The Germans add a very logical wrinkle, the caution comes on to warn the the green light is imminent. So "get ready to move !" I liked that idea a lot, not that our light system is bad but the German one encourages movement for the Germans seem preoccupied with 'action,' 'speed,' and 'production.'  Hence, their system moves traffic faster. German logic and efficiency...one hell of a productive and efficient country.
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NEW TOUR....BIKING IN 5 EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Well, I am back at it, the blogging, more touring and more observations on life and living.

The blogging
Again, as on prior tours, I will keep a running commentary on the things I see, I do, I hear and I experience. But again, I ask for feedback from you people. As many of you know, I freelance write and am always marketing my material. But we all are usually our own worst enemies when it comes to self criticism. So I invite you people who read my blogs to send me feedback. No, not ego salving compliments but more of things like it is fun to read, entertaining, or...it is lousy, polish more, be more attentive to fun side of things, etc. You people know what to tell me. And I promise I will take it to heart and work with the advice, suggestions, tips, etc.

The TOUR
Some of you may know that I am biking the Alps this September, 2 weeks, 5 countries; Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy and Switzerland. The tour starts from Munich, with the bike riding beginning in Lenggries, 60 kms south of Munich. I don't know why they are busing us there to begin riding from that town. Maybe they think Munich is too dangerous. I could concur as I have been bicycling around Munich for the past two days and a few times I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. Thank goodness my skin is chubby too. So the tour begins officially on Thursday, I think and I will admit, I will feel better being on a motorcycle rather than on a bicycle.
 
The OBSERVATIONS
As in the past, I will be writing about what I see, what I experience. I have dreams of writing a la Sandy Van Ocur or Andy Rooney or Allan Fotheringham. But may I tell you, those guys were old pros, who had years of experience behind them. Sandy wrote a Sunday morning travel show for CBS, a great travelogue with nice insights into what he saw. Andy Rooney, as most of you know, writes for 60 Minutes, and often he says things that make me say "why didnt I think of that or why didnt I write that when I thought of it too?" Finally, Allan Fotheringham used to write the "last page" for McLean's Magazine. He was hilarious and pricked a lot of Ottawa balloons in very humourous ways. The closest a modern satirist comes is Rick Mercer on CBC's The Mercer Report. But again, guys like Van Ocur, Rooney and Mercer have writing teams to assist him. Rooney though, I think does his own stuff as he has been a correspondent and newspaperman since the 1940s, even did war reporting during WWII. There are days I feel that old, but I sure dont have the experience they do.

Still I can observe things and comment on them. My wife reminds me to be more positive and that I should publish this material in a book. But she has more confidence in what I am blogging than I do. Still, some pieces may not stay on here for a long time, because I have compromised with her and said I would pull the blogs that she feels really strongly about. Maybe a book will come out of all my tours someday. I do know I have a lot of great experience from my touring which can be used to assist others in getting more joy and pleasure out of their own touring. I have logged many miles and had some close calls but so far, touch word, thank God, and say a prayer to my guardian angel, I am still here to write about those many miles.

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