EPISODE 24
2024 Holiday Special
Ever wondered about the voice that welcomes you to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast? In this special holiday episode, host Gabriel pulls back the curtain, inviting his wife Sandra as a guest for the very first time! Join them in their cozy home in Germany as they reflect on their summer bike tour with baby Emilio, sharing hilarious mishaps and heartwarming moments. But that’s not all – find out which episodes you found most memorable this past season, including a series of entertaining discussions with those episodes’ guests. Also, catch updates from other Season One guests and learn a bit about the podcast’s listeners. Filled with laughter, reflection, and a dash of that irresistible accidental charm, this episode is the perfect way to wind down the year and look ahead to the open road in 2025.
Episode Transcript
Gabriel: If you have listened to any episode of the podcast this year, then you know that each one starts like this:
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello, cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to the holiday special episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. During the year, several of you have asked, “Who is the woman who introduces the show? Is that your wife, Sandra?” The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, and she is joining me here today in our home in Potsdam, Germany, to reminisce a little about our summer bicycle tour with our baby Emilio, and to discuss the episodes of this amazing first season that you, dear listeners, found most memorable. To make things cozy on this gray afternoon, we have made ourselves hot beverages and baked blueberry muffins. If we had a fireplace, the fire would be crackling. Unfortunately, we have to make do with the screensaver of a fireplace. Most importantly, we have shipped Emilio off to enjoy some holiday cheer at the neighbor’s house.
Gabriel: Well, this is a special episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. You’ve been waiting all year for this. Sandra, thank you for being a guest on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Sandra: Thank you so much for having me.
Gabriel: You’re happy to be here.
Sandra: I am. This is really exciting. And I have to say, I’m a bit nervous. You know, other people told me, “Ooh, I was nervous.” And I was like, “Nah, this is fine. Gabriel’s going to edit it all.” And now I sit here and go like, “Oh yeah, I feel you.”
Gabriel: Something very interesting happened to us just a few days ago. Popular here in Germany is something called an Adventskalender. These calendars are usually large rectangular cards with 24 small doors, one for each day of December leading up to Christmas.
Sandra: Which is in Germany celebrated on the 24th.
Gabriel: Right, right. So this is meant to be started off on December 1st, and then it goes all the way to December 24th. And you open one door every day. All kinds of companies have advent calendars. The more obvious ones are something like chocolate, but you could have perfumes. You can have tea advent calendars…
Sandra: Beer and gin or alcoholic beverages are coming in these days too.
Gabriel: That’s right. Every day, one liter of whiskey.
Sandra: I think it’s more the smaller sides.
Gabriel: Okay. You never know with these German traditions. Of course, all of us have our own advent calendars, but we actually got one from a good friend of Sandra’s. And it’s one for couples to work on together. On December 10th, there was an interesting one that challenged both partners to think, and in German, the sentence that we got behind the door was, “An diese Situazion im Sommer denke ich gerne zurück.” So that means, “I think back fondly about this moment during the summer.” And I thought of a moment and Sandra thought of a moment and it turned out to be the same moment.
Sandra: Yeah, we actually had to think of that moment from the perspective of the other person and from our own, obviously, because then we had to say what was correct for the other person guessing for us. That was funny because we looked at each other and I thought, “Darn, I think I have the same situation that you might have.”
Gabriel: Definitely. And it was so. And now Sandra, can you explain the moment?
Sandra: Yeah, so we thought both of that moment where we ended our last day…
Gabriel: Yeah, ended.
Sandra: End. That’s an important word, where we ended our last day of our bike tour with our little son, Emilio, who was then 10 months old, roughly. Yeah, so he had been sitting in the trailer all the time and we, after weeks of cycling, actually made it to Saarbrücken, where we ended the trip at my cousin’s place. And it was fabulous. It was actually my birthday and they were waiting for us in the garden with a bunch of really delicious cakes from their family-owned bakery. Yeah, we just arrived, we had a shower, and then we sat down at this very nicely decorated table with a little happy birthday in the background and celebrated the day. And I think, very importantly, the end of the trip.
Gabriel: Yes, and you heard right, Sandra’s family owns probably the best Konditorei or bakery in Saarbrücken. So it is very much the reason we ended our tour there on Sandra’s birthday. That was also the day that I had thought about and it was just a great way to finish the tour. So I think it’s worth quickly recapping the tour. We ended up in Saarbrücken, but where did we start? And that’s Schaffhausen in Switzerland. And the question is, why did we start in Schaffhausen?
Sandra: Well, that’s an easy one.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Sandra: There’s two good reasons. One, that’s where we ended our tour last year. So last year we rode around the Lake Constance, the Bodensee. So it was nice to reconnect. And then two, we also decided to visit a bunch of people in Switzerland. But then the question is, why did we want to connect to the tour we did last year?
Gabriel: That’s right. And that’s because we have a crazy long-term goal.
Sandra: A big hairy audacious goal. A BHAG!
Gabriel: Nice. A BHAG of bicycling around roughly the perimeter of Germany.
Sandra: That’s right. Your crazy idea. I’m tagging along.
Gabriel: Well, it wasn’t my idea from the start, but when I looked at the map and I saw the different tours we had done, I kind of thought, “Wait, this is starting to look a little bit like the perimeter of Germany.” Not quite, but a little bit.
Sandra: Yeah. By pure coincidence, actually.
Gabriel: At the beginning it was pure coincidence, and now there’s a plan. So yes, I don’t know how many more years it’ll take.
Sandra: A lot.
Gabriel: And I don’t know how many kilometers are required. So my research is poor, but the idea, the BHAG is there, eventually cycle around the perimeter of Germany. So back to Schaffhausen. Yes, that connected with last year’s tour. This year we followed the Rhine from Schaffhausen to Basel. So that’s more or less the Swiss-German border, which is the Rhine River in its early days. And then we turned more or less north with the Rhine River, and that’s then the border between Germany and France, and continued all the way up to around Karlsruhe, and then turned west away from the Rhine, but keeping more or less along the border with France. And then we ended up in Saarbrücken. What are some of the most notable moments from our adventure?
Sandra: I think one important moment is actually before we started out, because I was really cracking my head over, how does the setup look like for traveling by bicycle with a baby? I was not sure about what kind of sleeping equipment we would need, and like what kind of an inflatable mattress do you have for a person that small? And so I actually did quite a bit of research on that, just to find that there’s hardly anything on the internet, because most people probably think that it’s crazy. As we also heard on the episode with Mylène and David, “Touring with a Small Child,” it is not something most people do, and it was difficult to agree on a setup and then also go with that, because it is so many unknowns, and you really want to get it right, because you don’t want to then have your kid get a bad cold or a bladder infection, because you didn’t pack correctly.
Gabriel: A bladder infection.
Sandra: Or whatever.
Gabriel: Oh my goodness.
Sandra: So that was really an important part, and I was a little bit stressed out to have like the right hats and the right equipment for Emilio, and yeah, I’m glad it all worked out, and I can recommend breastfeeding as really king on a tour like that, because it gives you maximum freedom to feed the kid whenever it’s hungry without having to resort to, “Oh, we need to make a proper break, we need to cook something or warm some food.” And I can say that has really, that has been awesome. Very, very practical. Yeah, what were some memorable moments? I definitely remember the Swiss part of the Rhine bicycling path to be very picturesque with a few more climbs, but very, very nice.
Gabriel: This was the Swiss National Route 2…
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: That we followed, and it’s so well signposted. They really find the nicest back roads. It was very picturesque, and yeah, at that point the Rhine is still blue.
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: So as I think back, one interesting thing from that first stretch is that we found this really nice campground in the small town of Murg.
Sandra: Oh yeah.
Gabriel: Which is in Germany, and this was the best campground because it was only for cyclists, hikers, kayakers.
Sandra: Nature travelers.
Gabriel: Nature travelers. There were absolutely no camper vans or anything like that. It was so cozy and small and peaceful. That was one great spot.
Sandra: Yeah, I loved it. It was really nice. Sorry, now I have some muffin in my mouth, but that was a really nice place, and it was so quiet, and yeah, and I loved also that they had shared bathrooms, like gender neutral bathrooms. It just felt homely in a way, and we met really sweet people who shared also a knack of board games, and we sat until very late, when it was pitch black and most people had already gone to bed, and we were still playing a board game.
Gabriel: Yeah. That was one of the best camping experiences, and unfortunately one of the worst ones was when we were quite a ways further north in Strasbourg, in France, and there there were a few things that kind of conspired against us.
Sandra: Oh my goodness, I wouldn’t call it the worst, but I would call it the most memorable campground we’ve been to.
Gabriel: Oh, the campground itself wasn’t the worst, but it was the worst night because Emilio was ill.
Sandra: So yeah, that night was memorable for several reasons. One, literally nobody took a shower, because the shower was a hose mounted between two euro pallets, so it was halfway open, and the other half you can see through the cracks. So nobody dared to have a shower, even though there were many cycling tourists.
Gabriel: And it was actually located right in the middle of the …
Sandra: Yeah, right next to the place to wash dishes and clothes. It was an unfortunate location.
Gabriel: I mean, nobody showered.
Sandra: And then there was literally one toilet, like one toilet for everybody on this campground and one sink. And so in the morning, there was this long queue, and you were hoping that everybody just had quick business to do in this very small little cabin, which was just some very thin wood panels.
Gabriel: It had a roof, let’s not complain.
Sandra: It had a roof, that’s right. It was warm in there, but it was also not very soundproof. It was a very small toilet cabin for the whole campground.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Sandra: I mean, I have to say, the price was great. We paid 10 euros for all of us. They said they have a heart for cyclists, I thought, after seeing the premises that maybe they also don’t dare charge anymore. But there were quite a few… also cars and camper vans. Yeah, in the end, it was good for us to just be there and cook something, and then that’s where we had the worst night of all, because Emilio had a little fever, and he wouldn’t want to sleep, and he was crying, and I’m sure everybody… I was trying to not look around when we climbed out of the tent very late the next morning, because we were all very tired, and people were already packing and having breakfast. But I’m sure everybody was just looking over like, “Those are the guys.”
Gabriel: Who brings a baby on a camping and biking trip? Who would do that?
Sandra: Yeah, crazy.
Gabriel: I definitely stared at my feet as I shuffled to and from the one bathroom, or to and from the one dishwashing area. I think, Sandra, you engaged one couple who were also on bikes, and they were very polite. I think you apologized, and they said, “Oh…”
Sandra: “No problem. We hardly heard it.”
Gabriel: “Yeah, we hardly heard the baby.”
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: “Did the baby cry during the night?” And then the whole time Emilio had been screaming his head off. “Was that birds or was it a baby crying? We couldn’t tell.” So they were very, very polite.
Sandra: Yeah. Anyways, that was definitely a very memorable night, and then I also remember that the following day we had to cross over to Germany again, and that was also one of my favorite moments, because, while we haven’t mentioned yet. I mean, generally it went pretty well with Emilio, considering it all, but he has one big advantage that is also a disadvantage: He loves sleeping when in motion. So as long as he gets into the trailer before he’s super tired, he’ll be just a happy kid, and then the trailer moves, and he falls asleep, and he is out. And he can be sleeping for two hours straight without giving a peep, simply because the trailer is moving. But the problem is, what if the trailer stops? He seems to have this incredible motion sensor, so as soon as he stopped, he would open his eyes and start screaming and be like, how do you dare stop? This is interrupting my beauty sleep. So that is really unsettling, and it definitely robbed us of a few photo opportunities when we thought, oh, this is nice, and no, we cannot stop. So there are quite a few places where we had to just keep going because we thought if we now stop, this is going to result in disaster, because then he would also not easily fall back asleep.
Gabriel: It was so extreme that sometimes you would even shop for groceries, and I would circle around the grocery store time and time again.
Sandra: And that’s where I’m getting, because we so badly wanted to buy croissants and baguettes in France before crossing the border back to Germany. And we were on the lookout, and you were like, “Look, there’s a boulangerie,” and I said, “Great! And I said, now what?” And you said, “I keep going,” and then you were just going up and down the road in front of this boulangerie. And I got off the bike and bought our provisions for lunch, and then we got going again. It was crazy, and there have been those moments where we thought, oh, we don’t know where we are, or we need to find a place for, like, I don’t know, a snack in the afternoon because it was a longer day. And we stopped just to look at the Google Maps and find a café, in Basel, for example. And Emilio woke up immediately, and he wouldn’t stop crying, and we figured, oh, we’re still in the outskirts. It’s 20 more minutes to go to our café. He was like, “OK, I want to get out of here. It’s warm. I want to move. And I have slept enough.” And so that can be a bit tricky.
Gabriel: Yeah, and I do understand that it was August, so he was sometimes very, very hot. And so when we pulled him out of the trailer, he was quite sweaty. I can understand waking up sweaty and wanting to get out of there.
Sandra: Absolutely. I mean, it’s also a long time for a small kid to be four-plus hours in the trailer. So usually we try to time it to go about two hours after breakfast, and then we had a longer lunch break, so he would stretch his legs and get moving and eat some food. And then we would go another two, two-and-a-half hours in the afternoon. But then there were some days that were longer because we just had to cover more distance or we had some climbs in between, and those were usually not so well received by him.
Gabriel: There’s one more story about our trip that I’d like to tell, and that is our crazy journey home by train. However, before we get into that, it’s time to find out which episodes you, the listeners, found most memorable during this first season. We’re going to introduce the five episodes in chronological order and discuss them briefly. Also, I am excited to report that the guests on those episodes graciously agreed to do a quick follow up with me, one of them in person. So here we go. The first episode that was among the most memorable is Episode Five, “Two Canadians Rolling Through Cuba” with Jim and Susan Allman.
Sandra: That was a really cool episode. I have to say, I absolutely loved it because it gave great insights into the country and its culture. Since I’ve been to Cuba myself, I could absolutely relate. And I felt so bad for them on their trip. They were four people and one bicycle got stolen the first day. I thought, oh, I also managed to get my wallet stolen the first night of my arrival. There seems to be something to it.
Gabriel: Welcome to Havana.
Sandra: Yeah, that’s right. But in the end, they made it work out all fine. And that’s the most important part. One thing that also struck me was the food poisoning they got from this water well that was right next to the chicken…
Gabriel: Coop.
Sandra: Chicken coop. Oh, goodness. Poor people. But that’s part of being on Cuba and getting the real adventure, I suppose.
Gabriel: Yeah, and that was even at a casa particular, not just in the middle of nowhere. They were served that water.
Sandra: I think the stomachs of Cubans are a bit more robust than those of non-Cubans.
Gabriel: Let’s listen in on that one.
Gabriel: Hi there, Jim. Is Susan joining us today?
Jim: No, Susan had a conflict that she didn’t want to break. She walks once a week with these friends. She has left me on my own, Gabriel.
Gabriel: No problem. You’ll have to let Susan know that your episode was rated the funniest of the season by the listeners. Everybody got a big laugh out of your Cuban adventures, and I did too.
Jim: That’s nice.
Gabriel: I even got a couple of people asking if you’d be back for another episode, if you had more adventures from other tours.
Jim: Well, we sort of shot our bolt, Gabriel. Yeah, that really was the extent of our silliness, you know?
Gabriel: I do know from talking to you over the years that you’ve done other cycling trips. I know you did a tour somewhere in Canada and also an e-bike tour in Portugal.
Jim: We did an e-bike tour in Portugal and we did the eastern coast of Canada in Quebec with a group of people, our friends. And so that was sort of funny because we drove across Canada with the bicycles because it turned out we didn’t know anything about Quebec. At that time of the year, actually on that week, everybody moves in Quebec. And so we had every intention of renting a van when we got there, and you couldn’t. There was absolutely no way that you could rent anything in Quebec, anywhere, that week. So we took all the bikes and a trailer and Susan and I drove across Canada and then met up with everybody else. And then… and then the other thing we did that was really stupid. We had cycled in the islands and so Blair Irwin, who was with us, he decided that it would be very romantic if we continued as if we had just gotten the ferry from New Brunswick. We headed all the way east to ride back to the west because we hadn’t done enough research directly into a headwind for the whole week.
Gabriel: Haha, there it is again. This is a common theme among my guests, not paying attention to which way the wind usually blows. I remember that in Cuba you even said, “You have to bike from west to east.”
Jim: Yeah, there you have to go west to east, absolutely, yes. As it turns out, that’s exactly the same in that part of Quebec, you have to be going west to east and we weren’t. It was very difficult, I would say. Everybody else flew home and then we had to drive back with all of the bicycles, right? Which I don’t think I would do again. Haha, yeah, so that’s another trip that we did. Portugal was fun and we took Susan’s sister, who was not a bicycle rider, which was both incredibly dangerous and lots of fun, because the bicycles that we have, they have a toggle switch like an accelerator, right? And so you can take off from standing, which is wonderful, but the bikes that we rented over there didn’t and so that was her most dangerous, was when she was first trying to take off and she’d be very wobbly and she’d wobble out into traffic.
Gabriel: Portuguese drivers accelerate first and ask questions later.
Jim: We had a couple of close calls. That was a beautiful, beautiful trip. We were in the Algarve, but not on the coast. We were in the mountains, well.. mountains, they’re hills, and riding through cork forests and eucalyptus forests. They take your gear ahead of time to the hotel. You know where the hotel is – they give you a map – and so you can get there any way you want and you just ride for, you can make it a long day or a short day and then you get to the hotel and your room is ready and yeah, then the next morning you have breakfast, get on your bikes, ride to the next destination. Very, very nice, a very nice way. I’d never done a tour before and it was really worthwhile. I would recommend that to anybody.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s nice, not have to worry about your gear.
Jim: Well we did get lost. We didn’t have GPS, we just had map directions and it was sort of like, you know, “Turn at the white house” and you know, it’s Portugal.
Gabriel: Well that’s changed now, everybody gets a GPS device with turn-by-turn instructions. You must have done this during the early days.
Jim: Very early days, yeah.
Gabriel: I’d like to wrap up by asking if you have any updates from Cuba.
Jim: Well it’s just that it’s horrible there, Gabriel.
Gabriel: Still.
Jim: Still. Worse, actually. Worse, yes. They have routine power outages and a lack of food and the tourism industry is collapsing for those reasons. This friend of mine, he has a motorcycle, he’s riding his bicycle because he can’t get gas.
Gabriel: Back to the bicycle culture.
Jim: Back to the bicycle culture, yeah. I send food. I’ll send another one in this December to two different families, where I send them, you know, chicken, pork, eggs, cooking oil, that sort of thing, you know.
Gabriel: Yep.
Jim: Just to help out because they have such difficulty. We’re going there in January for three weeks. Well, there’s another example. We were going to go for a month and WestJet cancelled our flight home. So I guess they didn’t have enough people. We had to rearrange it and so now we’ve only got three weeks there.
Gabriel: I wish you all the best on your trip. I know you will help as many people as you can in Cuba.
Jim: Yeah, I’ll let you know when we get back how life was.
Gabriel: That’s it. That’s an update from Jim and Susan, who, as you heard, will be traveling one more time to Cuba in January.
Sandra: Wow, it sounds like the situation there is pretty grim and not quite like I remember it, back in the day. I was there in 2017 and it was great fun and a lot of tourism. Seems like things have gone downhill pretty steeply since.
Gabriel: Definitely, yeah. The second episode that we’d like to mention today is Episode Nine, “No Preparation, Some Improvisation: 10 Touring Tips for Beginners” with Simon Alfassa.
Sandra: Oh, yeah, that was a funny one. I love how Simon really was the classic accidental bicycle tourist. He heard from somebody who cycled to a wedding and was like, “Yeah, that long cycling trip, that sounds like fun. I could do something myself.” And he had this totally non-touring suitable bicycle that he screwed some racks to and he borrowed some panniers. It’s cool how he dared do that. And I have to say, I was so impressed with your numbering of the 10 touring tips throughout the interview. I remember how I listened to the episode and I came back and said, how did you do it? How does it sound like you just called out the 10 tips during the conversation with Simon? And you said, “Well, I just mentioned them as we went along,” and I thought, “Wow, that’s incredible. It worked out so perfectly.”
Gabriel: Yeah, actually, there was no preparation and some improvisation in the numbering of the tips, but it worked out.
Sandra: Yeah, that was really good. Great episode for sure.
Gabriel: All right, well, let’s check in with Simon. And actually, his girlfriend, Annika, is also on this call.
Gabriel: Your episode, Simon, has been chosen by listeners as one of the most memorable of the season.
Simon: Amazing. I guess it’s just because it’s not crazy, experienced people who did amazing things, but it’s more like someone that people could relate to because they have no idea what to do. And I had no idea what to do either.
Anika: That is true.
Gabriel: It takes all kinds. So your episode definitely highlighted some things that are maybe not covered in others. But since your trip from Berlin to Copenhagen, there’s been an exciting development. This year, you took a tour with your girlfriend, Anika, who we can hear on the call and is joining us. So that is the topic of today’s update because, Anika, you were a skeptic about bike touring. Isn’t that fair to say?
Anika: Well, yes and no. Not about bike touring in general. I was just very skeptical because I knew how few preparation he put into his last journey. So I wasn’t ready to do that, but I was absolutely fine to do all of that in a more comfortable and well-prepared kind of way.
Gabriel: Alright. It was the no preparation part that you were not agreeing to.
Anika: Yeah. And also the not knowing where to sleep, not knowing where to go next and not having protection against rain or something, which for me is rather basic.
Gabriel: Well, that is one of the classic debates in bicycle touring, is how much to prepare and how much to improvise. So it sounds like you were more on the prepare in advance front.
Anika: Oh yes.
Gabriel: Simon, how did you react and what did you do differently this time?
Simon: So I was for sure way more prepared. And also I wanted Anika to like this trip. So I was actually super cautious into like how to not fail too much with regard to preparation, to, like, wrong planning, wrong path, wrong hills. So like I wanted to take it very chill and lucky so that she actually enjoys bicycle touring. Like, I’m basically aiming at the long run here.
Anika: Well, you were successful because I was very happy and I’m ready to do it again.
Gabriel: Oh, there it is. You heard it here first. Anika signs up for another tour. Next it’ll be South America.
Anika: Well, let’s see where the road leads us.
Gabriel: That’s exactly right. Let’s see where the road leads you. Simon, what are the parameters of this trip? How many days did you stay under a roof and where was it?
Simon: Yeah, so it was like around the Müritzsee, which is a lake north of Germany in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which actually was part of the region I crossed at the time when I did this trip to Copenhagen a few years back. And it lasted around a bit more than 10 days, I think. And we definitely slept on actual hotels or like houses.
Anika: It was not a hotel. It was an Airbnb.
Simon: Exactly. Basically, we had two accommodations. So we moved at once between those two, but we had also a lot of day trips like coming back to the same place, which was also like something that made it much easier.
Gabriel: I see.
Anika: Yeah, and also that was one of my conditions. I didn’t feel like camping and cycling at the same time, because I thought if it’s going to rain for 10 days straight, then I won’t enjoy this.
Simon: But it already didn’t rain for 10 days at all.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s good. The other benefit of being based in only two places is you didn’t have to carry much gear on the tour.
Simon: That is true.
Gabriel: Okay. And that area is fairly flat as well.
Anika: Well, yes, and no, it’s flat compared to what other people do, like if you go to the Alps, but it was less flat than expected. There were still some hills.
Simon: Yeah, there was still some kind of hills. So basically we were looking at the map and it’s like a lot of lakes, and we were always like, as long as you stay around the lakes, it must be flat because that’s how things work. Turns out there was a lot of hills between the lakes, so it was not as flat as promised. We still definitely managed it. It’s completely doable, just something that we were careful about when planning.
Anika: But there was one hill that kept coming back, and there was no way around it because we always had to go through this one little village, and there was a hill. It’s completely doable. It’s just not fun. So yeah, but we managed. We managed.
Simon: Absolutely.
Gabriel: Good for you. And then the bike that you had used, we know, is no longer with you. We know you donated it. So very quickly, which kinds of bikes did you each have?
Simon: What’s your bike, Anika? Your bike is a touring bike.
Anika: It’s a touring bike, and you always say my bike is really good.
Simon: It’s really good. Yeah. It’s relatively light, still frame, really good condition. So I think her bike is very good. Mine is slightly more used, but also fine compared to what I had.
Gabriel: I think that was one of the charming things of your episode. Not only the lack of preparation, but also this most unusual bicycle.
Simon: Absolutely.
Gabriel: Is there anything else that you would share about your trip?
Anika: Well, maybe it was not only biking, so we had some compromises because I also like canoeing. So we went to Mirow, which is a very well-known part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. And there we had two canoeing days. So we cheated a little bit, but we still had to get there by bikes.
Gabriel: Yeah. That’s not cheating. That’s a multi-sport tour now.
Simon: Absolutely.
Anika: Yeah. Yeah. I have to be honest. For me, that was also part of the charm because I really like canoeing as well and also the diversity. So we also had one day where we did neither. So we just walked around the little lake and enjoyed a little picnic. So it was more diverse than maybe just a bike trip.
Simon: Absolutely. But that’s also part of any bike trip. It’s like you don’t have to be on your bike like 24-7. It’s completely fine and it was super enjoyable.
Gabriel: That’s absolutely right. Sounds like a great time and thank you for sending that photo. You look happy on your tour and glad to hear that there might be more.
Simon: Absolutely.
Sandra: That was a cute story. And I love how Simon was very careful to make sure that Anika would actually enjoy the tour so that she would be ready to sign up for another one. So yeah, it sounded like a very much beginner-level tour reminding me of our first one, even though we still camped but we didn’t go long distances.
Gabriel: Right. Well, he said he was planning for the long run. So you want to start off nice and easy and make it a good experience, which it sounds like it was.
Sandra: Yeah. It sounds really like a pleasant vacation. I’m ready to do something like that. Also because it is a big deal not having to carry all your gear from one place to the next. Different kind of travel but very nice to get out and see what you can explore still by bicycle or canoe.
Gabriel: The next episode chosen by the listeners is Episode Ten, “Chasing Summer Around the Globe.” That was with Hannah Bowley. And what are your thoughts about that one?
Sandra: Well, this is one of those episodes where I like how the connection came into being. Our friends Marius and Clara happened to run into her on their vacation and established the connection and here you go, having a new interview guest. That is pretty cool. What was interesting is that she actually had a full year traveling around the globe with her bicycle. That must be so awesome. And then at the same time there was this really spooky episode where she had a heat stroke and since she was traveling alone, had it not been for this really nice, I will call him landlord, the owner of the place she wanted to stay at, who then decided to look out for her and actually see if he would find her somewhere along the road. Had it not been for this guy, she could have been in big time trouble. So it beautifully illustrated the beauties of going solo and also the perils you may run into.
Gabriel: That’s right. And specifically the heat stroke was something that several listeners mentioned. So let’s check in with Hannah.
Gabriel: Hannah, your episode and specifically your heat stroke was mentioned by a number of listeners as one of the most memorable moments of the year. So I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I guess it’s good because you pulled through, but also bad because everybody could understand that you went through a very difficult situation at that time.
Hannah: Yeah. Well, it aligns with everyone’s interest at home as well, who both listened and didn’t listen to the podcast. Everyone the whole year, everybody wants to talk about the heat stroke.
Gabriel: And now that more time has passed and you’re back at home, do you have any reflections about your trip?
Hannah: I think I realize why it feels more shocking to people because now that I’ve had some distance, I actually can’t believe it happened and that I am as okay as I am. I did write not a letter because the “lodge” owner, he doesn’t really receive mail consistently because he’s so remote in Vietnam. So I ended up writing him an email. I think it was well received and appreciated. He sent me back “Thank you.” And that meant a lot.
Gabriel: Very good. As you know, many people who are touring for a while when they get back, they experience some kind of reverse shock or something like that from getting back to their normal lives after being occupied by touring related concerns such as: How is the bike doing? What’s the weather like? Will I get any food today? Do I have a heat stroke or not? How has that gone?
Hannah: Yeah, I got back and decided immediately to go to Target to just get some things I needed like shampoo and deodorant and just some basic necessities and it was the second day I was back and that’s when the reverse shock hit me, and I just kind of had a little mini breakdown in Target because there were so many options and I couldn’t handle it. My brain was overloaded and ready to explode because for the last year when I’d go into a small shop, it would be like, here is one option and this is the shampoo and the tiny bottle that you’re going to use and it just felt extremely overwhelming and I think that was just foreshadowing for the reverse shock continuation that was going to come.
Gabriel: Oh, I see. I…
Hannah: It’s still happening. It hasn’t worn off. I should have given it like a week.
Gabriel: Was it one of those mega Targets that sell everything you can imagine?
Hannah: They are all mega in my eyes, but no, it’s not labeled as like a Super Target. It’s just a regular Target, but it felt mega to me. I have not gone back. That was a mistake.
Gabriel: OK, and as far as getting back into your job and all of that?
Hannah: That has been harder than I thought, to be honest. I was trying to be positive and think of all the things I miss about work and it wore off within the first couple of weeks, so trying to find my new normal and balance has been harder than I anticipated, but it’s this weird place where I don’t want to complain. Like, what was me? I just traveled by bike for a year and I’m having a difficult time readjusting. So it’s a very personal experience that I internally am figuring out. I don’t complain a lot to coworkers or other friends.
Gabriel: Are you getting by by planning another trip?
Hannah: Yeah, I am for this summer. I want to do the Great Northern Bikepacking Route that goes across Canada. I’m not going to do the whole thing in one summer. But yeah, I started planning another trip and that’s been making me feel better.
Gabriel: Trip planning is usually, and this is why I bring it up, a good antidote.
Hannah: Yeah.
Gabriel: Where does the great northern bike packing route start and end?
Hannah: I’ve only been looking at the western part, but it starts in Victoria, Canada, which you can take a boat with your bike to, from Seattle to Victoria. And then it ends on the east end of Canada, above New York. I’m not exactly sure the exact ending, but it’s the longest continuous bikepacking route in North America. And it was just established within the last couple of years.
Gabriel: That sounds like a great adventure. And for how many weeks will you go if you can get the time off?
Hannah: Well, I have the whole summer off because I work in a school, so I have up to three months. But I’m guessing I’ll make it about a month and a half, but we’ll see.
Gabriel: And will this be a solo ride?
Hannah: I have some friends that want to join. So I’m pretty sure I’ll have friends, but I don’t know.
Gabriel: The Japan friends.
Hannah: Yes, Mara and Tricia.
Gabriel: Mara and Tricia, the Japan friends. They are in consideration for this tour as well.
Hannah: Definitely, always.
Gabriel: Yeah. That sounds exciting. More to report in 2025. Anything else that you think would be fun to mention?
Hannah: I got a tattoo of my bike that I rode for the 13 months at the very end of my trip. That’s it. That’s the only other interesting thing.
Gabriel: OK, may I ask where this tattoo is located?
Hannah: On my ankle.
Gabriel: On your ankle. The classic ankle tattoo.
Hannah: The classic ankle tattoo, yes.
Gabriel: Very good.
Hannah: Yeah, the guy in Japan designed it based on my bike. So it was very special.
Gabriel: I see. You got the tattoo in Japan.
Hannah: Yeah, the last day of my trip.
Gabriel: Does your bike have a name? I don’t think we covered that.
Hannah: Its name is Moira, but I did not tattoo the name on my ankle.
Gabriel: Oh, come on! I was picturing a tattoo of a heart with the name Moira across it.
Hannah: I know.
Sandra: Well, that’s funny. No, I mean, I was like, OK. I’m not sure that it was ending right there. That is…
Gabriel: Moira forever.
Sandra: Yeah, very cute. I love the idea of having this very personal tattoo of the exact bike and not just a bike. I think that is really, I mean, you really grow to become companions through thick and thin, as you say in German and also in English?
Gabriel: Also in English.
Sandra: This is a great idea to establish that because you never know how long you’ll be united with your bicycle. Maybe at some point you do have to replace it. It is so interesting how she had this readjustment issue. And I was wondering by the time or at the time that you recorded the episode, how long had she been back for?
Gabriel: She probably started back at her school in September and she probably got back maybe in July. It’s fun, she’s already planning her next adventure.
Sandra: Yeah, it is a good antidote, though. It’s also a good antidote if you’re not feeling this readjustment issue and still feel like I need to get out of here.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Sandra: I love using dark winter days before planning the next big trip for our family because it just is giving me energy and joy and something to look forward to.
Gabriel: The next episode is Episode Eleven, “AIDS/LifeCycle: The Best Week of the Year” with Meg Shutzer. On that one, a couple of people actually mentioned the terms for bear and otter
Sandra: And Otter Pop.
Gabriel: And Otter Pop, which as we have all learned, is just a product that you can buy at a supermarket and not any kind of codename. So what are your impressions on that episode?
Sandra: Yeah, it sounded so much fun. I always remember how you first told me about the AIDS/LifeCycle and you have that t-shirt, you did it with a friend of yours. Roger, who actually also appears in a different episode. I thought, wow, it sounds so inspiring. The community sounds fantastic. The vocabulary was definitely also something that I brushed my knowledge up on. Yeah, to be honest, I thought I’m ready to do it.
Gabriel: The fun thing about this one is we got to go to San Francisco in the fall, so I actually met up in person with Meg. So if the audio is a little bit poor, it’s because this was recorded at the athletic club where Meg leads spin classes.
Gabriel: So I am here at Seventeen Reasons Athletic Club, formerly Seventeenth Street Athletic Club.
Meg: That’s right.
Gabriel: With Meg Shutzer, who roped me in to come to a spinning class, which in the end I could handle OK. But then I came for the spinning and I stayed for the weights.
Meg: Yeah, I think you asked if I wanted to get coffee and I was like, “How about coming to a spin class?” Which is a move I like to make.
Gabriel: The spinning was great. I enjoyed it very much. And for the weights, I think I provided the entertainment for my partners because I did not know how to do the most basic exercises.
Meg: That’s OK. You did great. And it’s beginner-friendly. But I do, I think you might feel it tomorrow. when you lift your child.
Gabriel: Yeah, I won’t be able to lift my child tomorrow. He weighs 25 pounds and that exceeds my weight limit tomorrow. So yeah, it’s so great to be with you in person here.
Meg: Yeah, totally.
Gabriel: In San Francisco. Yeah, I’m excited because so many listeners reacted positively to our episode about the AIDS/LifeCycle. And in particular, the moment we talked about the Otter Pop Stop, one of the rest stops on the AIDS/LifeCycle, and what was in bear and what was an otter. So that was a lot of fun. And so I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. The first question is that episode was released on the eve of your 2024 ride. So we want to hear, how was the 2024 ride?
Meg: Wow. The 2024 ride was amazing. I think per usual AIDS/LifeCycle just so much fun. The community is so special. My team in particular last year, I think it was just a really wonderful group of people who stepped up to support each other. We had some of the fastest people on the ride and some of the people who were the… I don’t like to say the slowest, but they were in the back. And it was really amazing the way we also came together. And when some of the people who were taking longer were finishing at the end of the day, like, others would come out and cheer for them. It was really wonderful.
Gabriel: This is WeSpoke.
Meg: This is WeSpoke. So it’s a team of women, trans, and non-binary cyclists.
Gabriel: And you’re a captain.
Meg: Yes.
Gabriel: Okay. How many people did you get in the end? I know that was unknown.
Meg: I think we had like 30-ish, but what’s crazy is this year we have 70.
Gabriel: Wow.
Meg: And we’ve never, at least since I’ve been riding, our team has never been that big. So it’s a pretty drastic jump.
Gabriel: That’s huge. That’s a lot of people. As usual, you’re doing the classes and the prep work for these folks.
Meg: Yeah. We, like, help people connect with the training rides that AIDS/LifeCycle organizes. And then we also invite them here to the gym where we’re speaking, where we do some indoor training when it’s cold and rainy and things like that. Bike maintenance clinic, packing clinic, that sort of thing.
Gabriel: Was there anything in particular that stood out compared to other years this year? You’re such a veteran rider now.
Meg: Yeah. Two things. The year before had been really cold and rainy. So this year, like every day that it wasn’t raining was just a gift. And then on a more serious note, it was the smallest I’ve ever seen the ride. On the upside, you didn’t wait as long in line for anything, but on the downside, obviously that impacts fundraising. And there was just this sense of it was small and it was different.
Gabriel: And speaking of that, I have mentioned in the previous episode where I talked to my good friend and riding partner, Roger Levy.
Meg: Roger.
Gabriel: Yeah, Roger also had a great experience with the ride, of course, in 2016. But we talked about how we still wear that old T-shirt sometimes. And I was actually approached by a man who said he’d ridden the AIDS/LifeCycle many times. And he also informed me that 2025 was decided to be the last year. So I guess what you saw in 2024 kind of hinted at that, that maybe it wasn’t economically feasible.
Meg: Yeah. That rumor was going around during the ride this year: that fundraising had gone down, but the cost of putting on the ride had gone up exponentially. And then the AIDS/LifeCycle announced that it is in fact going to be the last year in 2025. I’m saddened by a lot of things. I think the loss of the fundraising for these organizations, the SF AIDS Foundation and the LA LGBT Center, one. Two, I think there’s something that AIDS/LifeCycle does that it’s not a tangible… You can’t measure it in dollars. It’s not the fundraising that is all that AIDS/LifeCycle does. I think there’s something that happens on this ride, like the intangible. What this community does, not just for each other, but also all the towns that we go through and the different ways in which, like, this ride fights stigma related to HIV, but also related to queer people. And I think that that loss is really big, as well as the loss of this community, because there are so many people that give up a week of their vacation to go on this ride. Some of them to ride their bikes, which might be the vacation they would choose anyways, but some of them to volunteer in jobs like scooping food or handing out orange slices or whatever it might be. And those people, that is a huge sacrifice and it’s not just the week of the ride, because there’s also so many people who are training ride leaders who volunteer every weekend to help new riders get prepared and stay safe out on the roads. And so there’s all of this, like, energy and time that goes into making this ride possible and that’s not part of the final fundraising total and it’s not part of the equation of is this ride sustainable. But it’s just, like, gone after this, I imagine. I don’t know if there will be any way to channel that towards something else and so that’s part of the loss in addition to, like, the loss of the ride, the loss of the money that would go to these organizations. You know, the things that are maybe more obvious.
Gabriel: Yeah, and when I asked Roger what are his memories of the ride, he really said that he and I went into it not really understanding the community that was around it and it’s important for so many people in so many different ways: for the riders who might train and then get to accomplish the ride in the way that they can or for the people who get so much out of volunteering and helping others and of course for the actual organizations who can then get the money and help people. So yeah, it’s pretty big and it feels like such a quick end, in a way, that it goes from this huge event which has been going on for 30 years to zero. And I don’t know if there is a way to maybe scale it down or do something, but have you thought about that?
Meg: I think that the ride staff are thinking about what could happen in future and I’ve heard like maybe there will be a weekend event and maybe there’ll be something in Northern California and something in Southern California, but they’ve been really clear that, like, there will not be a seven-day bike ride from San Francisco to LA that’s organized by these groups.
Gabriel: Well, I don’t want to end this on a sad note, so is there anything positive we can take away from this?
Meg: Y….
Gabriel: Y… no.
Meg: I mean, okay, well I did mention earlier our team has 70 people and the ride for this year being last year sold out very quickly and I think that we have this one last week of our AIDS/LifeCycle lives to like really build something special and I think that week is going to be incredible so there’s a lot of momentum going into this final year and maybe… maybe we’ll come out of that with something that we don’t know what it is yet that will come from this community and this ride. So that’s as hopeful as I can get right now. I’m like… I’m really excited about AIDS/LifeCycle 2025. This is my favorite week of the year and I’m not ready to process that it’s the last one so like that’s the positive like just being in the moment and like where we are right now is like we’ve got a ride to prepare for. We’ve got a team to help get ready for it. Biggest team we’ve ever had.
Gabriel: Sounds good.
Meg: Yeah, and maybe when you can next lift your arms over your head after that weight training you’ll, I don’t know, like, build some future ride. Sorry, I had to like get a little dig in.
Sandra: Oh man, you know, I really was hoping to do this big cycle event with you one day and next year it’s already sold out and that’s it. I really feel a bit bummed out and I’m also sad for the community because it really sounded like this totally special event. Unfortunately, events like those die sometimes and I really hope some other cool event maybe comes to life.
Gabriel: Yeah, I’d be surprised if there was nothing at all to replace it but as Meg said, the seven-day ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles is no more. Yeah, things move on. And we’re moving on to the final episode of the Holiday Special and that is Episode Seventeen, “Adventures of a High-Tech Nomad” with Steve Roberts. Boy, did I get some comments on this episode.
Sandra: I can totally imagine. I mean, sorry, I have to just say it: Steve is a total nerd.
Gabriel: Oh, come on!
Sandra: You are too, in some ways. But wow, in the sweetest way, you know. It was very interesting to listen to it and I was impressed by how well he remembered all the different stages of the development and who he had collaborated with to make his bicycle the machine that it came to be. Wow, it’s crazy, and I have to say I’m not like a tech pro but I could at least roughly follow everything that happened and I am so impressed. And it’s also so crazy to think how things have developed since then. You know, it felt a little bit like this Back to the Future story where he was proud to be able to geolocate his bicycle on a map and everybody was like, “You’re kidding me!”
Gabriel: “That will never happen. That’s impossible!”
Sandra: And also it was incredible how he made his bicycle speak. “Hello, I am BEHEMOTH.” I think it would have totally jumped backwards if a bicycle had talked to me like that on the street.
Gabriel: “Stop trying to steal me. I will call the police.”
Gabriel: Steve, a number of listeners were astonished by what you were able to accomplish in the 1980s. Some of the listeners weren’t even alive at the time, but I think many of them could recognize that what you did was way ahead of your time.
Steve: Well, that’s cool.
Gabriel: Specifically, there was one technological advance that amazed listeners. Remembering that there are a lot of cyclists in the audience, can you guess the one thing you did that really stuck in people’s minds?
Steve: Oh, gosh. Oh, God, I don’t know. The security, the LEDs, I have no idea.
Gabriel: It was the handlebar keyboard.
Steve: Oh, the keyboard.
Gabriel: The way you could type out letters using finger combinations, people were like, what?
Steve: That’s so cool. I love it. I’ve always joked that being known for being the first person to text while driving, so to speak, is maybe that’s not good. We have all these laws against it and everything. It’s considered a really bad thing to do.
Gabriel: Yeah, it is.
Steve: But of course, I was on a bicycle going 10 miles an hour on country roads, so who cares?
Gabriel: Just the combination of coming up with the idea and then memorizing the codes for each letter and then actually being able to do it on the road, that got people’s attention.
Steve: That’s so cool. Wow, thank you. I like it.
Gabriel: I just have two follow-ups. One, we of course talked about your bicycle called the BEHEMOTH, which sits inside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Listener Mike, also in California, tipped me off that you have a second item on display in the museum and that it’s also called BEHEMOTH?
Steve: Yes, silly me with the confusion of that, but I built one of the really early personal computers in 1974. It was an 8008 system, wirewrapped from scratch. Another six-month project. And it is there also. I’ve sort of stopped calling it BEHEMOTH just because that’s confusing, but I believe it’s still listed that way.
Gabriel: Okay.
Steve: And of course, it was an acronym because I can’t help it. And that was from some silly night when I was staring at this thing and I called it a “badly engineered heap of electrical, mechanical, optical and thermal hardware.” So that’s the other BEHEMOTH.
Gabriel: Oh my gosh. I can’t believe it.
Steve: It’s a sickness, I know.
Gabriel: Okay. Well, that was very interesting.
Steve: Oh, thank you.
Gabriel: I must admit, I missed that during my visit to the museum. I think the bicycle and trailer must be much bigger than the early personal computer.
Steve: Yes. Yes, it was a 19-inch rack panel. I think maybe 5U. Classic front panel with lots of LEDs. There were no kits yet. I needed a computer, so I designed one.
Gabriel: Mmmmm. Classic. And my second follow-up question is about your book, Computing Across America.
Steve: Yes.
Gabriel: Last time we talked, you were lamenting that it wasn’t readily available to readers, but you’ve made some progress on that front.
Steve: I have, yes. This has gone through two stages. First is I think we discussed last time the idea of actually doing it as a book is just a big job because I would have to make it all color with lots of pictures and, of course, incorporate all three versions, because to everybody else in the world, there aren’t three bikes and three trips. It’s all just one thing, right? So you know, to have it be separate book with sequels and all that stuff is just stupid. So I would have to incorporate it all, and I just haven’t been able to take on something of that scope. It’s just too big. But I thought, well, great. People don’t read like they used to anyway, and I’m just as guilty because we’re all social media and everything. So I thought, great, I’ll just make it a video. Oh, well, that was a bit of an education. But what I learned is that something that works just beautifully on the page doesn’t necessarily work as narration. And it’s also a lot of work to do these things. And I still want to do them, but not try to tell the entire story that way. I don’t have enough lifetime left. So I just recently figured out how to solve the problem. And that is to just serialize it like I did in reality when I did it. I started a Substack and I’m learning my way around it. But basically the idea is once a week to just post one of the chapters in sequence and then continue from that right on into the Miles with Maggie epoch and the bike lab and everything. And basically tell the entire story with material written then. And then after each one have a little bit of an update from current perspective, as much as I feel like, with technical details and cultural context and media or whatever else goes. And then I’ll go back and give them forward back links so that you can follow the story without reading a bunch of other stuff and the table of contents.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s exciting!
Steve: That’s the plan, I think. And the beauty of that is that I’ll hopefully get people following along kind of like happened back when I was doing it, which was wonderful. I just had so many interesting people who kind of jumped aboard with me. But also by the time it’s all done, it should be this archive that I can then hand to somebody and say, make a book out of this. So we’ll see. But that’s the current plan and it just started tonight.
Gabriel: Great news. So I’m on board for the launch. Now, when you say subscription, does that mean that it will cost money?
Steve: You know, I don’t like to hit a paywall on reading. I know that’s awful because authors need to get paid somehow. But I just, I don’t like the idea of having somebody start to read something and then just not be able to continue without paying. That’s just irritating. And likewise, I don’t want somebody to get 10 chapters into it and then get this thing that says to read more, you know, send me money. So I’m just going to make it, I’m going to make it free with the hope that enough people will find it worth supporting voluntarily, that it hopefully will generate some income. So that’s the current plan. I don’t like, I don’t, I don’t want to make it an unpleasant experience for people to, yeah, to get into it and then be stopped. So because I have, I’m a reader on some things that do that and I don’t like it.
Gabriel: Well, I’ll definitely put a link to the Substack in the show notes.
Steve: Oh, cool. Thank you.
Sandra: I have to say, I was already impressed with the first acronym for BEHEMOTH. Wow, I wouldn’t have expected to come up with another one.
Gabriel: I know. Like he said, it’s an illness.
Sandra: It’s really cute that there is a new chapter of the book released every week. That almost sounds like an advanced calendar, but just for the whole year. I love that. This is like a podcast, but book style.
Gabriel: Substack. That concludes the episodes that were considered the most memorable by the listeners.
Sandra: Yeah, they were incredibly memorable for sure. I think all of them were. And sorry for those that didn’t get picked, but I am.
Gabriel: Better luck next time.
Sandra: Yeah, it’s also due to, of course, some episodes having been released just before the Christmas special.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Sandra: They didn’t have much chance to get voted for.
Gabriel: I know. It’s not a very scientific method.
Sandra: No, but it is fun to just reminisce a little bit about the incredible stories you have shared throughout the year.
Gabriel: And I also have brief updates from a few of the other guests this year. Mimi Ji from the route planning episode and her friend Emily made it over the mountains and kayaked across the fjords of Norway as planned. The best weird excursions on their trip included an underground mine tour, a trip to a fish farm, and a hike to Kjerag, the famous boulder wedged on the cliff.
Sandra: Wow, that sounds awesome. I have to say I loved her zeroeth step in planning her route, so I started to daydream immediately when I heard it.
Gabriel: Yeah, Step Zero: daydream. Well, neither fell off the boulder, but Mimi did catch a terrible cold, the Viking flu, she called it, that sidelined her for a few days. She recovered in time for the Paris Olympics, watching American Christian Faulkner win the women’s road race.
Sandra: Wow, what a program.
Gabriel: André Plumeau from the “Life is Wild” episodes fulfilled his dream of flying home just before Christmas and surprising his grandmother for her 90th birthday.
Sandra: Oh, that’s so sweet.
Gabriel: Yep. Frank Foulon, guest on the episode called “Los Caminos de Santiago,” completed his eighth Camino in 2024, once again arriving in Santiago on his birthday, October 4th.
Sandra: Incredible. Impeccable timing.
Gabriel: He’s a pro. That’s all we can say about that. And speaking of the Camino de Santiago, we received an AI-generated postcard from Scout and Rambler.
Sandra: Oh my goodness, they actually did the trip together.
Gabriel: They sure did.
Sandra: Let’s hear.
Scout and Rambler: “We did it. We walked the whole darn Camino just like we planned, mostly Scouts doing, gotta admit. Blisters, tapas, and enough stunning vistas to last a lifetime. Rambler even found a pie shop in every single town, almost. Turns out a Southern Gent and a Mountain Gal make pretty darn good Camino companions, which developed into something a bit more. Yep, we’re officially an item now. Who knew? You did, you sly dog.”
Gabriel: It literally says that.
Scout and Rambler: “We’ll tell you about it when we get back, but let’s just say there were plenty of stories. Shared snacks (Scout’s Cliff Bars were a lifesaver) and maybe even a celebratory glass (or two) of Rioja. Stay tuned for details. Best Scout and Rambler. PS: Turns out those Spanish tortillas Scout mentioned? Life changing. You gotta try them. PPS: Thanks again for connecting us.
Sandra: Oh wow, that is incredible. So cute. And so detailed too.
Gabriel: Very detailed. That was a very densely written postcard that they generated there.
Sandra: Yeah. Impressive what AI can do and also a bit spooky how they really feel they need to please everybody.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Sandra: That was also the impression I got on the episode, and here it also sounds like, oh yeah, it’s all so fantastic. Well, I mean, that’s good while it lasts.
Gabriel: Maybe at the Holiday Special 2025 we’ll get a sad note from Scout.
Sandra: Maybe they say you next time have to invite three AIs. We have a baby.
Gabriel: Oh my gosh. Oh no. Alright. And now very quickly, this is a little quiz for you. A couple of statistics. I’m going to see if you can guess the top three countries in which our listeners are geolocated.
Sandra: Oooh.
Gabriel: What do you think is number one?
Sandra: Germany?
Gabriel: No, Germany is number two with ten percent.
Sandra: Oh wow. Then I would guess the US.
Gabriel: Yup. The United States is 50%.
Sandra: Okay. Wow. That’s a big chunk.
Gabriel: Yep. So that’s sixty between them.
Sandra: Yep.
Gabriel: Which is expected.
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: But now what do you think is the third?
Sandra: Oh, this is a really tough question. To be honest, I would just have to take a really wild guess.
Gabriel: Yeah, take a wild guess.
Sandra: Canada?
Gabriel: Oh, that is a good guess. It’s actually the United Kingdom with nine percent. That is crazy because Germany is ten percent and United Kingdom is nine percent. And I’ve heard from a number of German people and I have literally heard from no listeners from the United Kingdom. It’s the silent minority. The people are listening, they’re not saying a word. Very surprising. The other question I had was about the platforms. What do you think was the top platform on which people listen to the show?
Sandra: Oh, this is really difficult. I mean, I’m totally bad at this. I can only talk about myself. I use Spotify.
Gabriel: Spotify is number two, twenty percent.
Sandra: Okay. Then maybe Apple Podcasts.
Gabriel: Yep. Apple Podcasts is number one, thirty-seven percent. Do you have a guess for number three?
Sandra: Google Podcasts?
Gabriel: Womp, womp.
Sandra: I don’t know.
Gabriel: Google Podcasts was discontinued.
Sandra: Yeah, that’s why I’m saying that’s now YouTube, isn’t it?
Gabriel: Yeah, they pushed everyone to YouTube and I haven’t done it. It’s on my to-do list, get on YouTube.
Sandra: Why do I know? Nobody listened through your website.
Gabriel: Website is number four.
Sandra: Wow.
Gabriel: At four percent. Number three is actually Overcast.
Sandra: Oh, I don’t use that service. Okay.
Gabriel: At six percent. So interestingly enough, the top four only account for sixty-seven percent. After that, there’s a very long tail of other platforms that all have a small number of listeners.
Sandra: Crazy.
Gabriel: To wrap up, the last thing we have is a tail of how we got home. So if you remember, we had ended our bicycling trip in Saarbrücken and we were so happy that we had made it, but we forgot that the adventure was not yet over. We still had to get by train from Saarbrücken to Potsdam.
Sandra: Yeah. Oh my goodness. What an adventure. But I thought, okay, it’s over. I just packed everything into some bag. You know, I forgot the very rigid regimen I had had before to always know where to find something that was immediately needed. And we got going and stopped at the bakery for provisions. And you were like, “My bike is not going as it should. It feels so heavy.”
Gabriel: I thought my legs were heavy at first. I thought, oh my goodness, I can hardly pedal to the train station. Then I realized it wasn’t my legs. The right tire of the trailer was flat, so it was dragging along.
Sandra: That sucked because it had a heavy baby and a lot of heavy gear inside. So we decided that you would just get going. It was raining, of course, and I couldn’t find the pump.
Gabriel: Well, the whole time we knew exactly where the bike tools were. But after the trip, we thought, who cares? We just threw it somewhere.
Sandra: We made it!
Gabriel: We made it. And of course, that’s the one time we needed it.
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: And we got to the station just before the train left.
Sandra: Unfortunately, we had to change once the train to get to Berlin. We thought, okay, we have a half hour in Frankfurt. Plenty of time, so we’ll be good.
Gabriel: In the meantime, I took the time on the train to Frankfurt to fix the flat tire. I patched it and then I installed it. And then later on, I looked just to make sure it was holding air and it wasn’t. It turned out, and I still have no idea how this could have happened, but the trailer tire had two holes. So I had to patch it once. It didn’t hold the air. I had to try to find the second hole, found it, patched it, and then finally it was holding air.
Sandra: At least we had a trailer that was okay to go again. Turns out that, of course, our train was further and further delayed until it looked like we might actually not make it. And I was so worried because in Germany, you have to reserve the space for your bicycles on long-distance trains. And in summer, they tend to be solidly booked. If you don’t have any, you cannot come. And we witnessed that on the way to our starting point that twice the conductor actually kicked somebody out of the train because he hadn’t reserved a place for their bicycle.
Gabriel: Yeah, it’s crazy. He was wearing a Captain Morgan hat, which was rather unusual. The Captain Morgan rum. And on the announcement, they said, “Will the passenger wearing the Captain Morgan hat please make himself known?” And then the next thing you know, they were taking his bike down because it was booked and that extra bike was blocking the passageway because there wasn’t a little hook for it to go into. And that’s a, “Ooh, look out. Oh, no!”
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: “This is a major hazard.”
Sandra: Emergency exit.
Gabriel: Emergency can’t do it. So next stop, Captain Morgan, his dog and his bike thrown out. And then the other person could claim their reserved spot for their bike.
Sandra: Yeah. So we witnessed that twice and we thought, okay. I was really nervous. I thought we really have to make our train because otherwise maybe we can get easily to Berlin, but our bicycles can totally not. And I didn’t want to leave everything behind.
Gabriel: And our baby?
Sandra: No, no. Okay. Yeah. But it would have been a total pain. So I was very stressed and our train was packed. When we pulled into Frankfurt Central Station, we had to very patiently wait for a ton of people to get off the train to then quickly get our bikes onto the platform. And then as you would probably call it, plow through the crowds.
Gabriel: That’s the only word to describe it. Basically Frankfurt Central is a huge train station and the fast train we were taking, the ICE, was on track one, right? We had pulled into the other side.
Sandra: Twenty-two or something.
Gabriel: Twenty-two. Yeah, it’s a crowded station. So we really did have to plow. You were pushing your bike with one hand and pushing the trailer with the other.
Sandra: Yeah. I felt that we didn’t have time to get off the train and then hook up the trailer to the bicycle. So I thought I somehow have to manage, even though my bicycle was of course fully loaded, so very difficult to steer with one hand only. And then the trailer was also fully loaded, also very difficult to steer with one hand only.
Gabriel: Impossible, which is why some people got hit along the way.
Sandra: I was trying to make them aware of me, but some people just decide to either stop in the middle of their stride to look around or… I’m sorry. I was like, “Hey, watch out, watch out. I’m coming through!”
Gabriel: We decided that because I was only pushing my bicycle, I would go ahead and I went jogging with my bike to track one. And then I look and I see it’s the ICE, right? It’s not like a single ICE. It’s a double ICE, I think. So, two really long sections. And of course the bicycle compartment is at the very, very, very front. So I’m just running and running and I get there and there’s the conductor and I tell the conductor, “My wife and kid are coming.” And she says, “Well, this train is leaving on time, in one minute.”
Sandra: Oh gosh. And I just saw that the platform was already more or less empty. And I was just sprinting, trying to somehow get there. I was glad once I had left the big crowds. Wow. I saw a conductor on the first section that you mentioned and I said, “Sorry, I need to get on this train.” And he’s like, “But we’re leaving.” I said, “I don’t care. We have reserved. This was not my fault and we are so late and my husband is already at the front.” And then he put himself to communicate over walkie-talkie with his colleague on the other end of the train. Then finally a passenger who did not have much luggage was like, “Shall I maybe help you?” And I said, “Yes, please.”
Gabriel: I left my bicycle at the front and I rushed back. The conductor said, “We already have the green light to leave the station.”
Sandra: We were actually holding up the train.
Gabriel: Yeah. We had to take our very wide trailer and just lift it into the train with wheels and everything completely assembled. Usually we disassemble and fold the trailer. But on this case, we had to take the completely assembled trailer with wheels and all and just try to shove it in through the door. And I didn’t know if it would fit or not – with Emilio in it.
Sandra: Yeah. The bicycles too. I think we just threw everything in and somehow tried to get in before the doors closed. And I remember this conductor lady was not very amused by us holding up the train.
Gabriel: No, not at all. For a moment I thought the trailer would get stuck. I knew the bicycles would go in, but I had this image of the trailer getting stuck at the wheels. Yeah. Then the doors closed and we were off and we could in relative calm take Emilio out, disassemble everything and fold it down so as to not create the safety hazard.
Sandra: We thought, that was it. We are on the ICE to Berlin. What can possibly go wrong?
Gabriel: Yup.
Sandra: Well, we were traveling with Deutsche Bahn so there’s many things that can go wrong. Like for example, a crane on the train track.
Gabriel: Yeah, so we were stuck in the town of Gotha.
Sandra: Oh yeah. Gotha.
Gabriel: And this crane had fallen out of the sky. But it’s a construction crane. It’s not a bird.
Sandra: Oh yeah.
Gabriel: It’s a construction crane that had fallen out of the sky and onto the tracks. It’s really hard to imagine how this could have happened. So it blocked the tracks to Erfurt.
Sandra: The small hold-up was continuously prolonged and prolonged further until we were two hours delayed. We were sitting across the aisle from two other cyclists and all of us were wondering, hey, should we not maybe just jump onto the bikes and cycle to the next station where there is an ICE stopping? Because all the other trains behind us were rerouted.
Gabriel: At the end of the day, it was raining and unpleasant.
Sandra: And we were also not sure if we could take the bikes on those ICEs because, as I mentioned before, there is only eight places for bicycles and if they are full, then that’s unlucky you. Luckily, we could disembark and push Emilio around in his trailer so that he would nap nicely and we could stretch our legs and we somehow still made it, that we were extra exhausted after that adventure. There are so many reasons why you want to avoid traveling by any means of transportation other than bicycle if you have your two wheels with you.
Gabriel: And then there was one more adventure. We got into Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the central station, which is a huge station, which has tracks in multiple directions on multiple levels. And we had about fourteen minutes to catch our last train from the central station to Potsdam. And we needed all the time we could get to make this connection because we had to take the stuff down, we had to get all of our gear into the elevators.
Sandra: And they’re so slow. Oh, my goodness. You really wonder if somebody is, like, trying to manually propel the elevator forward. They go so slowly.
Gabriel: Yeah, there’s some workers down there, under the lowest tracks, turning the cranks on a wheel. So it was very slow and when we got to the platform about one minute before the train arrived, the platform was so packed. I don’t know what happened. The other train must have been canceled.
Sandra: Oh, yeah, I remember that now.
Gabriel: As soon as the train pulled in, we each used our different strategy. My strategy is to just sit there paralyzed and your strategy is to immediately find the bicycle compartment on the train and elbow your way in there. And so that’s what happened. I stayed with Emilio looking, looking, and you went forward to the bicycle compartment to make sure you got in.
Sandra: Yeah, and then I got in and the bike was safely stowed and I thought, “Where are Gabriel and Emilio?”
Gabriel: So what happened was with my strategy, Emilio and I were pretty much the last ones left on the platform because I just waited and the good news was then I had a clear path but I couldn’t carry the bike and Emilio because it was such a narrow space. So I quickly went down to where you were and very, very luckily the train conductor was at that exact door. So I told him, “Don’t leave. There’s also a baby in a trailer, a ways down.” And Sandra was like, “What? You left Emilio?” I said “Yes, but I’m about to get him.”
Sandra: Oh gosh, yeah, that was a little shock. But we made it. Now it’s time for a vacation of our vacation.
Gabriel: That was the worst day. We made it and we will never travel long distances by train with a trailer. That’s a no-go. Well, and with that tale of survival, we reached the end of Episode 24, which is also the end of the Season One for 2024. See how that worked out?
Sandra: Beautiful.
Gabriel: Completely planned.
Sandra: Come on, you’re just bumbling through.
Gabriel: Bumbling through, absolutely. And thank you the listeners for bumbling through with us and we hope you have a great end of the year and 2025 gets off to a really good start. The accidental bicycle tourist will be back for Season Two.
Sandra: Yay.
Gabriel: We hope to see you then.
Sandra: All the best. Thanks for listening.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Gabriel: The Frankfurt train station is so huge. It’s really disconcerting.
Sandra: I have to go. I’m sorry.
Gabriel: He’s crying?
Sandra: Yeah.
Gabriel: This recording is at an end.
Show Notes
One of the selected episodes is “Adventures of a High-Tech Nomad” with Steven K. Roberts. If you would like to read the serialized version of his book Computing Across America, please visit his Substack page.