50+km along the Isar Bike Path
Just call me bikerbabe. I’m thinking this former runnerchick is going to hang up her jogging shoes for a mud bucket on wheels for good. (?) Alex and I wanted to cranked things up above our Englisher Garten trip and made a hardcore cycling adventure along the Isar river. How shall I say it, I was spoked stoked!
I recently bought a Isarradweg Radwanderkarte (Isar River Bike Path Map) at our local bike shop. The map, I had been eyeing for some time, follows the Isar river from Scarnitz to Deggendorf. Even though the bike trails are well marked, the map is still extremely useful for planning ahead or keeping tabs where the nearest biergarten or train station is in case body exhaustion takes over. The only annoyance is that the map is littered with advertisements. Perhaps that was a way to keep the cost around 6 Euros for its laminated and tearproof construction.
Sunday we oiled up the gears and starting just shy of the Wittelsbacher Brücke. Our handlebars veered south to Kloster Schätflarn, a Benedictine monastery on the Isar. The path was familiar to me up until Grünwalder Brücke, until then, the path was pretty comfortable, nice and shady and a rolling mix of up and downhill fun. But Grünwalder Brücke revealed a nice twist to our adventure -I have no endurance for uphill cycling battles. Hey, at least I didn’t have to get off my bike and push it, but even on the lowest gears I was huffing.
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Hirschau Option over Maibaum
Yesterday’s neighborhood Maibaumfest diddied up the Schlager hits as well as the average age of each party goer. This makes sense because there is a nursing home just across the way. So there wasn’t much to report. No one stole the Maypole or tried to randoms it for beer. But apparently this is a tradition in smaller towns. Nope. The white and blue diamonded pole stood proud and tall against a cloudless blue sky backdrop and the tiny crowd sat on the bierbänke, maybe tapping their feet to the oompa band tunes.
Actually, yesterday was a better day for a bike ride toward the Hirschau (deer meadow), where few people go and we could enjoy the sun and listen to the wind rustle the leaves in the trees. I read about Süd Tirol and started plans for our vacation there at the end of Juli. It should be pretty relaxing with lots of biking and hiking.. oh, and eating to do. This got me pretty hungry so we headed to the Hirschau Biergarten for a plate of spareribs and spicy barbecue sauce. Yummy.
I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already we’ve had such a happy almost lazy time except for this past Sunday, where we had two couples over for a dinner party. Alex and I are really getting into entertaining at home. We calculated that everything for 6 people costed less than what the two of us alone would have paid to go out to a normal restaurant. This is considering a bottle of wine at a restaurant costs about 40 Euro, we paid only 8 Euro for a excellent wine recommended by the experts at WOW (world of wine). So now, we recommend the dry Riesling from the vineyard called, Weingut Angulus in the Rheingau. Der Wein war prima! And the bottle makes for a beautiful outdoor candle holder.
Even Europeans..
Handy Cam: reporting a ride by ketchup assault..Have a Mean Streak Or they have a strange sense of humor. I’m not sure what this poor bike did to deserve a ketchup bath and I image the owner won’t see the fun in discovering the decorative mess either. Perhaps this is a form of a t.p. (toilet paper) prank or leaving a flaming paper bag of dog doo on someone’s front porch. Seeing this ketchup-cycle reminded me of the condiment tricks of junior high, when kids would start Cuban sandwich pickle races by flicking the slimy disks at the window and then rooting on those translucent green circles as they slid a few inches before they stopped suspended on the hot glass above normal human reach. On second thought, perhaps every country has it’s mean/funny pranks.
