The Lost Boy Boys Tour of Europe 2009: Rides ‘Round Rosenheim, Part 2

August 7, 2009: After yesterday’s good experience with the GPS routing, I was hoping for more of the same today but unfortunately I must have put in some directions incorrectly as once we set out the arrow kept taking us back towards the hotel.  Eventually we found a road sign that would take us in the right direction, towards the Austrian border and the town of Kufstein, along the River Inn (as in Innsbruck).

The start of the ride was not very promising as we quickly found ourselves on a major highway, Rt. 93, and although we were going very quickly it was not much fun at all.  A interesting sidelight is that we rode past the small factory where high-end Corratec bicycles are manufactured.  Eventually we cleared the intersection with Autobahn 8 and things got quieter and the Garmin was now working properly again.  Soon we reached the turn in Brannenburg that would take us west of the river and into the pre-Alps.  The climb began quite gently.  Dr. Chef noticed a sign that indicated “17%” but I said that this seemed unlikely.

We began to climb quite steadily and, sure enough, came to a section of road that actually was at least 17 percent.  The road was narrow, but there was not much traffic.  This was good as we soon came to a one-way tunnel which was short by quite steep so it was good that we did not have to dismount and lose the bit of momentum we had.

We were climbing the Deutsche Alpenstrasse, which would continue on to Sudelfeld but which we would only take to the intersection for the road to Tatzelwurm.  Some of the stronger riders had already passed the intersection but we managed to get them back by telephone.  In retrospect, we should have continued to Sudelfeld as the climb as quite challenging, but then we would have missed the truly splendid descent via Tatzelwurm through Rechenau and Seebach and Agg, which brought us down to the Inn flood plain and Reisach.  Riding towards the Inn we located the Inn bikepath and found a nice restaurant where we enjoyed lunch.  More beer!  More strudel!

The idea of following the Inn bikepath towards Kufstein was abandoned as it became quickly apparent that the nice paved stretch we found became rough gravel, so we returned to the main road and headed south, soon afterwards crossing into Austria and reaching Kufstein, which straddles both banks of the river.  Although it has only 18,000 inhabitants, it looked like a bustling place, overlooked by a large 13th Century fortress.  While scouting out the route out of town, which has a lot of one-way streets, I rode through the cobbled market area, which was very lively.

Turning back towards Germany, we passed through small villages such as Erl and the charming Nussdorf am Inn.  The road was gently undulating and fairly light in traffic.  My legs were starting to get a bit tired by this time but they were to be challenged once more as we came to Neubeuren, which is dominated by an impressive castle (sections of which date to the 12th Century, and which has since 1925 served as a boarding school).  The road through Neubeuren was quite steep and at this point all the traffic we had not encountered made its presence known.  But once over the top it was easy riding back to Rosenheim and the hotel.  We had covered 92 km, with about 1000 m of climbing, most of which was on the hill to Tatzelwurm.

Hello from Argentina!

(photo by Claus Rammel)

It was still early in the day, and the sun was beating down relentlessly.  After getting cleaned up, several of us took the opportunity to go to the “Lokschuppen,” a one-time locomotive shed that has been converted to an exhibition and event centre.  There was an exhibition “Giant Dinosaurs of Argentina,” showcasing some 24 dinosaurs, either in skeleton or reconstructed form, all species unearthed in the last two decades in Patagonia.  Argentina has fossils from all three eras of the dinosaurs (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous) and these included some of the earliest known therapods, the ancestors of T. rex, as well as the largest therapod, Gigantosaurus carolinii, which stood 4 m (13 feet) tall and was 14 m (46 feet) long.  But Gigantosaurus c. was small potatoes compared to the sauropods on display.  There was the weird, spiky Amargasaurus, for example, It was about 11 m long (33 feet) and was very impressive.  But then we left the building to enter a large, temporary wooden structure and were confronted with the skeleton of what must have been the largest animal to every walk the earth.  Argentinosaurus huinculensis was 8 m (26 feet) tall and 40 m (131 feet) long, and weighed an estimated 60 tonnes.  We stood next to it and I simply could not imagine I was seeing a creature this big.  There was no way to photograph it and get any recognizable image.

The exhibition, to celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday, was a coup for Rosenheim and utterly fascinating.  It will run until October 25 and is worth the detour to get there.

Steve Z. Joins the Greats

Lost Boys Cycle Press International, October 12, 2009

Breaking News, so to speak

In a surprise development, Steve "Zeezu" Zeliadt, one of the Garage team's strongest and most enthusiastic racers, has jumped up a few rungs on the sporting ladder and joined the immortals of pro cycling by breaking his collarbone during a cyclocross race this weekend. Cleverly, this will allow full healing by the time the real road racing season recommences. When interviewed, the Big Z admitted that with Armstrong and Hincapie both breaking their All-American collarbones this year, the pressure was on and time was running out in 2009 for this Seattle-based cyclist to join their ranks.

"Sure, anybody can get road rash," Mr. Zeliadt said while grimacing engagingly, "But a broken collarbone--that's the mark of the champion." And of course he is right: this has been a badge of courage borne by cycling's greatest names: Alex Zuelle, Magnus Backstedt, Tyler Hamilton, Kurt-Asle Arveson, Brett Lancaster, Tony Rominger, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, Marcel Wuest, Tom Zirbel, Alejandro Valverde, Christian Vande Velde, Saul Raisin, Pascal Simon, Rolf Sorenson, and countless others. Fausto Coppi did it twice, in 1942 and 1951.

And how about Fiorenzo Magni?

Magni might have won the Tour de France in 1950. He had just taken over the yellow jersey when an angry group of spectators accused Bartali of getting physical with Jean Robic, the 1947 winner from France, on one of the climbs. The crowd turned rather vicious and the next morning the whole Italian team withdrew from the race.


Magni was one tough individual. Note the picture of Magni from the 1956 Giro d'Italia where he held a rope in his teeth to help him get pedaling leverage because of a broken collarbone. He finished second overall in the race that year despite the broken collarbone.

Of course, the current reigning World Champion, Cadel Evans, broke his collarbone three times in one year, suffering this injury eight times in his career overall, so Mr. Zeliadt has some way to go to reach the level of the Rainbow Jersey.

All of us at Lost Boys Press wish Steve a rapid recovery with minimal pain (but, hey, isn't the ability to absorb pain the whole point of racing?) and that he will soon be back on his Tarmac, Black Lightning, rallying his Garage teammates, earning the respect of his opponents and the undying adulation of spectators.

The Lost Boys Tour of Europe 2009: The Roads ‘Round Rosenheim, Part 1

The Chiemgau countryside

After collapsing into bed, and taking care to leave the window open in our non-air conditioned room (after all, we are talking 1604 here), I quickly fell asleep and woke up feeling unusually refreshed.  I normally suffer from very bad jet lag when going to Europe but last year was an exception, perhaps because after landing in Geneva I was forced by my friend Will to walk around in the sunshine and look at Swiss/French cows for a while.  I think that the Mangfall bike path ride had the same effect so perhaps this is the solution to getting me up to speed in Europe.

Anyway, at breakfast it turned out that several people were kept up all night by the loud noises of partygoers out in the street.  My room was at the back of the building, which helped, but these are things you can never be sure of when finding a place to stay.

Today (August 6) the weather was absolutely perfect.  I had been told that it had been a summer with heavy rain in Bavaria but we were enjoyed a hot, sunny vacation.  After the usual German breakfast of buns and cheese and muesli, we saddled up eventually (not always an easy thing with a group of ten!) and rolled past the pedestrian zone and out of town to begin our first long ride.

On the road in our fancy 2009 custom jerseys

I had prepared a series of routes for the trip and loaded them on my Garmin 305 GPS.  This was a new experience for me and I was not entirely certain it would work.  I had followed some routes prepared by Will last year for the Tour d’Enfer but this was my first solo effort.  There was a bit of confusion getting out of town but as long as I followed the big arrow on the Garmin things seemed to be okay.  I had actually been a bit ambitious and found a route that took us off the main streets and went on the backroads, and had done this by using satellite images from Google.  Amazingly, it actually worked and I recognized the little residential streets seen before only from above.

The Lost Boys (and Girls) 2009

We were soon in beautiful rolling farm country, surrounded by intensely green fields and passing traditional Bavarian homes, often with religious statuary outside.  The roads were truly impeccable and well signposted.  When Will had given me GPS files I had been able to see turns coming but for some reason all I had was an arrow on the computer, which sometimes meant we missed the turn coming up as it took a moment to react.  But everything went pretty smoothly as we approached Frasdorf, near Autobahn 8.  I was bit concerned as the route just north of the highway was pretty complicated and went along unmarked farm roads but, again, it all unfolded perfectly even if I had to concentrate on the arrow most of the time.

At last: a bicycle that fits the Thin Man

We passed under the highway exactly where we should have and the farm roads took us past Bernau am Chiemsee towards Űbersee.  We stopped briefly at a large and very well-stocked bicycle shop where we bought some C02 cartridges, which we could not bring on the airline flight over, and had a nice chat with the proprietor.  Most of the store was dedicated to mountain biking, which is very popular in the area, but there were some nice road bikes, including a Basso.  This was the subject of some amusement in our group as people thought it was connected to former doper Ivan Basso, rather than being a long-established firm.  There was an enormous cruiser-type bike out front and we insisted that the Thin Man try it on for size.  The owner said that everyone thought the bike was very cool but that there were no customers for it.  

Unfortunately, our idyllic ride was to end as we approached the Chiemsee, Bavaria’s largest lake and the third-largest in Germany.  The road, St2096, had looked like a secondary road running along the lake, but it turned out to be a primary artery, with heavy truck traffic and lots of private cars as the area is very popular with tourists.  We got everyone in a single line and headed north towards Chieming and I set a steady pace at the front.  One of the group overtook me after a while, so I pulled in behind him, as did two others, Carol and Glen.  After a while I began to think we were going a bit fast considering we still had quite a distance to ride and although I enjoyed riding at more than 40 km/h along a very smooth, albeit busy road, it was bound to be too much for some of the others.  I looked more carefully ahead and realized that the cyclist pulling us was not actually someone we knew but a local rider going like a bat out of hell!  I slowed down and we found a place to stop where we could see the lake and wait for the others.

Our Gstadt Am Chiemsee lunch stop
(photo by P. Dominic)

Reassembled, we continued on our loop around the lake, now on St2095, and the traffic was quite heavy until we reached an intersection in Lambach.  Our destination for lunch was Gstad am Chiemsee at a restaurant that had been recommended by the hotel staff in Rosenheim.  We easily found the place, which was very close to the shore of the lake, and enjoyed an excellent meal on the terrace, watching the ferries leave for the islands in the lake, Herrenchiemsee and Frauenchiemsee.  The former is famous as the location of one of King Ludwig II’s follies, a full-scale reproduction of the chateau of Versailles.  My father had once worked at the hotel on the island and he took me there in 1972, and I last returned four years after that.

It was quite hot as we started on the road back to Rosenheim.  There were some nice hills but soon at Bad Endorf we were on the busy main road, St2095 again, but the way was pretty straightforward.  The group broke up as everyone rode at their own pace back to the hotel.  An excellent effort on a beautiful day: we had covered 94.67 kms, with 850 m of climbing.

The day was not over yet.  After getting cleaned up, seven us caught a bus we had arranged to take us back to Bad Endorf.  More specifically, we were going to a summer opera festival at Gut Immling, located on the top of a big hill and situated on the grounds of an animal rescue establishment, specializing in horses.  The road up was very narrow and twisty and normally you left your car in Bad Endorf and took a shuttle bus up but our driver was very good and quickly had us right at the summit.  I was a bit concerned about how difficult it would be to get us back down when everyone would be leaving at the same time but he was not too troubled by this.

After looking at the rescued animals, we went into an elegant circus tent that served as the restaurant where we had booked our dinner.  It was a very nice arrangement and the food, although a bit too not-vegetarian for me, was appetizing and plentiful.  I particularly liked the new potatoes roasted with some balsamic vinegar.  For Bavaria, the desserts were a bit limited but okay.

Time for the performance and we went off to an enormous barn-like structure for the opera, “La Bohème.”  The orchestra was at eye level, and the stage was raked up sharply behind the musicians, suggesting that the singers had to be pretty sure-footed.  Set decoration was fairly minimal but effective enough.  I was very impressed by the orchestra, but it turned out to be the summer home of the Munich Symphony, and the calibre of the singers was very good as well.

After Mimi sighfully breathed her last (sorry for the plot spoiler), we filed out and called for our bus, which arrived very quickly.  I have to say that one of the reasons I like travelling so much in Germany is that the logistics can be organized and are very reliable.  Back down the hill we rolled and soon were back in Rosenheim and our beds.

Yet Another Intersection of Beer and Bicycles: Lance Shills Weak Beer

   

Get fit and thin by drinking beer!
("Beer Belly Blues" byDJ@buzztwang, Creative Commons)

It has been announced the Lance Armstrong will now be the spokesman for Michelob Ultra beer and the first commercial is in preparation. Johnny Mellow was previously known for his attachment to Shiner, a beer brewed not far from his home of Austin, Texas in the village of Shiner (pop. 2000). A few years ago, I was in Texas and stopped on a hot afternoon in Fredericksburg. I was offered a Shiner beer and, wanted to try a local specialty, was happy to take it. It was served to me in a huge glass mug, which was taken straight out of the freezer! Needless to say, beer served at this temperature has absolutely no taste at all. It was wet, cold and pretty weak, so I was not very impressed. A subsequent tasting of a Shiner under better circumstances did little to change my initial perception.

At least the brewery, founded by Kosmos Spoetzl (!) in 1909 is a local institution. Lance Armstrong has now become the spokesman for a beer produced by the gargantuan Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer with 25 percent of the global market. And a strange beer it is, being both low-carb and low-calorie. Launched in 2002, this light beer is meant to appeal to people who don’t like beer very much and has come out in flavours (Pomegranate Raspberry, Cactus Lime, Tuscan Orange Grapefruit) to get a part of the wine cooler market. A bottle of the regular Ultra has 95 calories and 2.6 g of carbs, while the fruity ones are 107 calories and 6 g.

Michelob Ultra has gotten into sponsorship of cycling events, including the Tour of Missouri, and has been involved in other events as its ads all suggest it is a beer for the active, sporting type. The beer is cheap and almost colourless and by many accounts has as little flavour as Shiner. I will admit that on some cycling trips or during intense periods of training I have had alcohol-free Erdinger Weissbier, which is made in Bavaria and quite passable, since there is no alcohol to make me feel tired. As one reviewer remarked about Ultra:

Again, what does this mean to us? Your average non-diet mass produced beer such as Budweiser and Heineken have approximately 150 calories and 11 grams of carbs per 12-ounce serving. Guinness clocks in at a remarkably low 130 calories and 10 grams of carbs for a comparable 12-ounce serving. This means that you may as well drink what you want and what you like- even the average 200lb calorie-oblivious dolt can burn almost 100 calories by watching TV or sleeping for an hour.

The review described the beer as being so light it was like seltzer with a twist of corn.

A Belgian Icon
(Mannekin Pis, photo by Hot Grill, Creative Commons)

Michelob Ultra is about one-tenth as popular in the United States as A-B InBev’s Bud Light, a genuinely terrible beer. It is not clear if Mr. Armstrong’s endorsement will help it much but I cannot think in the way that Lance has encouraged Americans to take up cycling, it would have been nice to encourage Americans to drink better beer, such as that of a craft brewer like New Belgium Brewing. On the other hand, New Belgium, which began on a bike ride, probably doesn’t have revenues of US$25 billion a year either.

The Lost Boys Tour of Europe: Giro dell’Infèrno 2009--Arrival in Germany

Bike packed and ready to go!


Following our successful trips to the Black Forest, Alsace and the French Alps, Tour No. 4 saw our first visit to Bavaria and Northern Italy.  The trip for me began with checking in at the Ottawa airport on August 4 at US Airways.  The bike case always attracts excitement from the check-in people so I was sure to be there quite early.  Sure enough, my case was nearly 2 kgs, or 4 pounds, over the limit of 50 pounds.  We are in a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t situation as the whole point of the case is to protect the bike but having a hardshell case means an overweight charge in addition to the US$ 100 charge to ship the case in each direction.  The agent suggested I might take something out of the case and put it in my other suitcase but when I opened the case and started to look for things he just said to forget it.  I also asked if I could pay the shipping fee for both directions in Ottawa, which would save me some time when I flew back.  This turned out to cause other problems, as we shall see.

Anyway, the flight from Ottawa to Philadelphia was on time, and my flight out of the City of Brotherly Love, five hours later, also went very smoothly and I arrived in Munich on time.  My luggage was unloaded quickly and I easily made my way across from the international terminal to the one for domestic flights, where I met the Thin Man, who was arriving from Berlin.  We took our cases down the elevator to the S-Bahn platform where we waited for our train to Munich Ost.  There we unexpectedly met Carol and Glen, two of our group who were also heading to Rosenheim. 

On the way to the main station we stood to prevent our cases from flying around in the train.  I chatted with a businessman who was very interested in where we were going.  It turned out that during the following week he would also be heading to the Dolomites to ride his bicycle, so a small world all around.

City Museum, Rosenheim, and entry to the pedestrian zone

From the Munich Ost station we got on an Italian train going towards Venice and not ideal for handling bike cases as it has the same narrow doorways to be found on German EC trains.  The train was packed but since we were standing in doorways with our cases it did not matter much.  In half an hour we got off in Rosenheim, where construction at the station meant the cases had to be shifted up and down stairs, never an easy proposition.  At the front of the station we met yet more people from our group as Patrick and Julie looked for a cab.  An extremely helpful Deutsche Bahn person looking after the traffic in front of the station found us a huge taxi van and we quickly covered the 1.2 km to our hotel in the old city.

Our home away from home...

Old is right–the Hotel Gasthof Flötzinger-Bräu is in an old brewery building and has been occupied more or less constantly since 1543, and as an inn since 1604.  There was a large courtyard full of bike cases and other Giro riders were already there, assembling their bikes.  This all went very smoothly as even the mechanically-hesitant got everything together.  I had taken great pains and a lot of foam pipe insulation to pack the Tarmac and there was not a mark on it.  To celebrate, several of us went into the hotel restaurant for a truly Bavarian meal of Käsespätzle (cheese noodles) with big glasses of draft Hefeweizen.  We needed the fortification since we all had rooms that were up at the top of the building, requiring climbing three or four flights of stairs.  No matter–we were here to ride up mountains.

Terry unpacks his Dahon, which knocks down for easy shipping
(photo by Patrick D.)

But not on the first day.  Having had lunch and feeling surprisingly good after the long trip from Canada, I thought it would be a good idea to test out the bikes and ride along the Mangfall bike path towards Munich, find a place for another beer and then ride back.  It was fairly easy to find our way to the Mangfall, which is one of two rivers going through Rosenheim (the other being the Inn) and the bike path, although we discovered quickly that the path was very narrow and heavily used so we had to manoeuver rather carefully.

One narrow bikepath

Leaving Rosenheim and its suburbs we soon passed through Kolbermoor and Bad Aibling, a small spa town, before losing the bike path and the river completely.  After some detours, we found ourselves on a small agricultural road and soon located a beer garden, where we enjoyed our first outdoor Hefeweizens of the trip.

Mission accomplished, we returned to Rosenheim, taking time only to get slightly lost again, and after getting cleaned up everyone met up for an excellent Italian dinner.  The streets of Rosenheim are very lively in the evening (which some of our group would discover goes late into the night when they tried to get some sleep).  An excellent first day, and I was very much looking forward to the first real bike ride of the trip.

Enjoying our first group Hefeweizen!

Time Trial Season Winding Down

One fast guy: Fabian Cancellara, 3 time World Time Trial Champion
photo by UCI

My last time trial of the season was scheduled for today but thanks to the all-day rain (actually beginning during the night) the event has been cancelled.  After all, driving for an hour in the rain, followed by forty-five minutes of "warming up" in the rain, followed by an hour of maximum exertion in the rain before driving back again probably does not make much sense.  Unless you get paid for it.The weather is definitely tending towards Fall since the trees are turning and it was only 3C (37F) when I got up yesterday morning.


So that is the end of the season for time trials for me.  Although I did not make my goal of averaging 40 km/h on the 15 km, on the shortened 10 km course I actually managed to do this not once, not twice but three times, with my highest average close to 41 km/h.  Dreadnought 2, my Leader time trial bike, is already set up on the Kurt Kinetic so that the Tour de Basement can begin.  My performances were better than last year, although my very best time trial was only 2 seconds faster than my best effort in 2008.  40 km/h next Spring for sure...

Fabian flying at the Tour of California
photo by Darcy,©Creative Commons

For some people, riding 40 km/h is clearly not a problem.  On Thursday, my fave pro bike rider, Fabian "Spartacus" Cancellera, destroyed the field in the World Cycling Championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, doing three circuits of the 16.6 km course in front of his countrymen in the astonishing (to me) time of 57:55.74, averaging 51.54 km/h over the 49.8 km distance. I checked my math on this twice.  For those not metrically inclined, this works out to 32.03 mph.  The next rider came in 1:27 later, even after Fabian slowed down in the last 250 m to wave to everyone.  It would be marvellous to see him go for the One Hour Record.

In today's elite road race he had hoped to get another gold but it was not to be but fifth place is still not a bad effort at all.  Now he can spend the winter building up his strength with cheese fondue and chocolate or whatever it is Swiss champions train with.

Everything Old is New Again

As I go about assembling the last pieces for my Ancient-But-Honourable Raleigh SBDU bicycle, I have learned a great deal about classic steel racing bikes.  Some manufacturers have not forgotten about them in this age of carbon and titanium and for 2010 Colnago is bringing forth a fixed/singlespeed steel bicycle, with lugs, that will revive the Super name.

Although fitted with inexpensive Tektro brakes and probably not made in Italy, the new Colnago Super is a very beautiful bicycle.  I have located at least three online retailers who are already listing the model for sale.  At US$1900 you would expect to have some gears on it but, hey, that Colnago name is pure magic.  If I were to make the jump to a fixed gear bike (with a flip-flop freewheel hub), this might be it...

Another sad incident in Ottawa

This blog is about cycling, the joys of which mean a great deal to me.  Nonetheless, we cannot overlook the dangers involved and this was brought home to me late this afternoon.  We were just finishing up for the day in the office when directly outside on Sussex Drive a cyclist was hit by a bus. One of my colleagues saw the incident from her office window.  When the emergency crews arrived (within only a few minutes) it was soon obvious from their actions that the victim was already beyond help.  

Apparently the cyclist was moving across Sussex (which has a bus lane closest to the curb, which becomes a turning lane) to get towards the lane that takes you straight through and was struck by a bus and dragged underneath the front end.  We could see the rear end of the bike under the front tire of the bus. The Ottawa Citizen has a brief report this evening noting it was a female cyclist and the story is that she rode directly into the path of the oncoming bus.

This was probably someone like me, finishing work and looking forward to the ride home.  It could be any of us.  It is very distressing.  Please ride safely, everyone.

Milestones for the Week

It has been a pretty good week as we saw these milestones reached:

1.  On Friday, Ryder (what a great name for a cyclist!) Hesjedal of Team Columbia-HTC becomes the first Canadian to win a stage at the Vuelta a Espana.  Bravo!

2.  Travels with a Tin Donkey saw its 50,000th hit on Saturday.  I have had a lot of fun writing this blog since I began in February 2007 and hope to up the hit-ante with some more good stuff that I have planned.

3.  Although he started 12 minutes after me on the Almonte 40 km time trial course in Calabogie today, Doug van den Ham effortlessly overtook me (as did six others, I think).  This is not really a big deal, but what is impressive is that Doug, who started as the last of 20 participants leaving at one-minute intervals, was the first to arrive at the finish line, having passed all other nineteen participants.  It must be that Specialized Transition he rides...

Dick and Nick’s Excellent Adventure: A Book Review

While researching the history of my new-old Raleigh, I came upon a reference to the journey of two cousins, Richard and Nicholas Crane, who wrote a book about riding their Raleigh SBDU bicycles all over Asia in 1986 with minimal baggage.  I recall seeing a British television program about cycling in which someone showed how he would jump on his racing bicycle and ride off to India, with a credit card, some spare change and a sawed-off toothbrush, eating local food and sleeping wherever.  This sounded to me in the spirit of the Cranes so without further ado I found a used copy of their book, which has been out of print for years.

“Journey to the Centre of the Earth” is a wonderful book, firmly in the tradition of the Ripping Yarns/Monty Python/Eccentric Englishmen School of Travel.  Why it is out of print is puzzling as it is well-written, colourful, and quite quite mad.  The Cranes, in various family configurations, had raised a considerable amount of money for the charity Intermediate Technology (IT), now known as Practical Action, through original and ambitious athletic adventures, such as “Running the Himalayas,” and “Bicycles up Kilimanjaro.”  IT works to assist the rural poor in developing countries to work themselves out of poverty using their own skills and local resources.

A year after cycling up Kilimanjaro, the Crane cousins were having a drink at the Hand and Shears pub by the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great (could anything sound more cosily like the Shire?) in January 1986 when the subject of the next expedition came out.  This was to be something ambitious yet again, but lightweight, no support crews and completed in two months.  The key concepts that subsequently emerged were: “dangerous without being suicidal;” “exotic without being obscure;” and “awkward, without being impossible.”  A number of ideas were debated and discarded–my favourite being “Mules from Montana to Minnesota”–until they looked in the Guinness Book of World Records and saw reference to “an as yet unpinpointed spot” that is the land most remote from the open sea in any direction.  The Cranes decided to pinpoint that spot and thus began their Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which was apparently somewhere north of Urumqi, in China’s most western province, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Of course, flying to Urumqi, a city that had 900,000 inhabitants at the time of the trip (since blossoming to 2.3 million and the scene of ethnic rioting in July) and hitching a ride to the CoE would have been too simple.  The Cranes thought: “If we’re going to the most remote place in the world from the open sea, where do we start?”  The answer, obviously, was at the open sea and since the distance would be far too great to walk it was decided to cycle.  The most direct route was from the Bay of Bengal over the Himalayas, through Nepal and Tibet, and on to the great desserts of Central Asia.  This was provided that the Chinese authorities would allow the expedition to enter Tibet from Nepal and continue onwards, which in 1986 was a pretty major leap of faith.  Of course, since they had not yet plotted where the CoE actually way, the Cranes did not trouble to note on their maps how close it would be to the Russian border.  The plan was to get going on May 1 and complete the trip in 50 days.  Considering what it takes for me to organize a simple group cycling trip to Europe, the idea that they could arrange all this in only four months seems amazing.  Two weeks before their departure, they no bikes, no special clothing, no air tickets, no visas for China and India, no Chinese vocabulary, so they did leave things pretty much to the last minute.

Budgeting £2500 each from their own savings, they relied on donations of equipment.  I was gratified that Raleigh’s support was nicely recognized.  Ten days before departure, they went to Ilkeston where Gerald O’Donovan, the Godfather of the Raleigh Special Bicycle Development Unit (SBDU) and the man behind the frames used in Panasonic’s 1980 Tour de France victory, measured them up and built up a pair of Reynolds 753-tubed frames (similar to my Heron) which were then outfitted with an eclectic parts mix. I began to realize how concerned the Cranes were about weight when I read that neither bicycle had a front derailleur but the rider employed the heel kick-down, finger pick-up technique for switching chainrings.  Throughout the book the Cranes are constantly fiddling with drill bits and knives to reduce weight wherever they can even further.  The book includes Appendices listing all their equipment and there wasn’t much there.  The bicycles, with heavy Specialized 700x35C tires,  each weighed 22 pounds (9.97 kg) and carried an additional 18 pounds (8.3 kg) of gear.

With these few possessions, the intrepid Cranes launched themselves out of Dhaka, Bangladesh and began the long ride north through heavy traffic, drawing huge (and somewhat frightening) crowds whenever they stopped.  By the second day a bit of friction had developed as the Cranes discovered they had different riding styles and outlooks and although there would occasionally be some stressful moments in the relationship on the road ahead they managed impressively well.  The book was written by both of them contributing different sections, with the authorship usually identified.

From the crowded madhouse that is Bangladesh, our travellers crossed into calm India and then rolled into Nepal.  From tropical humidity and heat they moved into the cool dryness of the Himalayas and then onto the desolate Tibetan Plateau, cycling a road that the Chinese had newly built and opened to traffic only a few months before.  On they ride, relating their adventures with boyish enthusiasm.  Although they had a very positive outlook, the Cranes suffered some hardships as they slept in caves, fought their way through snowstorms, suffered from thirst and hunger and still managed to pedal 200 kms on good days, an impressive athletic achievement as often the roads were poor or even non-existent.   They met a variety of people who were almost always helpful, from nomads to truck drivers to road repair crews, and who must have been entertained by these Brits who did not speak any of their language but who instead cavorted and pantomimed their way across some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain, crossing the Gobi, Taklamakan and Dzungarian Deserts in their quixotic quest.

 One hundred kilometres out of Golmud we stopped to gaze in awe at the emptiness.  It seemed unreal that we had crossed such a large distance of totally featureless terrain.  The road was essentially a continual straight.  Though 3,000 metres above sea level, all the way we saw no hills, no mountains and it was hot, dry and flat.  Nick sat on the edge of the tarmac for a rest.  In deference to the enormity of the cosmos, I took a short walk out across the hard-baked salt crust beyond the telegraph wires.  There was nothing between me and eternity.

I will not tell you how the story ends, but leave it to discover for yourself, but by the time they stopped riding their dependable Raleighs (two flats each during the whole trip, and a gear cable that needed replacement after some children fooled with it), they had cycled 5301 km (3293 miles), of which 1473 km (915 miles) was on dirt, and ascended 26,680 m (87,532 feet).  As a foreigner living in China from 1987-1989, I can say that I was surprised by the lack of interference from Chinese officials as they roamed all over the country but in the end even the ever-cheerful Cranes could not escape the long arm of the Public Security Bureau.  But they remained resourceful and independent to the end, although not terribly clean.  Although the Centre of the Earth may not ever become the tourist attraction they thought it might be while planning their trip in London, this book is a testament to the spirit of discovery, not to mention Ilkeston-built Raleighs.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth
by Richard and Nicholas Crane
Bantam Press, 1987
238 pp., ill.
ISBN 0-593-01291-7

As mentioned, the book has not been in print for years but used copies are easily found if you check amazon.com or alibris.com.  My copy is hardbound but it came out in paperback as well.  The entire book has been scanned (well, one chapter seems to be missing) and can be found on-line here, which is where I also found the photographs.