The german cycle magazine ‘Fahrstil’ opened on the 28th of march their fine club house in Heidelberg. They invited for an overnighter in the hills of Heidelberg. Good start in the season with fresh built and updated bike. I started three hours before the meeting, luckily. After 10 minutes i had my first issue with the frontrack. It slipped down… I tried to fix it but my tools didn’t fit… Back home and fix it would take too much time. I tightend the bar bag to fix it. It worked out, except when i got bumpy it had to reajust it 😉 The ride was nice through the woods, the last 10k i went over fields and hat a sucking headwind. Finally i made it just in time.
When i arrived at the club house i saw many nice bikes in front of the house. And i saw Gunnar (also the cover pictures is made by him and property of overnighter.de ). After a heartly hello the trip soon started with 11 participants to the first stop, a supermarket to buy the essentials for the BBQ. Shortly after the stop it got steep. Knobbles and 15% uphill. Passing the famous castle of Heidelberg we went on a gravel way, then some trails, some where not prepared with the gearing for that kind of uphill and had to push the bike. Back on a gravel path we passed the first cabin. It was not good enough for us, so we kept on cycling. Gunnar figured out 8 possible cabins, enough to choose from.
The second one we passed looked fine, also a spring directly there. We decided to take it 🙂 Quickly everyone was getting wood and stones to prepare the campfire. Some of the crowd i knew of the SIS 2016, i had the please to stay for a night a their camping spot. Nearly everyone was an experienced overnighter. Soon the campfire was lightend. Having a beer or a wine till the BBQ could start. Then stories, talking, enjoying the stars in the sky. Not too late everybody felt asleep in the warm sleeping bags with impressive much stars above.
We got up early because some wanted to ride to Frankfurt. Coffee time! Falk, one of the professionals had a big Bialetti attached at his front fork and now he made several mugs of coffee in a row with it. Finished with breakfast and packing the spot got cleaned. You couldn’t see that anybody stayed there for the night. Good job! I said ‘Ciao, Ciao’ to the people and was leaving the oppposite than the others. I met super nice new and known people. It started for several minutes as a serious gravel downhill till i hit back to civilization . The way back home was about sunny and funny 60 k’s.
Thanks Gunnar for organization this and well done with the club house Fahrstil!