Location: Here (just south of Ludwigshaven)
Distance since last post: 27.1km
Weather: Warm 25 degrees C. Some cloud cover.
Notes: Counted 33 mosquito bites from last night. My back got eaten. There must have been one in the tent. He’s full up now!

When I arrived at the campsite this evening, the tent area was empty. About 30 minutes later someone turned up on a recumbent and, as you do, we started chatting. My 25KG bike is usually a good conversation starter!

Manfred is 63 and from Constance, where the Rhein river starts. He had just finished a 120km run and was on that last leg of a tour he started at the beginning of August. He had already been down the Rhein to Holland and was on his way back! We went for some food together and he was telling me about his career in computing and I tried to explain a little about what I was doing. Of course we had lots to talk about but I held back on saying too much about UMPCs. On the way back he was telling me how pocket PCs don’t have the right OS, how the communicator has the same problem and how he wanted a small windows XP (not Vista – he still has some DOS programs that need to run) machine. When I showed him the Q1b back at the tent he was amazed and when I connected to the Internet on the spot he couldn’t believe it. I passed my card over and smiled saying that I hadn’t expected to be promoting UMPCs face-to-face on this tour!

I’m settled in the tent now and I can hear Manfred snoring (yes Manfred, if you read this, let me tell you that you snore!) The Q1b has about 20 min’s of battery left and I’m going to switch to the external one soon.

Tomorrow I will have to see how the weather goes. If its as good as today I’ll take a nice long lunch break and load up as much as I can because the forecast for Tuesday isn’t as good.

Location: Speyer.
Distance since last post. Approx 30km
Temp. 25 C
Weather. Blue skies!

Awake at 0730 after a really good sleep and a horrible dream that when I got out of my tent I was in an empty campsite…with no bike. Packing up camp took a bit longer then expected mainly due to the dampness of everything and the fact that I usually get up at 0900 and not 0730. I also had to deal with about 10 mosquito bites. Damn they are annoying. On the road at about 0915.

At 10:45 this morning I pulled off the path and set up the solar panel for the first time. I haven’t actually tested it with the frame yet because I only finished building the frame a day before the tour but with a few strips of velcro it folds back on itself nicely and stays well in place. Its a pain to be getting things out of the panniers all the time though.

There are literally hundreds of bikes out today. The route is well ridden and of course, its Sunday. Everyone seems happy and friendly. I chatted to a couple of bikers at a train crossing and then, 30 minutes later they passed me in the opposite direction waving and wishing me a happy journey. That really helps make it more enjoyable.

I’m riding at about 20km/h on the bike which is a steady, but certainly not fast pace. Taking into account stops I think I must average about 15km/h while riding which means 3-3.5hours riding per day. I think that will fit nicely into the plan of a morning and late afternoon ride.

The Q1b is working well here on a table in a biergarten. I was worried about the screen not being bright enough but in there shade there’s no problem.

Now its time to catch up on emails, RSS feeds. See you at the next campsite.