Day 4…
Heidelberg, Germany – Ottrott, France – 342.3km

I made it to France!!!! But…it was my worst riding day yet. I stayed out way to late with the boys partying and having a good time. I wasn’t hung over, but we went to bed about 1:00am and my body woke up at 5:00am. I just couldn’t concentrate very well on so little sleep. See there is this thing called the sun. And there is this other stuff called A.C. I had to have the windows open because there was no A.C., but there was plenty of sun at 5:00am.

Then Liz was running way behind. I waited for her and everyone else took off in their own groups. John and Mike said they would wait at the gas station, but we were so far behind they were long gone when we got there.

And we couldn’t get out of the gas station! It was a bunch of one-way streets that led us all over creation and back before we could get back to the main road. So just trying to get out of town put us almost 2 hours back!

Liz and I skipped several of the side-trips and made up as much time as possible. I was really having problems because I was so fatigued. I also was reading the route maps because I was leading Liz. That requires far more concentration that I wanted to expend but we kept going.

Axel, one of our guides, told us that we would get lost today and we did. A bunch. For whatever reason, once you come into France they can’t put up signs where signs should be. So you would be booking along a road just fine and get to a town. Then you would lose the road. So you would try to find it…..and you did this by just randomly trying different roads until you finally found a sign or stopped and asked for directions. We probably burned a total of 1.5 hours dicking around in the towns trying to find the roads leading out of the towns. In some cases, we found other roads that we could see on the maps and took them instead. That combined routes 1 (easy route), route 2 (harder route) and the Brad and Liz route (most f’d up route).

Since Liz and I were so lost and trying to make up time we finally ended up stopping in the La Petite Pierre Nord region of France and having a nice picnic lunch of fruit, bread and cheeses. We even had a lovely view of the town. Sounds pretty romantic doesn’t it?

Did I mention this was from the curb-stop in a parking lot of a grocery store? See, everything was closed. The French obviously don’t believe in having any place to eat open past about 1:00pm and it was almost 3:00pm. My blood sugar was so low I thought I might literally pass out. So we just hit the store and bought a few things and munched them down in the parking lot.

I then had a thought. It takes a certain kind of person to ride motorcycles. It takes another breed of person to ride motorcycles and go on adventures like this one. And it takes yet another kind of person to get totally freaking lost in France and make a picnic lunch in a parking lot of a grocery store and actually enjoy it. Maybe it’s because I was starving to death?

So Liz and I high-tailed it out of there and got lost a few more times before finally running across another rider that we knew. He had already been to the hotel and was back out for a quick flog on the bike. He never found the roads he was supposed to be on, but we figured it out and ended up on the Tour De France route into Obernai!! It was one of the sweetest roads I had ridden in many years. I believe this is road 704 out of Mollkirchen and then route 204 from Klingenthal to Obernai.

The only problem was that I was running on fumes and didn’t know if I was going to make it. The fuel light came on with almost 50km left in the tank. No problem….except the French also don’t have gas stations in their towns. I don’t know where they gas up, but we went through at least six towns without any gas. Then we found one and it was closed. I then found a Texaco sign and headed towards it only to find out there was no gas. WTF? But I arrived at the hotel with 3km left on the tank and knew I could make it until the morning to gas up.

The hotel here is beautiful and I will try to include some pics later. They also have A.C.!!! BTW – the French servants are very rude and difficult to deal with. The folks in the little towns were very friendly and helped us out tremendously throughout the day.

We weren’t the only ones that got lost. EVERYONE got lost on that route. Some took it better than others. One guy went down on the bike, but it was in a mud bank. I don’t even think his pride was hurt. Me, I was riding too slow to get hurt – I couldn’t concentrate to ride fast.

I am crashing early to get some rest!