Wed Sep 27 – Cycle Day 6 – Nierstein to Mainz – 21.9 kms – App=129 meters (RWGPS=157 Meters) <<< Riesling Vineyards, Goodyear Blimp, Gutenberg Museum, Summarized our Cycle Week >>> With only 20 kms to cover today, we set out stopping more often to take photos. Today we saw the Riesling vineyards as we headed north. At one point, we had the vineyards to our left and the Rhine River to our right. Such pretty landscape! Today, being our 6th day of cycling, we saw once again: Swans! We have seen them every day of our cycle trip. I love them. Speaking of birds, seeing that we have cycled by many water areas, we have enjoyed watching the take-off and landing of birds. For most of them, they need time to get off the water and their wings touch the water several times before getting in the air. Speaking of air, from a distance we saw something peculiar. As we got closer, it turned out to be a Goodyear Blimp. It was impressive to hear and see it above us. As we got into Mainz, we appreciated their long Rhine River path. We arrived to the hotel around lunch time. As we suspected as this was a short cycle day, our luggage had not arrived, nor could we check in. After we stored and locked up our bikes in the garage, we took our personal items from the two paniers (per bike) that we had been using for 6 days. We had packed some street clothes in our paniers and thus changed our clothes in the bathroom and had a beer in a private lounge section. We celebrated our successful 6-day cycle trip!!!! We then took a cab to the old part of town and ate lunch at an outdoor café, looking at the old State Theatre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatstheater_Mainz) under the shadow of the huge St-Martin Cathedral. We slowly walked to the Gutenberg Museum (https://www.mainz.de/microsite/gutenberg-museum-en/index.php). We saw a demonstration of how the printing press works. We learned that Gutenberg used the pressing techniques from the Roman wine making but adapted it to printing on paper. He is credited for creating a thicker ink that printed well. Before his printing press, there were 50,000 books. We don’t know where these books were located, but within a short while, with the printing press technology, there were soon over a million books. We now have countless of books in different formats around the world! The printing press was a revolution. We went into a vault and saw a hand-written bible and compared that to a Gutenberg printed bible (around 1450). As we strolled back to the main square, we stopped at a café and did some people watching as they strolled by. We taxied back to the hotel and had a late supper there. During supper we summarized our week of having ridden 341.9 kms. CYCLE WEEK SUMMARY Our 5 longest days (Day 1 to 5) added up to 302.2 kms, averaging 60.4 kms per day!!!! The other 2 days were 17.7 kms in Strasbourg and 21.9 kms on our last day. Karen: • Karen enjoyed the camaraderie and cycling leadership of John and Celeste. She was especially impressed with John’s paper map reading skills. Self guided cycling can be challenging to continually find the correct route. She thinks she might still be wandering the forest paths of Germany without their skills and previously learned guiding knowledge. Haha. • She really enjoyed getting to know Celeste and John better. What a great couple to travel with! She has been on previous cycling trips, guided and self guided, and determined that cycling with 2-3 couples makes for a very compatible and fun experience. • She was surprised (as the rest of us) to see the high number of dikes. Many times, we cycled on top of them and enjoyed the views. • Being a farm girl, she especially enjoyed seeing the different types of crops as we rode by. There were a lot of corn and sugar beet fields. We stopped when we saw a very large sugar beet harvester close to our cycle trail. We observed him doing two rounds. He saw our interest and stopped to talk to us after he unloaded the beets onto a big pile. Karen had many questions for which he gladly answered: Their sugar beet harvester cost 730,000 euros which is 100,000 more than the one they bought two years previous. They harvest 800 hectares per year (almost 2000 acres) over about six weeks, compared to a 4-month harvest in warmer climates. A group of 120 small farmers have bought the sugar beet combines (called diggers) and they replace them with a new one when they are five years old. • As we cycled over the week, we kept seeing tall skinny tree poles with a horizontal bar on top. We wondered what they were use for. Karen surmised it was for hawks to keep an eye over the fields so that they could pounce on those pesky mice and other crop-ruining “varmints”. We all agreed with her, as we did, her idea that the tall viewing platforms that we also saw from time to time, were hunting platforms. Cam said: • Thank you for including me. • This experience surpassed my expectations. I experienced many enjoyable moments including interacting with some of the locals along the way. • I can sincerely say I would do it all over again – especially with this small group of people. • Due to this experience I really want to see more of Europe. I definitely would do another cycling tour if the opportunity arises. Celeste and John were new friends to me and I have really enjoyed travelling with them. • Editors note: It was fun when Cam spotted 2 deer on the trail ahead of us.   John: • John liked crossing the Rhine River, either by ferry or over the long bridges. o Day 1 - West to East: Drusenheim by ferry o Day 2 - East to West: Neuburgweier by ferry o Day 3 - West to East: Germersheim by bridge o Day 4 - East to West: Worms by bridge through big gate o Day 5 - West to East: Worms by bridge o Day 5 - East to West: Neirsteim by bridge • He was impressed by the high number of joggers, walkers and cyclists who use the shared bike trails. He was especially impressed by the walkers’ dogs, as they were very obediently quiet as we zoomed by them. Some of the dogs stood still by the owners’ finger touching their nose or the hand outstretched over them. • He also enjoyed seeing the hawks, riding through the small towns, seeing the river locks, seeing the industrial areas, including appr 3 nuclear plants. Celeste: • Ditto on what everyone said above. 😎 • I enjoyed seeing swans everyday because we do not see them where we are from. • The variety of trails and landscape at a bicycle’s pace allowed us to slowly see the rural, towns and cities along a 300+ kms stretch of the Rhine River (along it and several kms inland). • The more we cycled together the more we got to know each other. I enjoyed our breaks that we took, being quick ones on the side of the path or a relaxed lunch. We had fun teasing each other. • I loved that we were all patient and understanding if a wrong turn was taken. It helped though, that we were never lost for long period of times as we could always see where we were at, on the map app that Karen and I had downloaded to our phones! : o) We all appreciated that we: • had no flat tires • had no rain • had no major wind • had no hills to speak of • did not get really really lost • no accidents • had perfect weather: Not too hot, nor too cold ……… just right! 😎