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May 28, 2024 8:39am

Cycling trip - day 2

Well, what an arrival. Due to the weather I spent the whole uneventful 30 hour boat journey wrecking my brain on how to get to Hamburg. I could have taken it safe and taken a local train, then sleep at a hostel for some hours. Since I would have 7 hours until my train, the idea of spending that time riding was just a bit too much. I knew the weather would turn nasty around midnight, meaning potentially half of my ride I would get wet.

Some 5 hours before arrival to Travemünde the captain announced we would be arriving one hour early. It's a sign, surely! I would have an extra hour of dry ride time before rain. Rain which could be short showers, drizzle or heavy rain - but hey how heavy can rain be? I've done rain before. It's summer, it's warm summer rain. I've done freezing snow storms, surely a little rain wont hurt. To be on the safe side, I plotted a route going through the 3 train stops between Lübeck and Hamburg. Then, if rain comes down, I can always jump on a local train, was the masterplan. This did add 10km, but it looked like a nice ride.

The ride was nice. Pretty suburbs, farms, fields and quiet roads to zoom through. But boy was I wrong about the rain. When it started, it came down like it was on a deadline by an angry rain god to fill this region with as much water as possible. How long can rain like this last? Surely this is just a shower, then it will just "rain a little". So I peddled on, not planning on stopping at the last station. Wasn't even sure if trains went anymore. Apparently this rain wanted to very much disagree on the commonly accepted "heavy rain lasts for a short while" fact. Apparently the amount of water that can be stored in German clouds is more than my common sense wants to believe possible.

Unfortunately as well, just afte the heavy rain started, Garmin routed me onto a trail, and I was stupid to just jump on it. I thought it would be a short hop through something but it ended up being this massive park. Probably very beautiful if you weren't in it in pitch black darkness, with only your headlamp to make the now "oh I'll turn into mud" path visible. There is a thing I learnt about headlamps as well. I wanted a single lamp with me to be used for setting up a tent but also cycling in the dark. Works well strapped onto the helmet. Powerful enough to see and to be seen. But you know what happens in heavy rain? The rain drops in the light turn into bright sparkles. And this happens in front of your eyesight, which doesn't help visibility with already totally wet glasses. So slow it was.

And some point while struggling through the muddy trails I realized this will never end and politely went to curse myself to the deepest pit of hell as I realized my Garmin navigation was on "gravel" mode. I switched it to "road" mode and managed to get out of the hellscape that is a park somewhere south of Bad Oldesloe, towards Ahrensburg. Of course after that the rain cloud took a lunch break. Some 20km from Hamburg it dutifully returned to service and pounded away until I arrived at the trains station, when it decided it had dropped enough rain on poor Jason and Sanna, who dared to have the audicity to ride through this region.

I was a bit scared if the Garmin would hold up, but for now at least it seems fine. Beautiful device, can't imagine how I could have navigated through hours of downpour without it. Though they could add a quick action button called "it's raining heavily, please stop trying to route me into muddy paths, especially now that I'm on road mode", since apparently Hamburg has many nice gravel cycling paths which are probably great, but the few I tried last night were also completely horrible muddy death traps.

At the train station I realized saver train tickets are apparently not available just before the train journey starts. I only had a bicycle reservation and since the train was low demand, I thought I would buy it just before. This mistake cost me some 50€. Oh well, lessons learned. Quick snack after I camped at the platform to wait for my train in completely wet shorts and completely wet shoes and socks, otherwise feeling warm and happy with the rain gear doing its thing. Not sure what happened with the shoes. I had the rain covers I bought on them but apparently they either didn't work, there was too much rain or I didn't wrap them properly.

Although everything is muddy and I'll probably need to find a bike wash at some point soon, I did enjoy the ride, which apart from the rain was less effort than I had expected. Less hills than Helsinki probably explains a bit. Sanna rolls very nicely even in a heavy load <3 I can say I did it my way and didn't do the safe smart way, like one of the other cyclists who had been on the same ship, who apparently was going on the same train, who I had a nice chat with before trying to get some sleep. They had done the smart thing of going by train and sleeping in a hostel. They were not muddy.

Didn't get much sleep, which I kind of knew. Train is zooming towards Mannheim, from where I will jump on a local train to Heidelberg and ride another EC train to Ulm. From there a local train to Lindau, and I'll be at my destination for today. Hopefully it's not raining, I'd love to properly dry my shoes in some glorious sun before crossing the Austrian border. Wont probably ride that far today.

Distance cycled: 94.94km (today), 109.8km (total)