Coughing the Distance

Delays…. and making the most of them!

Flying… what can you use for entertainment when flying for 36 hours in a plane.

We found Martin and an awesome looking support vehicle!

Troy, Lucas, David, Walter and Martin.

Did you want to know I am still wearing all my old clothing I left Tasmania with? No? Ah well.
We are supposed to test-ride and camp tomorrow morning, but without luggage we have no sleeping bag, no tents, no clothing,… we will need to stay at least one more night in the hotel $$$$. We are jet lagged and dirty… I need to go for a ride, I need to cough…. There is Heineken downstairs!

Australia has gone smoke-free, but Amsterdam appears to be alcohol free…

We have formulated a plan of attack to deal with the lost luggage. As for clothing is concerned I am at crisis point. I have now determined that my Amex travel insurance will cover expenses of necessities. First thing tomorrow I will buy socks and shirts… I, and the team, have left Australia about 5 days ago and we are still wearing the same!!!

Many calls to British Airways luggage people has come to this. They have no idea at which point you can claim damages from them but that it is ‘reasonable’ in their eyes to have 2-5 days delays in luggage because it is peak season!!! Personally I disagree with that statement. We were invited to come to the airport after 3pm tomorrow to check the unsorted lost luggage at the airport to see if we can see our bags! I trust we will find them. British Airways has rented 180 meters squared space to store it all in!!! David got his bags, I got my medicine bag, we are confident the rest of our gear is there. Lets hope so!

So instead of testing out our camping gear tomorrow we have nothing to camp with and we had to find a hotel. The hotel we are in now is too expensive to just renew, so I got on the internet and found us another great deal elsewhere. Tomorrow morning we will change hotel. Hotels in Amsterdam are not cheap, and we wished we could camp for the night and check our gear…

This does mean we will get a chance to be tourists and take a canal cruise tomorrow. Although I have done that a few times in my life the rest of the crew is excited about that prospect! Hopefully we will find our luggage in the afternoon and go to Paris the next day. In the event our luggage is not there we will need to buy new tents, sleeping bags, and high tech equipment for our filming (wireless cameras, hard disk storage, cables, wires, and cycle clothing.

Most annoying is the large amount of awesome Patagonia gear that was given to us by Patagonia may be lost! That will probably be the single greatest loss as I am carrying the gear for Heather and Lucas and the spare pieces too. Big money, big loss… Lets hope we find our gear in the 180 m2 space of British Airways at the airport tomorrow!

We also have another slight complication, Heather’s mother was struck ill by for unknown reasons. Heather has delayed her flight by a day to be there for her mum. We all wish her all the best and are thinking of them.

Well, this is all good stuff for the documentary I suppose!

Walter—–

The one night we could do it we got some family to come and meet us!
Always great to see them, especially when I am so close but with so little time.

Mike Weinberg my cousin impressing Lucas!

Aunt Hannemien chatting up David.

My uncle Bernard showing a good van Praag appetite!

Our luggage is still lost… Its almost been a whole week in the same cloths.

We swapped hotel this morning. I had to book another night in a hotel as we had nothing to camp with. Nothing to ride in, nothing at all really… We had planned to camp this night but that was not possible. Booking our hotel for one more night was $$$ so I got on the internet and booked us into another hotel at an ‘internet’ rate. The swap was not simple. First we had to take the car out of the garage… 90 Euros for the two nights! It is the going rate in Amsterdam.

At the new hotel the car did not fit into their car park and we had to park it near the station in some public car park (also at 45 Euro per night). The car is only small, but the hotel was sure it was too tall. Not to worry, they also would have charged us 45 Euro for the car night.

Tonnes of Lost Luggage

In the afternoon Troy, myself and Lucas headed out to Schiphol airport to check out the lost luggage. It was not easy getting access, but we got it. We found the room with all the Heathrow ‘un-processed’ lost luggage in it. Our gear was not there. I also checked other rooms with luggage in it. There was heaps of lost luggage by the looks of it. Yes, they even admitted themselves that Heathrow had a bad couple of days.

British airways gave us some forms to fill in if it hadn’t been found by tomorrow and pledged to pay us ­35 Euro per day our luggage was delayed. After all, at this time of the high season 2-5 days were reasonable delays for luggage… If we had to buy anything keep receipts and send them to BA, although he could not tell us if we would get anything refunded nor had paperwork to explain it. The forms we had did ask for the inventory. Our luggage has a full Patagonia outfit for 4 people in it, $$$$$$ a huge loss. I assume we will get the luggage eventually, but when? BA was advised of our Paris hotel.

Shopping Spree

We raced back to town to catch the shops before they closed, and we went on a wild sweaty shopping spree. We bought duffle bags, tents, sleeping bags, bicycle shorts, raingear, panniers for the bikes… oh, underpants and socks,… It was a huge shop in a record time. We lugged heavy bags out the shop as they locked the doors behind us.

Then we came back to David who was lounging in the hotel, where he told us later that the amount of time we took convinced him that we had some major developments. We think he got his gear as he went to the transfer desk in Heathrow at the time and got his flight changes done there, whilst us three did it in the BA lounge where a friendly lady helped us while we had a cold beverage… David eventually got his bags, we didn’t. Who knows what happened. We just think it is frustrating that someone made the effort to look for the medicine, found the first aid kit that was part of David’s luggage, and my medicine bag, but the rest of our luggage was not taken! Surely they must have been placed together!

Tomorrow…

Anyway, we had an Argentinean steak for dinner and a relaxing pint of stout in a cafe. Tomorrow David and Troy will drive off to Paris and Lucas and I will have to find and buy some crucial computer/camera parts necessary for the documentary. We will need to postpone our morning flight to Paris, but BA was not open after 6pm when we called up – the earliest opportunity we had. Lucas is shooting good footage, but we really miss the external microphones as the audio is lousy from the built-in mike.

Tomorrow is another day and we should be in Paris tomorrow night. In the early morning we are all going for a run around Amsterdam to regain fitness and lung health!

Got up nice and early and we all went for our first run/exercise. Now that we got clothing to wear we can get changed into something fresh! Certainly was getting old wearing the same s$%t everyday!

Lucas was keeping up with us to film the spectacle of us running through Amsterdam. Amsterdam is totally shut-down in the mornings. Nothing is available before 8 or 9 am, only drugs and alcohol. Streets are pretty well deserted at 7am except for some street sweepers and drug pushers.

Freshly showered we walked to a bakery, most were closed, and got our last chocolate croissant (sorry wife, wish I could bring you one), Dutch coffee,… Only got harassed by one beggar, and a Rastafarian on the dam square. We were just about the only tourists up at this time, and so we were the only target for them.

Eight o’clock back at the hotel trying to call B.A. to postpone our flight. I missed them last night and now they don’t open till 9am.

Lucas and Troy spoke to their insurance companies in Australia too, and they will get some money reimbursed for the big shop. Troy mentioned Lost Luggage. The agent said; ‘Heathrow?’. Yes, said Troy. ‘British Airways?’ asked the operator… Apparently they reached a crisis point in Heathrow, we are not the only ones.

Ten o’clock a press photographer wants to take a shot of us with the vehicle, after which David and Troy will head off for Paris. The navigation equipment on the VW Caddy is already programmed to take them there! Too easy.

Flights for Lucas and I were problem free as we had no luggage for BA to loose! David and Troy had a good time navigating their way to Paris too. This morning we jogged to the Eiffel Tower! We also had our first language issues, ending up with an unexpected breakfast.

Today we split up to do chores, I ran into the metro to find a big computer store to replace lost IT stuff, went to pick up Martin from Gard du Nord. Troy and David went to add bits to bikes, Lucas went in search of wireless microphones (recording audio is lousy without it)…. and Heather is due to arrive. The airport is miles away and I cannot pick her up… I hope she calls up so I can tell her to catch a bus!
Heather is leaving Canada:

We had a celebration dinner after we finally found Heather! We could not pick her up from the airport, so she made her own way to the hotel. She proved herself to be a durable chick! Why was I even worried about her. Here is Troy comparing beer size to coffee size. How will this comparison go in Gemany!

July, 27, Paris_______________________________________

Walter has been tied up and placed in a closet as a result of buying the stinkiest cheese in all of France. I am Heather and it looks like I’ll be stepping in as Blog-updater. Walt’s attempt to remove the stinky-cheese smell from our hotel had him carting it around the city, polluting the expensively-perfumed air and attracting small animals along our path to Le Louvre Museum. Unfortunate, our people-watching curiosity and lolly-gagging brought us to the Louvre with only an hour to spare between it and a pre-arranged meeting. A decision was made and Le Louvre will have to wait until next time for our cheese offerings.

For dinner, we met with Jenny Busch, the Tasmanian Coordinator of Adult Cystic Fibrosis. Jenny had flown in from a meeting in Copenhagen to see us off tomorrow. Over pizza and red wine, we told her of our luggage mishaps. As it looks for the moment, British Airways has, in theory, located the missing bags of sponsored gear and expensive camera equipment and in a vague email, we are told the luggage is ”at the airport”…which airport, we don’t know. It is possible these necessary items are making their way back to the address of origin – Australia. We wait optimistically for its arrival, but haven’t got much time left to be hopeful as we prepare to leave at 10 a.m. from the Eiffel Tower. Sadly, most of the missing camping gear and camera equipment has been replaced during sporadic bursts at the shopping centre across from our hotel – at least convenience is on our side!

An email from the president of the Rotary Club in Provins, our destination for tomorrow, lets us know he is saving us beds and dinner upon our arrival, should we make it in time; something to look forward to, as the crazy driving techniques we’ve witnessed are certainly not! Our plan to be rid of Paris in four difficult route-finding hours may be a little optimistic, but we’re ready!

Sorry all – we’d love to write about every wonderful thing we saw today on our first day of the great COFE ride, but we can’t find anyone with enough energy to spell words properly, let alone have them make sense…

Here is the consolidated version, soon to be updated if we ever stop eating ourselves into food-comas every night and can stay awake long enough.

Day one of The Great Cofe was successful! At 10 a.m. Walter, Troy, David, Lucas and Heather left the Eiffel Tower exactly on schedule. We road through quiet Saturday streets in the drizzling rain to start but it soon stopped and the rest of the way through the suburbs of Paris, was in the sun.

Leaving the city was a bit tricky at times, and map reading became a frequent activity. Any attempt to coincide our timing with that of the support vehicle or the Rotary Club members offering up a place to stay that night, was more or less impossible, and so we just road on.

When once we stopped for a map-reading and saw that we were not yet even at our halfway point, the day’s objective of Provins seemed dreamy, but at 5:50 pm, ten minutes before schedule, we arrived! Our first day and already 100.01km are behind us!

After comparing bum-calluses and using stair-railings as crutches, we were over-joyed to meet Mr. and Mrs. Blackford from the Provins Rotary Club; not only because they are so kind for putting us up for the night, but because they had lots of homemade food and any kind of drink you desired!

Any chance it will always be like this?

Tomorrow, Troyes!

Just wanted to let everyone know that the team is doing great, I just spoke to them on the phone as they stopped for lunch. They have not been able to access the Internet and post updates on the blog and are very sorry about that. I complained strongly about the lack of up dates, comparing it to having my favorite soap opera pulled from daily TV line up!

The team has been doing big days and have also had a rest day. They do have some sore bits but that is to be expected.

They all seem to be getting along but it is still early days. I did hear profanities in the back round while speaking to Heather H.H. I am not sure who they were directed at.

I will keep this short, I am just the ring in. We all look forward to more from the team.

Thanks for the support… Katherine (Walts wife still in Tasmania).

Dear people,

Thank you for your fun and kind comments! We are flat out cycling and surviving right now and are unable to diligantly reply to you all. But we love the feedback!

Also, we are about to appear on the UK Male Health website: <click here>.

Back to Heather now!

Walter——

Day 8
635-ish KM
Altkirch, France

Day 7, I think
km 577, I think

Hello!

We are getting closer to the Germany border and are starting to notice differences in houses and faces. Today was a nice short day, only about 45 km and we’ve finished early enough to finally be able to catch up on the BLOG.

We are absolutely bushed, tired, trashed, bleeding from our ears: but after finally getting ahold of Internet in our once a week hotel extravagance, we had a chance to read some of your comments and we felt like we should at least make an effort to say something before succumbing to sleep.

We are having a great trip so far! The Rotary Club came through for us again in Dole, France. We were split up into two different houses: Walter, Troy, Lucas and Heather stayed in the old, castle-like home of Andre and Annie – built and still maintained as a home from 1774!!

It was across the canal from Louis Pasteur’s house, which we visited the next day (Louis invented pasteurisation!). Our hosts were very entertaining. Andre invented the first PVC Gnome and the first non-exploding gas tank (tres impressive), now used in all cars!

We were taken to the home hosting the rest of us for a large dinner at the home of Annie Number 2 and her husband, Etienne. We proceeded to have one of the longest, most elaborate meals I personally have ever had: we started with liver pate, then ham and pea rolls, wine from Andre’s brother’s estate and, of course, bread. Then the BBQ’d sausages were brought in, and more peas and ham, more wine, more bread. I was absolutely stuffed by this point, but no! Now comes the main course – BBQ’d pork and shredded carrots, more wine, more bread, then MORE freaking pork!

THEN? the cheese platter, BEFORE dessert, which was fruit flan and peaches and more wine.

While Walter wavered in his seat, trying to focus on anything besides his wine glass, the rest of us tried to fit more food in already packed stomachs.

The next morning after again stuffing ourselves with croissants and homemade plum jam and after visiting Louis’ house, we went back to the house where the press met us for pictures and a brief interview.

That afternoon after barely a few kms of riding, we stopped for lunch at the house of a friend of Andre and Annie’s, where we were treated to a giant lunch, with more wine, more bread and surprise gifts from Annie Number 2 – t-shirts, jumpers (sweaters for us Canadians) and a special box of french perfume for me. I always thought I was the best smelling of us all, but maybe the boys dropped a hint?

These host stays are incredible – we are really treated like kings (and one queen)!

Yesterday was a fantastic day of 90km of flat-ish biking along the canal. We had a lane mostly the whole way along the river and are sunburned and exhausted. For dinner, we ate frogs legs and escargots in a fancy restaurant that we even showered for.

Please keep your comments coming Our regrets are that we cannot get to internet as easily as we thought and are a little curious as to how that might affect our communication in some of the Eastern countries. Anyway, know that we are very happy with our progress and are happy with each other’s company (so far!) and are thinking of you all

Bye for now…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Here is a quick word from Walter: I started the ride on oral antibiotics, started ten days before the flight to Europe and continued till a day or two into the ride (a good two weeks+). I then changed to nebulised antibiotics for a while. Now I am just on the usual vitamins, glucosamine/chondroiton, Pulmozyne, decongestants etc. Doing a fair bit of coughing on all hills and the first 1-2 hours of each day.

One of our daily battles is keeping medicine chilled. We use hotel fridges, campsite fridges, refreeze our ice-blocks… And we have a small car fridge for pulmozyne and antibiotics.

Something above my left knee started hurting lots after a few days of hard riding, which made my leg very stiff. Now I am taking some aspirin in the mornings, and it is slowly going away. I am the slowest rider on the trip, but that was to be expected! Also, app art from David, I am the only one riding every day!

Tomorrow we leave France and enter Switzerland. We will have an unscheduled rest day there, but will catch up to our schedule shortly thereafter.

We miss our good gear from our lost luggage very much. My GPS navigator PDA is a painful loss, we might have to replace it soon before we leave civilisation. David’s Garmin GPS is doing well, but the support car has nothing to locate us with.

The great Patagonia outdoor gear that was in our luggage would have made life much better too, we miss that lots. David got his luggage, so he has his! The clothing I bought in a hurry is mostly misfitting and uncomfortable, especially the sleeping bags. But once you are riding and on the bike everything is perfect, ills or no hills, tail or head wind no matter!

That’s enough from me, back to Heather!

For those who can read Dutch!

We are having a rest day in Basel! It gave me an opportunity to try and contact British Airways again. They are impossible to reach. I blasted off an angry email to them saying we will take legal action when we come home. We are now dealing with cheap gear issues (such as broken tent pole etc) and we are close to purchasing another navigator and portable hard drive to replace the lost equipment. I am particularly annoyed at having lost the 9 Lions Club flags we had for exchange with Lions Clubs along the way. It would be a great excuse to call them and receive the extra publicity.

In Basel we did find the guide books we had and replaced them again, so at least we wont be led up the wrong mountain path! Basel appeared to be open for business (France seemed to be on hoilidays during July/August with streets deserted and shops shut).

And here is the Dutch article!

Coughing blood is something that does not sound nice, but really it is to be expected with all the coughing I do. Normally I do not cough up blood, but when I hit polluted areas, like 2 hours in a smokey internet cafe, and then riding into the European Chemical Castle of Europe; Basel, Switzerland. So I got David a little worried. It does look worrying.

Anyway, it is a rest day today, we are just lounging in an old fashioned looking dining room of a Hotel de l’Europe in St Louis, bordering the swiss part of Basel. Basel is right on the French border, and the french side, StLouis is cheaper and less ‘city’. I did some extra nebulisations with hypotonic saline and ventolin, and I am back to normal status quo. Did the laundry in a laundramat as well today, a huge load for three. The cottons we had took forever to dry. Getting coins was next to impossible as everything appears to be shut and the laundramat is unattended. But this chore is done! Met a lovely IT lady there with a broken wrist who entertained me as I waited. The french people really are very friendly.

Tonight we will wonder into Basel for a cheese fondue! Although we are staying in France, this is our last night in Switzerland! Confused? Don’t worry, we are too. Too add to the complication, Switzerland is not part of the European Union and we need Swiss Francs there! This was Walter reporting from the dining room and it is over to Heather in the studio again.

Say it, don’t spray it

Walter’s feeling rather fit these days….

Day 11
710km

Rest day in St.Louis, France/Switzerland

Today we have the luxury of doing nothing, however, we are managing to keep quite busy, what with eating, laundry, eating, emailing, eating, drinking…as you can imagine, life’s tough.

We arrived here in Basel, Switzerland, which is somehow St.Loius, France, depending on what side on the line you’re standing on 2 km up the road from our hotel. We only had to ride 37km yesterday and arrived in the city around noon with lots of time on our hands.

The ride yesterday was an easy 37 km of relatively easy up and down. We went through about 6 towns in about a 15 km distance – seems everyone likes to be an individual municipality. Some of the names of the towns have more syllables in them than the town has inhabitants. Sometimes I feel like Walter must – trying to pronounce some of the names of these places is like clearing phlegm from your throat; you can practically see the wet SPLAT at the end of the word.

Yesterday evening, we were to meet my cousin, Alison, now living in Nschnekinbergschnoff-nikopff or somewhere (sorry, can’t quite grab the concept of Swiss pronunciation yet), in downtown Basel around 7pm. She found us having our 17th drink of the evening in the 14th bar after about 6 hours spent roaming around the city. It appears that France is closed for the summer and to venture over into Switzerland proved less irritating – everything was open and there were actually people around!

One thing that’s quite annoying here in Europe is smokers. Everywhere. You are hard-pressed to find a non-smoking establishment. We spent a few hours in a Turkish internet Cafe two days ago and sadly saw it’s effects on Walter. He was coughing much more and even noticed some blood. Nothing a little rest day hasn’t seemed to fix.

The other night in the campground, we had a visit from a nice English family who wandered over to offer us a donation. The man himself suffered from Asthma and was quite interested in our ride. These are always appreciated gestures and we thank everyone donating on-line as well!

The Australian Cycling Magazine (Australian Cyclist) on the news stands now has featured Walter as one of the 20 faces of Australian cycling.

Introducing 20 of Australian Cyclist’s most interesting, inspiring, and intriguing cyclists, 2007

http://www.australiancyclist.com.au/edition.aspx?cid=44

The article is not yet avalible on line but it wil be eventually! Those of you from overseas will not reccognize the names on the list but the Australians certainly will. The list even includes members of the federal government, Tony Abbott federal minister for Health and Aging.

My husband continues to impress, inspire and enlighten and I love him for all his effort…and I miss him too!

Katherine

Day 14
921km
?, Germany

We had a gorgeous ride today! Sadly, Walter and I are barely awake here at the internet cafe and neither of us remembers the name of the town we are staying in. Sigmaringen is where we are going our internet, which is the city 8km from our hostel.
Nor did I remember to bring my USB port to transfer some photos for you all….sorry about that, but hopefully we’ll get some to you soon.

The last 4 or 5 days, it has been raining and we are consistently wet, but it doesn’t seem to be too cold, so we aren’t too badly off. Well, I guess we should be honest – Walter is feeling it. He had little energy today and feels like his lungs are having hard time keeping up. Our chilly, wet night spent in a crapy, overpriced campground last night didn’t help liven our moods much.

Tonight we have splurged on beds in a gausthaus, sort of like a bed & breakfast, which are popping up everywhere, now that we are on a very popular bike route following the Danou River.

This has been the most scenic part yet! Giant old castle-like mansions perched on cliff tops; beautiful green pastures with sheep; fingers of rock pushing up through green farmers fields….the going was fairly flat today, as we are usually blessed with whilst riding along river valleys. But not the last two days – oh no! Extreme uphill, anyone? Day 12 was the longest stretch (20 plus km) of straight uphill as we left the low-lands of Switzerland and headed into Germany. That day was hard and mostly in the rain. We are toughening up at times, but then it all seems to go to hell and we whine and whimper and complain. But I think I speak for all of us when I say that we have been having a great time, are seeing lots of beautiful scenery and smiling faces.

I will try to send photos for this BLOG ASAP.