Heimbach to Altenahr

Route: Heimbach to Altenahr via Mechernich, Euskirchen and Bad Munstereifel
Distance: about 70 km

So, breaking spokes is just a normal part of life now. I woke up to a cloud covered morning sky next to my little meandering river. The clouds had held in the heat of the day, and I overslept comfy and warm in the sleeping bag for a change. Getting up, I just didn’t want to leave, but I knew I had to. A rest is fine, three days in one place isn’t a rest, its lack of motivation.
Somberly putting my gear into the bags, and checking over the bike I noticed that another spoke had gone sometime during my wandering around Heimbach and associated trails. That was two new spokes that I needed to replace. I was going to have to find a bike shop, and this meant going to a city. Also, while shaking out the tent, one of the main poles snapped. Duct tape to the rescue again, I hope. Once the pole breaks, it’s kind of hard to set up the tent!
I’m know that grandpa wanted to come home the entire war, based on his letters, but his prose definitely became more terse and to the point after the Battle of the Bulge. He is no longer full of boyish sayings like “in the last fracas the old boy got the silver star”. I’ll find some better quotes, but he is very tired of being in the war at this point. I think all the men were to some extent.
I am tired of being on the road and that is certain. Tomorrow marks my one month anniversary since leaving New York. That’s four long weeks away from Becky and home, three on the bike, and I’ve got two more ahead of me. She joked about me coming home early and Lord knows I would love to. I can’t help but feel, however, that if I did that, the story would only ¾ done, and I will have missed the end. So, just as the war wasn’t over in March 1945, I’m not done here and I will see it through.
Even though it was apparent that Germany was going to loose after the Bulge, they didn’t give up, and the war dragged on for three more months. They fought a defensive holding action all the way back to the Rhine River, and grandpas unit, after resting and training new replacements, went into the attack south of Bonn centered around a town called Ippendorf.
The Germans were trying desperately to maintain a bridgehead on the west side of the Rhine as an escape route for troops left behind after the Bulge, and as a jumping off point for another offensive that Hitler was planning. Contrary to popular belief, a large German army remained in the Ruhr Pocket, and they were a force to be reckoned with.
Meanwhile, the Allies were trying staging troops and equipment for an assault across the Rhine to the north of the Ruhr. This was to be the final offensive of the war. If they could get across the river, only the smaller Elbe River stood between them and Berlin. The end was in sight, but it wasn’t done yet.
While grandpa was busy fighting to take Ippendorf and close the German salient west of the river, a sudden breakthrough came to the south. Elements of the 3rd Armored Division, under standing orders to take any intact bridge they could across the river, found one by shear luck at Remagen. The now famous Luddendorf Railway Bridge was taken intact by a platoon of Armored Infantry on the run. During the assault, the frantic Germans blew explosives which had been mounted to the bridge in an attempt to destroy it, and as many Americans with it as they could.
As soon as the Americans had crossed the bridge however, teams of combat engineers had gone to work disarming the explosives to the effect that, when they were detonated, they failed to fully destroy the bridge. While the engineers started to reinforce the damaged bridge, under a hail of machine gun, mortar, artillery, and last ditch Luftwaffe air raids, the 3rd Armored moved all of their heavy armor across as fast as possible, and a small, but defensible bridgehead on the east of Rhine had been established.
Upon hearing this news, the US 1rst Army starting putting as many units as they could across the damaged bridge while engineers built pontoon bridges to the north and south of the Luddendorf. All of this was done under heavy enemy fire, and some artillery units from the 7th armored were called into action defending the airspace around the bridge. Finally, the bridge collapsed, taking a lot of American lives with it. By then, however, the damage was done, and we were firmly across the Rhine.
Grandpas unit was called south to cross during the mad rush to get a bridgehead established, and breakout of the geographic confines around the east bank at Remagen. The 48th crossed the Rhine on March 24, 1945. I’m not as yet sure exactly how, but most likely on a Baily pontoon bridge. They then attacked east through the bridgehead, and spearheaded the allied advance into the heart of Germany.
My route will actually be the reverse due to the fact there are no bridges left at Remagen. I’ll go to Remagen, and work my way north up to Bonn, cross there and come back down south to visit some of the towns that the 48th took on their advance. I may let myself have the luxury of a hotel room in Bonn, we’ll see! Internet, showers, and clean clothes. Hmm.
And now for something completely different: I was sitting in my tent last night, contentedly feeding my nerdery by designing the perfect touring bike on some graph paper I had acquired at the market, when my reverie was disturbed by a very loud helicopter flying over. Being an aviation enthusiast to the most embarrassing degree, I find it impossible to not look up at the sky whenever some form of flying machine is present. It’s a conditioned response.
So, I stuck my head out of the tent, and saw a red and yellow painted Bell of some type I didn’t recognize flying directly over the field I was camped at. The site, I should mention, was completely surrounded by forested hills. He was flying over, and getting lower by the minute. Interesting, I thought, as I continued to watch from the apparent safety of my tent.
Suddenly, the whirlybird swung a hard left, and came around on a tight 180 directly over my tent. The pilot popped the door open, and looked down at me. I looked up at him. The whine of the engines, and the downwash from the rotor made me instinctively jump up out of the tent and stare up at this object as it continued to descend rapidly.
It took a while for it to occur to me that I was probably watching an emergency landing in progress. As the helicopter got down to treetop level, it swung out over the little stream in front of my site. With the pilot looking down from the open door like one does when backing up into a tight parking spot, he quickly brought the helicopter down gain to land perfectly in a soccer field filled with children directly across the stream.
I saw a mob of them run screaming from the chopper as the pilot powered down the aircraft. The engine exhaust finally subsided enough for me to hear the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles. That was some damn good flying!
An ambulance came, along with some other vehicles. I couldn’t quite see because the helicopter was blocked from my view by some trees where it had come down. After about 20 minutes, the ambulance drove away, and the chopper powered up and took off, flying along over the hills as if nothing had happened.
After last night’s excitement, the route today, like the weather, was kind of a let down. I thought it was going to rain pretty much all day, I could see the low hanging grey clouds coming from the north. It never did, but as soon as I climbed out of the valley around Heimbach, bidding the amazing castle and little town goodbye on my way, the air turned damp and cold. October is almost here, and the weather is definably changing. The leaves are starting to be blown off the trees, and the farmers of all burning the fields, getting ready for winter.
The increasingly pained sounds coming from the back wheel, along with a noticeable shutter on the rotation told me that I had to get the wheel fixed, and fast, or I would be buying another one. I looked at the map and figured that a town the size of Mechernich should have a bike shop.
Passing from the tall hills covered with trees into the rolling farm land east of the Ruhr, I saw more cows than cyclists and, sure enough, when I arrived in the dumpy looking, graffiti coated town of my hopes, I was told that the only bike shop was in Euskirchen, some 15 km to the north.
I was again not sure if the wheel could make it that far. Well, that and it was 15 km out of the way to the north. That would mean a 30km detour in the middle of the day. Damn. Looking at the wheel, and weighing my options, I could see that going to Euskirchen was my only option.
Grandpa must have suffered from equipment failure all the time. An armored unit was always working its gear to the breaking point. The maintenance crews attacked to each armored division worked around the clock, under combat conditions, to make sure that they tanks and halftracks moved when they were supposed to. Theirs was truly a thankless job, toiling away in a muddy field in the middle of winter to change an engine in a tank. That was real work, but it had to be done. It was just as important as firing a rifle.
Euskirchen, I had been warned by the cute waitress from the café two days ago, was not a place I should go. I think she said, “It is bad there, don’t go.” Now, I live in New York City. I am used to some questionable neighborhoods, but the last thing I want to do is get stuck for a night in some messed up German ghetto.
True to her word, on arrival into this thriving metropolis filled with angry looking men in their 40’s staring at the streets from windows, and graffiti encrusted everything, I felt a little unwelcome in this stronghold. Taking a wrong turn on the bike path, and ending up in a not so great looking patch of woods from which I had to extricate myself by cutting a trail to the nearby highway, I came across a concrete overpass with a swastika spray painted on it.
This symbol, as with all other sayings, songs, related artwork, etc., is forbidden in Germany today. I’ve seen that emblem of hate painted on a thousand walls and in a thousand stalls all over the US, but there is something more palpable and potent about seeing it splattered roughly on a concrete wall under the highway here in the country of its misuse. It is as if the reason for the symbol lays dormant under this veneer of civilization. I turned away from it, and went the other way.
Finding a bike shop, in a crappy part of town, I met Jurgen, a friendly bike guy about my age. He took one look at my wheel, and quickly got to work replacing all my spokes. While he was in the shop, people kept coming into the shop and asking me for help. I felt like I was back at work in New York, and the only reason why I didn’t help out was the language barrier.
I get the sense that the stereotype of all German school kids learning English is really only true in the richer cities. Here in this working class, mostly Turkish, city the kids that came in did not speak a word of English, and to compound this, their parents spoke only Turkish.
Jurgen was running back and forth trying to explain to this one kid over and over again why a used bike was priced the way it was. When the kid bought the bike, and instantly brought it back to complain about the brake lines getting caught on the front reflector, I felt like I was in some German alternate bike universe with Jurgen playing my role. I’m not sure about all of what he said, but their conversation ended with Jurgen pointing to the reflector and saying “Shiza” repeatedly.
After a while, a friend of the shop came in and we chatted for a bit. Then I told them I was from New York, and worked in a shop there. Both of them looked at me funny and asked, “New York and you’re here? Why?” I explained the project and the book.
“Let me show you my bike!” Jurgen’s friend interrupted me. “It’s from New York too! You see?” He pulled out a German made dual suspension mountain bike roughly equivalent to a Specialized Epic.
“Yeah, nice wheels man!” I exclaimed, while Jurgen slowly tightened the new spokes. I was happy to get the service, but I also wanted to get back on the road.
After a few minutes of broken English discussion about Jurgen’s and his buddy’s bikes, the buddy pedaled out of the shop, and Jurgen presented me with a newly spoked rear wheel. I checked the bearings, and had him reset them. I think with all the commotion he just forgot to do it.
With more customers coming in, I told him to go ahead and try to sell some stuff while I set the brakes, and generally checked over the work. I noticed that he tightened the cassette down way too much, and I wanted to see what else he did. I mean, he was a really nice guy, but some mechanics just feel the need to tighten everything down like it had to hold back the vacuum of space.
Back on the road and running as fast as I could, I followed the signs for Bad Munsterereifel, a town surrounding a castle, still surrounded by its ancient walls. Germany has a great bike trail system. It’s not as extensive as The Netherlands, but you can still generally count on bike paths and trails to every major destination. Usually, the main highways ill also have corresponding paved bike paths running alongside them.
They are surprisingly not well marked, however, and more than once I had to double back or run around a little village asking for directions. I do feel now that I’m starting to get the logic behind these little medieval towns. There is, or was once, always a castle or church smack in the center. If the original town wall still exists, there is usually a park around these with a road built into it. If the walls are gone, they are the road. Either way, there is a serpentine road which runs around the center of town. If you get lost, just find the main orbiting road. Pretty easy.
Off of this road, there are several branches which lead in all directions. They are usually marked with the names of the large cities that they run towards. Sometimes, the streets are actually named for the cities that they lead to. In this case, it’s just a matter of riding the orbital road enough times to get used to the signs, and then pick the one with the name that most closely approximates your destination. So far this method has served me pretty well. That and a compass.
Pulling out of Bad Munstereifel, while feeling a pang of guilt for not stopping to check out the intact medieval castle and town, I soon found myself in the longest uphill I’ve yet had. 4 km straight up and gaining probably close to 300 meters. I glanced at my contourless map and surmised that I would be going over a pass at around 540 meters. That’s over 1500 feet up a rock pathway through the woods at the end of the day.
It took all the strength I could muster not to simply pull off to the side and camp in the trees. Back home, that just camping, but here you would get a sizable ticket. The Germans love their forests, and they love them untouched, which is great, but it also means that you end up camping in trailer parks with crappy bathrooms in less than desirable parts of whatever town you’re staying in. Currently, I’m adjacent to a heavily used railroad track and there is a bum rustling in the bushes behind my tent. Charming.
All of my effort was rewarded when I crossed out of the woods, and back onto the open road. Soon a long series of downhill switchbacks opened up before me, and I felt like James Bond swooshing down the narrow windy roads of Europe to the canyon below. My Surly with the bum rear wheel is a far cry from an Austin Martin, but what the hell.
At the bottom, I heard the sweet sound of yet another spoke breaking. Yes! Luckily, before I left Jurgen’s shop, I had him cut 10 extras for me!