04 July 2008

The Home Stretch

We left Passau for Munich, a couple of hundred kilometers away. Munich was the end of the organized trip, thank God! But only a few kilometers out of Passau, we hit trouble--TJ pulls over, and his bike is, uh, fecked:
His sprocket had gotten pretty worn down, but he had decided to make it into Munich before having it fixed. With hindsight, a bad call! We waited around a couple of hours until someone came with a trailer to pick up TJ and his bike, and then headed into Munich. We didn't know it, but we wouldn't see TJ again, very sad, only a couple of hours from the end of the trip!!
I had a lot to do once we got into Munich, such as make flight plans, buy a camera, and of course:
Unfortunately, it was either raining or about to rain the whole time we were in Munich, so we didn't make it to one of my favorite places in the whole world: the Chinese Pagoda in the English Gardens. Very disappointing!

Actually, we had to have our bikes serviced in Munich as well, here he is:

After a few days in Munich we left for Garmisch, were there was the big annual BMW rally. We had heard the whole trip what a great time this was, but the Organizers dropped the ball and we had to stay in a hotel 25 km away, which made me lose almost all interest. Here's a shot of this rather limp event:
We were supposed to stay in Garmisch for two nights, but I was so bored after one night I decided to leave a day early. I agreed with Stuart that we would meet up somewhere in France in a couple of days. TJ was still MIA, although apparently his bike was fixed.

On the morning of July 5 I headed out on my own for the first time since Seattle, kind of a nice feeling. Next stop: Switzerland.

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