So a synopsis of the last few days is in order. I've settled into the Ferienwohnung, gotten over my cold and started up a new routine. Basically my days have resembled something like this:
8:30 Get up sluggishly and try to summon up the energy to go for a run
8:35 Go back to bed
8:50 Go for a very slow run
9:40 Eat an enormous breakfast
11:00 Ride up to Kniebis
1:00 Strap the skis on and do a few laps
5:00 Ride home, braving the horrible cycling conditions
6:00 Cook and eat dinner
6:30 Play on the internet
10:00 Go for a sluggish run
11:30 Bed
I haven't made it sound very exciting, have I? To add a bit of flavour, let me describe to you in detail how that plan turned out in reality yesterday.
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Sunrise (or at least the presence of some light - the sun was blocked completely by the white skies) woke me up at eight am. I was feeling surprisingly energetic and got my running things on much faster than usual. Stepping out the door, I was nearly bowled over by an incredibly powerful gust of wind. It was like running in a dream: my legs were moving, but I wasn't going anywhere fast and my demons were right on my shoulder. My cap got blown off a few times, and my face was soon freezing from the wind chill and the stinging rain. I was very glad when I reached the turn-around point and enjoyed a large, wind assisted negative split.
A sensible person would have realised that those kind of conditions were not at all suitable for riding a bike in, but I am a very proud member of the website CrazyGuyOnABike.com and as such am far from sensible. Setting off, I nearly fell off the bike when a horrible cross gust caught me and pushed me right off the shoulder and carried me backwards for some five metres before I got my foot on the ground. This definitely wasn't good weather for riding! Thoughts of taking the train entered my mind, but that would be giving up and I never give up!
It was a bit better once I built some speed up, but I was still a bit worried about getting blown sideways into the path of a well-built German automobile. A friend had told me about an alternate road to Kniebis that no-one drives on anymore. It sounded ideal for today, so I went to the tourist office in Baiersbronn to ask for directions. While waiting in line, I scanned the weather report on the pinboard. "Hurricane force winds are expected with the possibility of a blizzard later in the day" *Gulp*
I told the woman at the counter what I was after, and after asking me whether I was crazy (not quite in those words, but that was the connotation), she told me that if I followed Sankenbachstrasse, I would eventually end up at Kniebis.
Righteo! Gathering all my willpower, I stepped out into the tempest once again, found Sankenbachstrasse and pedalled away. The road was quite steep, and soon I was high enough that the stinging rain was replaced with stinging pellets of snow and ice. It was a bit better than it was lower down though because the road was flanked by snow dusted Fir trees, which absorbed the worst of the cruel weather. Climbing, climbing, chain on the lowest ring, I spotted a sign telling me Kniebis was only six km away. Great, not only was the road less trafficked, it was also a big shortcut.
After a while, I got high enough that the snow from previous storms was still coating the road. This was my first time riding on snow and I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I just pretended it wasn't there and kept riding like normal. It actually worked quite well. The tyres didn't lose traction and I remained upright..for a while. A big snow drift sent the bike slipping out from under me and I found myself on the ground with one foot still clipped into the pedals. No harm done, it was of course a soft landing. I picked myself up, walked through the drift and hopped back on, keeping my cleats well away from the locking position on the pedals. For about 200m, I was able to keep on riding, but after that there was simply too much snow and I couldn't ride anymore. Time to walk I guessed. Trying to push away the thoughts of what would happen if I got lost here on a road that no-one would drive up for at least a few days (that's how old the one set of tyre tracks looked), I trudged onwards. My shoes and socks were soon sopping wet, but I wasn't at all cold, having rugged up pretty well.
It was a very beautiful path. If I had the choice of where to be stuck with a bike I couldn't ride, in sub zero temperatures, with snow smacking into me constantly, driven by a nasty wind, it would definitely be here. The views down into the valley were breathtaking. Naught could be seen but the wide expanse of forest. It wasn't really wilderness, but it felt like it.
Eventually the road plateaued and I was able to ride again. According to my cyclometer, I was only two km or so away from where the sign suggested Kniebis would be and thankfully I was able to ride the whole distance. It felt a bit strange emerging into the clearing and seeing buildings and cars again. I rode carefully through the town and past a line of trucks, which had all stopped to put chains on their tyres. They were almost blocking the entire road and seemed in no hurry to get moving again. I squeezed past and after losing traction again, walked the last few hundred metres to the ski stadium.
There was no-one there. One car was parked in the carpark, but knocking on the door of both the Hütte and the ski hire shop yielded no response. Damn... I really needed to do some skiing to warm up. Despite three layers of water proof material, I was wet to the bone and if I had to ride back down the mountain, I was going to get verry cold. I could see why they'd decided not to man the station today: the snow was swirling around in a very unfriendly manner that would have made skiing very unpleasant to say the least.
Sighing, I got back on my bike and gingerly set off down the road. Some school kids were waiting for the bus and encouraged me with yells of 'Hopp! Hopp! Hopp!'. I slipped off the bike about fifty metres later and they stopped cheering.. This didn't feel safe at all. I didn't want to ride down in these conditions, but the snow showed no sign of abating, so I didn't really have a choice.
Within the space of a kilometre, I went sprawling another three times. A police car driving up, presumably to sort out the mess the trucks were making of the road, stopped adjacent to me and a policeman yelled something at me when I told him I wanted to go to Freudenstadt. The wind blew away his reply (which judging by the gestures, was something along the lines of 'You're not allowed to'), so I shrugged and kept going.
Hugging the brakes, I tried to descend carefully, but every time a cross gust came along, I'd be blown off balance and hit the ground. Normally I'd be riding down at 40kph, but I didn't feel safe going even 10kph. After one particularly nasty fall, I decided to just walk down. It was still a good six km to Freudenstadt, so I wasn't too keen about that idea, but it just felt too unsafe to ride. Secretly I was hoping that one of the station wagons going past would stop and take me down. If I walked the whole way, I was going to put myself in danger of hypothermia, but I was still too proud to stick out my thumb for a lift.
After about a km, a snow plough came past and made the road a bit safer. I told myself to harden up and got back on the bike and rode in the middle of the road back to Freudenstadt without incident. It was the most painful five km of my life. My hands were so painfully cold that I almost couldn't grip the brakes.
There was no way I was going to ride back to Klostereichenbach. I decided to do what I should have done all along and take the train back. First though, I sought refuge in a supermarket, where I knew it would be warm. For about five minutes, I kept my head bowed, trying to conceal the tears as the exquisite pain of blood returning to my fingers tormented me. Suitably weighed down with provisions, I walked over to the train station. I'd missed the last one by a few minutes, so had to wait in the unheated room for an hour until the three o'clock service came gliding down the rails.
The first thing I did when I got home was have a long, hot shower. It would be impossible to describe how good it felt...
I made a vow to never again ride my bike up to Kniebis unless the weather report predicts sun and blue skies and all the snow has melted. Immediately I felt much better about my time here. I'd been counting down the days til I leave, which is a sure sign that I'm not enjoying myself too much. Removing the stress of riding in unsuitable conditions should bring back the fun I think. It's a bit ironic that I was beginning to hate the snow considering how much I love cross country skiing.
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