Introduction to Blog, mostly about Bikes.

I've never had a blog before.

I'm not doing this correctly, since I've already been in Dresden for nearly three weeks and I'm not going to make much of an attempt to fill in. But for the past week I've been lying in bed with a neck brace, a cold cloth on my head, and a hideous-looking shoulder, playing poster child for bike helmet safety campaigns, and despite doctor's orders not to think for a week I've been reading other people's travel blogs and considering trying my hand at this slightly more objective and wider-audience writing. Jeff, another American on the same internship program here at TU Dresden, has set a wonderful precedent, which I'd recommend if you'd like some backstory, though I suppose I'm at least required to present my own side of this weekend's fun. The rest will come without proper introduction, more like one of those novels where you jump into the setting and you gather information about characters and places as you go. I always wanted to write one of those anyway.

But first,
An exposition on my love of bikes.
(I can do this. It's my blog. Muhaha.)

Last summer, as I'm sure everyone who would bother to read this blog knows, I spent five weeks in Darmstadt, Germany for a beginners' language class. I lived with a wonderful host family in the northern part of Darmstadt who presented me with a bike the minute I arrived at the house. I was delighted to discover I had not forgotten how to ride the thing in the six years since I'd last used my own, and after several weeks I was in love with bikes and bike transportation and convinced that I needed to continue this habit back at school in Athens.

This is relevant, I promise.

It was easier to buy a new one in Athens than transport the old one from Mandeville, so I waltzed into a bike shop downtown and asked the guy behind the counter if he knew where I could find a pretty vintage bike like that one that guy just brought in, and he just happened to have a gorgeous blue 35-yr-old English Triumph that he'd sell me for $50 if I didn't mind riding a single-speed. Since I grew up riding bikes in flat Louisiana I never really understood what multiple speeds were for, so I happily agreed, and bought it off him cash. Eventually I learned how to ride it up Athens' plentiful hills and thought myself pretty cool indeed.

AND SO when I arrived in Dresden I was determined to have a bike, a determination made necessity by the fact that the tram system is tragically not free for me since I am not a student this summer. I made a heartfelt effort at trying to find where I could buy a second-hand bike, in the process discovering this GDR-era line of bikes called Diamant. Jeff's mentor Reimund was able to give me advice on where to find old bikes and mentioned that he had an old one-speed Diamant in his basement that I could borrow for the summer-- exactly what I wanted. So last Wednesday Reimund fixed it up for me, lowered the seat, filled the tires, and I was set.



Making great strides with this Blogger program, after three tries I have inserted a picture of Bike into the blog at the appropriate place. An interesting perk of the fact that Bike was made during the GDR-era is that the fenders and the spokes are actually aluminum. Thankfully, Bike was designed to handle the rough roads found throughout Dresden. The best comparison I can use to describe this rattling indestructibility is that it gives one the sensation of driving a tank. From this angle you only barely see the misleading "Oh Shit" front brake handle on the right. It doesn't work. You have to rely entirely on the back brakes, which work by back-pedaling. This is important.

I rode Bike to work and around town the next two days, and then, convinced that Bike and I had reached some sort of peaceful mutual understanding, planned a bike trip with Jeff along the Elbe to Meissen. It was going to be epic, and it was, in all the wrong ways.

Saturday, absolutely the last notable thing I could write about

Dammit, I spent too long writing about Bike that I need to take a break because I've overclocked my brain. This is the problem with head injuries. So I'll leave it as a cliff-hanger for now, but just in case you're worried I'll give away the ending: Emily doesn't die, she just gets a concussion, has to take a week-long break from Life, and decides to start a blog.