Now, about last Saturday

I was going to update this sooner but I unexpectedly lost internet last night.

So, Saturday. I'll try to relay this without sounding too much like Jeff's blog.

Jeff and I got a later start Saturday than planned, but the wonderful thing about living this far north during the summer is the nearly infinite sunlight, so starting a trip at 2:00 still leaves hours and hours before dark. We started at my apartment, or rather a bakery near my apartment to buy brötchen for sandwiches, like you do, and assembled these sandwiches at my apartment before setting out. On the wrong road, actually, but the mistake was quickly caught and fixed.

Happily, reaching the Elbe proved not to be very difficult, despite the fact that it required riding off my map and into (presumably) unchartered area. We were immediately presented with a lovely view of wide, open fields and an innocent bike path and other bikers riding without helmets. I'll provide it now for illustration.The sky was kind of grayish-overcast, not lovely Athens-blue, but this made very nice weather for bike-riding.

It wasn't long before we came across a beautiful old windmill across a field of tall grass. We rejoiced in its blatant European-ness in the only manner appropriate: we decided to frolic. In cases where the English language allows so few opportunities to employ a verb, these opportunities must be grasped when they arise. (Still waiting for a chance to use "to defenestrate.") See Jeff's blog for illustration.


The windmill itself, which I have included here in an imposing, artsy view, was further cause for celebration by everyone, not just English verb enthusiasts. We celebrated the windmill by eating the first (and, for me, last) set of the six sandwiches we'd prepared. The Germans had already celebrated by establishing a biergarten there. Complete with ice cream.

But we passed up the usual temptations and continued on our journey, which presented many more lovely views, several of which included those flowers you make opium with (as described by my mentor Matthias when I showed him the pictures) (hey, "poppy" isn't a word they teach you in school) and several of which included cute little German towns and accompanying biergartens.



I remember (now, as I revel in the ability to remember Saturday) coming across spray-painted signs for Trinkwasser ahead, and sure enough the arrows led us to an interesting water fountain, which Jeff models for us here on the right. Check out that helmet. He's smart.

And that's the end of the pictures, folks.

About an hour ? further down the road-- we'd just come around this spectacular cliff-face-- something went very wrong and I ended up on the ground in a fantastic amount of pain. Somebody made me sit up, I suppose it was Jeff, and I vaguely remember various Germans stopping and asking questions...

Amnesia is not fun, but in case you've never tried it yourself (and I don't recommend it) I'll try to describe my version. I knew I was somewhere along the Elbe, I knew we were planning on going to Meissen, and that was it. I had no idea where on the Elbe we were or how long we'd been going. It was very similar to waking up from a dream, and knowing you dreamt something, and trying very hard to hold on to the images from the dream, in no particular order, before you forget them. Jeff asked me if I remembered the robot water fountain, and I didn't, and then I did very vaguely, and I didn't believe it was real. And as to what happened during the accident itself, I was coming up completely blank.

I had placed the cell phone I'd bought the day before "just in case" in my left pocket, and it was pretty much destroyed in the fall. But other people had cell phones, someone called an ambulance eventually, I didn't even realize that-- to me it just appeared out of no where-- and thank God I'd placed my passport and a list of phone numbers in a pocket in my bag that I could remember and access. I also had enough sense to direct Jeff to take my map when they wouldn't let him come in the ambulance with us.

I remember thinking one of the ambulance guys was cute.

And so this started my two-night stay in a German hospital, which was not exciting. My roommates and my mentor all met me at the hospital and helped translate, which was very nice. By Saturday evening (I think, mostly I just slept) most of the memories of Saturday-day had returned.

And Sunday afternoon the first hint of why I'd spontaneously fallen off the bike floated into my head: I remembered my feet slipping off the pedals and starting to lose control of the bike. It wasn't until a few days later that I put together why this would cause me to fall so badly, thanks to an observation of Jared's, of course-- the back-pedal braking that I described in my first post. At home I don't spontaneously fall off the English bike(s) at full speed because I have handle brakes so if something goes wrong I can slow down the bike with my hands and not impact the cement at 15km/hr. Aha.

Which brings us basically up to speed with today, since I have rather literally not been doing anything for a week. And now I think all this writing calls for a nap.