Starting my tour
The Skatalites in Cologne
My bicycle ride today is about 100 km from Neuchâtel to Mirebel
The Skatalites played at the Fiesta Caribe in Cologne
My bicycle ride from Neuchâtel to Mirebel on the map today looks like this:
That same night The Skatalites played at the Fiesta Caribe in Cologne at the Tanzbrunnen. Looks like it is still a wonderful venue:
They booked the Hotel Altea – Severinshof to stay overnight:
I stood up at 8 AM (do you remember, I went to sleep at 4 AM last night). I drank a part of my yoghurt. Then I left Alains place, before anybody else stood up. I gave him a tape with some rare Skatalites tunes on cassette to say “Thank you Alain!”
I took the first road direction west. That first part of the tour was upwards. It is a beautiful plateau called Jura (wikipedia). I enjoyed the complete freedom on my way to the Skatalites. I didn’t made a real plan. I just knew, that the band will play in Saint-Nazaire on 22 and 23 and the way is about 800 km. So I only had to drive about 100 km a day. Easy going I thought. After a few kilometers three bicycle racers overtook me. So I took their back wheel and was quite fast in their wind shadow. But when they took another way, I was all alone again. I took my first rest. Holy shit, I had a big mess in my luggage. The rest of the yoghurt I didn’t take in the morning was messed up the rest. Luckily only the mess was only in my food bag. But it took some time to clean up anyway. Later that day, I followed a special bicycle road, but after a while I went into a dead end. I mean the dead end was a big stairs upwards. Because the bicycle was too heavy to carry, I un-packed the luggage and went several times up- and downstairs. Finally I re-packed the bicycle. Still I was inside nowhere. I had to cross a big meadow upwards. It was heavy, ugly and not really necessary to do this, but what was my chance? After a while I’ve found the road again. Then I prepared myself to take a rest for the night. That was the moment, I’ve realized, that I forgot my bag with the food. I left my bicycle and the luggage behind and went back to the stairs at the dead end. Right on the way, there was my bag with the food. Lucky me. I felt asleep right on the field only in my sleeping bag (a Swiss military bag, not really ideal for a trip like that, but rude enough).
