Ausflug 39

Our first foray was to use our ebikes to ride South along the beach. The string of villages along the beach, Haffkrug, Sharbeutz, Timmendorfer Strand, and Niendorf, all have a separate bike path or hiker/biker promenade along the beachfront, and they connect into a nice, if unpredictable, bicycle path. The "unpredictable" aspect was partly the twists and turns of the bike path itself, but mostly the sheer unpredictability of the people, kids, and dogs on the path. Curiously, the dogs were most predictable, the children somewhat less predictable, but the adults were the worst of all! Quite typically adults would be walking heedlessly along the "bicycle only" sections of the path, or spreading out into lines four or five abreast to take up the entire width of the beachfront promenade! German bikes are, however, equipped for this in that they have a thumb-operated bell that gives out a sharp, piercing "DING!", and we had to use our bells continuously in some areas so that we could work our way through the press of people. Of necessity we kept our speeds low, just above a walking pace in fact, so that we could wind and wend our way through the gaps in the groups of people.

That process was complicated, however, by the fact that my ebike controller was not working correctly. The German ebikes are "pedalecs" where you choose the amount of electric-motor support you want, and the controller provides it as you pedal, up to a maximum of 15 mph. At least that's the way it's supposed to work, but my bike's controller had defaulted back to being an "all ahead flank" or "completely off" switch, which made fine control quite difficult. I ended up using the motor only when I had a long, empty stretch ahead of me and could easily control the sudden burst of power the motor would give me.

But I felt unsteady and somewhat vulnerable on my bike, and decided then and there that we needed crash helmets. Now every Spring in Germany bicycle crash helmets are on sale in every grocery store for a discount price, but in the Fall season when bikes are being put away for the year, crash helmets are as scarce as hen's teeth. In the end, we found a nice pink floral design for Monika at a Famila food store, and I bought one at the bike shop in Scharbeutz. It was only after we returned to Heinke and Gustl's place at the end of our trip, however, that we learned that we had left a pair of crash helmets there after our bike rides the previous year and really didn't need to buy any new ones! Arrrgh!!

In any case, we ducked, dodged, and wove our way through the crowds down to Timmendorfer Strand. We enjoyed the thatched-roof houses that had been built along one side of the promenade and the relatively empty beach with the beach chairs waiting for the weekend crowd.

At a pier in Niendorf we stopped to have lunch at a Doehner stand, a German Imbiss that specializes in Gyros, and other Greek foods. We ate our lunch at a table right beside the beach overlooking the Luebeck Gulf, and watched the people and dogs on the beach, the waves lapping against the shore, and the gulls flying by. Very relaxing.

After lunch we started to work our way back North, but paused at a curious playground built right into a wharf or pier that ran straight out into the gulf. The playground was a wooden tower shaped roughly like a snail's shell, but with netting inside so that kids could climb up. One way down from the top of the shell was a slide, but on the other side a web of ropes ran along the pier. But in one section they had cut away the floor of the pier and there was just the rope netting for the kid to walk on right above the water! Our granddaughter Rowan would have LOVED that playground, I think! Since I didn't have my grandchildren, I watched other people's grandchildren enjoy that small but very creative playground.

Of course there also was a bench for us older people with a wooden fisherman occupying part of it (looks like he caught a big one!!). Further on people indulged in the typical German pastime of sunbathing (whenever the sun shines and sometimes when it doesn't!) on wooden platforms just meant for this.

We had not ridden bicycles in over a year, so we tired easily and decided to head back North to Haffkrug, stopping off along the way to shop for groceries, rest, and have an ice cream cone in Sharbeutz. While we sat eating our cones beside the bike path, I counted the number of ebikes being ridden past us and found that about 1 out of 10 riders was using an ebike! I later found out that ebikes are a huge market in China, and a big market in Japan, Holland, and Germany. Who knew?//

The electric motors helped us get back to Haffkrug without the "jelly-leg" phenomenon where your legs get so tired from riding that you kind of stagger when you get back off the bike. But still we were happy to get back to our condo, put away the groceries, and put our legs up for the evening.