Reaching Prague

The ride to Prague was relaxed, plenty of time and uneventful being a gentle 60 kms either flat-ish or down. I followed R3 most of the way on good roads and paths, although the final bit being the A1 variant into the city centre one of those common events of seeing the daggy bits of great cities first.

So a bit of a status update after day 17 of the intended 84:

• no Egyptian fenugreek in the salads so still healthy
• the niggling left knee damaged in training not quite right, except on the bike when it is near flawless
• the new tubus lowrider front pannier racks, found at the 8th bike shop in Nurnberg, are great as they are, and will be greater if I could have half and hour in someone's fully equipped shed. With a few kg moved to the front, against the advice of John Kennedy, the resonant frequency of the bike has increased, the centre of gravity moved further forward so the front tyre does a bit of work, and overall handling much improved
• got back in the rythym of using the Garmin GPS 60CSx in conjunction with maps, and looking. The technique in these eastern block countries where the map data is a bit light on requires some change. Noticeably, the auto routing function occasionally mimics the notable story of the BMW owner who was so pleased with the new toy he followed his GPS advice blindly over a cliff.
• all the other bits ok but 1 or 2 might be sacrificed on the theory of no free rides on this trip
• a reader has asked for some clarification on the ABC. They are in fact a sub-group of GORM which is not anarchic, but a fully authoritarian and highly structured group, with the ABC comprising more than half of GORM membership. If this is not clear, some explanation: initially you might have thought that "half" was a precise term, and "more than" a vague indicative expression. However as you will now know quite the reverse applies. As we are clearly only talking about all real numbers in the range 0 to 1, and from a previous post "half" includes all numbers between 0 and 1, then simply "more than" can only be equal to 1 or "all of" and is thus a precise term.

Now there is Prague to see next - the city of endless beauty and endless repetitive fast food stalls all only selling about 4 different foods, and the youth on endless pub crawls where beauty is not a criterion.

Here for 3 days and 4 nights, then north to Dresden, Berlin, then west all the way to Aachen, then a re-assessment of the weather.