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Date: 25/3/2019
Location: Berlin
Km ridden: 10

 

It snowed!

Even in this weather, we still kept up with our sport by doing a short session with loads of burpees!  We’re 60-ish, and traveling, what’s your excuse? 😉

Freya drove us to the migration office to get Bjoerns visa extended…  Even though he has the strongest German accent in the family, he was the first Australian. Back when we moved to Australia, he bravely forfeited his German citizenship for an Australian one to give us certainty of residence.  

Luckily we were there at 11:50, so we still got a number. Sitting down we expected to be in and out in no time…however there is lunch… A nice official told us to get some lunch ourselves because we would only be seen after lunch – approximately 1 hour later… We waited in the cafeteria, then it was finally our turn. The actual application went without a hitch once we got in, and we were out in a flash. Now we just need to wait to get the visa.  Aaah, German bureaucracy. A game of patience and waiting. 

Directly after that we met up with Klaus to head to our friend Peters place where Bjoerns bike had spent the year. Being efficient, we employed 3 gps devices: Bjoerns, Sigrids and Klaus’…. all of them leading us up the garden path, almost literally.  We ended up on the wrong side of the Müggelsee.  After a scenic drive around the lake we ended up in a Forrest. For some reason Klaus didn’t want to continue that direction.  Eventually after a couple more turns we managed to find our way out and arrived at Peters place just before dark, about 1.5 hours later than intended.

Unpacking the bike was a great joy, no marks, no rust and with the battery reconnected it started straight away!

Ok by now it started to rain and Bjorn had to ride the bike in the rainy dark to the workshop where we needed to have it inspected for the TÜV: a necessity that needs to be done every 2 years to ascertain the roadworthiness of a vehicle.

Sigrid was worried, but despite her worries all went ok and we dropped off the bike before Klaus drove both of us home.

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Date:21/03/2019
Location: Berlin-Kleinbeeren-Mahlow
KM ridden: 12

 

This morning we got up a bit later. We started with our gym session first in the room, then in the front garden.

Anne, our coach from EFM Flinders Park arranged a program for us we could follow when on the road.

 

Additionally we had started a new thing to stay healthy. A “5/2” health plan: 5 day normal eating, 2 days of diet where we eat only 500 cals a day.
Fasting day today! So we had muesli for breakfast…

We got the bike ready for the first outing and started to drive to Klaus.

One Proud Biker

After only a couple of meters a warning light turned on indicating that the back tyre did not have enough pressure. We stopped at the next petrol stations to pump up the tyres. What we didn’t remember was that the tyre pressure in Germany is measured in Bar not PSI so we pumped them up to a nominal value. We quickly noticed a second issue: the GPS wasn’t getting charged by the battery.

When we arrived at Klaus’s house, he was working on his Polo to get it ready for “TÜV”: A mandatory bi-annual vehicle safety inspection. As he was working, Bjoern took a look at the GPS issue. Seemed that the clamps had come loose, so he removed all clamps and soldered the contacts. While he was at is he re-wired the Spot tracker to the battery (The thing that makes our Map go and tells our family we’re okay) and closed the bike up.

In the evening we went back to Freyas and had fish for dinner, finishing off our fasting day.