Ronny's traveller blog

If you go on a business trip to Hawaii (and the North American East Coast on the way back) and live 250 kilometres away from Frankfurt Airport, why not cycle to the airport instead of taking the train? And while you’re at it, why not go wild camping too? Having experience of long bike rides before, the trip didn’t seem too crazy to me. The bike tour didn’t really improve my CO2 footprint, but the feeling of having achieved something was still good. I didn’t usually have that much luggage when cycling: a lot more clothes, my big hiking backpack, laptop…

However, I noticed the biggest and unexpected benefit on the return trip. I flew back to Frankfurt from Boston overnight, the day of the return flight I had explored Boston on a hired bicycle. I think I was in Frankfurt at 8am, still had to go to the hotel where the bike (and everything I didn’t need in the USA) had been safely stored for the last 3 weeks, then pack everything from the travel backpack into the bike bags, early noon and off I went. And so I cycled on two different continents within 15 hours. It went upstream through the Main and Kinzig valleys, see how far I can get. I spent the night on the watershed to the Fulda valley, the last few meters uphill I noticed that I had slept only on the plane the night before. But on the other hand I didn’t have problems with jet lag, but felt that I could use the time well. I slept great in the tent and felt really good the next morning.