It may be yesterday's news, but I hope this is interesting to one or two of you.
This time, on one of the last days of the fall, Pirate-in-training Guido and I took it upon ourselves to survey our homeland, or at least a part of it.

The Oden Forrest, to be exact. According to official data, the Oden Forrest covers almost exactly 154186 acres/62.397 ha. You can believe it, but you don't have to and so we were off to inspect what trusting standard-citizens take for granted.

We left Seeheim, about 9.3m/15km from Darmstadt, at around 8am. We rolled out on time and took the B3 south towards Heidelberg. Rolling is supposed to have to do with roundness, evenness and silence. My gear shift did not. It clattered and rattled and made a deafening racket. I didn't mind too much, since it was my winter bike, my asphalt whore and uninspiring all-weather-bicycle. Guido, on the other hand, got pretty pissed off, which quickly led to him stopping to adjust my gear shift. Just a little while later, it was time for stop number two. This time due to the sudden loss of air pressure in my back tire. So, I changed my tube and off we went. Luckily these two interruptions of a technical nature were the last on the long lap around the Oden Forrest.

We followed along the Neckar east, in the direction of Eberbach, once we reached Heidelberg. We continued passed Hesseneck - the only long ascent of the route - where we turned north towards Amorbach.

In Amorbach - after about half of the trip, our empty carbohydrate-stores were filled and we continued to follow the Main north to Aschaffenburg, where we turned east towards Darmstadt.

At around 5:30pm, we arrived at our point of origin after 155m/250km and were proudly able to proclaim that the official data is correct. Carry on gentlemen!!

Andreas