Let the Training Season Begin!!!
Before I begin this post, I would like to quickly sum up the totality of my winter riding experience with this photo:
Snowy, cold, deserted. At least that's how I felt. In all fairness there were other bikers, although now that the sun is out and it's above 10 degrees (50 f), all the fair weather riders are back out - as a side note, they are slow and inconsiderate.
So for the winter season, from about late October to Mid-March (when it was still -10 outside), my final recorded stats are:
Distance: 2156 km
Total time spent being cold on the bike: 114 hours
Number of rides: 208
This includes a fair amount of snow and ice riding. Brrrr. Glad that's in the past, and I won't think about it again until I am somehow surprised by it next year. Also, regarding speed, that is slightly less than my trip to Odessa in about 1/5th of the time. Bleh.
Staying in shape while not biking
I kept myself in shape by a rigorous P90x routine and, when traveling, Insanity. This did not make my neighbors very happy. At all. Most of the P90x days are fairly quiet: pull-ups, push-ups, weight lifting, yoga, stretching. But some, like Plyometrics and Kenpo require jumping and a lot of active motion. This caused several visits from the neighbors, the first one inquiring whether we were having sex. Now I realize the best thing would have been to say yes, but telling the truth angered him even more. So every time we jumped around, he would either come up and yell at us in Turkish or bang on the ceiling with a broom, even though we had agreed upon times that we would not do any jumping. Mylène and I became well-versed in German household noise threshold laws and found ourselves to be within the limits of what we were allowed to do at home - basically meaning that a police call or complaint to the landlord would ultimately not result in any action. But to be considerate neighbors we padded the floor a little more, too.
By doing these exercizes, I felt my strength and stamina increase. These workouts really helped push my physical limits and improve across my whole body.
Onto the Ride!
I organized a ride up to an abandoned Soviet-era missile launching site from the Cold War.
I was alerted to this place by a friend who showed me a BBC article about the site's history. We rode north from Berlin up to Vogelslang, with a good part along the Havelweg bike path which rides directly next to the Havel river. The weather is nice, but spring is still not quite here and all of the trees were still bare.
There was also a town built on the base and we saw the school as well as what looked like a linen factory with industrial washers and dryers. The district heating plant was located right across from the factory and was probably supplied directly with steam. But now the pipes don't look like they could handle that kind of pressure anymore.
The signs and indications on the valves were originally written in Russian. Then there were German signs plastered over the Russian ones.
We only had a limited amount of time before we had to turn around, leaving a large portion of the base unexplored. Perhaps another day.
Ride Summary and Maps
Sorry, had to split the ride in two because I am afraid of data loss if I am unable to restart the GPS (happened to me twice on the last tour).
Snowy, cold, deserted. At least that's how I felt. In all fairness there were other bikers, although now that the sun is out and it's above 10 degrees (50 f), all the fair weather riders are back out - as a side note, they are slow and inconsiderate.
So for the winter season, from about late October to Mid-March (when it was still -10 outside), my final recorded stats are:
Distance: 2156 km
Total time spent being cold on the bike: 114 hours
Number of rides: 208
This includes a fair amount of snow and ice riding. Brrrr. Glad that's in the past, and I won't think about it again until I am somehow surprised by it next year. Also, regarding speed, that is slightly less than my trip to Odessa in about 1/5th of the time. Bleh.
Staying in shape while not biking
I kept myself in shape by a rigorous P90x routine and, when traveling, Insanity. This did not make my neighbors very happy. At all. Most of the P90x days are fairly quiet: pull-ups, push-ups, weight lifting, yoga, stretching. But some, like Plyometrics and Kenpo require jumping and a lot of active motion. This caused several visits from the neighbors, the first one inquiring whether we were having sex. Now I realize the best thing would have been to say yes, but telling the truth angered him even more. So every time we jumped around, he would either come up and yell at us in Turkish or bang on the ceiling with a broom, even though we had agreed upon times that we would not do any jumping. Mylène and I became well-versed in German household noise threshold laws and found ourselves to be within the limits of what we were allowed to do at home - basically meaning that a police call or complaint to the landlord would ultimately not result in any action. But to be considerate neighbors we padded the floor a little more, too.
By doing these exercizes, I felt my strength and stamina increase. These workouts really helped push my physical limits and improve across my whole body.
Onto the Ride!
I organized a ride up to an abandoned Soviet-era missile launching site from the Cold War.
I was alerted to this place by a friend who showed me a BBC article about the site's history. We rode north from Berlin up to Vogelslang, with a good part along the Havelweg bike path which rides directly next to the Havel river. The weather is nice, but spring is still not quite here and all of the trees were still bare.
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| The path along the Havel river. Photo by Fabian |
At lunch time we ate in the shelter of some old munitions depots and went around exploring. We wanted to find the statue of Lenin and the missile launchpad. But unfortunately these were too small and elusive inside such a large area.
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| Scoping out a place to eat among the munitions depots. Photo by Fabian |
The place is pretty destroyed from weathering since it was abandoned in 1994. Apparently it is still privately owned and we saw some signs that the EU had invested some money to raze some of the buildings. But we only saw a couple small land patches that looked cleared.
Unlike some other abandoned places I've visited, this one did not seem very visited. A lot of scrap metal, electronics, machine parts and various other textiles and metal things were still protruding out of walls and cabinets everywhere. Some roofs had collapsed, which gave some interesting effects with trees growing inside the buildings.
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| On the outside looking into a building with a collapsed roof. You can see the tree shadows from inside, and the reflections of the trees that are actually outside on the window. |
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| A whole lot of rubble made this building indistinguishable |
There was also a town built on the base and we saw the school as well as what looked like a linen factory with industrial washers and dryers. The district heating plant was located right across from the factory and was probably supplied directly with steam. But now the pipes don't look like they could handle that kind of pressure anymore.
 |
| The front wall here totally collapsed. In the back rooms there are storage tanks and large pumps still intact, although the floor threatens to give way in some places. We tread lightly. Photo By Fabian |
The signs and indications on the valves were originally written in Russian. Then there were German signs plastered over the Russian ones.
We only had a limited amount of time before we had to turn around, leaving a large portion of the base unexplored. Perhaps another day.
Ride Summary and Maps
Sorry, had to split the ride in two because I am afraid of data loss if I am unable to restart the GPS (happened to me twice on the last tour).
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