Monday, August 24, 2015

Thursday, August 20 - Stage 21 - 24 miles, Day 35 - Düsseldorf to Duisburg

We headed for the waterfront from the hotel, retracing our route home of last night. Once on the river our route followed bike paths and wide walking paths. We passed by an old roman fort dating from 4 BC, then past the abbey where Florence Nightingale trained to be a nurse. 

We stopped at a bakery for a treat and a coke for Sally, then the trail headed out across open fields on a dike. Riding on dikes is wonderful. They are perfectly level, raised above the surrounding countryside providing a great, expansive view and usually well paved. 

The outskirts of Duisberg were gritty and industrial. It was not threatening, nor scary, just very unattractive. When we got to the downtown core, just at lunch time we found a revitalized city with a wide open shopping district. We stopped a diner specializing in fish and had lunch. 

Sally stopped to shop for a pair of pants, all hers getting a little baggy. I stayed outside , watching our bikes and gear and fiddling with some time lapse apps. After our prearranged half hour she wanted  to shop some ore, so we rode to our hotel, about a mile away, checked in and rode back, without our gear. Sal went in to find the allusive pair of pants while unchained my bike to a pole and took her electric wonder out for a spin around town to explore. It is amazing how much effort it saves when riding. Just a gentle influx of motorized energy moves the bike along as you peddle. I picked a new fuel canister for the stove and a torx tool for her bike. When we get to Paris I have to disassemble her bike, and it has a few torx bolts that her old bike did not. I also found the bolts that hold her rear wheel in place were not securely tightened. The wheel shifted slightly after I had been riding a while, causing a rear brake to rub. I realigned the wheel and got that tightened up so it would not shift around again.
Back in the hotel room, we had salad for dinner, then called it a day.





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