Finally got back on the road today.
The weather was potentially disconcerting, but ultimately fine. It was heavily overcast, verging on black clouds overhead, but it never rained for which I was pretty happy about.
I made a quick run for the EuroTunnel, and got an earlier train than I was originally booked for. Met a couple people on the train; a father and son from the UK riding two-up on a BMW R1200GS, and guy and girlfriend from the UK riding two-up on a Kawasaki Ninja, and Oliver from Spain riding a BMW F800R.
This summarizes what I've been seeing in the past week; over 50% of the motorcycles on the road in Germany, Switzerland, France and the UK are BMWs.
I didn't spend much time in France; I wanted to end the day in Germany where I knew I could get online, and would leave me closer to my ultimate goal for the next few days; Innsbruck, Austria. I have an IRC friend that lives there today, but expects to be moving to Belgium in a week or so. I wanted to get time to hang out in Austria with someone who knows the area.
I set my sights on sleeping in Aachen, Germany. There's a local motorcycle accessory retailer here that has a decent price on Schuberth helmets that I don't want to be tempted to buy from, fc-moto.de . Figured if I slept here, I could be unwillingly tempted to visit there on the way out tomorrow, possibly stopping by Heidelberg to drop off my now-spared (again) Shoei RF-900. I hope I don't go there tomorrow.
The typical route from the EuroTunnel to Aachen involves going through Belgium, so that's what I did. I took a short detour off the highway to check out the Belgium coast at Koksijde-Bad. They had some kind of festival going on, with billions of people wandering around. The volume of bicycles around there was awesome; a good percentage of the cyclists were decked out in racing tights on decent road bikes. I've always heard that the generally-flat terrain around Belgium and Holland called for lots of bicycling-obsessed people, and I'm starting to see that. I definitely want to head back there with a bicycle on some future vacation.
At one point, there were some dark clouds boiling overhead. I pulled over on the highway maybe 100m behind a van pulling some kind of industrial contraption on a custom trailer, to put the rain cover on my tank bag. I then noticed that a motorcycle cop was having a really animated discussion with the driver of the van, out by the trailer. After a few minutes, the cop finished with the van driver, whistled to get my attention, then started walking over.
As he approached, he started speaking Dutch. I interrupted him and asked for English. He asked, "Is everything okay? Any troubles?" I replied that the clouds looked wet and I wanted to protect my tank bag. He looked up at the clouds, and said "Those? There won't be rain, and anyway, you're a motorcyclist! What do you care about rain!" I laughed, pointed at my poor rain-sensitive camera in the tank bag, and shrugged. He set off back to his bike, and I got back on the road. He was right, BTW, it never rained.
I'm staying at another ibis tonight. I'll probably see a lot of them through this tour. I'm a fan of last-minute bookings at cheap but clean motel chains. I could book ahead at motorcycle-friendly B&Bs, but I don't expect to be planning ahead that often on this trip.
Thus far, the ibis motels have been great. The rooms aren't large, but they are frequently recently built or to maximize the utility of the space you have, have a good breakfast, and all the amenities I desire. They're part of a larger french chain called Accor Hotels. There are lower end shops, with things like completely self-serve check-ins/outs with shared bathrooms, etc, but ibis's consistently have self-contained rooms, humans at the front doors, and parking (though not often free).
I noticed that while I still have good right-hand-traffic instincts on city streets, I have to keep trying to remember which are the fast lanes on the highways now. Irk. Thanks UK. Love ya.
One thing I'm noticing over here is that when I tell locals that I've got 7 weeks off, they don't think that's too exceptional for Europe.
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