Auntie Helen
Ich bin Powerfrau!
- Location
- 47906 Kempen, Germany
My long blurb about the puncture, or lack of, has caught up with me.
Firstly, when I arrived at my German lesson my lock didn't work. I have a pair of café locks which I bought from Aldi some time ago and look fairly chunky. The red one died two days ago - wouldn't unlock reliably, so I decided not to use it. One is enough at the German course as the window in our room looks out onto where my bike was parked.
Today, when I came to lock the green lock, that didn't work either. OK, I thought, I need to retire this lock too - so I didn't lock the bike, but kept an eye on it the whole time.
The weather forecast was for another cracking storm this evening, akin to the one on Monday where two people were killed by falling trees in Nordrhein-Westfalen and there was a tornado in Heligoland. At break time (4pm) the sun was still shining, but at 5:30pm it started looking gloomy outside and the wind was getting up. Oh dear.
When I walked out of the lesson at 6:05 it was clear that we were about to have a huge storm - black clouds visible in the distance coming steadily closer. I didn't need to unlock my bike, of course, due to the lack of functional lock, but as I started wheeling it out of the parking racks... argh! Puncture.
There followed the quickest tube change ever. It was indeed the tyre that I think I had overpumped last night. I had a quick look inside the tyre anyway to check there was no glass (it seemed clear) and when I pumped up the inner tube it stayed inflated. I swapped a fresh one in anyway and pumped it up. At this point one of my fellow students came and did some more pumping of the tyre for me. They were all watching me whilst awaiting their tram. As it happened, I was on my way as the tram arrived.
I was unfortunately having to cycle towards the weather, but soon my route turned parallel with it. As I waited to cross a road (on a pavement cycle path) the wind was whistling down the road at 90 degrees to my route with rubbish, dust and muck flying around in the air. At that moment there was a huge bang and I felt the wind of something on my shoulder. Turns out a huge bit of street furniture with signs on had fallen down, right beside my trike but not quite touching it. A pedestrian asked if I was OK and said a phrase which mentioned something about "being saved by the Virgin" which I assume is a local expression.
I really put my foot down after that, cycling home as fast as possible. I even ran a red (pedestrian) light - where I could see nothing was coming. In Germany you normally wait at red lights and no-one jumps 'em, not even cyclists. There was stuff flying around and then the VERY large raindrops started.
I got back home just as the rain was getting painful. I stashed the trike in the car quick-smart and I'm up now in my room, having shut all the windows and brewing myself a nice cuppa. If it weren't for the puncture I would have been home before the rain, but I reckon a 5 minute puncture repair is pretty good going.
Oooooh, impressive lightning outside!
Tomorrow I plan to cycle to a good bike shop (Olaf from CycleChat has recommended a couple in Düsseldorf) to buy a couple more café locks...
Firstly, when I arrived at my German lesson my lock didn't work. I have a pair of café locks which I bought from Aldi some time ago and look fairly chunky. The red one died two days ago - wouldn't unlock reliably, so I decided not to use it. One is enough at the German course as the window in our room looks out onto where my bike was parked.
Today, when I came to lock the green lock, that didn't work either. OK, I thought, I need to retire this lock too - so I didn't lock the bike, but kept an eye on it the whole time.
The weather forecast was for another cracking storm this evening, akin to the one on Monday where two people were killed by falling trees in Nordrhein-Westfalen and there was a tornado in Heligoland. At break time (4pm) the sun was still shining, but at 5:30pm it started looking gloomy outside and the wind was getting up. Oh dear.
When I walked out of the lesson at 6:05 it was clear that we were about to have a huge storm - black clouds visible in the distance coming steadily closer. I didn't need to unlock my bike, of course, due to the lack of functional lock, but as I started wheeling it out of the parking racks... argh! Puncture.
There followed the quickest tube change ever. It was indeed the tyre that I think I had overpumped last night. I had a quick look inside the tyre anyway to check there was no glass (it seemed clear) and when I pumped up the inner tube it stayed inflated. I swapped a fresh one in anyway and pumped it up. At this point one of my fellow students came and did some more pumping of the tyre for me. They were all watching me whilst awaiting their tram. As it happened, I was on my way as the tram arrived.
I was unfortunately having to cycle towards the weather, but soon my route turned parallel with it. As I waited to cross a road (on a pavement cycle path) the wind was whistling down the road at 90 degrees to my route with rubbish, dust and muck flying around in the air. At that moment there was a huge bang and I felt the wind of something on my shoulder. Turns out a huge bit of street furniture with signs on had fallen down, right beside my trike but not quite touching it. A pedestrian asked if I was OK and said a phrase which mentioned something about "being saved by the Virgin" which I assume is a local expression.
I really put my foot down after that, cycling home as fast as possible. I even ran a red (pedestrian) light - where I could see nothing was coming. In Germany you normally wait at red lights and no-one jumps 'em, not even cyclists. There was stuff flying around and then the VERY large raindrops started.
I got back home just as the rain was getting painful. I stashed the trike in the car quick-smart and I'm up now in my room, having shut all the windows and brewing myself a nice cuppa. If it weren't for the puncture I would have been home before the rain, but I reckon a 5 minute puncture repair is pretty good going.
Oooooh, impressive lightning outside!
Tomorrow I plan to cycle to a good bike shop (Olaf from CycleChat has recommended a couple in Düsseldorf) to buy a couple more café locks...