Leaving the Youth Hostel in Bad Ems required navigating the long down hill to the town. Since were riding along the Rhine, a relatively flat route, I didn't think we were going to need drag brakes. A drag brake is a large brake mounted to the rear wheel of a tandem. It is intended to deal with the large amount of heat generated while trying to slow down a heavy tandem going down hill. While the hill was not very long it was steep and we generated a large amount of heat slowing the tandems down. I rode about 1/3 of the way down and stopped. Before I touched the rims I could smell the brakes. The rims were very warm but not hot. If one is not careful, you can generate enough heat in the rims to melt the tires causing catastrophic tire failure, usually on the front tire. The catastrophic failure is derived more from the ensuing fall rather than the tire failure itself. If we go on a trip again, even on flat terrain, I will add drag brakes to the tandems.
Once at the bottom, we traveled along the Lahr back to the Rhine. Then along the Rhine to Oberwesel. Each day we stop somewhere along the Rhine to each lunch. The kids have taken to skipping rocks on the Rhine. Good skipping stones have been named 'Skipper Dans'. Exactly where this came from I don't know (neither do the kids) but skipping stones will forever been named this.
Navigation is now so simple, you barely require a map. Keep the Rhine within view and you really can't go wrong. Our only problem really has been wandering onto a walking path. We really didn't realize except for the stern corrections that we received from the Germans.
We arrived in Oberwesel only to find our accommodations once again at the top of a hill. Bad Ems was about 200 m high, today was closer to 300 m. I tried to avoid this but our map had the Youth Hostel in the wrong location. Instead of being on road close to the river, it was on a road that clearly had switch backs on it. While we can climb reasonably well with the loaded tandems, long steep climbs are too much and we had to push them up the hill once again.
The Youth Hostel was nice with a pool. Sarah and a very chatty German girl named Lea played in the pool for a hour before dinner. Lea spent most of the time trying to teach Sarah German. It was very funny to watch since Lea really didn't know much English. Lea would first ask me to translate then she would teach the words to Sarah.
“What is the word for nose in English” Lea would ask me in German.
“Nose” I would say in English.
Lea would then say to Sarah in English “The word for nose in German is Nase.”
This went on for about 40 minutes. Sarah found this exchange very confusing. Lea especially like those word that were the same in both languages. 'Bikini', 'OK' and 'Flip-flop' created a shriek of joy as she realized that the word was the same in both languages.
We went to bed early since today was a long day and tomorrow was also going to be a long day.
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