This was a nice day for riding - weather was mostly sunny, with temperature in the high 70's. The majority of the time we were on bike paths or posted bike routes. The route followed the Sure River until it met the Mosel near Trier. As always, we chose the road not charted from time to time and lengthened the trip.

After reaching the Mosel, we started seeing vast hillsides covered with vineyards. This is the vicinity that produces so many of the famous (and delicious) German white wines. We actually spent some of the time following bike paths through the vineyards, but I won’t say whether or not we tasted any of the delicious but still slightly tart grapes.

On a previous visit to this area, we stopped at a wonderful café in Piesport to sample a glass of their famous Piesporter Goldtroepfchen (little drop of gold). It is a very romantic setting and we recaptured that moment again this trip. It is a lovely town that was not on today’s agenda but we added it.

We also stopped in Trier, a city that we visited years ago. We walked through the entire open market (covering all of the old section) to the Roman wall (Porta Negro). It is a photographer’s paradise with beautifully restored buildings. All of the pictures above are from Trier. It’s easy to lose time there and we killed a couple of hours before we decided that we’d better get going. Sorry, Judith, there’s no time for the post office and stamps.

Unfortunately, our friend Nancy from San Francisco had a mishap this morning, which left her with a broken collarbone, and a concussion. She was unconscious for about 3 minutes. She failed to see a slight curb, and hit it sideways which caused her to fall down. They are keeping her in the hospital overnight for observation. Since we arrived immediately after the accident, Judith tended to her until the ambulance came. The curb was actually fairly dangerous. It slowly rose higher from the street level to about 4 inches.

We lost about an hour at the scene, and along with getting lost in a few places, we ended up getting to our destination a little too late to explore the town and castle, but we have been there before, so all we really missed was a revisit. We did go back into town after a huge meal later in the evening, just to remember what was there. Even at night with everything closed, it was a quaint, magnificent encounter.

After reviewing the day’s itinerary with everyone at dinner, we also discovered that we might have been the only riders that did not vary from the route sheets. Most found that it was much faster to get off of the bike paths and onto the road. We decided that we would consider doing the same in the days to come. As you will find out, there will be other factors affecting our decision to not necessarily adhere to the posted route sheet. Even our leader says," Get out and explore! Get lost and ask for help. Meet some people."