What follows is more information than you probably wanted to know about Tim and Maxa Burleigh and our approach to bicycling in Germany and Europe. We are the authors of BicycleGermany.com.

Feedback: Go to the Feedback page to send us an email. There are special instructions on there that will tell you how to get the correct email address.

Errors? If you find an error of any type in the material presented on this website, please, please let us know. We will pay what your feedback is worth (but do not hold your breath).

Why: Maxa and I are a couple of baby-boomers from Seattle, USA who enjoy active vacations but not so active that we need pain killers at the end of the day. Since 1999, we have been traveling to Germany for up to 3 months and taking bicycle tours. Each self-guided tour lasts several days. The length varies from 3 days to 15 days. Some of the longest tours take several outings to complete them. So far, the longest tour is the Rhine from Lake Constance to the North Sea. That trip was done over 5 years with 10 days being the longest single ride. The shortest one is the River Pader, which is a tongue-in-cheek write-up of a short river we encountered while on the longer trip, the Roman Route.

We do not lead tours: As mentioned on our home page, we only provide the information. Leading tours is too much like hard work for us. Sure, now and then we will take another couple with us but they are either close friends and/or family members who are not likely to sue us if we cannot find over-night accommodations and have to ride an extra 10 or 20 miles until we do. That type of thing does not happen often but just often enough that we simply do not want to hear any grumbling from the peanut gallery.

Disclaimer: My wife Maxa insists that I warn you at the beginning that some of the following may be tongue-in-cheek. I told her that everyone will know tongue-in-cheek when they read the silliness I write, but she points out that few people have as weird a sense of humor as I do and I should warn folks. So there, now you know.

Us: We were both born on dark and stormy nights – in log cabins – 10 miles from the nearest school (up hill - both ways and through five feet of snow with a stiff wind blowing). I my case, the year was 1948 and the location was Central Montana (Lewistown). If you have ever been lost trying to find Great Falls or Billings, you may have driven through this thriving metropolis).

Maxa was born in Germany. It is a long story because she was born during WWII. Her family lived in Berlin but moved to the outskirts after their home was bombed out. Anyway, we met in Kassel, Germany but we have lived in the Seattle area for over 40 years. We have made many trips to Germany (and Europe) over those years. We got the idea over ten years ago to quit the corporate rat race early and do this bike tour, webpage thing. We retired early and remained so for three years. Then, after I finished most of the work on this web site, I put the harness back on and went back to work.

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For the last 40+ years, we have lived in Bellevue, Washington (Seattle area). Since 1999, we have lived part-time in Kassel, central Germany.

Mission Statement: In business, I learned that all respectable groups of people have a mission statement. Well here is ours: "We endeavor to bring to the English speaking public, a complete, state of the art, web page promoting self-guided bicycling tours in Germany. And, we acknowledge that the web page will always be a work-in-progress that can be improved upon."

We write this website with people like us in mind, i.e., aging boomers who, unwilling to give in to a sedentary life, want to stay active. We also write for the people who are bored with traditional European vacations. You know the, "If its Tuesday, it must be Belgium," kind of vacation.

We have started an ad hoc club we call the Over-Fifty-with-Bad-Knees Club. If you qualify, membership is free, even automatic (and I am sorry about your knees); there is no membership roster, no meetings, no dues, no nothing. You may already be a member and not know it. If not, you probably will join the OFBK Club someday. We welcome you. (By the way, I am President For Life because I started it and it is my club.)

We ride all of the tours ourselves. Even if we inject a bit of humor in some of the travelogues, the information given is accurate to the best of our ability. How accurate is that? Well, we use an altimeter watch which is not very accurate because it works on barometric pressure. We use cyclometers for distance measurements which depend on variable tire pressures and average settings for tire size so there again, the measurement can vary up to 10%.

We encourage feedback from people who have taken our tours and if they have additional information or corrections to the information we provided, we will incorporate it into the website where appropriate.

Also, if you find any grammatical or spelling errors, please let me know. I try hard to get it right but I was educated in public schools so my language skills in English are almost as bad as my language skills in German; and in German, I am nearly illiterate.