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.
Did you find any 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 this website: Maxa and I are a couple baby-boomers from Seattle, USA who enjoy active vacations but not so active that we need painkillers 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 and self-supported tour lasts several days. The length of each tour 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 kilometers 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 (uphill - both ways and through
five feet of snow with a stiff wind blowing). In 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
of about 5,800 inhabitants).
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 48 years. We have made many trips to Europe (mostly Germany) over those years.
We got the idea 18 years ago to quit the corporate rat race early and do this bike
tour/webpage thing.
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 and
self-supported 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 bus tour 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 will probably 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.) As of 2018, both of us are over 70 so we considered changing the name of our club to OSBK but demurred. If we are lucky, we will keep at this and many of our readers are younger than we are.
A
nother
Disclaimer: 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.
