2024-12-30 52 8

Location

This Geohash is located next to a house on Jägerstr in Lohne.

Participants

Plans

Fippe ~~is free all day and plans to go. Any chance he will see someone from Oldenburg there?~~ plans to also be there at 15:00.

Beardygrade is about to hop on his bike and plans to be there at 1500. But perhaps he is a little bit late. The wind turns out to be stronger than anticipated... Sorry, still figuring out how to escape from Vechta.

Expedition

Fippe

TODO

Beardygrade

Since we had missed each other on 2024-11-23_52_7 I was looking for a possibility to finally meet Fippe. Therefore, I was intrigued to read his plans for this expedition and could well imagine being the "someone from Oldenburg". In the vain attempt to also add some shape to my outer appearance, it had to be done by bike. I generously admitted myself four hours to cover the 50+ kilometers and thus announced an ETA. Then I scrambled to retrieve rain garments (which I didn't use), some bike tools (thankfully, I didn't need these, too), something to eat, and, well, somehow I busied around for quite a while before I got on the road.

After a few minutes I had to realize that the air was not motionless, as it had seemed looking out the window. It had velocity. And a preferred direction - into my face. Despite being only a weak wind, it was enough to both permanently slow me down and to demand an extra amount of effort. I only did stop when unsure about the best direction and in order to reduce even these stops, I decided to follow the biggest roads. Unfortunately, all the lorries of Germany obviously had made the same decision.

I tried to circumvent Vechta in order to not get lost in the town. But suddenly there was no more bike lane alongside the fat road. Since the lorries continued to zoom by, I had to give in and cross Vechta. This worked out quite well in terms of not getting completely confused, but it cost a lot of precious time. Especially the traffic lights in and around Vechta showed a frustrating character: bike and pedestrian light only turns green after a button has been pressed. But almost every time, they didn't do this at the first occasion, but only after skipping a complete cycle. Four or five times, I lost several minutes to this behaviour.

Eventually I could leave Vechta and head for Lohne, where Fippe patiently waited. We made some pictures and had a very nice conversation. Together we walked to the Lohne train station and I briefly considered mounting the bike again. But in the end, taking the trains NWB RB58 to Delmenhorst and NWB RS30 to Oldenburg was much more appealing. At first, we walked to the wrong platform. But the time table revealed that all departures from Lohne (in both directions) take place on the other platform.

After fiddling around with several map tools, I have to admit that I didn't fulfill the juggernaut criteria. While the crow would have reached the spot after 53 kilometers, I covered 62 km and my sightseeing tour in Vechta took me more than 3.5 km from the optimal beeline. But the pain in my legs gives me hope regarding the shaping project. Would do it again.