Biking along the Danube River in Austria

This year's summer vacation took us to Passau, Germany, which was the starting (and return) point for an eight-day boat/bike trip along the Danube River. The trip, which is called The Danube By Bike & Boat, is offered by UTracks. We biked along the Danube River mainly in Austria, but also part of one day in Slovakia. Our 'hotel' was the boat Theodor Korner, which took us to the different towns where each daily biking trip would start. We biked from Mauthausen to Grein (a beautiful village with a castle and old theater--the Stadttheater), from Devin to Schloss Hof (impressive palace with lovely gardens) to Bratislava in Slovakia, around the city of Vienna, through the beautiful Wachau Valley (wine country) from Krems to Melk, from Melk back to Grein, and then from Obermuhl to Engelhartszell (total biking distance including Vienna was around 210 km/130 miles). From Engelharszell, the boat sailed back to Passau and we disembarked.

The trip included three meals per day, a cabin on the boat with private bathroom, and bicycle rental. It was extremely well-organized and went off without a hitch. A big thank-you to UTracks for the professional organization of the trip and the support at all points along the way. We didn't lack for anything.

Austria is a beautiful country, and the Austrian Danube bike path is impressive. If you'd like to read more about it, you can find more information at these links: https://www.donau-oesterreich.at/en/danube-cycle-path/  and  https://www.danube-cycle-path.com/austrian-danube.html.
Here are some photos of a memorable fantastic vacation; I'd do something like this again in a heartbeat.....

bike path along the Danube River

one of many small cafes along the bike path 

one of many wheat fields along the bike path

an idyllic small brook 

approaching the lovely village of Grein

Greinburg castle

Sala Terrena at Greinburg Castle--mosaics made from tiny pebbles from the Danube River

courtyard at Greinburg Castle

Schloss Hof palace

bike path leading away from Schloss Hof

St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna

bike path in Vienna

the beautiful Wachau valley--wine country

view from the town of Durnstein in the Wachau region

one of many roadside shrines in Austria

our boat--the Theodor Korner

approaching Grein on our return trip

one of the quaint ferries that take bicyclists over the Danube

Engelszell Abbey, a Trappist monastery, in Engelhartszell

Biking, Bicycle Sundays and the Bikecentennial

We are experiencing an early autumn in Oslo this year, not that I am complaining, because the sun is shining more than it did the entire summer. So for some few hours a day, in the early afternoon, there is actually some sunshine and warmth. Today was a perfect day for a bicycle ride up along the Akerselva river, which is something I have done quite often in recent years. Biking up along the river from the beginning to the end (Oslo fjord to Maridalen reservoir) is a total distance of about five miles, so it’s not a long river. My trip today was about six miles round trip (from Ila to Kjelsås and back); for the most part fairly hilly on the way up, but an easy and enjoyable return downhill for those (like me) who end up being a bit tired afterwards.

I have biked all my life, it seems. There is something about getting on a bike that spells freedom for me. I learned like most other children to ride a two-wheeler when I was around eight years old, and after that I was sold. I can remember biking around Tarrytown as a teenager, exploring back streets, the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, Philipse Manor and Sleepy Hollow Manor, and maybe once or twice I got as far as Rockwood State Park, slightly north of Tarrytown on route 9. I didn’t go much further north than that. Sometimes I had my friends with me, but most of the time I was alone. When Westchester county officials decided in 1975 or 1976 to close off the Bronx River Parkway to cars on Sundays during the summer and early fall, I was thrilled. Bicycle Sundays still exist as I discovered when I googled them (http://www3.westchestergov.com/news/2674). The course ran from the Westchester County Center in White Plains south to Scarsdale Road in Yonkers, which was a round-trip of about 13 miles. I would first bike from Tarrytown to White Plains and then bike the entire round-trip course, together with a lot of other bike enthusiasts. There was no question of biking fast—you were limited by how fast the others biked. But sometimes I could break away from the pack. My brother joined me on some Sundays and that was always nice. He became quite a good biker and went on to participate in triathlons in his early twenties. In early 1976, the year of the bicentennial of the USA, I and my friend Loraine from college decided to try and join one of the cross-country trips that was offered by BikeCentennial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikecentennial), now called TransAmerica Bicycle Trail (http://www.adventurecycling.org/routes/transamerica.cfm). She left it up to me to do the planning. I do remember getting the brochure/maps in the mail and poring over them, trying to decide what route would be best for us, and settling on a week-long trip through Virginia; I don’t remember the exact route, but the present routes are probably the original routes. We both bought fairly expensive bikes for that time, in April 1976, in order to be able to train for this trip. Unfortunately, by the time we registered for it, it was booked solid and we missed out on that opportunity. Many of the other trips were not on the East coast and we were limited in what we could choose, since the Virginia trip was the one trip that fit our time schedule; we had the month of August free and after that we had to return to college. So we didn’t manage the Bikecentennial trip, but I at least kept on biking and am still doing so today. I still flirt with the notion of attempting another such trip—shorter distance and shorter time, in the USA or in Norway. But it has not come to pass and I must admit that I have not actively sought it out. After I left college and moved to the Bronx, my biking days became more limited because I did not feel comfortable biking in the Bronx. When I later moved to New Jersey in the mid-1980s, I bought a new bike at the urging of my brother who by that time was a triathlon biker. My new bike was a racing bike; to go with my new bike, I needed biking shoes (that attached to the pedals) and biking gear. Biking in America at that time was really taking off (this was around 1986-87), thanks to Greg LeMond and his 1986 win in the Tour de France. Bikers needed trendy gear. However, I never really felt comfortable with any of it, and I hated that my shoes were attached to the pedals when I biked. It felt claustrophobic. So if I biked, it was in the old way, comfortable shoes—unattached to the pedals, regular pants, no helmet—as non-aerodynamic as possible. I have relented somewhat over the years—I own bicycle pants with padding that reminds me of a big diaper, and a seat cover with padding, and bicycle gloves to grip the handlebars better. But this is about comfort and nothing else—if seats were comfortable like in the old days I wouldn’t have bought a seat cover or bicycle pants. I also own a helmet that I never use; I don’t like the feeling of having it on my head and it seems to interfere with my hearing—too much swooshing in my ears. I’ve fallen off a bike twice in my life; the first time as a child and a passenger on my friend’s bike--I smashed my front tooth, and the second time as an adult—I ended up with skinned knees that were painful and took weeks to heal. But small injuries have never deterred me. After I moved to Norway in 1989, I didn’t bike regularly for a number of years, I’m not even sure why, not until I bought a bike again in 1997 and used it to bike to and from work. But after I injured my back in 2001, I didn’t get on a bike again until 2009. I was afraid of injuring my back and for some reason I associated biking with back problems. This fear turned out to be unfounded. So now I am biking again, not as much as I’d like, but much more often than I thought I’d manage.

Although I enjoy walking and hiking in the forests and our occasional trips to the mountains, I think I enjoy biking best. It is something I can always do, anywhere. I prefer it to jogging, which I find somewhat monotonous, although I do jog at times. I have biked to work on occasion; that is real training, again mostly uphill all the way. Suffice it to say that my energy level is not at its peak in the morning, so I do struggle a bit. I am an early afternoon biker from the standpoint of being able to tackle all of the physical challenges involved. I think what I have always liked about biking is the freedom, the fact that you get to different places faster than you would if you walked, and that you are outdoors in nature. The latter is most important to me these days. I cannot wait to get outdoors now—to breathe fresh air, to be out in the sunshine, to be a part of the nature around me. In such respect, I don’t really miss my health club training; although I am still a member, I am rarely there, because it means going indoors and stepping onto machines—treadmills, cross-country machines—that take me nowhere. The only way I survive the boredom of training is to have my iPod with me. That saves me. I train indoors during the winter—I don’t enjoy biking in the ice and snow, although I have one friend who does and she says it’s fine as long as you have the right tires. Perhaps I will get to that point one of these days, if only to find my way outdoors again during the long winters.