Shot on Fujifilm X-T10 with TTArtisan AF 27mm f2.8
Vaddamorgana: The Flat Surprise
For the sake of marketing, there is a strong allure to call every other liaison with nature an adventure; especially in cycling, if it involves sleeping outside. Depending on the mode, you are instructed to need different adventure-specific equipment. And, this little weekender is explicitly not it, not an adventure. No remote are will be explored and no special gear will be needed. All that is needed is time.
I carefully select a group of my friends, invite them to my current habitat, sketch up a route with unspectacular statistics, loads of off-bike potentialities, and spaces to sleep under the stars. Since we have one friend join with a bus, we quickly decide to offload luggage and enjoy the playfulness of almost unloaded bikes. We start on a Friday after noon. At kilometer six, we have our first Spezi/coffee stop. It is just three of us on the bikes and we enjoy the non-competitive atmosphere and roll into our first camp space a quiet, original farm just before sunset starts.
We sit around a little bond fire warming our cold limbs in this quickly cooling fall night, when we hear the free hub sound of two more friends arriving. They quickly set up camp, join around the source of warmth, and our band of now six.
While some sleep comfortably in their bivy and some in their tent, others crawl out of their warm nests and watch the sun arise in the east before hiding under a thick layer of fog. Coffee is a highly desired good to counter the cold the fog is exposing us to and the first cups are savored in silence without a care in the world for the artificial construct of time.
When the others awake, coffee is made without leaving sleeping bags while breakfast is prepared. Sitting around a small table, we satisfy our nutritional needs, decide to let the car carry our packs again and jump on the bikes to meet my partner on the other side of lake Chiemsee. We zigzagg e-bikers in the pursuit of a suitable swim spot that provides french fries, cold drinks and ice cream to make it a formidable summer day of riding. When we find it, our group has reached its full size of six cyclists and naps and lake dips after lunch are in high demand.
Right at golden hour, we exit a supermarket, load up on cold Radler, ice cream and sweets and enjoy another lake dip in another country. It is a beautiful atmosphere that allows for everyone to follow their own gusto while still working as a group. The desire to use every ray of daylight for probably the last lake dip this fall or to arrive at the next camp spot in daylight evenly splits our group of cyclists in half only to be regrouped over pasta plates at dinner.
Our last sunrise provided the same wake whenever attitude, we cherished the whole weekend. While I figured the perfect space for my camping chair from two camping pros in their late sixties, I was quickly joined by others. At the count of two with sunlight in my face, I hear first coffee water hissing in the cooker. With every joining friend, another load of coffee is brewed.
To prolong the time with my friends, I added some climbs into our last seventy kilometers. So, together we climb. It feels like a welcome diversion from highly frequented cycling paths along the lakes. The weather works in favor of all those that like the warmth, the others cool down with cold beverages on one of the alpine huts before we slowly descend down from our celebration of the mundane and into our professional lives latest by Monday morning.
