Take A Licking and Keep On Ticking! More Travel Adventures ...

In an attempt to catch up from several days of activity, I will recap with words a few hair raising events and intermix many photos at the same time. 

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, this trip on a boat is a high participation effort.  Everyone on our team needed to be ready for action, and we often had to be "all hands on deck".  It was not a kickback relaxing time, it was a lot of work and you usually had to be at your best all day long.   

Mishaps to our crew!  

In order to pilot a boat like this through the miscellaneous challenges, you need a young, vibrant crew of agile, athletic, strong people.  This was not a description of our crew.  None of these adjectives applied to our team.  In some ways, we were the opposite of this required status.  

 
But, for the most part, we did a surprisingly good job negotiating the numerous skills needed to sail a boat on the canals for a week through sixty two locks, often in bad weather.  


Until near disaster happened.  There were a couple of rather alarming accidents that affected our team, and put us to the test.   

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The first was late in the evening when a female member of the team took a nasty fall inside the boat.  Bev went down while making the transition from bathroom to the bedroom of her cabin.  Keep in mind, these are tight quarters.  

It was a very noisy plunge in which she landed roughly with one part in the bathroom, one part in the bedroom, and one part out in the hallway.  

We all heard the crash and jumped out of bed to see her laying there in a very awkward position.  It looked real bad, but she gamely said "I'm good, it's all right, nothing to be concerned about.  Nothing to see here!"  Only we knew that was not true.  She couldn't get up. 

Turns out she twisted her ankle pretty badly, and it got worse as time went on, but she was a trooper and tried not to let it affect her perpetual good-natured approach to life.  

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Unfortunately, things got worse a couple days later when her husband Larry went down hard while making a leap from the boat to secure a rope line to a dock landing.  The last thing we heard from him before he prepared to jump was "this is a perfect spot!"  

It was a rainy day and the dock was slippery.  The dock was also concrete.  As Larry hit the landing, his feet slipped out from under him and he went down hard.  He landed with a thump and a loud groan.  It sounded bad, and it was. 

We had to scramble to get the boat tied up while he rolled around in pain on the hard ground in the pouring rain.  It was an alarming period of time, as he could not breathe properly and thought he broke some ribs.  When I first heard him fall, I thought he said he broke his leg!  

We were all extremely concerned, both for Larry, and for the remainder of our trip.  Is he going to have to go to the hospital?  Is he going to be okay?  How are we going to carry on?

As it turned out, he gradually recovered from possible broken ribs, and some very, very serious bruises.  With the aid of some medicine, rest, and a trip to a local pharmacy, he was able to continue on with our boat trip.  

But he was limited in his movement, and suffered a lot of pain.  It was a huge bummer for Larry, and we were hampered by having a key crew member out of action and in recovery mode. 

Hey, we're all about travel adventure, but this was a bit much.  In fact it was off the charts.  First his wife Bev went down and was still struggling from the ill effects of her fall, and then Larry suffered a calamitous tumble that while very bad, could have been even much worse.  

So we soldiered (sailored) on.  While our team had years of acquired wisdom, we lacked the above list of physical attributes that should have been obligatory.  We made it through, but it wasn't easy.

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We Saw Many Amazing Things 

I don't want to make it sound like it was all bad.  Indeed, we had a lot of good times and saw many wonderful things.  We had a great time that we won't forget.  

 



As an example, we had scheduled a tight window of opportunity to visit a brewery on the shores of our canal.  This was a large historic French beer making company that had been in business for over three hundred years!  (I know, the French are generally assumed to be all about wine, but they are also master brewers!)

We parked our boat and walked a couple kilometers into the nearby town.  It was a glorious sunny day after a lot of rain, and we enjoyed a extraordinary visit to the Meteor Brewery in Hochfelden. 

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One of the more interesting parts of the trip came when we sailed on the canal ... over a river.  Yes, there was a river running down a small valley and we went right over the top of it in our boat on the canal.  

It may be hard to tell from the picture above, but the canal is on the top left, with the river below.  You can see our boat there on the top right. 

This scenario struck me as very unusual, but for some reason, the others were not as impressed.  Different strokes.  But this was undoubtedly the first and maybe only time I will sail over the top of a river in another body of water going a different  direction.  

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There were many charming towns through which we passed and even spent the night on the trip.  The canal has been around since 1845, so the towns are built around it, and history is woven into it to a large extent.  

I really enjoyed the smaller towns, and we usually had dinner in a local restaurant, with excellent results.  

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At one point I was tasked with going to town early to get some bread and was asked to bring back something "pretty".  This is not normally a strong suit for me, but I did my best.  

  
This particular episode was blessed - when I didn't have enough coins with me to afford the items I selected - and a wonderful French young fellow paid the shortage and bought for them for me/us.  It was a special moment on the trip ....


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Who Are These Morons?

And another anecdote of pure goofiness - 
Larry and I went to town on bikes to get some food or anything we could find for dinner.  It was a long way and it was Sunday and pretty much everything was closed.  

We somehow wandered into a very nice restaurant and promptly got kicked out - based on how we were dressed and the fact that the first thing out of our mouths was "You guys have any beer?!?"



But we did score!  We did not return empty handed!  We eventually found not only some beer - but Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream!  Check out the triumphant look on our faces with our bounty!  (And the obvious reason we got booted from the nice restaurant). 

By now, as you read this, we have completed our initial phase of our journey, and we are moving on, to Germany and Holland.   Stay tuned for more updates!