08 Sep 2011
Breisach to Offenburg (86 Km)
The hotel we’re in tonight is over 400 years old. The bathroom hasn’t been updated since then, but otherwise, it’s quite lovely. A spacious room, plenty of Old World charm, and a table to get organized upon. Definitely better than camping.
This room is Gina’s doing. In fact, all of our rooms are Gina’s doing. When we arrive in town at the end of each day, it’s Gina’s job to find us a room (while it’s my job to stand sentinel over our stuff). She likes this job and I like that she likes it. Only I never quite know what’s going to come of it. Some days she disappears for what feels like hours and I stand there, wondering where she is and whether or not she’s found us a home for the night. I imagine this is what it feels like to be on trial and waiting for the jury’s verdict; it’s completely unpredictable what will happen and it could go either way. And the longer the jury is out, the more anxious I become. Sometimes when she’s gone for so long she comes back smiling, exuberant about the deal she just got us in that super cute guest house, dangling the key to our double zimmer frei. Other times, she comes back with a scowl and a harumph, irritated that either (a) she couldn’t read the map and we know that I’m better at that so I need to go find the darn hotel or (b) everything she found was either too expensive or booked so what are we going to do now.
It’s at these times that we start to wonder why it is that we like this bike touring so much; I mean, wouldn’t it be easier to plan a trip with all our rooms booked in advance? But then, like any good John Grisham novel, the jury comes back with a verdict we can live with and our relief outweighs whatever penance that’s been handed down, whether the room doesn’t quite meet the super cute standard but at least it’s big and clean, or maybe it’s more money than we wanted to spend but at least the duvet is extra fluffy and we’ll have paid jobs again eventually, or maybe it offers little more than a roof over our heads but at least it’s better than being out in the tent in the pouring rain. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why we like this bike touring so much – not only do we see and smell and hear the world go by at a slower, more appreciative rate, but it also reminds us to look for the good in everything, even something as simple as our room for the night.
