"... a tire that won’t reinflate no matter how much tape you wrap around it...."

Lance Armstrong cheats – he has air in his tires.
But really, as much as I respect the superman, to truly experience riding through France and the western frontiers of Germany, where I studied abroad, you need a bike with handlebars coming off, a seat cracking in half, lighting/gears/brakes that don’t work and a tire that won’t reinflate no matter how much tape you wrap around it.
And it has to be named Freddy.
Freddy, whose moniker was chosen by fellow student Heather, whose name was presumably chosen by her parents, and I first became acquainted after I realized my social circles ran later than the public transportation in Freiburg, and it was a long walk home from the bar.
I learned a lot about bicycle maintenance from second, third or fourth hand Freddy. What do you do when you’re scooting in front of a moving city bus and a wheel falls off?
You think quickly and carry pliers. And don’t tell your mother.
Anyway, my adventurous side (the same one I walked to South Carolina and back from Shelby with) noticed even before I left for Europe that Freiburg was only about 20 kilometers from the Rhine River, separating France and Germany. And so I started thinking….
One night I was out late with some Italians when I proclaimed my plans to ride to France the next morning.
I tend to talk myself into adventures/columns/holes with some frequency.
As I rode back to my apartment I went down a ramp to a tunnel under some tram tracks. I expected a gentle ramp ascending up the other side.
After I rammed into the stairs I could hear the air leaking from the tire.
I tried to patch the tube, but pumping air into it was like holding sand in a sieve – it had burst like an overcooked bratwurst.
I tried wrapping tape around the tire. But the sticky mess just got caught in the brakes and threw me.
So I tried just riding without any air in the tire. A little bumpy. But passable.
I woke up about three hours later (because I had to get back before class started at 9 a.m.) and started going – with a map in the pocket of my army jacket and a cardboard box taped to the back of Freddy to hold some drinks.
You see, before I left to study abroad, my Army ROTC buddies asked me to drink beers for them. I thought that, hey, what better place to drink a toast to Master Sergeant Brown, Airborne Ranger, than at sunrise on a bridge over the Rhine between France and Germany. I think the beer for Pete was on a bridge in Basel, Switzerland.
By the time I got to Lichtenstein things had gotten way out of hand.
Does John make it? Just how far can you ride on chocolate and beer? Check out the blog at www.shelbystar.com/blogs.asp for extra details (where I thought they’d find my body) and stay tuned for next week’s column to find out.
Hint: “Mud,” “Blood,” “Autobahn.”