kirkcudbright | discovery tour, day 1

So, I realize I haven't said anything publicly about the bike trip, and it's pretty much over, one way or the other, for all concerned. I will now endeavor to post the trip, one day at a time, exactly one month after it occurred.

For background, I met Dan on my cross-country bike ride. He had an unfortunate accident several years ago, which never healed properly, and which resulted in a painful lump of flesh where most people have a foot and ankle. Eventually, he decided enough was enough, and had it excised. After the amputation, he got a Harmony and Luxon Max foot, and took up cycling. On the cross-country ride, he did a lot of PR for Otto Bock, in return for a charitable donation to the Barr Foundation. At the end of the trip, Otto Bock asked him to organize an amputee bike trip across Europe. This is what it turned into.

For the record, here's the official Otto Bock version of events (written by Mitch), which is, shall we say, highly edited. Then there's Dan's own version of events, which is also edited for public consumption.

This is what I observed. For me, it started with a crash, and ended with a breakdown, so it qualifies as low comedy. For Dan, it started with eight months of Dilberting, and ended alone and lost in the Czech Republic, so it's some kind of tragedy, but I recall the pilots' saying: "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one." And this was a good one.

April 30 - Arrival in Glasgow

After a fabulous 40th birthday dinner with about a dozen of my closest friends, I took the overnight flight from Boston to Glasgow, with a two hour layover in Heathrow at 5:00am local time - midnight east coast time, or just about time to go to bed. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. Arrived 8:30am in Glasgow, with no one to meet me, so eventually I took my bike and luggage in a cart, and set out in search of the hotel. It turns out there are both a Holiday Inn and an "Express by Holiday Inn" at the airport - naturally in different directions, and naturally I went to the wrong one first.

Tried to call Dan and Neil & Emily from the hotel lobby, but got no answer. Not knowing what else to do, I hung around the lobby, walked back to the terminal to see if they were waiting for me there, and eventually took a nap in the hotel lobby. It transpired that Dan had left a key for me at the front desk, but the clerk who knew that was not the one I had been talking to.

Another nap later, I un-boxed and assembled my bike. Apparently the TSA has a policy of opening and inspecting all oversize luggage, which I was prepared for. What I wasn't prepared for was the man-handling they gave it. They opened the box from the bottom, tore a chunk out of one side panel of the box, and rotated the cranks so that one crank arm tore through the bottom of the box. It's a miracle nothing was missing or badly damaged.

May 1 - Glasgow to Edinburgh

We rode out today with Martin, who I think works for Otto Bock, and Alan and Stewart, two students in the Orthotics and Prosthetics program at University of Strathclyde. Also for the next three days, we have Scott, the international sales director for US-based Otto Bock products, e.g. the Harmony leg and the Luxon Max foot that Dan and Mitch both wear.

After consultation with the locals, we scrapped the planned route, which would have gone about 50 miles in a straight line, through some fairly industrial towns. Instead, we followed the canals for 60 miles, almost all of the way to the hotel. The weather was lovely for biking - sunny, in the mid-60's, practically tropical for Scotland.

The canal paths were generally hard-pack dirt, with bits of cobblestone under the bridges, on the aqueducts, and anywhere else it was inconvenient. There were also plenty of gates and barriers to slow us down as well.

At one point, I was turning to look at a church in a passing town, and ran smack into a post in the middle of the path. Nailed that sucker right in the middle, couldn't have done a better job of it if I tried. My bike stopped suddenly, and I kept going, over the handlebars, over the post, and head-first into the ground. I've been doing aikido for five years, so I should have been able to roll through it, but I was still clipped into the pedals. Mitch was right behind me, and I looked up just in time to see him crash into me. Just call me "Speedbump", eh? Miraculously, we were both un-injured, with only minor scratches and mis-alignments to the hardware, including Mitch's prosthetic leg. I do need to get a new helmet, though.

Halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Forth and Clyde Canal intersects with the Union Canal at the Falkirk Wheel, a recently-completed boat lift, and one of the most awesomely cool pieces of engineering.

At the outset, Alan had managed to jam his seat post down into the seat tube so hard that it couldn't be gotten out. We couldn't level the seat around, because it was in imminent danger of breaking off the from the seat post. He decided to ride on as is, and ended up hurting his back due to the bad positioning. At the Falkirk Wheel, Dan put his bike mechanic training to work to extract the seat post. He wrapped a brake cable around the post, wove it into a freewheel tool, and used that as a lever to try to turn the seat post. He broke one brake cable in the effort, but succeeded with the second.

The Union Canal goes all the way into Edinburgh, but was closed for renovation a few miles from the city center. It was dammed up on both sides of the section, with excavating equipment down in the channel, and chain-link fence across the tow path. Once we got directions into the city center, Alan was able to navigate by dead reckoning, and get us through the really tricky bits. Edinburgh is quite picturesque, with the castle and all, but Alan's back was killing him by that point, so we went straight to the hotel, near the new Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.

Da croo: Neil, Mitch, Scott, Brad, yrs truly, Dan	Bike trail in Glasgow
Swan with egg and crisp packet (potato chip bag)	The Falkirk Wheel
Canal boats on the Forth and Clyde Canal	Nuke plant and oil refining plant, cheek by jowl
Aqueduct, my friend...	The church I was trying to look at when I crashed into the post