Ollie Does It Euro Style 2007

This trip can be divided, so far, by what type of bug gets stuck to my face.

First day, Leaving Vienna:

Let's back up one night, shall we. Night before we leave on our bike ride, Vienna, quite coincidentally, hosts the Bicycle Film Fest. Ron's hot in the ass to see it, I'm luke warm, but I muster and press on.

The cinema was jazzy and happening. There was an attached bar and we kept running great jugs of beer into the theater. The patrons were all inner-city bike kids, that Ron loves and I can tolerate.

Let's skip ahead then.

Day we leave for our trip, Ron's alarm on his phone reports out loud, about three hours after we kicked our shoes off and climbed into the sheets. Ron was wasted and I was only mildly buzzed. That's not when we laid down to sleep, that's when we woke up.

We get to a briefing in a conference room. We are unprepared, wholly. The guy giving the briefing talks for about half an hour on all the tips, dangers, specific points on the map we're to avoid and where there are turnoffs we have to hit and on and on. We certainly don't have a pen and I'm pretty good, but a half hour lecture, I can't memorize.

We get our shitwagon bikes from the garage downstairs. They are real turds, but we're determined more than disappointed. We pack, it takes us forever and we're finally out in Vienna, on bike, and lost. There's absolutely no way to remember what we were told, and Ron wrests the healm of Navigator from me, to commandeer us.

It takes us probably twice as long as it should've to get 40-ish miles. By the time we find our Hotel in Bad Duetsch Altenberg, Austria, we're covered in road grime, buzzed from the thrill of being so horridly lost for so long and picking tiny gnats from our eye sockets.

We decide to head out into the sleepy little shitbox village of Bad Duetsch Altenberg. This place looks like it has about 400 residents, they're all over 65 and cranky. We get the stink-eye from quite a few drivers and outright rudeness.

There are three bars in town and in every one of them are a dozen oldsters, waltzing and drinking sturm. Except one.

The bar at the end of town has a 20-something waitress and where there's a 20-something waitress there are 20-30 year old guys. We ask around, a few of the people in that bar speak great English and we ask them where the hell everyone under retirement age spends time.

"Everyone is in the next village for an Oktoberfest celebration."

Ron and I say we're in and make plans to hop on the bikes and ride the 4-5 kilometers to the next village, away from Bed-Time Sleep-Away Berg and into a party. I'm thinking beer tents, lederhosen, and steins are a far beter option than retiring to our granny flat and catching up on the sleep we lost the night before.

The young waitress is hot for Ron so she says she's going, and automatically that means five guys are going. What was going to be me and Ron on bikes, is now a caravan of cars because one girl said she was game.

Lederhosen and steins was a misconception. This was a fuscia spotlight, fog machine, and American Hip Hop dance party. The second we walked into the door we were force-fed booze by drunk Austrians who thought it was a great idea to get two Americans shitfaced.

Again, we get to the room about 2:30, this time, I'm wasted and Ron's half sober, he's still reeling from a quick make out he got in a parking lot from the game waitress and we're up again at 8 to get on the bikes.

This day we faced a 60 kilometer ride marked by spider webs stuck to my forehead, dehydration to the point where I was pale and shaking, but that'll be a story for another time.

My time's run out at this internet cafe.

Oh, by the way, there's a function in this blog software to update my current location. I can't figure out how it works.

I'm in Gyor, Hungary. [NOTE FROM STEVE THE TEXAN, SERVING AS EDITOR: I've added the location to it's proper spot at the top of the entry. Ollie has trouble with high-tech things like blog software and wheelbarrows.]

Pace.