A Ride to the former DDR

Two weekends ago we had a nice motorcycle tour with Laura and Sean Ruddy (friends in the military), my wife (Judith) and three friends, Steffi, Wieland and Christian.

L - R: Steffi, Wieland, Christian, Sean, Laura and Judith: Photo by Sean or Laura

We headed North from Nürnberg and met Sean "Rocket" Ruddy and Laura "MacGyver" Ruddy in Bamberg. The meeting point was to be a Bäkerei (bakery) that turned out had closed in 1985 (thank you Garmin Maps for the up to date information).

Our Route

After we managed to connect at the non existing Bäckerei we headed out North towards the Thüringer Wald region. This is in the former DDR (East Germany), where we found some very nice roads and great scenery.

On the way, Rocket Ruddy lost one of the two screws holding his license plate on, and it was threatening to come completely undone (supersonic speed seems to do funny things to hardware). Between all of us there were no extra screws or zip ties (a very well prepared group - eh?). However, Laura MacGyver Ruddy came through with a roadside repair using an old keyring and a pair of pliers and some duct tape.

MacGyver at work

"I am going to get this thing on no matter what!"

After the repairs were completed we all got a little hungry, so we stopped at a Gasthaus across from the Basilika Vierzehnheiligen for coffee and cake. No... I did not take this picture. I stole it from the Web. The Basilika was covered in scaffolding undergoing a renovation.

The baroque Wallfahrtsbasilika Vierzehnheiligen was built by the famous architect Balthasar Neumann.
http://www.vierzehnheiligen.de/en/

Alter

Next stop was at Confiserie Lauenstein, where these two group photos were taken. The Confiserie Lauenstein make absolutely killer Pralinen, Trüffels and Schokolade.
 

: Photo by Sean or Laura

: Photo by Sean or Laura

I picked up some supplies there, as well as a set of tools in case another roadside repair was needed.

Supplies

More Supplies

 

 

Special Tools

Later in the day we also ran into a guy with a 1920's something DKW at a Tankstelle (gas station). DKW is an old German motorcycle manufacture located in the former Eastern Germany sector.
 

: Photo by Sean or Laura

An old DKW getting some modern Air

Old bikes have a lot more levers to make manual adjustments to ignition, choke and throttle position in order to get them to start within a reasonable numbers of kicks.

Sorry, but I did not get many pictures, as we didn't do much sight seeing standing still. A couple are from Laura and Sean.

It was a super tour even though Sunday turned into a fairly rainy day and we headed pretty much for home. There is another tour mid May with the cast of characters.