"He Wood Ride Anything with Wheels"--Riding a bike made of ash wood up a 1000-meter climb

This bike is entirely made from ash wood including the seat and handlebars

It's not great for a 1000-meter climb on a switchback road.

Several times during my recent trip in Europe and Asia I switched my plans to avoid the places where the pandemic was currently worst.  I was in Athens when I was supposed to be in Rome.  It was a Sunday. The bike rental shops were closed. The only place I could rent a bike was at an upscale hotel that was connected to a local company that makes bikes from ash trees--fifty bikes per tree and then they plant fifty seedling trees for each tree they use. Here is their website.

The bikes are seven-speed, planetary hub city bikes.  Three miles away from my hotel was a 1000-meter high mountain in the middle of the city with several cell towers at the top. It was 60 degrees, sunny and I wanted to ride!  So I rented the wooden bike, raised the seat as high as I could and rode up the mountain.

At three miles up, the road got really steep and I had to walk a hundred meters, but then it leveled a little and I kept going.  The view was beautiful. Halfway up I looked back at the city and was looking down on the Acropolis.  Further up the road turned south and I was looking at the harbor and the Aegean Sea.  Near the top the switchback interval got shorter and the grade went above ten percent.  I gave up when I was looking at the base of the cell towers knowing I could get a steel bike with a triple crank the next day and ride to the top.

Along with its planetary gearset, the bike had a caliper brake on the front wheel, but a coaster brake in the rear. On the way down the mountain, riding into a couple of switchbacks I slid the rear wheel when I went to backpedal and braked instead. By the bottom I was used to it, but it made me realize that I backpedal on the way into sharp turns--some of the switchbacks were 180 degrees.

The road had few guardrails and many long, sheer drops. I thought if I had really screwed up with the coaster brake my epitaph could be:  "He Wood Ride Anything with Wheels."

Google maps is mostly wonderful, but occasionally just terrible.

Alligator or Crocodile: Google maps wanted me to find out in person!

Google maps is mostly wonderful, but occasionally just terrible.  I rented a car at the Athens airport and drove back to a hotel where I was staying. The hotel was six miles away in a little village.  For some reason, Google maps told me to leave the highway and take a dirt road to the hotel.  For almost a mile, I followed the road with an increasing sense of foreboding.  At first it was two very small cars wide, then narrower. 

Then it went from straight to winding. There were stray dogs on and near the road. Then the road turned slightly downhill.  Although Athens is mostly very hilly, the area near the airport is flat and occasionally marshy. Slightly downhill can be significant.

It was.  I rounded a corner and there was a puddle. A big puddle. A width of the road puddle. I stopped. I stared. In the light of a waxing moon, the puddle was black but illuminated by the lunar light.  I looked beside the puddle and saw no clear path. The puddle itself was smooth—not rocks or branches sticking up through the surface, so it was deep.  The Renault Clio I was driving had about three inches of ground clearance, I had one bar of cell service, so I turned around and went back to the highway. 

Google tried to get me to turn around and go back to the impromptu alligator habitat, but I kept driving on the highway until it recalculated me a route on pavement.  Or was it crocodiles?

Persistent Pitch Men and Women in front of Athens Restaurants

Restaurant row in Athens.  Each restaurant has a 
pitch man or woman saying some version of "Eat here!"

Between my hotel and Athens and the place I rented bikes was a block of restaurants. They were side by side competing for tourists who could only eat so many meals.  My favorite coffee place was also at the far end of the line, so I passed restaurant row several times a day for three days.

Outside each of the restaurants was a hawker.  A man or woman who would say, “Eat here. Authentic Greek food. Or pizza if you want.” I passed by. Crossing the narrow street to the opposite sidewalk was no help.  Some of the times I was walking by I was wearing spandex—not a fashion choice of anyone else that I could see. 

Finally, the last night I wanted to eat a pizza, so I went in the restaurant with a tall, bearded guy doing the pitches and ordered pizza and water. 

When I left, I had to pass by a half-dozen other hawkers. One of them, a short, intense woman in her forties said, “Why did you go to his place? What did they offer you? Was it free beer? They give free beer.”

I was going to keeping walking, then I stopped and said, “They gave me a brand-new car. They gave me a 2020 Renault Clio.” 

She looked stunned for a minute then recovered and said, “What else?” Then the woman hawking for the restaurant beside hers, a taller woman in her late 20s, smiled and said, “Yes, what else did they give you?” 

I said, “Two motorcycles. A Ducati Monster and Honda CBR1000.”

She said, “You better be careful and not drink too much if you are riding those bikes.” 

I said I drank a whole bottle of sparkling water and would not touch the bikes till morning.  She smiled. The first woman forced a smile. Clearly, she had a side bet going about whether the old guy in spandex would ever eat in one of their restaurants.