Day 5: Germersheim to Hagenbach: 50km The Best Bike Shop in the World- Rad-Schlag

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Next morning we woke to rain drops and within minutes it was pouring steady. Denis arose in search of a washroom. He returned and we headed to the bike shop. Wolfgang arrived at 10:00 am much to our HUGE relief. He looked at the Dual Drive and immediately fixed it. The bent steering from our fall off the path in Speyer was also straightened. We thought these were the big problems, but they were not. Our tires were worn wrong due to the bent steering and we needed to replace them. Again normally not an issue but the rims were off a bit and it took Wolfgang a very long time to replace tires and tubes and he is truly an expert with trikes as we could not have done this ourselves. He and his friend, Deter, were simply amazing. They made me coffee, allowed me to charge the Ipad and really set us up for success. We could not have been more lucky as to break down when we did as we are certain another location would have meant the end of the trip that we had planned. So the lessons learned this day were huge, but the most important one is that the people we have met are amazing and that is exactly what we know will remain the strongest of memories. It could have been the worst day ever, but only two days later we are thinking it wasn't so bad and that we are glad it happened as the trike is in better shape than ever. We headed out and were on the road by 1:30 which was pretty good considering we thought we were not leaving town at all!

We headed south again with plans to get to Laterbourg but as luck would have it this day turned into the best of our vacation yet because of Wolfgang and our new friends Monika & Kurt. We were about 10km from Laterbourg when we stopped to help a cyclist whose pump was not working. We offered ours and a conversation led to a most welcome offer. Kurt and Monika offered us a bed and shower and we readily accepted. We hit it off immediately and had an incredible time with these two new friends. We pedaled back to their home in Hagenbach and were thrilled to have the second best beer of our lives. We sat and visited and the next thing we knew they had proposed supper in Neuberg at the German Festival. It was so much more fun than we could ever have imagined. We arrived in Neuberg to find a traditional German band mixed with both young and old. Monika even arranged to have a song played for "The Canadians" that were visiting. We found our cheeks were sore from smiling and we could not have arranged for a more interesting event and we cannot thank Monika and Kurt enough for their generosity! Overall, it was truly the best day and the reason we came to Europe.

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