Boris said the Bavarian Alps had some great motorcycling roads, so I thought I\u2019d better check them out.<\/p>\n
I grabbed a cheap return flight to Munich in July on line, and looked for a place to stay. There was a town ten kilometres from Munich airport called Erding which had a motorcycle rental business. I thought I could do some day rides down to Salzberg, and Berchtesgaden, and Schwangau; and maybe even the Czech Republic, and it wasn\u2019t even that far to Switzerland. And Erding had the brewery where they made Erdinger Weissbier. It\u2019s not a bad drop.<\/p>\n
July was over a month away, so I thought I\u2019d better brush up on my German.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an Austrian club ten or so kilometres from home, so I went up there on Saturday. It\u2019s a nice club. It\u2019s low key. They don\u2019t have poker machines, so there is no river of gold to help the finances. And because of this they only open weekends and Friday night, and the staff are volunteers.<\/p>\n
The walls are decorated with paintings and shields and flags and deer heads. The waitresses wear dirndls. One was obviously of Indian extraction, which looked a bit weird, but I put that behind me, and ordered a Weissbier, and grabbed their newsletter from the bar, and sat down to drink and read.<\/p>\n
The newsletter said they had an air rifle club and to just ask at the bar.<\/p>\n
I finished my Weissbier, and went up to the bar, and said \u201cIch will Luftgewehr schiessen<\/em>\u201d, and the bartender said \u201cSorry mate?\u201d<\/p>\n So I said I want to shoot air rifles, and the bartender said no worries, just turn up on Tuesday at seven thirty. I asked if everyone meets there and goes to the range, but he said no, the range is here.<\/p>\n The building is obviously bigger than it looks.<\/p>\n I rode up there on Tuesday to shoot the breeze in German and air rifles in the international language of shooting things. Everyone seemed very Aussie, but one guy had an accent. Someone went over to the back wall, which had a few paintings on it, and raised it. It was hinged, and behind it were target machines which you could pull back ten metres and clamp to a table. Then you insert the target strip, push a button, and the target travels back to the wall.<\/p>\n They shoot at 45mm targets at 10 metres. They move the flower vases off the mid-range tables first.<\/p>\n People came and introduced themselves to me, and when the guy with the accent came over I said \u201cWie werde ich Mitglied?<\/em>\u201d and he said \u201cSorry mate?\u201d<\/p>\n I said how do you become a member and he said first you have to join the Austrian club, then you can join the air rifle club.<\/p>\n I showed them my firearms licence, and they lent me one of those three thousand dollar Olympic air rifles with di-optic sights, and I shot forty shots, and took my four target strips over to the scoring machine, and got three fifty nine out of four hundred. Someone said it was a good thing I didn\u2019t get 333, because if you get 333 you have to shout the bar.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bar?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yes. There\u2019s always someone here with an RSA, so we\u2019ll open the bar when he finishes shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n The RSA guy finished shooting and opened the bar, and I ordered a Weissbier. He said no charge because I\u2019m a new member.<\/p>\n I sipped my Weissbier. People finished shooting, and bought schnapps and beer and wine and came over and asked me what sort of bike I rode, and I told them a Kawasaki Ninja 1000, and all but one of them said they had a motorcycle too. Mainly BMW GS\u2019s in parallel twin and flat twin, and one guy had a four cylinder Japanese two fifty that he was rebuilding.<\/p>\n I told them I was going to Bavaria to ride a motorcycle in July, and they said that\u2019s great, and I should come for a ride with them some time after I get back.<\/p>\n I told Ben about it a couple of days later. \u201cSo much for brushing up on my German\u201d, I said. \u201cI spoke less than ten words over two days, and no-one understood a word of it. Though I did overhear a woman at the next table speaking it on the first day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReally?\u201d said Ben. \u201cWhat was she talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo bloody idea\u201d, I said. \u201cWoman stuff, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStill,\u201d he said, \u201cshooting those high-end rifles must have been fun\u201d.<\/p>\n He\u2019s a stein half full kind of guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1496417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[9,221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1496416"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1496419,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496416\/revisions\/1496419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1496417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1496416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1496416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1496416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}