They shook hands.
Andy left the store an hour and a half later, after the bicycle modifications and packing had been completed. As he was packing, Becker gave Andy a box of heavy black plastic trash bags to use as waterproof liners for the panniers, handlebar bag, and the now half-empty overseas bag. The latter initially went into the almost-full trailer, for fear that Becker might spot the SIG ammo and accessories. Laine would have preferred that his sleeping bag and bivouac bag stuff sacks be strapped to the top of the cargo rack, but the gooseneck of the trailer was in the way. So they, too, went in the trailer.
Kurt and the old man both shook Laine’s hand before he wheeled the bike and trailer out of the store.
The younger Becker waved and said, “Viel Gluck!”
“Thanks, but I’ll need more than luck,” Andy replied. “I’ll need God’s Grace.”
“Well, then . . . Moge Gott mit Ihnen sein!”
Andy took the Saarbrucker Strasse out of Landstuhl, heading west. Getting accustomed to the feel of the bike and trailer took some adjustment. After the first few uphill grades, he decided that he should carry less food and water. He kept three liters of water but poured out two other one-liter bottles. He decided to gradually reduce by half the amount of food in the packed trailer.
15
Der Pilger
“To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mind-set to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.”
Bruchmuhlbach-Miesau, Germany Early November, the First Year
Andrew Laine kept on the secondary roads as he headed toward the French border. He stopped when he reached the first dense stand of timber, loaded the SIG, and put it in his holster.
The L395 expressway had surprisingly few passing cars and trucks. Laine passed through the town of Bruchmuhlbach-Miesau late in the afternoon. Just after turning southwest on L119, the terrain again got hilly, and Andy was feeling exhausted. Paralleling a major railway line, the road was heavily treed on both sides. It was a long day of riding, and his muscles were unaccustomed to the new strain.
Andy started looking for a secluded place where he could camp for the night. He wanted to stop before he got to Homburg, which was a sizable city. Huffing and puffing his way up a grade, now in low gear at barely more than a walking pace, Andy was surprised to see three young men burst from behind the screen of trees. They came running at him to intercept, with their boots thudding on the pavement. Before Andy could either pick up his pace or turn, they were upon him.
All three of the men had shaved heads. Two of them wore black flight jackets, while the third was in an obsolete Flecktarn camouflage pattern Bundeswehr jacket. All three of them wore what looked like Doc Martens boots, or something similar. One of them grabbed the bike’s handlebars while another shoved a one-inch diameter tree branch through the spokes of the front wheel. Laine wasn’t going anywhere.
The one standing the closest taunted, “Wo willst du denn hin, Pilger?” His breath stank of beer.
Andy jumped off the bike and backed up five steps. He held his hands just out from his thighs, showing his palms to the men.
The tallest one made a show of flicking open a German parachutist’s gravity knife. He held it up and cackled. Then he looked down at the bike’s pannier and trailer and asked, “Alles fur mich?” He set the bicycle’s kickstand and then closed the knife and put it in his pocket. The third man loosened his grasp on the handlebars and began to walk around to Andy’s side of the bike.
Laine took two more steps backward. Then, in one smooth motion, he pulled back his jacket, drew the SIG pistol, leveled it, and took up the slack on its trigger. He took yet another two steps backward.
He commanded them to leave: “Haut ab! Verschwindet!”
The skinhead in the Bundeswehr jacket shook his head and hissed, “Nein, Pilgergeiger. Deine Pistole ist nicht echt!” (No, Pilgrim fiddler, your pistol is not real.”)
“Sorry, boys, but it’s echt. Now, verschwindet, macht schnell und zwar schnell!”
The one that had used the tree branch pulled it from the spokes, raised it over his head, and shouted “Lugner!” He took a step forward.
Andy aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger twice. The second shot hit the tree branch, ripping it from the man’s hand. He looked startled. The one in Flecktarn shouted, “Lass uns gehen!” All three of the skinheads ran off into the woods, shouting and cursing loudly.
After seeing them top a hillock seventy-five yards away, still running at full speed, Andy thumbed the SIG’s de-cocking lever. He switched magazines with one of the full spares on his belt, and reholstered the gun. It was only then that he noticed that his hands were shaking and his ears were ringing.
Back astride the bike and again starting to pedal uphill, Andy’s nerves calmed a bit and he started to chuckle. Pumping his legs in cadence, he repeated to himself, like a running Jodie, “Schweizer Qualitat. Swiss quality. Schweizer Qualitat. Swiss quality.”
He spent the first night just over a mile farther down the road. It was getting dark, and he could see the lights of the village of Bruchhof in the distance. According to his map there would be at least five miles of urban area beyond that. So he turned left onto a farm road, and then again onto a smaller lane that ran into the woods. Now that it was almost full dark, he pulled his bicycle off the road and into the woods. There were just a few scattered lights from farmhouses. Unlike a typical American forest that was choked with fallen trees, this forest was of the orderly German modeclass="underline" it looked more like a park than a woodlot. He had no trouble wheeling his bike and trailer two hundred yards into the timber.
Finding a brushy patch, Andy disconnected the trailer and laid his bike down. Then he backed the trailer into a clump of brush. The ground here was fairly level. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining. It took him just a couple of minutes to set up his camp. His sleeping bag was kept stowed inside his bivouac bag. All that he had to do was lay it out on top of his ground pad.
After rolling back a large rock and relieving himself, he returned to his bike trailer and washed his hands with a water bottle.
Andy sat and prayed. He had a lot to be thankful for. He pulled out an MRE at random. He was ravenous, and wolfed down nearly all of its contents in just a few minutes, not bothering with the niceties of the heating packet and the drink mixes. After eating the chicken and rice entree, he gobbled down the entire packet of crackers, followed by several slugs of water. Then he tore off the corner of the peanut butter pouch and began squirting it directly into his mouth. Finally, he put all of the candies into his shirt pocket.
After zipping closed the clear plastic front of the bike trailer, Andy sat down and kicked off his sneakers. They were still wet from an earlier rain shower. He realized that he would have to alternate between his two sets of sneakers on this trip: this pair that would only rarely dry out, and the pair that he’d keep dry. The latter he would wear only on days when there was no threat of rain. He put the shoes into a plastic bag and tucked it into the foot end of his bivy bag. He draped his rain gear over the sides of the trailer to help camouflage it. He’d have to do something about the bright yellow color. Before crawling into his bag, he rolled up his coat inside out to use as a pillow, and tucked the SIG under it. He took off his damp socks and put them between his outer shirt and T-shirt to dry overnight.