Flat Tires and Candy

I am starting to like the under aged-drinking law in the US… As you may know you can buy alcohol at a tender age of 16 here in Europe. That in itself would not be a problem but Friday was the last day of exams at German high schools and that usually means celebrations afterwards. This, too, is fine but this year the kids went a little overboard, it seems, and a lot of bottles shattered. As most of those “parties” happen outside, guess where all the glass ends up… Anyways, we went on a pretty nice ride yesterday, weather was good, we even had “summer-like” temperatures of about 50° (first 5h ride without winter gloves, yay) but I never had to stop so often during a ride to fix flats. At one point a friend and I had a flat at the same time! So we stopped to fix the flats and while we were standing at the side of the road, competing about who would change the tube faster, an older lady came out of a bakers shop on the other side of the road and offered us some candy! Needless to say, the flat-changing-competition lost its appeal immediately and we focused more on the right selection of sugary goodness. Turns out the lady runs the shop and saw us standing outside and thought we might need a little “boost”. I never had anything like that happen to me before in Germany and I must say I was very positively surprised. Maybe in need to change my perception of The Grumpy Germany to something nicer…