When I joined the Air Force I had not intention of being stationed outside of the Continental US until the opportunity to move to Germany came in 2000. I volunteered primarily to avoid being stationed in Korea where you aren't allowed to take your family. What a wonderful opportunity. We were stationed at Ramstein AB which is in the state of Rhineland Pfalz which sits in the west central portion of the country. Prior to moving to Germany, my cycling interests were primarily of the mtn bike persuasion. That changed quickly when I discovered the windy German roads. We lived 12 km north of the base in the village of Kollweiler. I had a great commute. Here are some of the sites I saw every day on my way to work.
RACC
Before I left California, a friend of mine who was stationed in Germany told me about the Ramstein Area Cycling Club (RACC) and their Tuesday/Thursday lunch time rides. I showed up on my old Schwinn and got my ass handed to me on the Tuesday Spin and sprint. I stuck with it though, replaced the Schwinn with a new Bianchi road bike and before I left, I was able to hold my own on the sprints and was in charge of the RACC.
Pide Piper of Cycling
When people see how much fun I have cycling they tend to want to try it themselves. My first convert was my buddy Curt. Curt and I arrived in Germany a week a part and shared an office about the size of a closet. We immediately became friends. Curt's wife made a comment once that he had put on a few pounds so he asked me to help get him into cycling. We went to the shopette at Ramstein which happened to carry some decent entry level bikes. A shopette is a military convenient store. Cycling was so popular in Germany that this one carried bikes. Curt bought a diamond back mtn bike for around $250.00. He ended up adding a suspension fork, clipless pedals and several other accessories. Before he left Germany he bought a custom made german mtn bike. Curt and I would ride at lunchtime when I wasn't doing RACC rides. We ended up getting several other folks from work to ride with us. When the Air Force started it's push for fitness we started doing PT rides. Curt left Germany a year before me in 2004. before he left we did a ride from Homberg Germany to the French Boarder. The ride was on the Glan Blies trail which ran 60 miles from Glan Muuchwieler Germany to the French boarder. We caught the trail at the half- way point and rode it all the way to France. We finished with a cold beer at one of the little outdoor cafes on the trail. What a great ride.
Racing
I competed in two different types of races while in Germany. I competed in the US Armed Forces races and I attempted to compete in a few amateur German races. I did ok in the Armed forces races, placing in the top 5 in the mtn bike races and as high as 1st in some of the road races. The German races were another story. They have 3 classes, A,B, and C. C is the entry level class. In Germany, cycling is like baseball. Children as young as 5 join clubs and start training with a coach. By the time they are my age, they have 30 plus years of training and racing. The races take of hard and never let up. I usually got dropped from the start, lapped and headed for the car much before the race was half over. It was a humbling experience. Some of the guys from the RACC would do ok, a few did very well, but most resigned themselves to racing the military rides and leaving the German races to the Germans.
An example of how popular the racing was in Germany was the Schopp velodrome. There are only 19 velodromes left in the US but they are everywhere in Germany including the little village of Schopp which is just a few klicks south of Ktown. We held both miltary road and mtn bikes there. It was a great place for our families to watch us. Some of us would even ride there and hope on it for training intervals.
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