This will be scattered, but full of the heart, soul and romance of motorcycling. We spend a couple of semi-calm seas rolling toward the English Channel. At the narrowest point it is a mere 10 miles wide, but goddamnit it was good to see the coast even if it was just the glimmer of lights on the coast in the increasing darkness. Two days out of the channel and into the North Sea we got the word that we could roll into Hamburg, but just then we hit a storm. The impact of just a knot or two on the length of time it takes to travel a few hundred miles is severe. Figure it out. Damn I was horny as hell, but reports from around the world told me there was ready love waiting for the taking in the Reeperbahn area of Hamburg as prostitution is legal, clean and ready to rock. I was climbing the steel bulkheads.
After a rough day at sea on Thursday in a force 8 storm the reports from the port was that we couldn?t get in the harbor and might have to anchor at sea. At 11:30 at night in a twisting sea that had us dancing on the bulkheads the captain reported that the crowed port had no craft available to haul a Pilot to the ship and would we consider a helicopter. The Captain laughed and asked them if they were snorting glue. We have six tall cranes on this ship, cables running everywhere, and the chances of catching a harbor guide hanging out of a helicopter with some of the steel cables was 90 to one. There was no way. The anxiety level increased and at 4:00 in the morning I jumped out of the sack. I was cold but I noticed that the rocking had shut down and it felt as if we motored into a dry dock. We were in the Elb river with a pilot who was delivered to the Leon on a high speed 50-ft Hydroplane. He stayed with us until the Hamburg Harbor loomed ahead, then he was removed and we were told again that no pilots were available. Four more ships were lined up behind us. I was surprised that the Rickmers company has been home based in this port since 1834, yet had so small a handle on their own harbor. Another pilot finally boarded for the last multi-harbor maneuvering and docking. The Hamburg port is on the River Elb that consisted originally of several merging rivers into a swampy delta. In the 14th century many of the small towns used an island in the flat delta as their home protected by canals, bridges and guard shacks.
Rumor from management at the port was that there would be crews of longshoremen waiting at the Stlanerkai dock to begin to load cargo and we would be gone in two days and a half. As a passenger I wasn?t happy to hear that I only had a couple of days to roam the hinterland and find sexual release. I stood up on the bridge from 4:00 a.m. on watching a gang of ships attempt to find home in the myriad of docks, islands and peninsulas. Hamburg is a maze of fresh water canals, rivers and harbor inlets and the traffic was intense.
I was fortunate enough to have a leg up on this port. Lee Clemens knows a rider who had a shop in the Buxtehude, a suburb of Hamburg. I met George at a couple of events with Lee several years ago and he was willing to take some time out and rescue us from the ship?s docks. I watched as the first lines were tossed to the stevedores on the concreted dock 80 in another grizzly port. I understand the industrial strengths of ports and their service to the industrial side of the world, but each one I?ve had the displeasure of entering is a Siberia of metal, trash and containers. In towns smart city planners arrange industrial areas to be separated from other industrial units with residential and retail. Each port I come across could be a delight to thousands of residents and a pleasure to work in, if proper planning was implemented. It would actually boost morale within the dock worker?s community and afford the people of the community the opportunity to appreciate the work that goes on in port and how world wide shipping works. Instead it?s hidden from society by chain link fences and dirty streets that no one wants to be caught on.
George was ready to pick me up the moment we arrived and after 10 days at sea I was ready to stretch my legs. But I held off for a couple of hours. The crew on the docks was ready and began to load the ship immediately. Right away the deck was crowded with stevedores loading crates of copper tubing the size of houses bound for Hong Kong. We got the word right away that we were still leaving in a couple of days since the gangs on the docks would be working around the clock. We would finish loading in Antwerp, Belgium and head to Italy. When I asked about England I was told that currently the process for shipping included smaller ships that brought materials from the UK and spilled them into the free marketing zone of Hamburg to be off loaded, then loaded again on ships bound for the orient. Seemed costly, knowing that dock space and union workers pay to load and unload cargo was a high cost to shipping. What the hell do I know, except that we will not be going to see the queen? As it turns out we will be here five days since the workers took off at 10:00 p.m. and know one worked again until 6:00 a.m.
George showed me his historic town and the canals that ran through it. It?s tough to imagine that farmers harvested crops of apples and hauled them to the canals where they were loaded on small shallow boats in the 1600s and hauled to the harbor in Hamburg, then loaded on bigger ships bound for ports all over Europe. In parts of Hamburg buildings are built right on the edge of the canals and material was off loaded on one side into a building like hops for making brew. On the other side of the building lifts that reached every floor were loaded with the brew and lowered into waiting boats on the other side of the building.
George is the owner, with his wife, of five waterbed stores in the Hamburg region. Lee Clemens put it perfectly when he told me, ?George Bergman is the Waterbed King in his area.? Well, he is. His stores reek of class and style, and if you live in Germany or one of the surrounding countries and would like to consider a high quality waterbed. He?s your man, his web site is www.wasserbet-city.de. Wasserbett City is the name of his business. He?s still into bikes and rides from time to time while building the business, restoring a home and taking care of his wife Cindy and his young son George, Jr. He has a couple of brothers, John and the other, Robert. I?m 6?5?, George is 6?7? and his brother John or Jochen Bergmann is 7?0?. These guys are good looking monsters. The other brother rode some, but is currently out of the lifestyle. George has a Fatboy, and John has Heritage, and a Ultra with a sidecar.
So here?s where we touched on a little motorcycling philosophy and the real depth to the desire and need to ride. John explained it perfectly in broken English and I only wish I can paint the picture described in his big blue eyes. I could hear the passion in John?s voice and see the need for it in George?s eyes. John tried to explain something to me that we all feel but usually accept as a life long endeavor which we never talk about. It?s the will to be free and the opportunity to express that freedom. ?I have two hearts,? John said, ?One is for my family and the other is for my motorcycle and riding. I cannot function without my sense of freedom to ride. If when I was getting ready to marry my wife, she had said you cannot ride since we are having children, it would have been like cutting off my leg or my arm. She has grown to understand and so I still ride, but I have tried to give her the opportunity to understand by taking her and my first son on sidecar trips. She has grown to understand my need for this.?
I listened to his stories as we roamed the ancient street of Hamburg. I learned that 72 percent of the city was bombed out during WWII. Yet the entire time I spent with people in this beautiful city I only heard the word Nazis once. It is something the people of Germany would like to put behind themselves. It?s the 23rd of December today and tomorrow is Christmas Eve and this is a dynamite place to be during the holidays. It gives me a true sense of Christmas with some of the most magnificent churches on the planet and in each plaza is a group of temporary wood cabin like Kiosks, decorated in Christmas motifs, serving wine and rum drinks, selling candies and nuts, ceramic, leather or wood craft Christmas presents. As the evening fell upon us we rolled into Reeperbahn, the nasty section of town. Beautiful prostitutes line the streets. I mean knockouts all hitting on you as you meander through. The publicized highlight is the famous street called Herbert Strasse. The window street where no children or women are allowed. Half naked women sit inside windows and try to get your attention. They even have their own website called Herbertstrasseonline.com. Unfortunately these girls and some of the others are rip offs that I was warned about. The women lure you in with big tits and promises of love for 100 marks, then once inside the story changes trying to milk every nickel out of you and you?re lucky to get a hand job. We wandered the streets and looked, but didn?t touch. On the other hand, hard working girls are out in the street, or if you have a contact, there are prostitutes who know how the oldest profession is supposed to be handled with warmth, honesty and tenderness, but I?ll get to that later. The rest of the area is packed with peep shows, titty bars, night clubs, Irish pubs, adult stores and bars with girls who will stroke your leg for a high-priced drink.
We drank traditional brews and shot the shit about riding and our brother Lee Clemens who lost his son in a motorcycle accident this year. Travis, his son, was about to take over a major part of Departure Bike Works, in Richmond Virginia. He had a small son and a troubled wife he was trying to handle when he went down in a freak accident and died. George and I feel strongly about our brother who has endured many changes in his life this year and his trying to sort out his direction within his heart. Then we got into a story of one of John?s rides. Seems he?s in an executive at an insurance company, HDI in Hamburg, but rides to every major European rally, whether it?s in the middle of the winter or rockin? in the summer months. The man is a Viking of a rider who doesn?t hesitate to ride in weather that?s destined for snowmobiles. A half dozen years ago he was headed to the Super Rally ?97 in Sweden and decided to ride to the North Cap in Norway, which is the northern highest point in Europe. Hell, he was on the road to the Super Rally anyway, why not, right? They started with a 24-hour ferry ride from Germany to Oslo to Hwy 6. They stopped in Trondhiem the first night out to camp. There was no one in the camping area since it was covered with snow. John was on his Heritage and was riding with a buddy on a ?78 Ironhead Sportster. They went to the office and the owner said, ?We only have the large cabin with heat. The other cabins are too cold.?
?We?re just going to camp,? Jochen said, and they did to the owner?s surprise. The campgrounds were next to a pass over the mountains and there was a traffic light in the middle of nowhere. The light was red so they had to camp the night. The next morning the light turned to green, so they road out. They were rolling over Latitude 66 where the weather was brutally cold with wind that blew snow over them from left to right. They followed a snowplow truck until they reached the hall at the artic circle. The highway was clear, sorta, but the small road to the commemorative building was gravel and covered in snow 5 meters thick. They could only take a photo of Jochen standing on top of the snow with the roof of the building behind him. There were four meter tall light poles leading to the monument, but only the tops of the bulb housings were visible.
As they were getting ready to head out, the rider on the Sportster noticed that something seemed to be leaking from underneath his generator. They took the generator off and the cap off the generator and discovered that his brushes were gone. Jochen rode to a gas station nearby in less that 20 degrees and found that they had nothing, but the service man recommend that he hit the Toyota Dealership, which he did, but the damn thing was closed. There was an emergency number and he called and waited for a mechanic to arrive. The helpful mechanic assured him that he didn?t have any Toyota parts that would work, but after thinking about it realized that somewhere in the shop was a box of Bosch parts. After some hunting they found the box and some brushes that could be ground to fit and the wire lugs replaced with something that would work. They were on the road again.
They reached the crest of the pass and the road wasn?t too bad heading down to another ferry crossing. They waited for the Ferry to cross until 8 in the evening when they were informed that the pass on the North side was closed and they were forced to find a motel room. They waited 3 days. One evening a local invited them to the discoth?que for a party. There were very few people who lived in the area, mostly farmers from outlying areas came into the ferry base for the party. Since they were strangers and crazed motorcyclists riding in terrible weather they were treated like kings and asked to roam from table to table to add some spice to the evening. At 8:00 a.m. on the third morning they waited at the ferry dock as the 400-car ferry arrived and opened its doors. One car drove off the ferry and they were the only two vehicles heading North. After the 45-minute crossing they began another uphill winding road riding while dragging their feet on the icy pavement 6-8 miles up. The trip down the opposite side of the pass was far worse. First the Sportster went down, then John and the Heritage. They struggled and fought to right the bikes for more treacherous miles. Sometimes the roads were so slick and unruly that when they parked a bike on the sidestand and stepped away, it would begin to slide down the hill on its own.
At the bottom of the pass was a stretch of road that was built by 20,000 Yugoslavian prisoners during WWII. They were building the roads or dying trying for Nazis. There were lots of dark tunnels which Jochen and his friend thought would give them a break from the snow, but each man made cave dripped constantly with icy water from the snow above. Before Jochen knew the history of the highway that is 200 Kilometers long, he thought for sure he was lost and entering a mine shaft. At one point the gravel road was made of stones the size of fists. He couldn?t stop since the stones were so slick that the rear wheel would just spin. Just about the time he was certain that they had made the wrong turn he spotted a flashlight in the tunnel ahead. It turned out to be a bicyclist. When they finally made it to the other side of the prisoner road, the street improved and they were finally able to ride 55 mph to the next Petrol station where the owner said, ?Come into my living room and have some coffee.? John was wet to the bone, freezing and a puddle of water was building around his feet. The gentleman had been a prisoner of war and insisted that they relax in his home. A snowplow driver stopped at the station and made a point to warn them that the upcoming tunnels were slick with ice and treacherous. Some 5 to 10 Kilometers before Navik they began to have a problem with an SU that was freezing. Jochen discovered that the SU was extended far enough from the engine to freeze whereas his Bendix was not. Once they chipped away the ice and made it to Navik the carbs warmed enough to continue running. Heading north out of Navik the SU froze again, until they reached an intersection 20 miles north and turned toward the Swedish border. They never made it to the cap. At the top of the pass it was less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
As they turned toward Sweden they came to another block in the road where authorities held up cars heading East while a snowplow lead 20 cars West. After the snowplow came through, and turned around to lead the cars back the other direction, they asked the driver if they could make it through the pass. The experienced driver shook his head no, but said, ?Yes.? They pulled their bikes to the back of the pass perplexed at the undetermined response, but decided to follow the 20 cars ahead and give it a shot.
As soon as they entered Sweden the roads improved immensely. As they road 10 Kilometers into the country, they passed a lake more than 100 kilometers long and frozen. There were ice fisherman all over the lake in huts, wooden shacks, even some had their truck and campers pulled onto the ice. The sound of motorcycles was as foreign as greetings from bikini joggers. They were blown away to see motorcycles on that road at that time of the year.
The next town they entered was Waskaruna, Sweden, then rode to a city between Sweden and Finland where the weather improved although there were still several meters of snow alongside the roads. While passing a bay nearby Jochen witnessed an eagle sweep out of the sky and grab a fish from the bay and fly away. As they rode out of the next town they spotted their first elk which had been hit by a truck and lay dead hooves up along side of the road, but it wasn?t long until they spotted more elk, in groups, very much alive standing in the snow.
After one more rainy ride they finally made it to High Chaparral in Sweden for the Super Rally ?97. I took another shot of Irish whiskey just to fight of the verbal cold chill that filled the bar with each of John?s descriptions. We had a helluva time in Hamburg and I?ll spill my guts about the girl I met on Thursday in the news. I?ve got to grab some shuteye. It?s been whiskey, women, pubs and German beer every night until, well, until I find my ass back on the rusting barge.
Merry Christmas everyone. This is going to be a helluva year comin? up—
Bandit
