Henk's bike and Panasonic team kit brings back memories for me. In 1990 I was 20 yrs old embarked on a solo European bike tour for the summer, staying at youth hostiles and B&B rooms along the way. I spent several days following the tour of Switzerland so that I could watch my first pro cycling race in person. It was neat to see the pro cycling scene up close that I had only ever know from outdated issues of Winning magazine and John Tesch's - wide world of sports TV commentary. I got Lemonds autograph and talked with him as he was adjusting and putting on his cycling shoes sitting in team car one morning, I got to watch the 7-11 team up close (in their final year of 7-11 sponsorship). I'de found a cast-off Panasonic team cycling cap next to the road after one of the tour de Suisse stages. Just before start of next days stage I noticed Olaf Ludwig, Panasonic's DDR olympic gold metal sprinter duck into an alley near the start line so I followed him. When I caught up with him, somewhat embarrassingly I found he was in the process of relieving himself in the alley in preparation for the race start. After he had finished with his business and turned around, I used my limited german to ask him "Deine untrerschrift bitte?" and he somewhat grumpily complied with signing the team cap for me.

After several days watching Suisse tour stages. Starting from Zurich I spent about a week bike touring exploring up/down some amazing Alpine passes in Switzerland in a route that took me through Gottardpass, Sustenpass, Furkapass, & Grimselpass before I returned through Zurich. I then headed north into W.Germany past lake Constance, skirted in countryside around Stuttgart and up to Heidelberg, turned east and went as far as Prague in Czechoslovakia (pre-Czech/slovak split), then north and spent a couple days passing through dreary East Germany. The DDR border was still staffed by guards carrying AK-47 and Russian helmets but they just waved me through and the East Germans were now free to cross border (driving their 2-stoke Trabant cars). This was just several months after the east/west border had opened up and I had a hard time finding tourist/hostel accommodations, restaurants, beer or suitable grocery food in rural East Germany. After a couple of days of riding all day against headwinds, eating cold canned mackerel fish supplemented with apples "liberated" from roadside orchards, and sleeping out in the woods I gave up and returned to West Germany through Hamburg, Rostock, ferry ride into Denmark and ended my bike tour at Copenhagen. I completed the tour on a early 80's light sport tour Trek, hand-built from 531 tubing. I traveled very light, single set of panniers with just a couple changes of clothes and no camping gear so I could still climb and put in long miles each day. The trek bike later got stolen once I was back in America, I didn't bring a camera along and I have few remaining relic reminders of the trip however 30+ years on, I still have Olaf's signed cap that I hauled around Europe;