< ![CDATA[  The first day out of Bamberg was a depressingly long, short day. We rode a whopping 26 km. A third of our best day. Up two incredible hills. All of us feeling sickly. Being Saturday, we loaded up at the grocery with two days worth of food (they roll up the sidewalks in Germany on Sundays and nothing but the bakeries are open) and set off into the mountains to “save time” and take a “short cut” around the looping bike path. Ha. Needless to say, we neither saved time, nor cut short any aspect of the ride. We rolled into this valley tired and sore, happy to find such a lovely place to “stealth camp” beside a babbling brook in the cleft of two little mountains. We’d recommend it to all of you if we knew where in the world we are! We were no more than off the bikes before the boys started clutching themselves, announcing their need to pee. Of course. One boy had a slightly more desperate look. Not pee. I started searching, frantically, through every single bag for the shovel, which we haven’t used yet this trip. Could I find it? Of course not. It is here somewhere, but hiding as stealthily as we are camping. More, actually. The boys were not deterred by this and started digging with sticks. Twice they came back asking for Dad to “check the hole.” He declared it not deep enough and they kept digging. Half an hour later the men came trooping back to the camp. We heard them whooping before they arrived: “Well boys, that was an adventure experience,” says Gabe.... “Our first attempt at “stealth pooping.” Not as fun as we thought it might be!” Meg and I were stifling our laughter. The whole story came out later. I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say it involved squatting on all fours and sports announcer style commentary from a certain middle boy. As for the “stealth” aspect, not so much. They dug their hole in the middle of an open field in full view of both the road and the bike path. Gotta love it. Once the laughter died down I found the perfect segue to my favorite Ghandi quote: “It is a sin against God and fellow man to not cover your own poop in the forest.” The boys could appreciate that and decided that Ghandi must have been a pretty good guy. The sun is setting over our tent in this valley for the second night. We woke up to determined rain and it hung over us all day long. We’ve played more card games and dice games than we care to recount. The only news on that front is that someone besides Meg is winning... for once! The kids have read and colored and wrestled in their half of the tent until we yelled at them to “Quiet down.” We ended the day with baths in the stream under a full moon... picturesque... it would have been perfect if not for the ice cold water. The boys said “Goodnight” to Ghandi before they went to bed, warning him that we’ll likely not be here in the morning. We’re hoping for fair skies and following winds to blow us out of this valley.]]>