Difficulty: Could be done by a pirate with a wooden leg and a glass eye while giving his pet parrot Pete a manicure.
Duration: Just under one hour.
Follow the little red line on the map:
Vienna’s Harbour seen from the speed of a bike: Sounds like:
One leg pushes, the other leg lifts. Swallowed by trees. Spat out on a fry pan of a highway.
Cycle on footpath past graffiti on the wall ‘I love you’. The love is a love heart. Keep cycling.
Over the bridge and by the water. Nothing left of the city but a distant hum. The river is brown. The grass is green. A Mick Jagger of an old boat.
Second hand books stacked on a table – take something, leave something the sign says. Most take and never leave.
A garden on a boat …
A seagull. WTF? Where am I? Become increasingly confused. Feel like I’m in a port city.
A shining golden ball suspended upon a white dome comes into view. It’s a pagoda. I push back on the foot break propel myself onto it. Take my shoes off first.
Stand upon it. Look up. The sun bounces off it. The giant golden Buddha winks at me as I leave. Or perhaps that’s the sun.
Traffic here is low. Grass is high. Gravel crunches under foot. Two topless guys lazily roller blade past. They look so leathery, I expect them to squeak as they pass.
A old guy slouches in his deck chair with his legs apart like trying to get a tan on his balls. His wife snores under a green umbrella. Fishing poles in the water. Just for looks.
Rustling leaves in trees and a field of water is on my left. Parallel train tracks. straight lines, wire fences, fields of shipping containers on my right. BIPA, Coca Cola. Where have they come from? Where are they going? Airports make you feel left out if your not flying. Habours make you feel stuck to the land beneath your feet if your not floating off into some horizon.
Gravel crunches under wheel. A topless old man paints his boat while listening to Austropop. A mighty big windmill grows as I peddle on. As if it’s growing into the sky.
Eclipsing the sun for a miniscule of moments at the rhythm that this reads – sun… eclipse… sun eclipse.
Power lines and wires above the train line run overhead like guitar strings waiting to be played. A passing biker exhales heavily as he overtakes like a truck’s hydraulic brake.
Stop on a depressing concrete, wooden bench. Watch a tourist boat rise on some gate like dam contraption. A little girl waves. I wave back. Not sure what for. She smiles than I understand the point of it all.
Upon the bridge a man eats a sandwich and throws the crusts to the seagulls. Underneath us is the Freudenau hydraulic power plant. Electricity generated underneath by the push and pull of water.
I look over my shoulder. A woman is dangling her child over the edge of the bridge, for a better look.
It makes me nervous but the kid is calm. Calm as a kid.
Seagulls gather and wait. God knows what for. Food probably. Like most of us.
A train track makes a quick getaway out of town. My eyes follow.
I wheel my awkwardly bike around and head back the way I came.
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