Acclimatising to the 9 euro ticket. Its such a different experience, hopping on and off trains in Germany, with no barriers to check your progress, and no staff to show a ticket to.
Half the time, you see an inspector and half you don't. They are always polite and friendly as you rummage for your phone and find the downloaded image with a QR code.
All our travel that's not been leg powered has been on a 9 euro ticket. Amazing as it seems to cover everything, buses, trams and trains that are not doing international journeys.
That's the real positive side of German integrated transport.
The downside is the height of the new trains, for some reason, someone forgot to check the height before ordering. Sometimes Samantha has faced a 1 in 2 gradient, too steep for the giant ski jump but ok for someone in a wheelchair to attempt to go down. Likewise, trams with their pull-out ramps can be challenging at the best of times.
The train journey begins early in the morning so we can get to our cycling start before the heat rises. It's forecast to rain in the UK but this silly heat continues on the continent.
We disembark and straight away hit a (what is the collective noun for teenage school kids?) chaos of pupils, all walking everywhere and anywhere obstructing our progress. Some spontaneously ran in front to greet or hit a friend/enemy before flying on in an unpredictable chaotic fashion, oblivious to my bright fluorescent greeny yellow top and frantically pinging bike bell.
As the swarm of children thins a stream of bike-wielding cavalry take up their place in front impeeding our clear passage and blocking progress until you prize them apart with the bike wheel.
A few more kilometres of this slow progress, and we are free. Free from the Brownian motion of perambulating students but still mostly confined to the urban street landscape, traversing our way sometimes linear other times a crabbing motion back and forth, left and right at 45 degrees to our true flight.
When we do make the countryside, it's with villages offering idyllic settings to drink beer or coffee. Back you sirens, acceptable at journeys end but not it's beginning.
The temptations pass, and we rise above 15km/hour on average for the first time in the day.
As we make progress, so does the sun, with its arc ascending as we perspire below. And here it occurs to me the true meaning of acclimatisation.
When I hear that a football squad or athletics team have gone somewhere to acclimatise it has sounded more glorified jolly than a vital necessity. But never again will I take acclimatisation so lightly.
In England, I was knocking off the 40km training trips in a few hours and over much tougher inclines than we have faced. I would do it on less than my bottle of water and come back fine.
The humid island atmosphere I hail from does not demand that I give up my body's moisture to the air and the ambient temperature is happy to stay in the sensible zone for cyclists.
Here the air is dry, the sun demanding, and by noon your moisture is sucked from your body by the vampiric ether we travel through. The only hope of warding off the Dracula of the skies is to shelter from its Sauron gaze by seeking shelter at every opportunity.
Conserving and utilising every drop of water becoming the highest priority. If only I could ride in a Dune suit, fashioned as an Arrakis stillsuit to ensure the safe passage on my journeys.
But until they are the must-have of the average cycle shop, I will continue with my newfound interest of shade in all its variations.
Soon a sign for Frankfurt, and we find more senior cyclists joining our quest as we ride beside the tram lines making their way into the city.
This continues for many kilometres as urban street furniture becomes more solid and numerous.
Finally, the count down into the centre and our hotel. We arrive but then have the mission to find safe bike storage as there is no room in the hotel.
After finding and declining the trains' bike storage, unmanned and poorly supported, we decide to take off the quick-release parts and chain the rest together on the street bike stations.
Next, a trip on foot to find a supermarket, and then with watermelon, greek salad and other treats in hand, we head back.
Programming ensues for some hours in the foyer until Benjamin retires then Samantha and I check out the Frankfurt nightlife and stop at a bar to chat and chill.
On the way back, we spot yet more mice than on our outward trip and decide sleep has the better calling on our time as we settle for the night.
