An exciting day in Stuttgart...

The weather was perfect, low 20s, sunny & no wind. Exitement began early when we caught the lift down to go and have breakfast. As luck would have it, our lift was full so we waited for another which we did not notice was going up instead of down. So we piled in with the other people & took a ride to the top floor, but instead of the door opening there was aloud bang & the lift fell 6 inches & then bounced, then all the numbers disappeared off the indicator & the lift slid rapidly down to the basement, it then started back up again & stopped, this was quite scary. Then nothing happened for a while so we pried the inner doors open, only to find ourselves between floors & unable to open the outer doors. We pressed the emergency call button & got no response, so we forced the lower part of the outer door open as we could just reach it, & called for help, no response. We again closed the inner doors & after a while the lift again decended to the ground floor, where the doors finally opened & we ran for our lives. ( not really, but we were now late to meet the others ) We cycled rivers & parks to the Mercedes museum, (pictorial below, boys only day ) & then cycled over to the Porche museum. (also pictured below). On the way to the Porche museum at about 10 klm from our hotel we had some more exitement.
( will the fun never end ? )
As we topped a long 5 klm hill climb I had a flat rear tyre, which is normally not a problem, exept that today, for the first time in history, I left all tubes, repair kits & tools back at the hotel, as we were only riding around locally.
( Of course this is when I would have the first flat tyre in 3 years ).
Luckily for me everyone had different size wheels than me & no one had a car valve pump anyway. In the end we installed a 21mm tube from Stewarts bike, in my 38mm tire & it had a presta valve that Mick could pump up. We lost 25 minutes to this incident, which wasn't too bad. The flat was caused by the original first day in Frankfurt when the derailleur went through the spokes. The damaged spoke finally broke this morning & the stump forced up through the band on the rim & penetrated the tube. So tomorrow it is off to the bike shop for parts & no more riding without spares. ( something I never do anyway )

 

Riding over a wooden covered bridge. over the river.

 

The first motor car ever built, from 1886.

 

A motor bike from the same era. It must have been fun riding this with no suspension & solid metal bound wheels, over the cobbles.

 

Admiral Bismarks personal launch, from the 1800s, powered by a Benz engine.

 

A very cool looking Benz tourer.

 

An interesting bus.( about the same era as mine )

 

A couple of very cool cars. There were many hundreds of cars & other machines. Far too many for this forum.

 

Even the lift inside the 8 floors of museum was very cool.

 

A bit of an interesting story for these vehicles. The red 2 door Merc belonged to Princess Dianna which she drove for 18 months but had to give back, because the English unions were outraged that she should be driving a foreign car.

The other is the Pope mobile he used while in Germany.

A Mercedes electric car which is commercially available here @ uses a hydrogen fuel cell to power its electric motor. It has a 400 klm range & a5 minute refuel.

 

Selfie in front of the car Yvonne is going to buy me for Christmas.

 

Lots of cars & every one has a story.

 

Best looking dude in the museum.

 

The outside of Mercedes museum.

 

Moving right along, the outside of Porche museum.

 

This wheel with built in electric motor comes from a car over 100 years old, when petrol was not readily available. I think we progressed backward.

 

A Porche tractor designed to travel between rows of fruit trees & sugar cane & do no damage.

 

This car is hung upside down to show the downforce of its design would hold it safely on the ceiling once it reaches 321 klm/hr, easily within its ability.

 

In the mid 90s Harley Davidson went to its EVO engines, designed by Porche & then became reliable.

 

A very fast car.

 

View of the city on our way home.