If Bernd Kunkel wants to know how many kilometers he cycled five years ago, he doesn't have to think long.
A look at the archive is enough.
He made a note of all the trips.
Kirchheim
- Bernd Kunkel cycled 5503 kilometers in 2016. More than ever before. He knows that very well. Not because he has memorized it, he doesn't need it at all. A look at his notes is enough. Since 1979, Kunkel has been keeping a precise record of every kilometer he covers on one of his bikes. The 79-year-old is Kirchheim's cycling kilometer archivist.
In total, Kunkel had seven bicycles with which he has covered more than 161,000 kilometers in the past four decades.
Three of them are still in use: a racing bike for long tours, a cross bike for bad roads, such as looking for mushrooms in the Ebersberger Forst, and his first half-burner.
“I fitted it with a luggage rack and turned it into a shopping bike,” says the 79-year-old.
“I only had to replace the rear wheel with the drive unit, the rest is still original.” The distance covered with the half-burner?
75,940 kilometers.
E bike?
"I don't need that for a long time"
His annual average over the last twelve years is 5126 kilometers, including the top year 2016. That makes 15.03 kilometers per day, despite a number of lost days. Kunkel used to go on tours to Freising, Erding or Altötting with his son, since he moved out, the Kirchheimer has almost always been cycling alone. "My wife doesn't like cycling, it gives her back pain, she prefers to jog long distances - I have problems with my back," says Kunkel. "So I cycle alone, it would be nice if I had colleagues." His neighbor is 72 and regularly cycles to Lake Starnberg, but that is too far for him, especially since he has had health problems with his lungs for several years. The Danube Cycle Path has also been on his list for a long time.And what about a little electrical assistance when pedaling? "An e-bike," says Kunkel, "I don't need that for a long time, it works like that for me too, 25 to 30 kilometers a day are always possible."
Kunkel is an engineer. For many decades he was employed by MBB in the space division in Ottobrunn, later as a consultant in Weßling in the Starnberg district. "After Ottobrunn, unless it was raining or snowing heavily, I cycled to work whatever the weather." 21 kilometers there, 21 kilometers back. “We got quite a few kilometers together,” says Kunkel. Of course, he knows this perfectly thanks to his records, which date back to 1979. That year his wife gave him a half-burner for his birthday. At the time, she smiled at his argument that cycling to work could save him many liters of petrol. "Then I bought a speedometer, initially one with a pointer, later digitally, so that I could prove it to her."
He often got wet on his daily trips to Ottobrunn, "and somehow I had the feeling that I almost always had a headwind," he says with a smile.
A friend of his glider pilot told him that this was by no means just a feeling, but corresponded to reality.
Especially when the weather is nice, the wind often comes from the south-west in the morning and turns to the north-east in the evening - exactly in the opposite direction to which Kunkel was pedaling.
Until his retirement in 2002, he had been cycling for many, many kilometers.
Time he used.
"On the 45-minute journey there, I thought about my daily routine and on the way back what I wanted to tackle the next day," reports Kunkel.
In addition, he always came to work at full throttle in the morning, fit and awake, even without coffee.
City cycling "a great thing"
Kunkel was born in Brandenburg and grew up on the eastern edge of the Ruhr area. “In my youth I cycled a lot, I cycled almost all of the larger West German cities.” As a student in Marburg, however, it was too hilly for him - “I stopped cycling for decades”. Later he got back in the saddle and reeled thousands of kilometers. Not accident-free. Kunkel was taken off his bike three times by motorists, each time he was not to blame, he says, but sustained considerable injuries.
One action that the long-term cyclist follows with benevolence is the annual city cycling.
"A great thing", as Kunkel thinks.
“A lot more people should cycle more.” However, the cycle paths should finally get better.
"In and around Kirchheim in particular, they are sometimes catastrophically bad, so you should take an example from the Netherlands or cities such as Münster, Osnabrück or Oldenburg." If anyone knows, then the bike-kilometer archivist.
You can find more news from Kirchheim and the district of Munich here.