The joys and sorrows of having a cycling partner

John and me are cycling together for almost 2 months now and we get along surprisingly well despite the fact that he is a male and you can't leave him alone for 5 minutes and he will do something stupid like getting a puncture on his bike. But I have to admit that having a cycling partner makes things a lot easier:

- You save a lot of money (despite the fact that he keeps telling me that I cost him a fortune): You can buy food in bulk (did I mention our 3 course dinners?) and you can share accomodation costs (we had the poshest room ever the last two nights and between two people and the exchange rate it was still incredibly cheap).

- You can cook 3 course dinners. This is especially true if your cycling partner carries a petrol stove, 2 pots and 1 pan and you yourself only have to carry 1 titanium pot and a tiny little stove. The best is that this way you can still moan at him for being ultraheavy and still have 3 course dinners.

- You can cook anything you like and your cycling partner still eats it. John has the advantage of eating everything you set in front of him including chicken liver, parsnip and beetroot. He even volunteered to eat Sauerkraut!

- You are plenty warm at night especially due to the fact that he carries a 2 person 4 season tent that weighs about 1 ton while you carry an ultralight tarptent. If you smuggle yourself into his tent at night you can still moan at him for being ultraheavy, but keep yourself warm and dry at the same time in his tent. Very useful!

- You have someone to repair your bike in exchange for sewing repairs. Unfortunately, my bike never had a single problem since we are cycling together while his 40 kg of ultraheavy crap is constantly falling apart and needs to be repaired by me.

- You have someone you can nick food off - especially white chocolate John is extremely anal about. I am constantly being accused of eating too much of it which is all his fault because he is just not fast enough to eat it before me.

- You have someone you can blame it on if you get lost. The fact that John is not able to read any of his various maps without his glasses is extremely helpful there. But beware: Never give any new map to a male cycling partner - he will study it for hours whereas he never reads his guidebooks and therefore would miss all the museums and sights if you did not tell him.

- You have someone you can ditch doing the dishes on in exchange for cooking. He of course thinks that you are doing a big sacrifice for him by cooking for the two of you whereas you just love cooking and would never let get any screaming amateur like him near you food anyway. And I hate doing dishes!

- You can always moan at something when you have a cycling partner and get bored. Men usually do something stupid every 5 minutes so you don't have to look far to find something! In the worst case you can just misunderstand his so called British humour that no German would ever understand anyway. And I will never understand why he does not find feminist jokes funny!

PS: Despite what I have written so far I am really having a very good time with him and might eventually even develop a sense humour!