Sunday 31 July 2016

Sun31Jul16: Arlo - Holloko, Hungary (105.9km, 2,572.3km YTD)

"Cultural differences", that's what it must be.  Apparently some Hungarians go to a campground to party all Saturday night, and they - and the campground management - have no regard for any people who are actually there to sleep.  Electronic music pounding all night, the laughing / shouting / attempted singing by drunken idiots, the barfing on the tree alongside my tent, and the last tittering gaggle of young ladies staggering from the WC and back to their tent at 5:23am.  Not too restful for us who came to rest up. 
However, the morning promises nice clear skies, 16C temperatures, and the riding day starts off with a downhill glide from the campground through Arlo and back into Ozd, turn left, and we're off westward on some new highway.





wood statues, Tar
Gergo is having us skirting the outskirts of Budapest counterclockwise to try and bring us in along the Donau (Danube) River.  Good roads, light traffic on a Sunday morning, lunch van at 62km, and the temperature is starting to getting fairly warm.







four-plex accommodation, Holloko
Route turns right up into the hills above Highway #27, and climbs, and climbs, and ends up at the 'ghost town' of Holloko which has been restored as a 15th century 'tourist trap'.  The houses have been renovated for four-plex accommodations, bars, gift shops, ice cream parlours, wine tasting cellars, etc. and anchored by a church in the middle.





Kacsic Castle, Holloko
Above the town is the castle built by the Kacsic family during the 14th century, also partially renovated and turned into a museum, filled with period furnishings and several plaques of the area's history.
The late afternoon sun provides some drying time for camping gear that got moisturised during last nights outing, and then it's time for 5:45pm rider meeting.

Saturday 30 July 2016

Sat30Jul16: Kosice, Slovakia - Arlo, Hungary (136.2km, 2,466.4km YTD)

storage garage, Hotel Yasmin
Couldn't sleep well last night but got my act together at 6am, showered, packed, and down to the lobby.  Rider's meeting at 6:50am outlining details of the 137km that represents our longest day of the Tour.  Another lovely buffet breakfast, then a convoy away from the Hotel Yasmin after 8am, Gergo leading the caravan to the southern outskirts of Kosice.





steel plant, Kosice

For some reason Gergo wants us to pass through and see the old industrial steel plants that made this place famous in eastern Europe, but all I notice is that the tour adds on 10km to our day's schedule.  Initially I'm heading down the road with (Bristol) Peter, but when he passes Dan & Shirley (USA) I decide to match their pace instead.





sunflowers, Sokofany
Lovely flat valley with plenty of agricultural usage, high hills on both sides provides great scenery,









Turnanod Hrad (Castle)
Turnanod Hrad (Castle)

one prominent hill has the Turnanod Hrad (Castle) perched on top.  There's lots of traffic on Highway #58 but a nice wide shoulder, then we're turning south towards the border of Slovakia and Hungary.

cow elk, Tornanadaska
A cow elk is spooked beside the road, and you're tell that they're rare because of the number of cars that stop to view it.  Another 10km down the road is an ATM where we can access quantities of Hungarian 'florins', another country that thinks they can individually do better printing their own currency rather than support the Euro.





stork, Aggtelek National Park
There's quite a bit of hill climbing in today's itinerary, including passing by the UNESCO cave regions of Aggtgelek National Park.
Then it's down into the valley areas again, a 'Pepsi stop' at a small bar in Seresyzfalva with Dan & Shirley, and we're enroute to Ozd.






Camping Suvadas Liget, Arlo, Hungary
Co-op grocery store at 127km is our restocking/shopping centre before the final few kilometres to Camping Suvadas Liget.  This small local campground has a lake for swimming and non-motorised boating, a bar & snack restaurant, and comes stocked with the rowdy group of overage over-consuming older adults - hopefully, they'll be passed out by nightfall.
Set up the tent, shower, laundry, and then I can relax and appreciate my surroundings.

Friday 29 July 2016

Fri29Jul16: "Hotel Yasmin", Kosice, Slovakia (rest day)

Forgot to turn off my watch alarm before going to bed last night, so it woke me up at 6:05am.  No trouble dozing until about 8am because this physical body is tired!  When you're moving and cycling every day, there's no indication of any need for a rest, but when that routine ends..... Full stop.
Went downstairs for breakfast after 9am, ate slowly and focussed on the food that we don't normally get at small rural hotel buffets.  Then out for a walk around Kosice, where the nearby Old City was built on a river plain and protected by two large branches of the Hornad River.
St. Elizabeth's Cathedral, Kosice
roof, St. Elizabeth's Cathedral, Kosice
Plague column, Kosice



interior, University Church of the Holy Trinity


   










A small caffeine lunch of coffee and chocolates with George, then it's back to the hotel to clean the crap off my bicycle, and oil up the chain for our next five days of cycling toward Budapest.  Housekeeping has done my hotel room so I can also string up my clothesline again and do another load of laundry.  With that work out of the way, it's time for another shower, then photos and blog time.

Thursday 28 July 2016

Thu28Jul16: Bandejov - Vsysny Tvarozec - Kosice, Slovakia (131.6km, 2,330.2km YTD)

Yours Truly was the last tour rider in to the Kosice hotel today, and he couldn't be prouder.  What a great day!  These kind of days don't happen often enough in a person's life, so they have to be remembered and treasured.  Details below.....
Ed Sokol & his ancestral villages
This morning after breakfast, the rest of the TDA group and right at the STOP sign for the scheduled ride south to Kosice, but Ed Sokol and I tuned left at the STOP sign and headed up to visit his paternal ancestral village of Nizny Tvarozec (viz. Lower Tvarozec), about 18km northwest of Bandejov.  Ed had been there about 15 years ago, but that visit was a blur so today he had the birth certificate of his grandfather Mikhail Sokol and wanted to check out all the possible family roots by talking with residents and checking the files of the local municipal offices.


Romany village, below Nizny Tvarocez

We started riding in a light fog, temperature about 18C, and it turned into a nice clear sunny day.  Highway #77 has become a nice paved road and we turned up into the hills to the village of Sverzove, then further on we turned right and encountered a Romany camp in a side valley below Nizny Tvarozec. Romany (or Roma) are the transient (a.k.a. gypsy) field workers that every farmer needs but nobody trusts.





helpful residents, Vysny Tvarozec
English may not be a common language in the small villages of Slovakia, but Peter (who used to work in England) led us to the two church cemeteries in Vysny Tvarozec and introduced us to other people were also enthralled by the Slovak birth certificate and endeavoured to do everything they could to help us out.  The only Sokol still living in that small community just happened to be away from home.




Sokol relatives, Nizny Tvarozec
Cycling back to Nizny Tvarozec, Ed met a family whose surname is Sokol, so they're undoubtedly related to him, but nobody could figure out the exact connection.  When we turned to leave, the older (est. 80+) Sokol woman began to weep, and the younger (est. 60+) Sokol woman gave Ed a big hug (maybe they're cousins?), but the menfolk couldn't have cared less and went back to their carpentry work.




guard post, Slovak frontier
We cycled back to Bartejov, arriving about 11:30am after 38.8km of genealogy exploration, so Ed decided to head for the station and take the train to Koscie.  My choice was to find the TDA flagged ride to Koscie beginning on Highway #656, another 90km or so, and start in the middle of the day, about 4 hours behind everybody else.
Early afternoon on a hot sunny day, what can possibly happen?  Well, for one thing the thunderstorm clouds rolled in, thunder and lightning, and then it began pouring rain about 1pm.  Rain makes the flagged route a bit more difficult to follow because the flagging tape gets stuck to the poles and is more difficult to see and follow.  However, after a series of interesting events that would take far too long to recount, I made it into Kosice about 4pm, pedalled around the Old City for awhile, and finally asked for directions from a bartender at the Luxor (advertised as an 'Irish bar').
Hotel Yasmin is a very fancy hotel by TDA standards.  The concierge spotted me picking up my bike lock in the box outside their front door, helped me find the storage locker in the underground parking garage, escorted me to the Reception desk, where I found out that I was given a SINGLE room for our two day stay in Kosice.  Hooray!
Room #704 has a king-size bed, a bathroom larger than some of the hotel rooms we've had to share over the past 3-1/2 weeks, so after stripping off my rain-soaked and gritty bicycle clothing, that 30 minute soak in a tub of hot water was just 'what the doctor ordered'.  About 6pm I returned to the Luxor and thanked the bartender for his assistance, then had supper while the EuroSports channel replayed highlights of the 2016 Tour de France (most of which I missed).  Turns out that my 20ish waitress had worked in England for several years, was trying to figure out what to do with her life, ended up chatting with me frequently, so it wasn't long before she had heard the 1995-2016 history of my own family.  Don't know whether those memories helped her, but it sure felt good to reminisce.
Back to the hotel room to finish off my laundry in the sink, and then hang it up on a clothes line strung across this huge bedroom, while watching Rogers Cup tennis on television.  Boy, am I ever a happy guy!  And full of it, too.

Wednesday 27 July 2016

Wed27Jul16: Rzeszow, Poland - Bardejov, Slovakia (120.5km, 2,198.6km YTD)

Yes, three guys can sleep in the same room without undue acrimony.  But it sure would have helped in the hotel manager had turned on the A/C because - although we had lots of air flow at 23C all night - it was down to 17C outside by morning.
Peter McCartney is up at 4:50am, dresses, and leaves at 5am; then Chris Wille gets up and turns on his computer and plunks away with every key stroke having a 'boink' sound component, but I just lay there and dozed until 6am.  After all, 45 minutes is lots of time to log onto Skype (to see if anybody cares), check my e-mails, shower, dress, pack, and get the bag down to the van for loading.  Buffet breakfast is quite nice, a few dishes different from the ordinary, but these hotels have to realise that most cyclists travel on scrambled/fried/hard boiled/etc. eggs and meat in the morning.
Away by 7:30am, Peter catches up to me, we chat, I miss a turn, and realise that either I go back or stick with Peter and his Garmin for the rest of the morning.  Okay, let's up the tempo and stick with Peter.
Many people continue to live in their old log homes, but some newer homes even have an old log home in the side yard, likely the first family home, which has been kept in great shape and freshly painted.







Peter`s route is different because he dislikes L and R turns and changes of direction, so his Garmin route may involve main highways rather than small rural roads.  One of his side trips goes past a castle overlooking the city of Krosno.  Once I overtake him on a downhill stretch (because fat people travel faster due to gravity) and while cruising along suddenly realise that I have no idea where I'm going or whether I should be thinking of turning.  Oops!  Follow the man with the Garmin.

When the two of us arrive at the lunch truck my Garmin reads 67.7km and the guys following the flags have 66.7km - really no shorter, but interesting.  After lunch with Ozcar there`s a long screaming downhill to a river valley, and then some marvelous rural - almost alpine -  cross-countryside along the southern edge of Poland.  One section goes through a National Park where there are warning signs out for wolves and bear:  who knows the last time they spotted a wolf, but bears are definitely in the area.





I stop at the last convenience store in Poland at a village called Ozienne and use up my zloty coins to buy ice cream, Pepsi, and an energy drink.  The lady counts carefully, then shakes her head when she realises that I'm a bit short of change, but says nothing.  Hooray!  That sugar loading should get me up the final grades to the border and down into Slovakia.  The sun is merciless and temperatures must be above 30C, but with enough sugar in the bloodstream, a cyclist just keeps rotating the feet around and around and around, at whatever speed the body can maintain.  At the 102km point, Gergo wants us to turn left on a dinky little farming road, oil surface with plenty of patches and holes.  For a distance of about 6km this trail looks like a cruel joke, but then it turns into another valley system and connects with a paved road that screams downhill right into the suburbs of Bardejov, connects with a bypass that leads under the Old City area, and then up to the art-deco Hotel Sardis complex.  "Complex" meaning there's a 3-storey building with a furniture store, a clothing store, a bar, and a dinky little reception desk that services three levels of dinky little rooms all on the west side of the building.  And no ventilation system.  It's like being booked into a sauna.  After my shower, I hang the laundry out on a line under two pine trees in the hotel parking lot; not classy, but functional.
Then I take a slow walk (great exercise for working out those knotted muscles behind my shin bones) around the Old City, nice stone walls and bastions, with a huge basilica in the Town Square.  However, what I really need is a bank to change Polish zloyts to Euros (Tranka Banka), and a store that sells fermented grape juice, and - can you believe it?  They have a Tesco supermarket just down the street, fully air-conditioned, about the size of a Wal-Mart, and with enough selection to make the thirsty cyclist drool.
Back to the room for some blog time before supper.  The usual rider's meeting has been cancelled because Gergo is still out on the highway rounding up stragglers; boy, will they ever be exhausted.  Supper at the hotel, sharing a table with Eric & Ed (New York).  Tomorrow morning, Ed Sokol is skipping the scheduled bike ride and heading up into the hills to visit his ancestral home, and I've offered to go the 18km (and back) with him on our bicycles.  Hopefully we & our bikes will catch an afternoon train to Kosice and reach the TDA group's hotel before supper.  What the heck!

Tuesday 26 July 2016

Tue26Jul16: Sandomierz - Rzeszow, Poland (113.2km, 2,078.1km YTD)

The overnight road noise from Highway 77 was incessant and soothing, because tents don't stop much except a few drops of moisture.  My self-inflating air mattress has now proven to be self-deflating, something to do with that large rip in the lower seam.  Other than that, the night was a success.
I have a towel somewhere in the pack, but stopped looking for it some time ago when I realised that it would never dry on a tour cyclist's schedule - the best method is to take a shower, body wipe with the hands, put on a swim suit, and just wait for air drying to complete the job - low humidity helps.
Porridge with mangoes for breakfast, pack a couple of peanut butter & jam sandwiches for an emergency lunch, fill up my Camelback in anticipation of another hot day on the road, and we're off. 
Gergo has us heading cross-country for about 10km along dikes bordering the Vistula River, before settling down into the more familiar secondary- and tertiary-road network.  Peter hops out of the van and joins me at 19km which is strange because I'm the 3rd rider and he's supposed to be "sweep", viz. after the 23rd rider.  He proves his worth by quickly yelling at me when I miss a couple of easy flags, and seems to enjoy cruising along with me at 26-28kph.



There's a lovely wood church at 55km near a small community in the middle of a region of pine tree plantations.
When we arrive at the lunch van at 67km, Gergo reminds Peter that he has to wait for ALL the riders before leaving, which could be a couple of hours or so.  Although this group isn't too spread out after the first 67km, with "Coke stops" and "pastry stops" and "ice cream stops", the last half of a day's ride can become very stretchhhhhhhhed out.  Normally I arrive before 1pm, however, the last riders usually don't arrive until after 4pm.  (Peter recounts a sectional rider from TransEuropa2014 whose normal speed was 10kph and she didn't normally arrive at the destination until after the Rider's Meeting and the start of supper at 6pm.  Every day!)
Gergo has a logistical problem at 85km because of some road construction at a bridge underpass, so I catch up to the flagging van and give them an impetus for the next several minutes.  After that, they're gone and I'm on my own again.






Getting hotter now, temperature probably close to 30C, and the route follows no definable direction or pattern.  First we're climbing, then we're descending, first we turning southeast, then we're heading southwest, an interesting way to appreciate the countryside but the map also confirms that it IS the shortest route from point A to point B.  Finally see a fallow deer alongside the highway, feeding on a crop of alfalfa, but looking very scrawny and undernourished.
The final turn on our itinerary is right and then up a little gulch, and 1.8km further our trail enters the property of  Team Uchwat and the "Hotel Dwor Maria".  Team Uchwat is a "horsie training facility" and the Hotel is the newly-constructed accommodation for the "horsie set" who come to train and compete at this facility.




This place is very active and 15 teenage girls are in residence and going through their paces.  Our group of 26 cyclists and staff should be merely a blip on their young impressionable conscious remembrances of the week.

Monday 25 July 2016

Mon25Jul16: Radom - Sandomierz, Poland (108.8km, 1,964.9km YTD)

Terrible sleep, considering this is a hotel night.  This hotel has NO ventilation on the upper accommodation floor, except for a little window in each room, and since our room faces busy Highway #9 about 150m away, the choices are (a) close the window and suffocate in your own sweat, or (b) open the window and listen to the heavy traffic.  In addition, the people in Room #107 next door are smoking in their toilet/shower area and - since the exhaust fans don't work - the smoke is infiltrating our toilet/washroom area and stinking up the whole joint.  I went down the Reception twice to ask them to either (a) tell the people in Room #107 to stop smoking, or (b) change our rooms.  Their response was that it's not permitted to smoke in your room.  TripAdvisor is going to hear about this.
Cleaned the chain this morning, nice buffet breakfast at 7am, away by 7:30am, and the zig-zagging begins.  Gergo has a fiendish way of trying to keep a straight line route from Radom to Sandomierz but it involves zigging left on every little farm road and then right on the next narrow farm road, climbing 11%  gradient hills and swooping down into little river valleys then thumping across those narrow little bridges, just to hold a course approximating 174 degrees.


It's a wonderful way to experience the countryside, to enjoy the cherry







and apple orchards, the golden fields of ripening wheat, the quaint little farming villages; but it's a hell of a lot of work and concentration for a cyclist.  After all, most of his sharp turns are at the bottom of steep hills when you're crouched down over the handlebars and approximating the speed of sound, voila!  orange marking tape on the left!!  Brake hard, turn when you're under control, then realise that you haven't shifted down and are still in the 8th gear of the upper range of gears.  Yeech!  Time for start all over again.

Dan & Shirley (USA) catch up to me at the 78km mark and I tag along with them to 'get my head back into the game'.  We stop at an ABC mini-market at the 92km mark and the Gatorade and chocolate bar do their magic.  Although we leave the store together, I leave them in the proverbial dust.  Zig, zag, merge onto Highway #77, swoop into and through Sandomierz, down the hill on the bicycle path, crank a hard right at Camp Browarny, and it's over.  Turn off the Garmin at 108.78km, Chris and Peter have already arrived (so what's new?), head over to a nearby service station for 1L of Cherry Coke to toast my arrival.
Pitch the tent close to the TDA van so I don't miss the call for supper, showers at the Handi-Cap WC are lovely, do my laundry in the dishwashing sink, then re-hydrate my body while I do some blog/photo time,





Sandomierz is quite properly famous for its Old City, so after supper is out of the way, George and I climb up the hill behind our campground for a closer look at the town square and assorted buildings.

Sunday 24 July 2016

Sun24Jul16: Warsaw - Radom, Poland (118.9km, 1,856.1km YTD)

Stranger and stranger.  Last night Roommate comes back from the 10km Warsaw Uprising Commemorative run and brings me a Polish Underground armband - I thank him profusely, because I thought they were only for the runners;  an hour later he drags his mattress & bedding off the boxspring and sleeps on the floor under the window.
Up at 6am, packed slowly because Gergo doesn't want our bags downstairs in the lobby before 6:45am, rider's meeting indicates we will have an 11km convoy out of town and then head south to Radom.  Counting Saturday's 'rogue breakfast event', this is my third buffet breakfast at the Hotel Ibis for a two day room registration, and the food variety nearly matches the Tallink Hotel in Tallin, Estonia.

Convoy departs about 8:15am into nearly departed streets on a warm, calm, Sunday morning.







A sign connecting the food chain "Mcdonalds" with a "McFit" fitness/wellness club is a real hoot:  maybe one day Mcdonalds will actually start running their own fitness centres.









private game park, 70km
Gergo wishes us well at the 11km mark and I realise that I've forgotten to turn on my Garmin - better late than never, but that screws up all the kilometrage marks on the itinerary.  I find myself riding with Peter McCartney, who has programmed in his own route on his Garmin and asks whether I'm with him or with the marking tape - easy decision. Peter will always pick the most direct route, so today we miss out on the standard dirt and cobblestone route that Gergo favours, and make a bee-line for the lunch truck at 65km, arriving about 10 minutes ahead of Chris.


streamside frolics, 90km
The three of us team up in the afternoon, but once again the pace comes close to burning me out.  Temperature started out at 20C and is now nearly 30C, and several local people have the right idea of cooling down and enjoying a swim, sunbath, and frolic in the stream on a Sunday afternoon.






Highway around Radom is old and in poor condition, but we reach the "Hotel Lesny Dwor", a very nice highway hotel, new, classy but basic, Gergo must have been able to negotiate a good price for our little group.
Tonight's room assignment has me with Peter McCartney.  Time for a shower, laundry, and then some photo/blog time in the hotel courtyard.

Saturday 23 July 2016

Sat23Jul16: "Hotel Ibis Warsaw", Warsaw, Poland (rest day)

Roommate hit me last night!  Well, I guess it was going to happen eventually, because before we started this ride I said to him "If I snore during the night, just give me a push".  So, after three weeks together, he physically struck me.  Well, at least he said it was because I was snoring, although how the heck would I know - after all, I was asleep at the time!  Afterwards I analysed my face down position on the pillow, noted that my arms and legs were extended and relaxed, noted that my breathing wasn't laboured.  So, why the heck would I be snoring?  Oh well ... Next time I'll call the police and maybe he'll give them a better explanation.
Today was exploration day through the city of Warsaw.  Our Hotel Ibis is at the northern end of the city so the natural direction to travel was southward.  Directly in front of our hotel is a monument to the Polish Holocaust, noting the number of Christian souls who took the trains to their death...






a monument to Madame Sklodowska-Curie (who discovered the phenomena of atomic radiation and died doing her work)...









reconstructed barbican and walls of the Old City...









a mermaid statue in the Old Town Market...










some idiot joining street buskers in the Old City streets...









...slipped inside the Royal Palace to see how Polish royalty lived back in the 18th centry...








...attended a baroque organ recital by Przemislaw Kapitula....











...watched Polish folk dancing in the 'free concert' area...








...checked out the Holy Cross Church where the heart of Chopin is emtombed in a support column...










....guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Saski Park, finishing with a tram homeward in the mid-afternoon to sort and edit all my photographs.










This evening there's a 10km run being held to commemorate the 72nd Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (which actually began 26 July 1944, but let's not quibble over a couple of days).  Volunteers at the barricades have donned WW2-era military uniforms and are allowing all sorts of riff-raff to be photographed holding German submachine pistols or automatic rifles.  Which reminds me, tonight I've got to remember not to snore...