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!