Bush Whacking on Bikes

So we had hoped that today we could keep our blog entry on the shorter side, but unfortunately I don't think we will be able to achieve that goal....

Although our legs are a bit sore and our fannies scream when we sit on our bikes, today posed to be much more challenging mentally rather than physically....

Our itinerary today revealed that today was going to be extremely hilly. If we thought the first day was hilly and they didn't even give us a warning on that one, than today was going to be insane. So we decided to start our day with a little public transportation. Oh no, denied! The bus driver would not allow us to bring our bikes on board. So back to square one, biking.

We were lost within minutes but tried to remedy our mistake using our map. We found ourselves in the deep woods, for all the Wo- girls out there, they were way more dense than camp (I know, hard to believe). Both of us are rather fond of the woods, but then there was a chainsaw man.... He was just minding his own business cutting down trees, but the sound of the chainsaw was rather frightening as we rode along. We both felt like it could be a seen out The Blair Witch Project or something like that. Anyways, we got back on track, but it took us about 10 km of riding to go 5 km on the map. Also, the days description of hilly was not a joke, rolling hills and lots of them.

Things continued much the same as they have in past days, lots of poor directions, lots of guessing but beautiful landscape and awesome weather. Our next big boo- boo happened when the directions from our tour company were cut off the page.... So we were missing the last 4 or 5 words. We looked at our map and followed that instead... We followed a small paved path, much like the other ones we have taken. The path was up the longest hill ever with about 4 false summits. When we reached the top, the path turned into gravel (which has happened a lot) and then the path just became grass, and then just a massive field! It was beautiful, we could see all the surrounding towns and all the farm land. We had two options, go back about 5 km to where we went wrong or make our own path down through the field. We went with the latter. So we peddled down the massive field, which for those of you who have seen Sound of Music, looked a lot like the opening seen when she is singing the Hills are Alive with Music. We then walked our bikes through a huge pine stand on a very steep slope. After the pine trees there was dense grasses and shrubs that we bush whacked our way through. We both felt like it was NOLS all over again but with bikes. While bush whacking we got covered in stinging neddles. We came to a farm path where we both took a moment... Frustration had finally reached us. With our stinging arms and legs and a lack of forward progress we found this one harder to laugh off. We followed the farm path and much to our dismay it took us back to the exact spot we had started. The full circle had taken us over an hour and was probably 8 km.

We took the only other turn possible and then found ourselves at a town that was completely off our route and only 10 km from Telc (where we stayed last night). More mentally defeated and frustrated than physically tired, we decided to throw in the towel. It was already 2:30 and we had another 50km to go, at this rate there was no way we would make it there by dark. We called our tour company and after feeling incompetent, arranged a car.

While driving with Anton, the old man who owns the hotel we stayed in last night, we came to 5 road closures that even puzzled the local. The drive took over an hour and would have been crazy to bike.

Vranov, the town we are staying in, is the smallest town we have stayed in yet, which means that no one speaks a word of English here. Also the town seems to be haunted/ deserted. Our hotel is the weirdest one yet but it will do for the night.

We just had a wonderful dinner and have recovered from our interesting day. Not quite sure if our dinner was pork or chicken, but it satisfied our hunger from yet another day full of adventure. Day four of biking here we come!